Contextual Socio-demographic Change and Denominational Growth, 1980-2010
Open Access
Author:
Bacon, Rachel Jeannine
Graduate Program:
Sociology
Degree:
Master of Arts
Document Type:
Master Thesis
Date of Defense:
June 26, 2015
Committee Members:
Stephen Matthews, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Keywords:
Mainline Protestant Evangelical Protestant Spatial Ecological Free Market Religious Change
Abstract:
This thesis provides a contextual analysis of how changing demographics in the United States have been related to contemporary trends of Mainline decline and Conservative growth using four denominations as examples. This is accomplished using spatial fixed effects regression on data at the county-level for the 1980-2010 time period. I focus on socio-demographic changes such as racial-ethnic and socioeconomic changes, as well as general population change dynamics (i.e. natural increase and migration) that provide environments favorable for some denominations’ growth and not others. I rely on an organizational ecology and socio-demographic niche framework, which conceptualizes religious denominations as normative organizations that draw from sub-populations as their primary resource. A set of hypotheses are tested for the six contextual variables included in the analyses. Findings partially support the general hypothesis that growth is most guaranteed when resource (i.e. people) changes have a stable source such as natural increase, when the denomination has the right religious products and membership composition (i.e. niche components) to attract growing segments of the population, as well as emphasizing membership growth in the denomination’s evangelism strategy.
