Church and Sect in Jehovah Witnesses of Russell, Kansas

Sects constitute a force in the Christian religion, in addition to Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, in most communities of the United States. Sects have a basically negative religious orientation. An important distinction between sects and denominations is that sects are established to achieve a context of isolation in society, while denominations currently accommodate to middle-class beliefs and values. Sects provide a haven from the complexity and tensions of the larger society. The Congregation of Jehovah witnesses of Russell, Kansas, reflects a predominant sect orientation with respect to the classification used to determine sect and church characteristics. This group shows very few signs of being assimilated into the mainstream of the social and religious life of the community

The Moral and Spiritual Qualifications of the Biblical Interpreter

The existence of many different Christian sects and denominations, although all purport to base their theological tenets on the Bible, has been a source of great perplexity to Christian and non-Christian students of the religious life of the past and present. While a number of reasons have been advanced for this situation, one of the underlying causes has been correctly stated by Burrows when he wrote: Wrong methods of interpretation and use have prevented Christians hitherto from arriving at any unity in their understanding of the Scriptures

Family, denomination, and the adolescent world view: an empirical enquiry among 13- to 15-year-old girls in England and Wales

The present study draws on a large survey of 16,581 13- to 15-year-old girls representative of the school population in England and Wales to examine the power of family denominational affiliation to predict the adolescent world view. World view was illustrated by reference to nine areas: personal well-being, worries, counseling, school, social concern, religious beliefs, paranormal beliefs, sexual morality, and attitudes toward substances. Comparisons were made between those who claimed no religious affiliation and those who claimed affiliation as Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, and Jehovah's Witnesses. The data demonstrated that each of these seven denominational groups offered a distinctive profile in areas of personal and social importance. These findings were interpreted as offering support for views advanced in Canada by Bibby, in Australia by Bouma, and in the United Kingdom by Fane regarding the continuing social significance of religious and denominational affiliation and as offering critique of the British Government's decision not to include denominational subdivision of the Christian category within the 2001 census conducted in England and Wales

Religious Extremism: The Good, The Bad, and The Deadly

This paper challenges conventional views of violent religious extremism, particularly those that emphasize militant theology. We offer an alternative analysis that helps explain the persistent demand for religion, the different types of religious that naturally arise, and the special attributes of the %u201Csectarian%u201D type. Sects are adept at producing club goods both spiritual and material. Where governments and economies function poorly, sects often become major suppliers of social services, political action, and coercive force. Their success as providers is much more due to the advantages of their organizational structure than it is to their theology. Religious militancy is most effectively controlled through a combination of policies that raise the direct costs of violence, foster religious competition, improve social services, and encourage private enterprise.

Dynamics and Growth Prospects of the Protestant Denominations in Ukraine

The intensity and nature of changes in Protestant communities in Ukraine is analyzed on the basis of broad empirical material (statistics, sociological surveys). The confessional specificity of the spread of Protestant communities in the Ukrainian territories is revealed, as well as their dynamics, geographical conditionality, and more. Changes in institutional, socio-political, cultural, and educational spheres of life of Protestant churches in modern Ukraine are recorded. Social legalization, the legal recognition of these movements as the churches and religious organizations equal to other traditional churches, as well as dynamism of Protestantism in evangelical and missionary sphere and public life, have contributed to the formation of a new type of confessional institutionalization and contributed to the outreach of Protestant communities to the public space. Protestant communities find it necessary to initiate moral responsibility of citizens before society, to encourage people to unite in various non-governmental organizations (charitable, medical, legal, educational, creative, etc.); they are focused on charitable goals. However, it is important to understand that the Protestant milieu in Ukraine is not homogeneous. It differs in character and has its own internal problems, among which is a confrontation between conservative Baptists, socially active Evangelical Christians and Pentecostals, and new Protestant movements, especially neo-charismatic. There are also a number of problems related to the occupation of the Crimea and the war in the East of Ukraine. Such problems are caused by the infringement of the rights of Protestant denominations by the occupation authorities. In general, the Protestant communities try to give priority to civil society, equality and impartiality of the structure of Ukrainian society and are in solidarity with the principles of the Constitution of Ukraine. In situations of social upheaval, Protestant communities as part of inter-religious and inter-denominational associations demonstrate a willingness to take on the role of a mediator in fostering dialogue between the parties

Statistical Dynamics of Religions and Adherents

Religiosity is one of the most important sociological aspects of populations. All religions may evolve in their beliefs and adapt to the society developments. A religion is a social variable, like a language or wealth, to be studied like any other organizational parameter. Several questions can be raised, as considered in this study: e.g. (i) from a ``macroscopic'' point of view : How many religions exist at a given time? (ii) from a ``microscopic'' view point: How many adherents belong to one religion? Does the number of adherents increase or not, and how? No need to say that if quantitative answers and mathematical laws are found, agent based models can be imagined to describe such non-equilibrium processes. It is found that empirical laws can be deduced and related to preferential attachment processes, like on evolving network; we propose two different algorithmic models reproducing as well the data. Moreover, a population growth-death equation is shown to be a plausible modeling of evolution dynamics in a continuous time framework. Differences with language dynamic competition is emphasized.Comment: submitted to EP

Friends at Mid-Century

The Isaac T. and Lida K. Johnson Lectureship, made possible by their gift, was created by the Executive Committee of the Five Years Meeting in its sessions of April, 1940. The creative minute of the Executive Committee is in part as follows: It is the duty of the Executive Committee to determine the use of this money and the Central Committee submits this recommendation: (1) that the gift be made a continuing memorial to these dear friends and (2) that the memorial be in the form of a lectureship for the Five Years Meeting, and, as it may direct, to be known as the Isaac T. and Lida K. Johnson Lectureship. It is further recommended that these lectures shall within the jurisdiction of the Executive Committee, be restricted to the field of Christian scholarship and the Christian message and its application to life. It is the confident expectation of the Executive Committee that not only the constituency of the Five Years Meeting, but all of Quakerism will be enriched by the successive messages made possible by this gift.https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/quakerbooks/1072/thumbnail.jp

Application of Economic Concepts on Religious Behavior

This survey gathers the current state of research activity on the emerging economic sub-area Economics of Religion. The religious beliefs and activities are analyzed from the viewpoint of economic theory and behavior. The advanced statistical tools and theoretical formulations of economic science can be applied to various problems of religious activity, dogma and social context. Analysis of interrelationship between economic and religious behavior increases our understanding of the nature and behavior of the target subject of economic science scrutiny, homo economicus.Economics of Religion, Religion, homo economicus, Club models, Religious production function

An economic theory of church strictness

This paper makes several contributions to the growing literature on the economics of religion. First, we explicitly introduce spatial- location models into the economics of religion. Second, we offer a new explanation for the observed tendency of state (monopoly) churches to locate toward the "low-tension" end of the "strictness continuum" (in a one-dimensional product space): This result is obtained through the conjunction of "benevolent preferences" (denominations care about the aggregate utility of members) and asymmetric costs of going to a more or less strict church than one prefers. We also derive implications regarding the relationship between religious strictness and membership. The driving forces of our analysis, religious market interactions and asymmetric costs of membership, high-light new explanations for some well-established stylized facts. The analysis opens the way to new empirical tests, aimed at confronting the implications of our model against more traditional explanations.Location theory, economics of religion