Scofflaws and Carpool Lanes

Like most folks who live and drive in urban areas, I get a little bent out of shape when, during rush hour and the commute (carpool) lanes are in effect, cars with only one person, cut into the carpool lane and leave me far behind. Once I calm down, however, I remind myself that carpool scofflaws don't slow my commute down. They actually speed it up. When they choose to drive in the carpool lane, fewer cars are in my lanes, which means that my commute time drops. So, if they want to risk getting a exorbitant priced ticket, who am I to complain?

There are folks who do slow my commute down, however. These are the folks in cars with two or more individuals that, during rush hour, don't take advantage the carpool lane. When these law abiding citizens don't use the carpool lane, more cars are in my lanes and, as such, my commute slows down.

Just a little food for thought.

Why Evangelical Churches Thrive (or, Why Strict Churches Are Strong)

In 1972 sociologist Dean Kelly, who was working for the National Council of Churches at the time, wrote a book entitled, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing, in which outlined the reasons why he believed theologically conservative churches were more successful in attracting and retaining members than were more liberal churches. In particular, he argued that conservative churches were more successful because they placed high demands on their members, thus making their worship and membership experience more meaningful.

At the time Kelley’s thesis flew in the face of conventional wisdom that assumed that high-octane forms of religion were ill suited for the modern world and, as such, doomed to fail.  We now know that Kelley was right.  Over the years high octane religious groups have outperformed their milder counterparts, and as I noted in a post last week ("The Myth of Evangelical Decline"), they continue to do so.

In a preface to a later edition of the book, Kelley noted that his preferred title for the book was “Why Strict Churches Are Strong,” but his publisher insisted on the more provocative title, “Why Conservative Churches Are Growing.” Kelley preferred the former title because his main point was that it is strictness, not conservativeness per se, that leads to higher levels of commitment, and high levels of commitment provide churches with a competitive advantage in the religious marketplace. In Kelley’s view liberal churches were capable of being strict and the fact that most weren’t was beside the point (or at least a topic for a different day).

Twenty years after Kelley’s book was first published, economist Larry Iannaccone revisited Kelley’s thesis (“Why Strict Churches Are Strong,” American Journal of Sociology, 1994:1180-1211). He noted that the rapid growth of strict churches presented a problem for standard economic theory because why would someone join a “high-cost” church when plenty of “low-cost” alternatives are available?  That is, why join a church that requires you to spend 15-20 hours per week at church when you can join one that only requires that you spend one or two?  The costs of strict churches aren't only measured in time, however. Membership in some strict churches can invite ridicule and persecution, sometimes limits one's chances for social and economic advancement, and often bars access to secularly endorsed pleasures (e.g., Halloween).

Iannaccone’s Solution

Iannaccone's solution to this paradox is that strictness increases church strength in at least three ways:

• It raises overall levels of commitment
• It increases average rates of participation, and 
• It enhances the net benefits of membership

Strictness accomplishes all three of these things because it eliminates free-riding, which is where individuals benefit from the efforts or contributions of others without putting forth a corresponding effort or contribution of their own (e.g., people who listen to public radio but don't donate).  In religious communities free-riders are those who show up for and benefit from worship services but only contribute marginally to the services themselves. Iannaccone argues that free-riding can undermine the collective activities of groups like faith communities because it reduces the average level of participation, enthusiasm, energy and so on.

With strict groups, however, only those fully committed to the groups join or at least stick around for the long term. This leads to an increase in the average level of participation, which in turn leads enthusiasm and energy levels to be higher.

The important thing to emphasize here is that religion is a "commodity" that people produce collectively. For example, the satisfaction I derive from worship doesn’t depend just on how much I contribute to the worship service but also on how much other people contribute. If only half of the congregation participates (e.g., the singing of hymns), then the collective product will not be as good as it would be if everyone participated, which means that my worship experience will be less than it would have been if everyone had participated.

Churches can get too much of a good thing, though. Too much strictness drives “away all current and future members” because the benefits no longer outweigh the rewards of belonging. Consequently, churches must strike a balance between strictness and leniency; otherwise they will wither and die. Striking a balance can be tricky, though – churches can choose the wrong areas in which to be strict and in which to be lenient.

The Rise of Christianity: Strictness and Christian Rewards 

In The Rise of Christianity Rodney Stark draws on Iannaccone’s strict church thesis to help explain the success of the early Christian Church. He notes that the early Church placed heavy demands on members, to the point of being willing to die for their faith (i.e., martyr).  And while the martyrdom of Christians was sporadic and relatively minimal (I know, conventional wisdom has it that Christians were martyred repeatedly throughout the Roman empire -- but that simply wasn't the case. It did happen but not nearly as often and regular as most people believe), people who joined the early Church were expected to fully participate in its ministries and worship.  This led to worship services that “must have yielded an immense, shared emotional satisfaction” and levels of care that generated many "this-worldly" rewards to church members (p. 188):

"Because the church asked much of its members, it was thereby possessed of the resources to give much. For example, because Christians were expected to aid the less fortunate, many of them received such aid, and all could feel greater security against bad times. Because they were asked to nurse the sick and dying, many of them received such nursing. Because they were asked to love others, they in turn were loved. And if Christians were required to observe a far more restrictive moral code than that observed by pagans, Christians – especially women – enjoyed a far more secure family life.”

Thus, although membership in the early Christian Church was costly (e.g., martyrdom and other forms of sacrifice), it was still a bargain.

The Grammys and Lady Antebellum

The Grammy awards have come and gone, and the band, Lady Antebellum was the big winner, taking home five Grammys. My son assures me that Eminem deserved to win, and while I'm not an Eminem fan, I wouldn't be surprised if he's right because the Grammys has a knack for getting things wrong. A case in point: Lady Antebellum has already won more Grammys than the Rolling Stones, The Who and Led Zeppelin, and it only needs to double its output before it passes The Beatles. The Stones didn't receive their first Grammy nomination until 1982 and didn't win their first "real" Grammy in 1995 (they received a lifetime achievement award in 1987).  The Who and Led Zeppelin have only won lifetime achievement awards and four of The Beatles awards came long after the band broke up -- three in 1997 and one in 2008.

Now, I don't want to suggest that Lady Antebellum's song, "Need You Now," isn't any good (it clearly is), but surely no one really thinks it has the staying power of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," "Pinball Wizard," "Stairway to Heaven" and "I Saw Her Standing There."

Cinderella Story (It's in the Hole!)

It's been thirty years since Bushwood Country Club's assistant greenskeeper Carl Spackler (a.k.a. Bill Murray) uttered these immortal words, which rank 92nd in the American Film Institute's 100 top movie quotes of all time from US films:

"Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac...It's in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!"

And while the Crosby (oops, I mean the Pebble Beach National) Pro Am isn't the Masters and Bill Murray was never a greenskeeper (at least I don't think he was), this past Sunday fiction sort of morphed into history. In case you missed it, Bill Murray and his professional playing partner, D.A. Points, won the Pebble Beach Pro Am title (Points also won the professional title). Again, it isn't the Masters but definitely a "Cinderella story."

The Myth of Evangelical Decline

Much recent research into American religious trends has concluded that evangelical Protestantism is in the decline, perhaps not as much as is mainline Protestantism, but in decline nonetheless. Leading evangelicals have greeted this news with dismay and calls for the need to evangelize the unchurched and those who have fallen away from the faith. By contrast many secularists and liberal Christians have reacted to the news with undisguised glee, the latter because they see evangelicalism as distorting the faith proclaimed by Jesus, and secularists because they view religious belief in general, but evangelicalism in particular, as a sign of societal ignorance (although they often tolerate liberal Christians because at least they are "right" on the issues).

The research is wrong, however.  Evangelicalism is not dying, nor is it fading away. The reason why many researchers have concluded that evangelicalism is in decline is because of how and what questions surveys ask or don't ask. What researchers at Baylor University have found is that many evangelicals who attend nondenominational churches often identify themselves on surveys as "unaffiliated" or (amazingly) "having no religion." As Byron Johnson, a professor of social science at Baylor University notes,

Because traditional surveys do not provide categories that adequately describe those who attend nondenominational congregations, their members often check "unaffiliated" in typical surveys and questionnaires" (Johnson, "The Good News About Evangelicalism," First Things, February 2011: 12). 

However, when surveys ask respondents to not only identify themselves by their religious family (e.g., Baptist) and denomination (e.g., Southern Baptist) but also by their local congregation (as the Baylor Religious Surveys do), the supposed evangelical decline disappears (the same cannot be said about mainline Protestantism, however). In particular, researchers at Baylor found that:

1. American churchgoers feel more connected to local congregations than to denominations (e.g., United Church of Christ) and religious families (The Reformed Tradition)
2. Currently 10.8% of Americans are unaffiliated, which is much less than the 14-16% reported in a lot of other surveys 
3. Many of those who identify themselves as unaffiliated are affiliated with congregations and of those who are, most attend evangelical churches 
4. America is more evangelical than previously reported in other surveys. "Fully one-third of Americans... affiliate with an evangelical Protestant congregation. Indeed, evangelicals remain the numerically dominant religious tradition in the United States" (Johnson, First Things) 

Why evangelicalism remains such a potent force in America is a topic I'll take up in a future post ("Why Evangelical Churches Thrive"). For now it is suffice to say that reports of evangelicalism's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

The Super Bowl and Violence Against Women (The Myth of)

Many of you are probably familiar with the claim made in 1993 that on Super Bowl Sunday violence against women jumps by as much as 40%. This was first noted by a coalition of women’s groups at a news conference a few days before the 1993 Super Bowl and followed up with an article in the Boston Globe a couple of days later. Also, a psychologist from Denver appeared on “Good Morning America”, claiming that she had gathered 10 years worth of data backing up this claim.

What you may not know is that there are no data supporting this claim. An investigative reporter from the Washington Post found that the Denver psychologist had never shown her data to anyone (and still hasn’t), and the other studies cited by the women’s groups in the original news conference did not support the claims that they made. Consequently, the Boston Globe retracted the story a few days later.

A blow-by-blow account of what happened can be found in Christina Sommers book, “Who Stole Feminism?”, and the citations to the articles, etc. can be found in the book's endnotes. Here are a few pertinent facts:

• January 28, 1993 (Thursday) – News conference called by a coalition of women's groups announcing that anecdotal evidence suggests that Super Bowl Sunday is "the biggest day of the year for violence against women." It was also reported that Old Dominion University had conducted a study that had found that police reports of beatings and hospital admissions in northern Virginia rose 40% after games won by the Redskins during the 1988-1989 season. 
• January 29, 1993 (Friday) – A Denver psychologist named Lenore Walker claimed on "Good Morning America" to have compiled 10 years worth of data showing a sharp increase in violent incidents against women on Super Bowl Sundays. 
• January 30, 1993 (Saturday) – Article in the Boston Globe reports that women's shelters and hotlines are "flooded with more calls from victims on Super Bowl Sunday than on any other day of the year." She noted that one study of women's shelters in the West showed a 40% increase in calls on Super Bowl Sundays. 
• January 31, 1993 (Super Bowl Sunday) – NBC broadcasts Super Bowl game and makes a special plea for men to remain calm, broadcasting a public service spot reminding men that domestic violence is a crime. CBS and Associated Press called Super Bowl Sunday a "day of dread." 
• January 31, 1993 (Super Bowl Sunday) – While most newspapers and other media outlets picked up the story at face value, Ken Ringle of the Washington Post actually called around to check on the sources of he story and exposed the claims as a myth. He asked Janet Katz, professor of sociology at Old Dominion who was one of the principal investigators of the study about the connection between violence and football, and she said “That's not what we found at all.” Instead, they found that an increase in emergency room admissions “was not associated with the occurrence of football games in general.”
• Ringle also called the reporter of the Boston Globe article to find out where she got her information. She said she never saw the study but had been told of it by a representative from FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting – a media watchdog group that fell down on the job in this case). FAIR then told Ringle that the authority for the 40% figure was Lenore Walker (see above) who in turn referred him to Michael Lindsay, another Denver psychologist, who admitted that he had never seen any data supporting the 40% figure. More to the point, Lenore Walker refused to release the data on which she based her claim, saying she doesn't use data for public consumption.
• February 2, 1993 – The Boston Globe retracts its January 30th article in a story by Bob Hohler, who quotes several psychologists/counselors who said they didn’t believe the 40% figure when they heard it. He concluded, “Despite their dramatic claims, none of the activists appears to have any evidence that a link actually exists between football and wife-beating.”
• May 1993 – A separate investigation by the American Journalism Review also concluded that there was no data to support the 40% figure although it did take exception to Ringle’s selective use of quotes out of context. 

Why a handful of people thought it necessary to make all this up is a question for another time. For now, enjoy the game.

OMG! A Center for Theological Conversation

Here's a story that is both tragic and inspirational that recently appeared in the Christian Century ("Freelance Theologian"). In 2004, Anna Madsen and her husband were studying theology in Regensburg, Germany, and just before she and her family were to move to Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to take a teaching post, Anna's husband and (nearly) three-year-old son, Karl, were hit by a car. Her husband died, and her son Karl suffered a traumatic brain injury.  Her daughter, Else, who was not in the car, was only eight months old at the time. In spite of all this, she still moved to South Dakota to take the job at Augustana College.

2009 turned out to be a year of change for Anna. She remarried (Reynold) and, with the encouragement of her husband, she left her tenure-track job at Augustana and started a business as a "freelance" theologian. Her venture is called OMG: Center for Theological Conversation through which she works with individuals and churches to address theological concerns. OMG has a website where several theological conversations are on-going, and Anna has a regular blog (far more developed than mine). You can find it here (OMG: Center for Theological Conversation). A couple of recent articles some of you might find interesting are ("An Epiphany about Metabolized Theology") ("Injustice in Health Care") and ("MLK, Jr., Crosshairs, Amygdalae, and Agape").