scholarly journals Superordinate Ties, Value Orientations, and Congregations’ Organizational Cultures

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 277
Author(s):  
Matthew May

In this paper, I examine how clergy’s value orientations and congregations’ relationships to the superordinate organizations in their institutional environment are reflected in congregations’ organizational cultures. My analysis of nearly 50 qualitative interviews with clergy, members, and former members of four Southern Baptist Convention congregations and one Independent Christian megachurch indicates organizational cultures are (1) reflections of their leaders’ value orientations and the congregation’s engagement with superordinate organizations and (2) an important indicator of how congregations establish legitimacy. I describe three unique organizational cultures and their relationship to clergy’s value orientations and the congregations’ ties to the superordinate organizations in their institutional environment. In the discussion, I argue there is a need to focus on specific components of the institutional environment beyond superordinate organizations, and I consider the role the three organizational cultures described in the text play in congregational growth and decline and church conflict.

Author(s):  
Paul Harvey

In 1917, a Baptist minister in Henderson, North Carolina, wrote to a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) worker of the frustrations pastors encountered in teaching their parishioners a “progressive” religious ethic appropriate for the age:Nearly all of us are driven by the force of circumstances to be a bit more conservative than it is in our hearts to be. I am frank to say to you that I have found it out of the question to move people in the mass at all, unless you go with a slowness that sometimes seems painful; and I have settled down to the conviction that it is better to lead people slowly than not at all.


1975 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 277
Author(s):  
William A. Poe ◽  
Robert A. Baker

2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-486
Author(s):  
Marty McMahone

Discussions about the historical meaning of religious liberty in the United States often generate more heat than light. This has been true in the broad discussion of the meaning of the First Amendment in American life. The debate between “separationists” and “accommodationists” is often contentious and seldom satisfying. Both sides tend to believe that a few choice quotes that seem to disprove the other side's position prove their own. Each side is tempted to miss the more nuanced story that is reflected in the American experience. In recent years, this division has been reflected among those who call themselves Baptists. One group, best represented by the work of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, tends to argue that the Baptist heritage is clearly steeped in the separation of church and state. The other group, probably best represented by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, tends to reject the term separation and sees value in promoting an American society that “affirms and practices Judeo-Christian values rooted in biblical authority.” This group tends to reject the separationist perspective as a way of defending religious liberty. They argue that Baptists have defended religious liberty without moving to the hostility toward religion that they see in separationism. Much like the broad story of America, the Baptist story is considerably more complicated than either side makes it appear.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-452
Author(s):  
Екатерина Александровна Бороздина ◽  
Анастасия Андреевна Новкунская

The interplay between different institutional logics is a vital topic in contemporary institutional analyses of healthcare. In this paper, we consider relations between professional, bureaucratic, market, and informal logics in the volatile and ever-transforming context of post-Soviet maternity care. We approach this issue from an unconventional angle and study how various logics are interpreted, enacted and manipulated by women-patients. Neo-institutional scholars commonly enlist patients as institutional actors that are involved both in maintaining and changing the institutional order. However, current research neglects the patients’ perspective instead focusing on the practices of healthcare providers. In order to fill this gap, we investigate how expectant mothers make sense of and navigate the complex institutional environment of Russian maternity care. In our analysis we rely on empirical data from fifty-nine qualitative interviews with recent mothers conducted in St. Petersburg in 2015–2017. This data allows us to conclude that the institutional dynamics of maternity care are powered mostly by the rivalry of two logics – one bureaucratic, the other market-driven. The professional logic, meanwhile, remains underrepresented and dominated by the other two. Unlike healthcare practitioners, women perceive the bureaucratic logic as chaotic and unpredictable, while wealthy clients employ a repertoire of actions offered by the market logic to exercise more control of their hospital routine. Different institutional logics compete for dominance, leaving areas of uncertainty in regard to institutional rules. In some cases, patients use informality to manage such ambivalence and challenge the formal order of healthcare facilities. The common character of this strategy prompts us to suggest that informality forms a distinctive fourth logic that frames some actions and interactions within Russian maternity care.


Author(s):  
Mark Newman

The chapter compares the response of the Catholic Church in the South to desegregation with that of the region’s larger white denominations: the Southern Baptist Convention, the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. It also makes comparisons with Catholics outside the South and with southern Jews, a minority, like Catholics, subject to suspicion and even hostility from the Protestant majority, and with the Northern (later American) Baptist Convention and the Disciples of Christ, both of which had a substantial African American membership. The comparison suggests that white lay sensibilities, more than polity or theology, influenced the implementation of desegregation in the South by the major white religious bodies. Like the major white Protestant denominations, Catholic prelates and clergy took a more progressive approach to desegregation in the peripheral than the Deep South.


2001 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 216
Author(s):  
Bill J. Leonard ◽  
Carl L. Kell ◽  
L. Raymond Camp

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