Dynamics and Stability in Globally Expanding Charismatic Religions: The Case of the Vineyard Movement in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

This article examines processes of religious transfer taking place in the neo-Charismatic Vineyard movement by analyzing the development of the German-speaking branch, Vineyard Deutschland, Österreich, Schweiz (DACH), in comparison to its American sister association. By drawing from first-hand interviews with congregational leaders and analyses of websites and other digital and print material, the article shows that Vineyard DACH is pursuing an unusually collaborative strategy to integrate into the German-speaking Christian landscape by forging close ties to both the Christian mainstream and its periphery. At the same time, it accentuates its identity as part of the international Vineyard network as a global charismatic movement. In this way, it negotiates the tension between the dynamics of expansion and the stability of a coherent self-identity, which is a distinguishing trait of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity. This development may be indicative of broader changes occurring in the religious landscape of German-speaking Europe in the early twenty-first century.

Children with Autism and Congregations: Leader’s Assessments of Knowledge, Programming, and Potentialities

The purpose of this study was to explore congregational responses to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The limited research around ASD and congregations reveals a lack of engagement with, and integration of, persons with ASD. In the current study, a mixed methods approach focused on congregational leaders’ knowledge, perceptions, and interests regarding ASD and related education and programming. A quantitative element assessed leaders of congregations by means of a survey (N=121), while a qualitative element offered participants an opportunity to comment on the survey (n=51) and participate in an interview (n=12). An analysis of the data suggests that leaders’ knowledge of ASD was higher than anticipated but that formal programming was lacking in smaller churches. Responses in smaller churches were less formal, occurred on a case-by-case basis, and were led by professionals and parents native to those churches. Leaders reported an interest in more education and training regarding .

Conclusion

The final chapter reviews the evidence that is presented throughout the book and discusses its implications for current conversations regarding female ordination in American congregations as well as wider societal forces at play. It also assesses the evidence in light of previous research on female ordination—finding, for example, empirical support for the idea that politics can drive religious behavior, and empirical disconfirmation of the notion that having female clergy will reduce religious attendance and involvement. In fact, levels of attendance and other religious behaviors are slightly higher in congregations that ordain women and moderately higher for younger women in congregations with a female pastor or priest. The chapter concludes by offering some thoughts on the issue of women’s ordination to religious congregational leaders and decision-makers who control access to leadership positions.

Marionetter eller dirigenter?

The purpose of this article is to enhance our knowledge of how congregational leaders understand and perform strategy in their work. By comparing findings from interviews with priests, churchwardens, and leaders of parish councils within the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Norway, this study explores their strategic agency through the illustrative case of a church development program. Role characteristics, responsibilities and cooperation are analysed. The article contributes empirically by clarifying how spiritual and administrative congregational leaders relate to the concept strategy work and elucidates its conditions in a folk-church context. Priests and churchwardens display a somewhat different conceptualization of strategy work. The former category places it within an institutional-cultural organizational perspective emphasising values and processes, whereas the latter understands it as rational-instrumental underlining goals and products. Parish council leaders hold a middle stance. The theoretical interest of this study is how these coexisting perspectives may both supplement each other and compete. The article discusses how and why strategy work is demanding in folk-church parishes characterized by complex structures favouring an internal rather than external orientation. Strategy work presupposes agency and close interaction between congregational leaders.

My Dear Ones

Gertrude Weil was raised in a multicultural household. Her father and grandparents had joined the Bavarian and Wurttemberg Jewish immigrant tide to America after the failed 1848 revolutions. From Baltimore they followed rail lines southward to North Carolina. They quickly acculturated as southerners, including Confederate service in the Civil War. Settling in a New South mill and market town, they rose from clerks and peddlers to successful mercantilists and entrepreneurs. Gertrude was raised amidst affluence, with white racial privilege, and benefitted from the progressive public school movement. Weils were also observant Jews, and her parents as congregational leaders imbued her with the ethics of Reform Judaism. Her identities as an emancipated Jew, cultured German, and progressive New Southerner were consonant.

Achieving Broad Participation in Congregational Health Surveys at African American and Latino Churches

Congregation-based health program evaluations often rely on surveys, but little documentation is available regarding specific methods and challenges. Here we describe methods used to achieve acceptable response rates (73–79%) in a survey of HIV-related attitudes and behaviors in two African American and three Latino churches in high HIV-prevalence communities in Los Angeles County. Survey participation was enhanced by conducting survey sessions at church-based meetings (e.g., women’s Bible study) and after worship services; employing diverse survey staff; providing participation incentives for pastors, church coordinators, and survey participants; and working collaboratively and respectfully with congregational leaders. Achieving broad participation in church-based surveys on sensitive health topics is feasible when done collaboratively with congregational leaders and with a flexible protocol, which permits tailoring survey approaches to cultural and organizational contexts and leverages available resources appropriately.

A tale of two Sister-Principals: Mother Mary Edward (Catherine) McKinley, Sisters of Providence of St Vincent de Paul (Kingston, ON) and Mother Mary of Providence (Catherine) Horan, Sisters of Providence of Holyoke, MA

This paper analyzes the career of two Sister-Principals who began their religious life in the same congregation: Mother Mary Edward (Catherine) McKinley and Mother Mary of Providence (Catherine) Horan. Depending on whose version of history you read, these women were rival religious or virtuous sisters in habit. Drawing on archival sources and their own writings, the paper analyzes the perceptions, in their own words, of the experiences Mother Mary Edward McKinley and Mother Mary of Providence Horan as Sister-Principals. It also provides an assessment of the historical significance of their careers as case studies of Sister-Principals. The careers of the two Sister-Principals reveal much: both members of the Sisters of Providence of Vincent de Paul (Kingston), both committed to the social welfare of the poor, both forced unwillingly to be Sister-Principals; both elected as congregational leaders; both memorialized in the public domain as powerful women leaders.

Facilitating Religious Environmentalism: Ethnology Plus Conservation Psychology Tools Can Assess an Interfaith Environmental Intervention

Reliance on a limited number of methodologies may be distorting scholarship in religious environmentalism. This article describes a religious environmental educational intervention, uses a qualitative ethnological approach to describe the response of local congregations to this intervention, and uses a quasi-experimental, quantitative psychological methodology to assess the impact of this intervention on the behavior of religious congregational leaders. This article reports the impact of the Living Ocean Initiative, a ten-month interfaith envi­ronmental outreach intervention that engaged forty-nine diverse religious congregations and their leaders in California 2006-2007. This study indicates the value of studying religious environmental interventions, and suggests that carefully designed interventions may be able to increase religious environmentalism. It found that religious leaders were more inclined to engage in personal pro-environmental behavior within their congregations than pro-environmental behavior in the political realm. This study reports expressions of religious environmentalism at the congregational scale. It suggests that the potential of religious environmentalism to transform environmental beliefs and politics proposed by scholars and religious leaders may be unrealistic, yet it does demonstrate impacts of an intervention on pro-environmental behavior, thus clarifying some of the ambiguity in past correlational studies, and suggesting that religious environmentalism can help foster a more sustainable society.