Discipleship from Catholic, mainline and conservative protestant congregant perspectives in Canada

Author(s):  
Arch Chee Keen Wong ◽  
Joel Thiessen ◽  
Keith Walker ◽  
Bill McAlpine
Author(s):  
Paul A. Bramadat

Is it possible for conservative Protestant groups to survive in secular institutional settings? Here, Bramadat offers an ethnographic study of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) at McMaster University, a group that espouses fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible, women's roles, the age of the earth, alcohol consumption, and sexual ethics. In examining this group, Bramadat demonstrates how this tiny minority thrives within the overwhelmingly secular context of the University.


Author(s):  
Axel R. Schäfer

The political mobilization of conservative Protestants in the United States since the 1970s is commonly viewed as having resulted from a “backlash” against the alleged iniquities of the 1960s, including the excess-es of the counterculture. In contrast, this article maintains that conservative Protestant efforts to infiltrate and absorb the counterculture contributed to the organizational strength, cultural attractiveness, and politi-cal efficacy of the New Christian Right. The essay advances three arguments: First, that evangelicals did not simply reject the countercultural ideas of the 1960s, but absorbed and extended its key sentiments. Second, that conservative Protestantism’s appropriation of countercultural rhetoric and organizational styles played a significant role in the right-wing political mobilization of evangelicals. And third, that the merger of evan-gelical Christianity and countercultural styles, rather than their antagonism, ended up being one of the most enduring legacies of the sixties. In revisiting the relationship between the counterculture and evangelicalism, the essay also explores the larger implications for understanding the relationship between religion and poli-tics. The New Christian Right domesticated genuinely insurgent impulses within the evangelical resurgence. By the same token, it nurtured the conservative components of the counterculture. Conservative Protestant-ism thus constituted a political movement that channeled insurgencies into a cultural form that relegitimized the fundamental trajectories of liberal capitalism and consumerist society.


2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Millard Haskell ◽  
Stephanie Burgoyne ◽  
Kevin N. Flatt

Based on the survey responses of over 1000 attendees of growing and 1000 attendees of declining Mainline Protestant churches in Canada, this research examines patterns of denominational switching and the characteristics of switchers from both groups. Based on previous Canadian research we hypothesized, among other predictions, that the majority of our Mainline Protestant congregants would never have switched denominations and, of those who had, a plurality would indicate that their previous church was part of another Mainline Protestant denomination. These hypotheses were supported when the responses of growing and declining church attendees were combined but when the responses of the growing church congregants were tabulated separately they were not supported. We show how the switching patterns of the growing Mainline Protestant church congregants are more akin to those of Canadian Conservative Protestant church congregants and we offer explanations as to why this may be the case. Keywords: Religious Switching; Reaffiliation; Church Growth; Mainline Protestant; Conservative Protestant; Canada


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (6) ◽  
pp. 980-1000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin T. Smiley

Research on religion and the environment primarily focuses how religion shapes environmental attitudes, but this leaves aside how this connection links to observable levels of pollution. This article outlines three elements by which religion and environmental inequality are related: the cumulative effect of religious worldviews, free market outlooks held by some religious adherents, and the bridging or bonding character of social ties of religious adherents. These three elements are analyzed by examining the relationship between industrial air pollution and the proportion of population in metropolitan areas that are conservative Protestant, Mainline Protestant, Catholic, and a composite measure. Results show that the composite measure is associated with more industrial pollution. But important distinctions between religious groups show that a greater proportion of conservative Protestant Evangelical adherents are associated with greater pollution, but that Catholic and Mainline Protestant adherents are not. These findings suggest the importance of renewing research between religion and environmental degradation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 353-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Derks

Abstract This article discusses two major ways in which sexual and religious identities are conceptualized in Dutch public discourses about homosexuality. In a secular discourse that stresses that LGBTs should be able to ‘be themselves’, certain religious identities are often ignored, subordinated or attacked, while the self that needs to be realized is rendered primarily a sexual self. A conservative Protestant (counter-)discourse on ‘being in Christ’ subordinates (homo)sexual identity to Christian identity—or even rejects it. To move beyond such (Late) Modern oppositional constructions of religion and homosexuality in terms of (religious/sexual) “identity”, this article explores the (queer) Catholic concept of sacramental characters—as an anti-identity—and suggests that it has the potential to unsettle some of the deadlocks in public discourses about homosexuality and sexual diversity.


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 274-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura M. Northrop Orme ◽  
M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall ◽  
Tamara L. Anderson ◽  
Jason McMartin

This study assesses individual social attitudes and ideological beliefs regarding systems of power and sexism (i.e., Authoritarianism, Conservatism, Traditionalism, Social Dominance Orientation [SDO], Hostile Sexism [HS], and Benevolent Sexism [BS]) in relationship to Bible interpretation choice about passages related to gender. Data were collected from 216 conservative Protestant Christian churchgoers. It was hypothesized that individuals with higher levels of Authoritarianism, Conservatism, Traditionalism, SDO, HS, and BS would prefer interpretations that endorse gender hierarchy. The results supported these hypotheses, finding Traditionalism and HS to be the primary factors related to interpretation choice. Additionally, it was hypothesized that any significant difference between men and women regarding interpretation choice would be explained by individual differences in these social attitudes and ideological beliefs. Men were significantly more likely than women to prefer Bible interpretations oriented toward gender hierarchy, and this difference was primarily explained by Traditionalism and HS.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document