David Sikkink

• University of Notre Dame

A majority of the American laity has switched congregations at least once in their adult lives, and more than two-thirds of U.S. congregants have previously attended a different congregation (Schwadel in Rev Relig Res 54(4):543–54, 2012). In contrast to religious tradition switching, we know little about the individual-level correlates of congregat...

In this study, we examine social trust and the social attitudes of young adult evangelicals in the United States and Canada to better understand how national context shapes these attitudes. While some differences are predictable in light of national cultural differences, other differences between Canadian evangelical school graduates and American e...

Previous studies offer evidence that U.S. public and private high schools differentially influence volunteerism in adolescence. However, these studies are typically cross-sectional and only consider whether the individual volunteered or not. We address patterns of volunteering from adolescence into adulthood and the kind of volunteering activity in...

This article investigates whether parents in the United States and Canada send their children to schools that are similar to the schools they attended. Intergenerational continuity in the type of high school attended may be generated by social status or religious socialization concerns, or simply through familiarity, identity, and network ties buil...

In most contemporary societies the relationship between religion and education weighs heavily on the general relation of religion and society. Understanding the multifaceted relationship between religion and the social institution of education provides an important window on the place of religion in society. In attempting to shed light on these rel...

This article offers a rejoinder to William H. Jeynes' response to the six related articles and studies of private religious Protestant and Catholic schooling in North America featured in the March 2012 issue of the Journal of School Choice. While the authors express appreciation for the credit he grants these studies and especially for the further...

This article introduces the research initiated by Cardus on private religious Protestant and Catholic schools in North America and provides an overview of the succeeding articles presented in this special section of the Journal of School Choice. Through mixed method study by multiple research teams the inquiry was designed to seek to better underst...

School sector differences have been the subject of much debate in the literature, but there is limited data that allows careful consideration of differences within the religious school sector. The extensive Catholic school effects literature focuses on issues of school climate, especially an emphasis on persons-in-community, or communal organizatio...

IN THE works of prominent democratic theorists, conservative and evangelical Protestants are sometimes seen as a potential threat to a healthy democracy. One of the more visible and debated aspects of this threat are the curriculum challenges to public schools and the nature of conservative Protestant schools (Binder 2002; McLaren 1987). Democratic...

The relationship between growth and financial strength in a group of colleges and universities generally interested in enrollment growth was studied. Contrary to the conventional wisdom among administrators, it was found that institutions characterized by greater enrollment growth in a given year were not characterized by more positive subsequent c...

Surveying 2,610 respondents, the Panel Study of American Religion and Ethnicity is a nationally representative in-home survey of the noninstitutionalized U.S. adult population. The survey is designed to (a) focus primarily on religion and spirituality (with over 200 questions on these topics), (b) include multiple other modules (such as health, fam...

Why did some Americans volunteer to provide relief to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack victims, their families, or workers? This paper uses data from the 2002 Religion and Public Activism Survey, a nationally representative sample of adult Americans, which show that 10 percent of Americans volunteered to help victims of the terrorist attacks...

We draw on recent developments in the sociology of race and ethnicity and theories of the duality of social structure to explain how the formation of 'educational identities' interacts with racial stratification to shape the school choices of highly educated whites in the United States. Analysis of the 1996 National Household Education Survey shows...

Previous research has observed that religious participation is positively related to a wide variety of adolescent outcomes, including academic achievement, but relatively little is known about why this is the case. We focus on a group of related potential explanations for why religious involvement improves educational outcomes. We examine whether r...

Data from the 2002 Religion and Public Activism Survey were used to examine relationships among measures of religious orientation, embeddedness in social networks and the level of trust individuals direct toward others. Results from ordered logistic regression analysis demonstrate that Catholics and members of other denominations show signifi cantl...

The relationship between religion and education has been at the heart of numerous cultural conflicts in the United States. Struggles over educational institutions have in many ways defined the relation of religious groups to U.S. public life. The orientation of Mainline Protestantism to public life in the early to mid-20th century was reflected in...

To attract members and adherents, contemporary racist organizations construct interpretive frames that address a wide variety of social issues and problems. We draw on Simmel's insights on the social position of “the stranger,” arguing that racist framing should have greater resonance in communities with a large non-White population that is not ful...

We analyze the relationship between private prayer and participation in voluntary association. We argue that prayer fosters a cognitive connection to the needs of others, and thus promotes membership in associations that emphasize personal relationships. Private prayer is not related to membership in political groups. The effect of prayer is streng...

This article examines how structural conditions and social movement frames interact to influence mobilization and political consequences of social movements. Mobilization efforts benefit when movement framing is congruent with local structural conditions. This mobilization, in turn, produces political leverage for the movement through its capacity...

We use data from the National Election Study (2000) to analyze relationships among measures of religious orientation and commitment and three aspects of social trust. Results from OLS and ordered logistic regression models indicate that individuals affiliated with specific denominations (e.g., Pentecostal and other Christian) tend to display signif...

Which Americans remain in the religious communities and traditions within which they were raised? Which move to different traditions within their own religion, switch to different religious traditions altogether, or become non-religious entirely? And what social factors influence these outcomes and processes? This article engages the extant literat...

This chapter traces the journey of religion in American law from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Through most of the nineteenth century, many judges used common law to insert community and religious notions of justice and fairness into legal decisions. In the late nineteenth century, the actions of the emerging legal elite expanded the inf...

This paper examines how religious practice and religious faith can protect Latino youth from problems in school and contribute to their academic success. Data were drawn from research on social capital and from three major national surveys with large samples of Latinos. Findings indicate that Latino students who actively attended church or who saw...

Most students of social protest now agree that protest participation and participation in institutionalized politics are both potentially effective means of addressing individual and collective grievances. A primary conceptual distinction between the two forms of political participation centers on the contentious nature of protest. We focus attenti...

The old stereotype of "fundamentalist" Christian schools as rigid and insular must be abandoned. The pressures of mainstream culture and market forces, combined with internal differences in religious style and governance, have created a wide diversity of Christian schools that contributes to the public good. (MLH)

This article investigates why some Americans see public schools as hostile to their moral and spiritual values and whether churchgoing Protestants favor abandoning public schools. Through an analysis of 1996 survey data, it finds that religiously conservative groups, especially Pentecostals and charismatics, express alienation from public schools a...

To further understanding of Americans' explanations for racial inequality, and the implications these explanations have for reducing black-white socioeconomic inequality, we explore the role of religion. We argue that the cultural tools of a religious subculture shape the rationale for racial inequality. Examining white conservative Protestants, wh...

The ability of conservative Christian political organizations to influence local and national political races seems remarkable—made possible through mass distribution of voter guides, magazines, radio advertisement, and political talk show appearances. Research on the Christian Right offers several competing ideas about support for the Christian Ri...

Americans vary widely in their ideas about causes of and solutions to poverty, and differ as well in what compassion to the poor should look like. Few researchers have examined the complex issue of compassion. Most who have suggest that conservative Protestantism has lagged behind Catholicism and more liberal Protestantism in "generosity" or "commi...

This article examines the relative prominence of religion in the American South, in light of two contemporary phenomena: increased interregional mobility in the United States, and the rise of American evangelicalism. We investigate the effects of regional migration and non-migration on church attendance and importance of faith in the South as compa...

This review draws on research on U.S. schools, especially religious schools, to understand the importance of value orientations for teaching practices, and the various ways that values and religious identities and cultures influence the professional lives of teachers. It finds evi-dence that religious and value orientations influence teachers to sa...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1998. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-162). Microfiche. s