
Kevin D. DoughertyBaylor University | BU · Department of Sociology
Kevin D. Dougherty
PhD
About
66
Publications
17,748
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Introduction
I am a sociologist who studies religion and religious organizations. I have written on religious affiliation, religious participation, racial diversity in congregations, congregational growth and decline, and the impact of religion on other realms of social life such as community involvement, politics, and work. My published research appears in leading academic journals and has been featured in news outlets including CNN, National Public Radio, and USA Today.
Additional affiliations
January 2016 - present
Religious Research Association (www.rraweb.org)
Position
- Executive Officer
August 2015 - present
August 2011 - present
Education
May 1999 - December 2003
August 1997 - May 1999
September 1989 - April 1993
Publications
Publications (66)
Large congregations are commonly criticized as efaiting less involvement from adherents than smaller congregations. Small groups have been heralded as a remedy to drawbacks of increasing congregation size. This study tests the relevance of small groups to individuals' commitment and participation y particularly in large congregations. Analysis feat...
How do congregations from a white ethnic denomination respond to growing urban diversity? Using an ecological perspective, we examine 14 Christian Reformed congregations in Southeast Grand Rapids, Michigan over a 30-year time period (1970 to 2000). We track neighborhood composition, residential patterns of congregation members, and congregation mem...
Racial integration in religious congregations is a topic of keen interest to researchers and religious leaders. Although not common, there are congregations that successfully reach across cultural lines to attract adherents. Prior studies tend to dichotomize congregations into categories of multiracial and nonmultiracial and, thereby, miss a wider...
Over the past several decades, survey research has found a growing percentage of Americans claiming no religious affiliation. In this article, we introduce a modified religious traditions (RELTRAD) typology to measure religious affiliation. The approach benefits from a more detailed data collection and coding scheme of religious tradition based upo...
It is a common conception that the church is among the most segregated of American institutions, yet there is little research
to identify the extent of racial-ethnic homogeneity or to explain what factors propel diversity within religious communities.
Research that does exist draws primarily on individual level data and treats diversity as a catego...
Religious self-socialization theory posits that chosen exposure to religion can impact future attitudes and behaviors via the internalization of religious messages, but emerging adults in the United States tend to decrease their participation in religious activities during college. Therefore, unique outcomes may arise for the few that maintain or i...
Depression and anxiety symptoms have risen in the last decade, especially among college students. Virtues are potentially strong predictive factors of mental health symptoms, but a minimal amount of research has explored which virtues are the strongest predictors. We examined the relative predictive strength of gratitude, forgiveness, patience, int...
College is a setting and time of profound change in the lives of emerging adults. This change can include shifts in identity related to politics and religion. Given widespread attention to the alignment of religious people with conservative politics and less religious people with liberal politics (i.e., the “God Gap”), we ask: do college students w...
Athletics occupies an ambiguous place within the greater university mission, particularly at religious institutions. Intercollegiate sports programs may purport to reinforce the university’s aim to develop the whole person, but the nature of athletics can compromise student-athlete religiosity and well-being. Little research has focused on the reli...
The present study uses a person-centered approach to examine personality profiles of religious variables and the dark triad traits in relation to intellectual humility, prosociality, and mental health cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Undergraduates at a religious university completed assessments across two timepoints (Time 1: N = 1,006; Time 2...
While interviewing seniors at our university, we came across a curious and disturbing trend. Students of color were less active in any local church. This finding pushed us to ask: does this gap exist throughout Christian college campuses? We answered this question using survey data from over 800 seniors at Baylor University and a national sample of...
Competitive pressures can dilute the denominational identity of religiously affiliated colleges as colleges shed denominational bonds in pursuit of academic prestige. We ask: What is the relationship between denominational identity and athletic success at contemporary Christian colleges? To answer, we combine data from the Council for Christian Col...
Christian colleges strive to nurture the religious faith of students. Our study examines the relationship of curricular and co-curricular activities on two dimensions of faith maturity—vertical and horizontal. Analysis of survey data from seniors at one Christian university showed that the factors of discussing religion with peers and spending time...
Managers and ministers exercise influence over their members inside and outside of their organizations. We examine the relationship of servant leadership from two contexts, an individual’s workplace and place of worship, with regulatory foci, and, in turn, entrepreneurial behavior and counterproductive work behavior (CWB) at work. Moreover, we cont...
For Christian colleges and universities, students’ spiritual formation and character development are important outcomes. However, unlike academic outcomes of retention and graduation, systematic efforts to measure outcomes of faith and character are far from ubiquitous. The purpose of this article is to report the efforts of Baylor University to ad...
A large body of research documents the difficulty congregations have in creating and sustaining racially diverse memberships. However, little scholarship explores the overlapping consequences of racial change in congregations and neighborhoods over time. Since the number of all-white neighborhoods has fallen sharply in recent decades, we ask in thi...
Racially diverse congregations have become an important part of the American religious landscape. We use data from the National Congregations Study (NCS), notably including data from the fourth wave, collected in 2018–2019, to examine 20 years of racial diversity in congregations. We find that racial diversity within congregations has increased sub...
More than one quarter of Americans now have tattoos. The proportion is even higher among younger adults. Tattoos express affiliation and identity. For some, tattoos also express religiosity. Very little research exists on religious tattoos. The purpose of this study is to profile religious tattoos among students at one Christian university in the s...
The growth of suburban and exurban areas pushed many Americans into commuter lifestyles. People drive automobiles to work, to shop, to play, and presumably to worship. Yet, recent decades have birthed a countermovement that pulls people back to urban centers and an emphasis on local environments, i.e. to “go local.” Recognizing these centrifugal an...
Entrepreneurs tend to think differently than nonentrepreneurs. Among the differences are values prizing achievement and self‐direction, while downplaying tradition and conformity. Religion is an important correlate to human values. Nevertheless, previous research has failed to explore adequately the connections among religious beliefs, human values...
The only constant in life is change, or so goes the familiar refrain. But when it comes to research on multiracial congregations, studying change has largely been overlooked. Questions loom about the changing prevalence, leadership, and composition of racially diverse congregations. Using three waves of data from the National Congregations Study (1...
An increasing number of Christian colleges are adding football programs as a way to boost enrollment among men and ethnic minorities. No systematic study has attempted to measure these outcomes. We tested the relationship of football to percent male, percent non-White, and first-year retention at 125 U.S. colleges and universities affiliated with t...
Religious participation has reinforced the color line in American society for generations. Despite rising racial and ethnic diversity across U.S. communities, most Americans continue to belong to congregations composed primarily of others from their own racial/ethnic groups. Yet recent scholarship suggests that the presence of multiple racial or et...
This chapter provides an overview of research on the relationship between religion and work, occupations, and entrepreneurship. It begins with a review of Max Weber’s well-known Protestant Work Ethic thesis and problematizes it using extant research from sociology, psychology, and business. The relationship of religion to workplace outcomes is comp...
One of the surprising oversights of existing research on racially/ethnically diverse congregations is the inattention to how racial composition relates to patterns of attendance. Is diversity associated with attendance growth, stability, or decline? A popular assumption from the Church Growth Movement is that cultural homogeneity is a foundation fo...
Existing organizational research overlooks divine attachment as a “personal characteristic” relevant to work. We argue that secure attachment to God as an internal working model can function as a “secure base” from which individuals form meaningful attachments to their workplace and work position. We further hypothesize that a sense of vocational c...
Method:
Drawing upon data from the General Social Survey and the National Congregations Study, we fit binary logistic regression models to estimate the association between congregational size and Americans' explanations of Black/White economic inequality.
Results:
Findings reveal that attendees of larger congregations are less likely than attend...
This study examines the extent to which the racial composition of a congregation moderates explanations for Black/White inequality
among White, Black, and Hispanic congregants. Using nationally representative data from General Social Surveys and National
Congregations Studies, we find that religiously affiliated Blacks and Hispanics tend to hold di...
Christians sometimes separate work and faith into secular and spiritual spheres. But recent studies show that if faith-work integration is emphasized in congregations, members experience work more positively and contribute positively to their workplace.
Despite increasingly egalitarian gender roles in the United States, when the wedding bells ring for heterosexual couples, husband and wife still commonly emerge sharing the man’s last name. Largely missing from previous studies of marital name change is the influence of religion. We examine the marital naming plans of 199 students from four Evangel...
We examine the influences of servant leadership from two context, workplace and a place of worship, on employees’ two forms of deviance: entrepreneurial behavior and negative deviance. Regulatory focus theory is proposed as offering an explanation for the influence of servant leadership. The promotion focus mindset of an employee is argued to be th...
Research in the sociology of work has long considered the importance of individual worker values but has not considered one of the central sources of those values: the congregation. In this study we examine this understudied relationship and propose greater theoretical specification on religious capital. We argue that religious capital, like social...
Classes of hundreds pose special challenges for teaching and learning. Notable among these challenges is the tendency for students to feel like anonymous spectators rather than active, collaborative participants. To combat this tendency, we employed the popular social networking site Facebook to cultivate a sense of community among 200+ students in...
Disputes over the connection between beliefs and behaviors, coupled with the relative paucity of survey measures of specific theological beliefs related to work and its association with financial success, motivated the development of two beliefs scales: beliefs about work as a means to honor God and beliefs about God promising prosperity for believ...
The relationship between entrepreneurship and religion is complex (Dana 201013.
Dana , Leo Paul . 2010. “Entrepreneurship and Religion”. In ed, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. View all references), and religion can help or hamper the entrepreneurial process, depending on the context and culture (Dana 200912.
Dana , Leo and
Paul . 2009....
Research in the sociology of work has long considered the importance of individual worker values but has not considered one of the central sources of those values: the congregation. In this study, we examine this understudied relationship and propose greater theoretical specification on religious capital. We argue that religious capital, like socia...
Significant effort has gone into understanding and promoting racial diversity in congregations. Still, uniting worshippers of different races remains a challenging endeavor. Even congregations that successfully attract worshippers of different races often have difficulty sustaining their multiracial composition. This study contributes to the discus...
While personal experiences and family socialization are likely to influence beliefs and behaviors linking faith to work, religious congregations also are likely to play a prominent role in shaping faith-work connections. Our purpose in this chapter is to draw upon a nationally representative sample of over a thousand working adults to describe the...
The entrepreneur is a celebrated figure in American society. These innovative risk-takers hold an influential place in the economy and in popular culture. Substantial research has gone into identifying characteristics associated with these individuals, but research on entrepreneurs and religion is surprisingly sparse and inconsistent. Using nationa...
A growing body of literature weighs the influence of religion on civic life. Largely missing from prior analysis is Pentecostals. With novel religious beliefs and practices, Pentecostals might be expected to focus more on in-group bonding activities than out-group bridging activities. We test this expectation using national data from the 2005 Baylo...
It has long been noted that religious congregations tend to be racially homogenous. Previous case studies assert that members of a numerical minority group face individual and organizational pressures that lead them to leave congregations faster than majority members. This can create a constant pull toward homogeneity despite congregational efforts...
Surveying key informants is a common methodology in congregational research. While practical and cost-effective, there are limitations in the ability of a single informant to speak for an entire organization. This paper explores potential limitations empirically. Using the 1993 American Congregational Giving Study, we compare demographic descriptio...
What does it take to sustain a church where blacks and whites worship together? According to Korie Edwards in The Elusive Dream: The Power of Race in Interracial Churches, it takes a congregational culture familiar to whites. Her thesis is that “interracial churches work to the extent that they are, first, comfortable places for whites to attend.”...
Authors’ introduction
Contemporary religion is at its core an organizational phenomenon. Religious behaviour is channelled and religious communities are structured through congregations, denominations, religious nonprofits, seminaries, and other organizational forms. To understand religion, then, one must understand the organizational aspects of re...
One of the important goals of congregational research is to examine shared religious characteristics at the organizational level. Yet, data collection using key informants and limited questions concerning belief on congregational surveys can potentially mask significant religious diversity within congregations. Using detailed belief and attitude qu...
While growth in congregations and denominations generates much research, few studies speak to the other side of religious organization performance: decline and death. This study steps into this gap to consider rates and reasons for closings among America’s most pervasive form of voluntary association. Drawing on prior studies of organizational mort...
Whether willingly or not, the sociology of religion has become increasingly influenced by organizational theories and research. Despite objections, the sociology of religious organizations is an area of study rising in prominence. Growth comes from both explicit and implicit applications of organizational theories. In a push toward more explicit co...
How and why religious groups grow are central questions in the study of religion. Previous research largely fails to account for the dynamic relationship between an environment, a religious group, and its growth. We present organizational theory on density dependence to explain this dynamic. We test the theory using historical data on a population...
Few campus offices bear the weight of organizational health and vitality more directly than college and university admissions offices. This is particularly true for Christian colleges and universities where annual operating budgets depend largely on student tuition dollars. The purpose of the research reported in this paper was to explore rates and...
Recent trends in church growth research emphasize the influence of institutional factors in generating organizational growth. However, confusion exists over how internal factors relate to growth and which are most influential. Pitfalls of limited longitudinal data and a lack of attention to both direct and indirect influences limit past studies of...
Debates over seminary education have been at the heart of some of the most heated denominational battles and schisms, often focusing on doctrines being taught at the seminaries. This research moves beyond the debates over specific teachings and explains how seminaries cultivate distinctive social capital (e.g., resources secured through social netw...
A call has been issued in American colleges and universities for diversity courses taught by those who live the experience. This presents a challenge of credibility particularly salient to white educators teaching multicultural courses. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that this challenge may be met by integrating feminist standpoint epistem...