Michael O. Emerson

• Provost at North Park University

Employing an alternative methodology and new data, the authors address the debate concerning the underlying causes of racial residential segregation. Are white Americans avoiding racially mixed neighborhoods because they do not want to live with nonwhites? And if so, is this the case independent of factors with which race is associated, such as cri...

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...

“Sewage is not sexy” (p. 38). Without getting caught up in the social construction of evaluative judgements and their gendered antecedents as to what is or is not sexy, we can safely accept this statement as true. Despite its lack of aesthetic appeal, however, how cities handle waste—from human and other animal excrement to the bodies they leave be...

Immigration scholars largely focus on adaptation processes of immigrant groups, while race scholars focus on structural barriers nonwhite immigrants face. By comparing nonwhite immigrants with native-born Americans, we can better understand how racial logics affect the identification of racial minorities in the United States. Drawing on 153 intervi...

Diverse urban theories discuss how economic processes shape conceptions of a city, but less research focuses on how pragmatic situations of urban life contribute to the characterisation of cities. We argue that pragmatic justifications reify socially constructed meanings of cities by creating a ‘spirit of urban capitalism.’ This framework conceives...

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...

Chapter 3 discusses government in the two cities in four sections. First, we do not take for granted what government is supposed to do but instead analyze how leaders consider the role of government in the first place. Second, we discuss the priorities that rank highest on their priorities rubric for the government. Third, we discuss how they pay f...

In chapter 8, we move our perspective beyond our two-city analysis to consider Market Cities and People Cities other than Copenhagen and Houston. First, using data on 79 European cities, we discuss how the overall levels of trust in a city are associated with better ratings of city characteristics. We believe this indicates that more trusting citie...

In chapter 4, we foreground how residents think about their cities, and the critical role that their cultural beliefs play in underwriting the Market City and the People City—as well as contesting it. Specifically, we examine five survey questions that detail how Copenhageners and Houstonians have vastly different beliefs about work, inequality, an...

In chapter 6, we discuss in six parts how the environment and the economy stack up against each other. First, we show how the cities, until very recently, have had similar energy histories. Second, we detail how Houstonians have similar rates of pro-environmental views compared to Copenhageners, but more specific questions, such as about climate ch...

Chapter 7 takes on the range of issues relating to diversity and cities. We discuss trust, notably how Copenhageners overwhelmingly trust others and how Houstonians do not. We highlight differences in levels of crime: Houston is much more violent than Copenhagen. We also analyze how these relate to inequality. In particular, we relate this to segre...

The book’s claim is that cities in the twenty-first century are diverging in their fundamental priorities in one of two directions: toward markets or toward people. In introducing the concepts of Market Cities and People Cities, we make our primary argument that cities are not the homogeneous lot that many urban scholars might lead us to believe. R...

In our concluding chapter, we briefly summarize the main points of the book. Our primary task, though, is to offer thoughts and advice on our perspective for other cities moving forward. We argue that both types of cities are needed. Notably, we argue that social change from one type of city to the other is a highly difficult process. We use theory...

Chapter 5 begins a new section of the book: why it matters. Here we investigate the large differences in transportation and land use in Market Cities and People Cities. We describe how Copenhagen promotes alternatives to cars, especially through cycling but also with public transit and for pedestrians. By contrast, Houston is in thrall to sprawl, a...

This chapter details the history of Copenhagen and Houston. In Copenhagen, we showcase the medieval roots of the city and how it was compacted into a relatively small area until the mid-nineteenth century. Since that time, many economic, governmental, and population changes have occurred. In Houston, we study how the younger city took off with the...

Humanity is undergoing a fundamental, dramatic shift from a rural people to an urban people. Just as importantly, urban areas are growing ever larger. Despite sociology of religion’s role to understand religion within the patterning of human societies, the field has largely ignored how the move to more and ever larger urban areas does and will shap...

Despite long-term, documented declines in racialized attitudes, racial inequality persists. Scholars have theorized why this dissonance exists but few have empirically demonstrated how views can become more progressive while simultaneously maintaining inequality. The present study uses neighbourhood racial preferences and their influence on racial...

Research on the sociology of cities has long foregrounded how elites uphold the capitalist system for their own benefit, but much less research has focused on the wider processes of how city residents in everyday interactions make sense of and bolster unequal, capital intensiveurban life. We argue for the importance of cultural justifications in re...

This research analyzes attitudes on immigration before and after the February 14–15, 2015 Copenhagen shootings. Little research has been conducted on changes in immigration beliefs pre- and postcrisis events, and, further, this research has not closely considered how political views and safety concerns may operate within immigration beliefs in an a...

In recent years, researchers have increasingly noted the malleability of racial boundaries across time, context, and life course. Although this research has advanced our knowledge of the maintenance and perceptions of racial groups, it has introduced a new question: If we are attempting to best capture the actual variation in racial inequality, how...

The authors provide an analytical review of the past 115 years of scholarship on race, ethnicity, and religion. Too often work in the study of race and ethnicity has not taken the influence of religion seriously enough, with the consequence being an incomplete understanding of racialization, racial and ethnic identity, and racial inequality. The au...

Amidst increasingly equality in belief and in practice between the sexes, we ask if height preferences still matter, and if so, why people say they matter. First, we collected data from Yahoo! dating personal advertisements. Second, we used answers to open-ended questions in an online survey. The Yahoo! data document that height is still important...

Here, we argue for the need to examine the particular contribution of religion to immigrant civic life by comparing a religious and a nonreligious ethnic organization. Specifically, we compare the justifications a Mexican Catholic Church (MCC) provides immigrants for civic service and the focal recipients of this service to those provided by a Mexi...

Objectives Our objective is to extend previous structural explanations of religious belonging and denominational variations concerning “closed communities” and the “divided by faith” thesis to the individual level by testing the effect of religious affiliation and church membership on levels of self-reported social network diversity among a nationa...

Through interviews with 33 Chinese American first- and second-generation immigrants, we ask how narratives that describe the link between religion and civic life differ among Buddhists, Christians, and nonreligious Chinese. All groups stress the tight institutional connections between religion and politics in the United States. For Chinese Christia...

We review the bourgeoning literature on multiracial religious organizations. While scholars have paid attention to racial integration in congregations since the 1940s, it is not until recently that there has been a concerted focus on this topic. This article—having reviewed the state of field—argues that research on this relatively new topic must e...

Despite recent progress against racial inequalities, American society continues to produce attitudes and outcomes that reinforce the racial divide. This book offers a fresh perspective on how to combat racial division. The chapters document the historical move from white supremacy to institutional racism, and then look at modern efforts to overcome...

Conventional wisdom holds that Christians, as members of a "universal" religion, all believe more or less the same things when it comes to their faith. Yet black and white Christians differ in significant ways, from their frequency of praying or attending services to whether they regularly read the Bible or believe in Heaven or Hell. In this engagi...

Analysis of change in diversity and segregation in the Houston Metropolitan area. Joint project between Kinder Institute for Urban Research and the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas

The debate about racial residential preferences has two open questions. First, are neighborhood racial preferences truly racial, or is race a proxy for socio-economic factors? Second, are in-group or out-group preferences more salient? Using the Houston Area Survey, we employ a factorial experiment to assess the effect of racial composition on neig...

In the last four decades, desegregation has revolutionized almost every aspect of life in the United States: schools, businesses, government offices, even entertainment. But there is one area that remains largely untouched, and that is the church. Now comes a major new call for multiracial congregations in every possible setting-a call that is surp...

This chapter provides some background to the striking differences between black and white conservative Protestants. Among the major religious segments in American public life, no two are closer together in doctrinal and ethical beliefs than black Protestants and white evangelicals-and no two are further apart in voting behavior and political attitu...

It is sometimes said that the most segregated time of the week in the United States is Sunday morning. Even as workplaces and public institutions such as the military have become racially integrated, racial separation in Christian religious congregations is the norm. And yet some congregations remain stubbornly, racially mixed. People of the Dream...

This paper revisits the longstanding ideological debate over black nationalism versus inter-racial integration. Survey research in this area concentrates on various concerns related to black nationalism. Consequently, scholars know very little about the relative effects of factors influencing the broader variation in beliefs about Black Power. The...

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...

My spouse grew up in Minnesota. I moved there when I was five, as my parents wanted to move back to the state they knew best. Although my spouse, children, and I have lived in Texas for over a decade now, nearly all the rest of our families live in Minnesota. At least once a year, and usually two to three times, we drive to Minnesota (about 1,300 m...

This chapter examines various data sources on charitable giving in the United States to establish six crucial facts about the giving of American Christians. These are that at least one out of five American Christians - twenty percent of all American Christians - gives literally nothing to church, para-church, or nonreligious charities; the vast maj...

This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of the primary goal of this book, which is to better understand and explain American Christians' lack of generosity, from a sociological perspective. It then assesses the claim that people, including Christians, are often selfish and greedy. The chapter then explains how the approach it used...

This chapter considers nine hypotheses potentially explaining the low levels of financial giving by American Christians. It argues that Most American Christians do not give generously for a combination of reasons. The first is that many have not seriously confronted and grappled with the theological and moral teachings of their traditions to give g...

This book shows that few American Christians donate generously to religious and charitable causes - a parsimony that seriously undermines the work of churches and ministries. Far from the ten percent of one's income that tithing requires, American Christians' financial giving typically amounts, by some measures, to less than one percent of annual e...

Passing the Plate shows that few American Christians donate generously to religious and charitable causes -- a parsimony that seriously undermines the work of churches and ministries. Far from the 10 percent of one's income that tithing requires, American Christians' financial giving typically amounts, by some measures, to less than one percent of...

This chapter focuses on how American Christians can make a difference through generous financial giving. It is estimated that if committed Christians in the United States gave ten percent of their after-tax income - fully but no more than ten percent - that would provide an extra $46 billion per year of resources with which to fund needs and priori...

This concluding chapter begins with a synthesis of the discussions in the previous chapters. It then offers a set of informed conjectures, based on the findings of the previous chapters, about changes that leaders concerned about generous financial giving might consider implementing in ways appropriate to their situations. The lessons provided by t...

This chapter examines the results of a focused mental experiment wherein a nationally representative sample of American Christians was asked to ponder their response to the idea of their churches raising expectations on the financial giving of Christians. The idea in doing this is that having ordinary Christians all over the United States run this...

Research on African Americans in congregations has overwhelmingly focused on what is collectively referred to as "the black church:" those denominations and congregations that are primarily or historically African American. In this paper, we adopt a comparative perspective, asking if there are differences in demographics, social networks, racial at...

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...

Religious fundamentalism has risen to worldwide prominence since the 1970s. We review research on fundamentalist movements to learn what religious fundamentalisms are, if and why they appear to be resurging, their characteristics, their possible links to violence, and their relation to modernity. Surveying work over the past two decades, we find bo...

The United States' black/white health gap is an important consequence of racial inequality. The gap is large, shows little signs of declining, and explanations have been limited by lack of theory and data. A new direction that offers potential for theoretical development is a focus on black immigrants, a group that shares the same racial status as...

This paper contributes to a growing understanding of U.S. black-white health disparities by using national-level data to disaggregate the health status of black Americans into the following subgroups: U.S.-born blacks, black immigrants from Africa, black immigrants from the West Indies, and black immigrants from Europe. Using new data on the 2000 a...

Identifying the relationship between the proportion African American and the level of segregation aids in unlocking the key to the past and present state of race relations. National-level studies have found a positive relationship between these variables. Informed by historical and theoretical considerations, I examine the association between the p...

Religious institutions are among the most segregated organizations in American society. This segregation has long been a troubling issue among scholars and religious leaders alike. Despite attempts to address this racial divide, integrated churches are very difficult to maintain over time. Why is this so? How can organizations incorporate separate...

In recent years, the leaders of the American evangelical movement have brought their characteristic passion to the problem of race, notably in the Promise Keepers movement and in reconciliation theology. But the authors of this provocative new study reveal that despite their good intentions, evangelicals may actually be preserving America's racial...

A significant body of literature has documented and explained the racial and ethnic homogeneity of volunteer organizations, including religious ones. This paper seeks to break new ground by beginning to examine ethnically diverse religious organizations. In this study we ask: What are the personal costs of being in a multiethnic religious organizat...

Although the overwhelming majority of religious congregations consist of members who share the same racial background, there are a significant number of multiracial congregations in the United States. We begin with an analysis of why most congregations remain uniracial despite racial integration in other institutions. Then, based on our two-year na...

Americans are less likely to develop primary relationships with members of different races than with members of their own race. Thus, organizations in which Americans develop their primary friendships are highly likely to be racially segregated. In a society in which primary interracial relationships are uncommon, multiracial churches are anomalous...

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International migration of people is a momentous and complex phenomenon. Research on its causes and consequences, requires sufficient data. While some datasets are available, the nature of migration complicates their scientific use. Virtually no existing dataset captures international migration trajectories. To alleviate these difficulties, we sugg...

Employing an alternative methodology and new data, the authors address the debate concerning the underlying causes of racial residential segregation. Are white Americans avoiding racially mixed neighborhoods because they do not want to live with nonwhites? And if so, is this the case independent of factors with which race is associated, such as cri...

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...

For contemporary Europe integration has several aspects, as in different branches of the social sciences. Sociologists since Durkheim stress integration of society as the first principle of social behaviour [Giddens, 1993]. Social structures and specialised institutions have to mesh together, work in harmony and cooperate, implying consensus over b...

We assess changes in gambling and problem gambling from 1990 to 1994, a period of rapid expansion in gambling availability. Surveys of non-institutionalized adult Minnesotans were conducted in the spring of each year. Problem gambling was assessed using the SOGS-M, the Minnesota revision of the South Oaks Gambling Screen. Gambling was found to be m...

We lack knowledge on factors intervening between religion and abortion attitudes. Consequently, how religion is associated with abortion attitudes, the full impact of religion, and the most important dimension of religion are all uncertain. Informed by theoretical considerations, I test the plausibility that worldview dimensions serve as intervenin...

Identifying the relationship between the proportion African American and the level of segregation aids in unlocking the key to the past and present state of race relations. National-level studies have found a positive relationship between these variables. Informed by historical and theoretical considerations, I examine the association between the p...

Using structural equation techniques and the LISREL software package, we successfully replicate the results of Hasenfeld and Rafferty's causal model predicting public attitudes toward welfare state programs. By taking advantage of the ability of these techniques to incorporate estimates of measurement error, we also assess the consequences of imper...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1991. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [199]-209). Microfiche of typescript. s