Brad Christerson

The Costs of Diversity in Religious Organizations: An In-depth Case Study

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 organization, and are these costs borne disproportionately by any specific groups of people? Drawing on macrostructural theories of intergroup relations and social psychological principles, we hypothesize that minority groups (in size and power) within ethnically mixed congregations will disproportionately bear costs compared to the majority group. We test our hypotheses using a case study congregation, conducting in-depth interviews with 22 members and 4 former members of the congregation. We also conduct a network analysis with 38 members of the congregation. We conclude that the same social dynamics that tend to produce internal homogeneity in volunteer organizations also produce high personal costs of belonging to multiethnic religious organizations. This is an important finding because it leads to the larger question of how multiethnic religious organizations survive despite these costs

SANCTIFIED SEXISM: RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND THE GENDER HARASSMENT OF ACADEMIC WOMEN

The present study explored gender harassment in the context of Christian higher education. Specifically, we examined ways in which the theologically based gender schemas in these settings might affect the experiences of harassment among male and female faculty. A questionnaire containing measures of harassment and two aspects of institutional climate (the degree to which the participant feels he or she has influence in the academic unit and perceived access to information about academic life and advancement) was sent to all faculty at a single university; 138 responses (a 65% response rate) were received. Of these, 89 (68%) were male and 42 (32%) female, closely resembling the gender distribution of the faculty. Results indicated that attributing discrimination to the Christian beliefs of the perpetrator moderated the effects of harassment on the two organizational climate variables, potentiating the negative effects at higher levels of harassment. These results suggest that the religious context of institutions should be taken into account in confronting sexism in religiously committed settings. Effective interventions should be tailored to address theological concerns in order to counteract the implied immutability of theologically based sexist statements.

Women Faculty at an Evangelical University: The Paradox of Religiously Driven Gender Inequalities and High Job Satisfaction

This article examines the job satisfaction of women faculty at an evangelical university. Using mixed methods, the authors compared the job satisfaction of women faculty at an evangelical university with their male counterparts, as well as with men and women faculty at a secular research university in the same region. Paradoxically, they found higher levels of gender inequality at the evangelical university when compared to the secular university, yet also found higher levels of overall job satisfaction among female faculty at the evangelical university when compared to their secular university counterparts. The authors conclude that the evangelical “toolkit” 1 which highly values personal relationships with students combined with a form of “benevolent sexism” 2 on this campus that allows for cordial and warm relationships between male and female faculty while simultaneously excluding women from important information and resources explain these paradoxical results.