David Sikkink

Who Gives to the Poor? The Influence of Religious Tradition and Political Location on the Personal Generosity of Americans Toward the Poor

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 commitment to the poor. This article examines the giving habits of Americans to organizations which help the poor and needy, using religious and political measures to test the conventional view that devout Catholics and liberal Protestants are the friends of the poor, and that politically conservative Christians are indifferent or hostile toward them. The results suggest that religion and religiosity do increase giving to the poor, but that there is no support for the conventional wisdom about conservative Protestants. Indeed, the evidence suggests theological and political conservatives are currently more generous in this particular form of charitable giving.

Religious Involvement and Educational Outcomes: The Role of Social Capital and Extracurricular Participation

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 religious participation enhances academic outcomes among teens by the way in which it shapes their social ties, or social capital, focusing on both intergenerational relationships and on relationships with peers. We also examine the potential intervening role of extracurricular participation. Using structural equation models to analyze data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we examine the potential role of social capital and extracurricular participation in mediating the relationship between religious participation and academic achievement, dropping out of high school, and attachment to school. We find that religious attendance promotes higher intergenerational closure, friendship networks with higher educational resources and norms, and extracurricular participation. These intervening variables account for a small part of the influence of adolescent religious participation on the educational outcomes in this study.

The Radius of Trust: Religion, Social Embeddedness and Trust in Strangers

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 significantly less trust in strangers than mainline Protestants, while older persons and those who are more trusting of acquaintances show greater trust. Although measures of personal religiosity and activity within a congregation show no statistically significant relationship to trust once important controls are taken into account, measures of embeddedness within secular social networks do.

Corn, Klansmen, and Coolidge: Structure and Framing in Social Movements

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 to deliver support of its members and adherents. Its political advantage may be offset, however, if another of its key framing activities, the construction of collective identity boundaries, alienates the broader population and stimulates a backlash. Such backlash is also intimately connected to structural conditions because its potential is a function of the characteristics of the local population — specifically, the proportion of the population alienated by the movements boundary construction. We apply these arguments to the case of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and show that while the Klans diagnostic and prognostic framing may have resonated structurally and facilitated the Klans mobilization efforts, its exclusionary boundaries frustrated its attempts to secure broader political gains.

God, Politics, and Protest: Religious Beliefs and the Legitimation of Contentious Tactics

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 attention on the disruptive potential of religious beliefs and values and argue that approval of contentious tactics is a critical link between religious beliefs and protest participation. We analyze data from a representative sample of churchgoing Protestants in the United States. Results show that four factors increase the likelihood that Protestants approve of contentious tactics: volunteering for church organizations, a perception that religious values are being threatened, a belief that individuals should not have a right to deviate from Christian moral standards, and a belief that humans are inherently sinful. Approval of contentious tactics and frequent volunteering for church organizations are the only variables in our analysis that differentiate conservative Christian voters from those who combine conservative Christian voting with protest participation.

Devotion in dixie and beyond : A test of the shibley thesis on the effects of regional origin and migration on individual religiosity

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 compared to the rest of the country. Results show that religiosity increases when people move to a region of high religious commitment, and decreases when one moves to an area where religious commitment is lower. The evidence suggests that the South maintains its religious distinctiveness for natives, but the prospects of maintaining as strong a religiosity for those who migrate out of the South are low. These findings call into question Mark Shibleys thesis (1996) about the sources of the resurgence of American evangelicalism.

School choice and racial segregation in US schools: The role of parents’ education

Abstract 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 that the racial composition of schools plays an important role in the schooling choices of highly educated whites. As the per cent black in a residential area increases, whites are more likely to select alternative, higher-percentage-white schooling for their children. Importantly, this effect is amplified for highly educated whites (but not highly educated blacks). Ironically, then, despite many positive effects of formal education on racial attitudes, increased education for whites leads to greater negative sensitivity to blacks in public schools, which may in turn have the unintended effect of increasing school segregation and racial inequality.

SOCIAL PREDICTORS OF RETENTION IN AND SWITCHING FROM THE RELIGIOUS FAITH OF FAMILY OF ORIGIN: ANOTHER LOOK USING RELIGIOUS TRADITION SELF-IDENTIFICATION

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 literature on religious retention and switching by using measures of religious tradition self-identification, instead of denominations, and by highlighting the dissimilarity of social factors predicting retention and switching for different traditions. Analysis of the 1996 Religious Identity and Influence survey shows that different social factors influence different groups of people in diverse religious traditions in dissimilar ways. The discussion attempts to theorize these findings.

Religious School Differences in School Climate and Academic Mission: A Descriptive Overview of School Organization and Student Outcomes

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 organization (Bryk, Lee, & Holland, 1993). But less is known about sector differences in school climate across evangelical Protestant, Catholic, and nonreligious private schools, particularly as these differences vary between the United States and Canada. This study uses descriptive analysis of national-level survey data from the Cardus Education Study to show average differences across detailed school sectors on several measures of school climate and mission. It finds a strong focus on relational goals in evangelical Protestant schools and an emphasis on academic outcomes in Catholic schools. The findings also point to nearly uniformly positive evaluations from private school graduates of their high school experience, which is particularly characteristic of evangelical Protestant and nonreligious private schools.

Private Religious Protestant and Catholic Schools in the United States and Canada: Introduction, Overview, and Policy Implications

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 understand the academic, spiritual, and cultural outcomes of private religious Christian education in Canada and the United States. This article introduces the conceptual variables under investigation and the approaches to inquiry employed in the various studies. The article reflects on several of the findings and comments on the possible policy implications of this research.