Jörg Stolz

The Diversity of Religious Diversity. Using Census and NCS Methodology in Order to Map and Assess the Religious Diversity of a Whole Country

Religious diversity is often captured in “mapping studies” that use mostly qualitative methods in order to map and assess the religious communities in a given area. While these studies are useful, they often present weaknesses in that they treat only limited geographic regions, provide limited possibilities for comparing across religious groups and cannot test theories. In this article, we show how a census and a quantitative national congregations study (NCS) methodology can be combined in order to map and assess the religious diversity of a whole country (Switzerland), overcoming the problems mentioned above. We outline the methodological steps and selected results concerning organizational, geographic, structural, and cultural diversity.

The Established and the Newcomers. A Weberian-Bourdieusian View of Congregations in the Swiss Religious Field

At least since the work of Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu, scholars have claimed that established and newcomer groups may compete for resources and power in religious fields. Remarkably, even though the religious field concept rests in important ways on the relationships between religious suppliers, there have, to date, been few quantitative studies that describe these fields on the congregational level. Using a representative National Congregation Study (NCS), we measure and compare the activities and resources of established and newcomer congregations across all major religious traditions in Switzerland. As expected, establishment status is linked to strong privileges for the established groups. Despite diminishing numbers of official members and diminishing attendance, established groups are much wealthier and have more staff than newcomer groups. Other than expected, established groups do not seem to compete with newcomer groups by using exclusion strategies. On the contrary, established groups explicitly seek ecumenical and interreligious contacts and are very tolerant concerning individual social and religious diversity. We suggest that this does not contradict the Weberian/Bourdieusian field theory, but can be viewed as a strategy by established groups to preserve their threatened establishment status.

Rekrutierungsproblem und Rekrutierungsdilemmata des Evangelikalismus

Ein Dilemma ist im Alltagsverstandnis die Wahl zwischen zwei (gleich unangenehmen) Dingen.1 Es ist eine „schwierige Entscheidung“, schwierig deshalb, weil offenbar nicht klar ist, welche Alternative besser oder weniger schlimm ist. Sehr plastisch werden Dilemmata in vielen sogenannten Action-Filmen vorgefuhrt. Hinter dem Held ein Rudel hungriger Wolfe, vor ihm der Abgrund, was jetzt: kampfen oder springen? Der Held zogert; er steckt in einem Dilemma, weil in der Tat beide Handlungsalternativen etwa gleich unangenehm erscheinen. Beispiele fur weniger dramatische, aber gleichwohl unangenehme Dilemmata liefert der Lebensalltag zuhauf. Aber taugt der Begriff auch etwas fur soziologische Analyse? 2 Ich meine: ja.

How Do You Recognize a “Congregation”? Definition and Operationalization Strategies of the Swiss Congregation Census

In congregation studies, scholars must define and operationalize their unit of observation. While most mapping studies routinely give a definition of congregation, there has been no attempt to show just what techniques of operationalization are needed to apply the definition to the field, what problems may arise and how they can be solved. This chapter uses the example of the Swiss congregation census to fill this gap in the literature. We first discuss general questions of definition and operationalization and give our definition of congregation. Second, we show how the definition has been operationalized in the census, demonstrating for every element of the definition how it includes certain phenomena and excludes others. We give special attention to borderline cases and discuss with what techniques they have been treated.