{"id":403,"date":"2008-12-09T21:45:38","date_gmt":"2008-12-10T03:45:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=403"},"modified":"2008-12-07T21:53:56","modified_gmt":"2008-12-08T03:53:56","slug":"sociologists-know-about-megachurches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2008\/12\/09\/sociologists-know-about-megachurches\/","title":{"rendered":"sociologists know about megachurches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Creative Commons licensed photo by Flickmor on flickr.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/44378953@N00\/2503511221\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2045\/2503511221_8036583b1c_t.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Mega Church (2)\" \/><\/a>This past weekend <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.christianitytoday.com\/outofur\/archives\/2008\/12\/megachurch_misi.html\">Christianity Today<\/a> ran a story about &#8216;Megachurch Misinformation&#8217; in which they cited not one, not two, but <strong>three<\/strong> sociologists. Check it out&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The evidence shows that more and more people are attending large churches. Duke <strong>sociologist<\/strong> Mark Chaves writes, &#8220;In every denomination on which we have data, people are increasingly concentrated in the very largest churches, and this is true for small and large denominations, for conservative and liberal denominations, for growing and declining denominations. This trend began rather abruptly in the 1970s, with no sign of tapering off.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, the 1,250 megachurches in the US in 2007 show remarkable strength across a range of indicators, according to Hartford Seminary <strong>sociologist<\/strong> Scott Thumma and Dave Travis&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Beyond Megachurch Myths<\/em>. Thumma and Travis take seriously the stereotypes of megachurches as impersonal, selfish, shallow, homogenous, individualistic and dying but they do not find the accusations match the data.<\/p>\n<p>Even Baylor <strong>sociologist<\/strong> Rodney Stark&#8217;s\u00a0<em>What Americans Really Believe\u00a0<\/em>lauds the strengths of megachurches as compared to small churches. &#8220;Those who belong to megachurches display as high a level of personal commitment as do those who attend small congregations&#8221; (p.48). This is significant because some of Stark&#8217;s earlier work claimed growth dilutes commitment.\u00a0In 2000, he declared, &#8220;Congregational size is inversely related to the average level of member commitment . . . In all instances, rates of participation decline with congregational size, and the sharpest declines occur when congregations exceed 50 members.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past weekend Christianity Today ran a story about &#8216;Megachurch Misinformation&#8217; in which they cited not one, not two, but three sociologists. Check it out&#8230; \u00a0 The evidence shows that more and more people are attending large churches. Duke sociologist Mark Chaves writes, &#8220;In every denomination on which we have data, people are increasingly concentrated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[39112,42],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-culture","tag-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":404,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions\/404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}