"All for Faith": Profiles, Engagement Chronicles, and Perceived Implications of Adherents to Indic Faith-Based Organizations

Abstract

1. Samta P. Pandya[1][1] 1. 1Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India 1. Samta P. Pandya, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Deonar, Mumbai 400088, Maharashtra, India Email: pandya.samta19{at}gmail.com This article is based on a study of a sample of 481 member adherents across nine Indic faith-based organizations (IFBOs) in India. Findings revealed that higher socioeconomic status, socially privileged ethnicity grouping, and fairly higher end religiosity and spirituality scores characterize IFBO adherent profile. Adherence is a way to strike the tradition–modernity balance and fill in the moral spiritual vacuum. Engagement chronicles entail factors initiating association, duration of involvement, time devoted, nature and view of work, training, and factors motivating sustenance. In general ideology, teacher charisma, faith communitas, and familial connections serve to initiate and motivate. Levels of identification propel longer involvements, and work is of the nature of altruism–philanthropy–seva as also routine maintenance activities. Perceived self-implications are a combination of transcendental gains, faith orientations, and network–communitas formation. On a larger scale, member adherents perceive that in an environment of existential uncertainty, IFBOs’ message/epithets contain practical elements for social change/development. [1]: #aff-1