Church Newspaper Readership and Faith Community Integration

Abstract

Church newspaper readership positively relates to institutional aspects of faith community involvement: participation in governance and tithing. Church newspaper use does not consistently relate to involvement in noninstitutional aspects of church life: Sunday school classes, mission projects, or fellowship groups. These findings—from a survey of Protestant leaders in Texas—indicate that faith community involvements may be too complicated for the original community integration hypothesis to explain. The institutional/noninstitutional differences hint at a factor not considered by earlier researchers—interest in how the faith community is run. People can be active in church life without needing information about how the faith community functions. Furthermore, people who give less than a tithe do not read church newspapers as much as tithers. Depth interviews indicate that tithing may result more from conditioning than education. Because many adults with no church background join congregations today, they may not be conditioned to give. That has stewardship implications.