American Church Research Articles

Salt, Smurthwaite, and Smith: The Origins of the Modern Legal Identity of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Salt, Smurthwaite, and Smith: The Origins of the Modern Legal Identity of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Mending What Is Broken: The Logic of the Cross in 1 Corinthians

In recent decades, scholars have come to see 1 Corinthians as a rhetorically unified response to the problem of divisions among Corinthian believers. This essay explores the ways in which Paul presents the cross as the organizing principle that can bind together three different forms of community division: the cult of the personality (1:10–4:21); the freedom to eat idol meat (8:1–11:1); and economic disparities when gathered for a meal (11:17–34). In each case, Paul appeals implicitly or explicitly to the cross as a remedy for the all-too-familiar strains on the fractured community. In the end, Paul’s countercultural message about the cross offers a word of exhortation for the American church today, as it navigates a society that shares much in common with first-century Corinth.

Editorial Introduction

Editorial Introduction

The Alter Program: A Nurse-Led, Dementia-Friendly Program for African American Faith Communities and Families Living With Dementia.

Dementia is a stigmatizing condition requiring enhanced awareness and understanding. Churches are a trusted source of support for African Americans, a demographic disproportionately affected by dementia. However, many African American churches are not equipped with the knowledge and means to provide safe environments, resources, and spiritual and social support for their parishioners living with dementia and their families. This protocol is written to detail the design and implementation of a nurse-led, dementia-friendly congregation program, Alter. The Alter program was developed to increase dementia awareness, develop a supportive, faith-based dementia-friendly infrastructure, and create a community supporting the well-being of African Americans living with dementia and their families. Engagement in this program aims to improve brain health status of older adults, improve physical and mental health outcomes, reduce dementia stigma, and enhance personal agency. Improved outcomes for persons living with dementia translate into lower use of acute and emergency services due to more stability in community care. It is expected that the churches participating in this program will be recognized by their community as a great resource for dementia information and support. The long-term goal of the Alter program is to be widely adapted in various health systems to reduce health disparities associated with dementia in the African American community.

An Apostolic Journey: Stephen L Richards and the Expansion of Missionary Work in South America

An Apostolic Journey: Stephen L Richards and the Expansion of Missionary Work in South America

Dynamic Associations Between Lifestyle Factors and Positive and Negative Affect in Middle-Aged African Americans

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the dynamic association between lifestyle factors and both positive and negative effect in middle-aged African Americans. Methods: Study participants (N = 69, Mean age=51 years, 80% female) were recruited from two African American churches in the Deep South. Participants completed daily surveys on positive and negative effect, physical activity, sedentary behavior, diet quality, and sleep quality daily for up to 10-days. Mixed-effect models were used to examine associations between the variables of interest. Results: On days that participants were more active, they experienced higher mean positive effect (P = .015) and lower mean negative effect (P = .028) scores. Conversely, more time spent sitting in lagged models (i.e., T-1) was associated with higher mean negative effect (P = .001) and lower mean positive effect (P = .040) scores. In lagged models, better sleep quality was associated with higher positive effects (P = .007) scores but reported lower negative effects (P < .0001) scores on the same day. Lastly, on days where diet quality was higher, positive effect scores were higher (P < 0.05). Association between diet quality and positive effect was moderated by age (P = .025). Conclusion: The data suggest that same and previous day health behaviors may have a significant impact on the health and well-being of middle-aged African Americans. More research is needed to determine whether these behaviors can be targeted in real-time as a means of improving mental health outcomes in this population.

Religious Intolerance, America, and the World: A History of Forgetting and Remembering

Religious Intolerance, America, and the World: A History of Forgetting and Remembering

The Church Is Essential: COVID-19 and the Hyperlocal Politics of Mutual Aid in Black and Latina/o Churches

This article explores the work of Latina/o and African American churches in New York City, Los Angeles, and Houston as they serve their communities and, in the midst of a pandemic, are fundamentally reimaging the relationship between religion and society in hyperlocal sites. A focus on neighborhood churches provides a particularly clear view of how mutual aid is practiced and informed by a relational and horizontal orientation as much as it is rooted in a social ethic with strict expectations around charity. Churches are often criticized for their vertical and heavenly focus, but for many churches, the pandemic radically changed that orientation, prompting them to redirect their efforts toward supporting the spiritual and physical wellbeing of their Black and Brown parishioners and other community members. As churches became sites for food distribution, transformed their sanctuaries into classrooms, and joined Black Lives Matter protests, they renewed their commitment to a radical religious tradition grounded in concerns around economic, racial, and immigrant justice.

From the Garden of Eden to the Zen Rock Garden

From the Garden of Eden to the Zen Rock Garden

Nutrition Intervention for Reduction of Cardiovascular Risk in African Americans Using the 2019 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Primary Prevention Guidelines.

Introduction: The 2019 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) Prevention Guidelines emphasize reduction in dietary sodium, cholesterol, refined carbohydrates, saturated fat and sweetened beverages. We hypothesized that implementing this dietary pattern could reduce cardiovascular risk in a cohort of volunteers in an urban African American (AA) community church, during a 5-week ACC/AHA-styled nutrition intervention, assessed by measuring risk markers and adherence, called HEART-LENS (Helping Everyone Assess Risk Today Lenten Nutrition Study). Methods: The study population consisted of 53 volunteers who committed to eat only home-delivered non-dairy vegetarian meals (average daily calories 1155, sodium 1285 mg, cholesterol 0 mg; 58% carbohydrate, 17% protein, 25% fat). Body mass index (BMI) and fasting serum markers of cardiometabolic and risk factors were measured, with collection of any dietary deviation. Results: Of 53 volunteers, 44 (mean age 60.2 years, 37 women) completed the trial (88%); 1 was intolerant of the meals, 1 completed both blood draws but did not eat delivered food, and 7 did not return for the tests. Adherence to the diet was reported at 93% in the remaining 44. Cardiometabolic risk factors improved significantly, highlighted by a marked reduction in serum insulin (−43%, p = 0.000), hemoglobin A1c (6.2% to 6.0%, p = 0.000), weight and BMI (−10.2 lbs, 33 to 31 kg/m2, p = 0.000), but with small reductions of fasting glucose (−6%, p = 0.405) and triglyceride levels (−4%, p = 0.408). Additionally, improved were trimethylamine-N-oxide (5.1 to 2.9 µmol/L, −43%, p = 0.001), small dense low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL) (24.2 to 19.1 mg/dL, −21%, p = 0.000), LDL (121 to 104 mg/dL, −14%, p = 0.000), total cholesterol (TC) (190 to 168 mg/dL, −12%, p = 0.000), and lipoprotein (a) (LP(a)) (56 to 51 mg/dL, −11%, p = 0.000); high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) was widely variable but reduced by 16% (2.5 to 2.1 ng/mL, p = NS) in 40 subjects without inflammatory conditions. Soluble urokinase plasminogen activator (suPAR) levels were not significantly changed. The ACC/AHA pooled cohort atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk scores were calculated for 41 and 36 volunteers, respectively, as the ASCVD risk could not be calculated for 3 subjects with low lipid fractions at baseline and 8 subjects after intervention (p = 0.184). In the remaining subjects, the mean 10-year risk was reduced from 10.8 to 8.7%, a 19.4% decrease (p = 0.006), primarily due to a 14% decrease in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and a 10 mm Hg (6%) reduction in systolic blood pressure. Conclusions: In this prospective 5-week non-dairy vegetarian nutrition intervention with good adherence consistent with the 2019 ACC/AHA Guidelines in an at-risk AA population, markers of cardiovascular risk, cardiometabolism, and body weight were significantly reduced, including obesity, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDLc) density, LP(a), inflammation, and ingestion of substrates mediating production of trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO). Albeit reduced, hs-CRP and suPAR, were not lowered consistently. This induced a significant decrease in the 10-year ASCVD risk in this AA cohort. If widely adopted, this could dramatically reduce and possibly eradicate, the racial disparity in ASCVD events and mortality, if 19% of the 21% increase is eliminated by this lifestyle change.

Evaluation of the LIGHT Curriculum: An African American Church-Based Curriculum for Training Lay Health Workers to Support Advance Care Planning, End-of-Life Decision Making, and Care.

Background: Lay health workers (LHWs) engaging African Americans in conversations about advance care planning (ACP) often have felt unprepared for the challenges of communicating with patients as they approach the end of life. We developed a church-based training curriculum, LIGHT (Listening, Identifying, Guiding, Helping, Translating), in response to this need. Objectives: To evaluate the LIGHT Curriculum by assessing its impact on knowledge, beliefs and attitudes, and self-efficacy of the learners; describing their assessment of the classroom component of the training; and describing their visit activities, and perceptions derived during client visits. Design: prospective, descriptive, pre- and post-training evaluation. Settings/Subjects: Thirty-seven LHWs (Comfort Care Supporters [CCSs]) from three African American Churches (United States). Measurements: knowledge, beliefs and attitudes, assessment of classroom training, self-efficacy, visit activities, and perceptions. Results: Pre-to-post knowledge scores (range 0-26) increased by a mean of 5.23, p < 0.0001. Agreement with favorable beliefs about palliative and hospice care (HC) did not change significantly post-training. Disagreement with unfavorable beliefs about hospice increased, most notably, the belief that hospice means a place where people go to die (43% to 87%, p = 0.003) and HC means giving up (77% to 93%, p = 0.03). Post-training, 94% of the CCSs felt prepared to function in their roles. The CCSs who visited clients demonstrated the ability to engage clients and families in conversations about issues important to ACP, end-of-life decision making and care, and the ability to identify relevant benefits and challenges of their roles. Conclusions: LHWs, trained using the LIGHT Curriculum, can acquire the knowledge and self-efficacy necessary to support African American clients with ACP, end-of-life decision making, and end-of-life care.

The War That Never Was: Evolution and Christian Theology

The War That Never Was: Evolution and Christian Theology

A Revolution in Catholic Thought on Poverty: Engaging the Poor Means Engaging in History

AbstractPerhaps nowhere else has the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes been appropriated more radically and completely than by the Catholic Church of Latin America. The gathering of bishops at Medellín, Colombia in 1968 and the documents produced there represent a significant appropriation of the new possibilities opened up by Gaudium et Spes. The new emphasis on “justice” allowed the church to leave older “charity” approaches aside and the “dynamism” embodied by social doctrinal change would allow this episcopal body to affirm a preferential option for the poor that was both multifaceted and revolutionary. A careful consideration of documents from the Medellín Conference reveals the strong influence of Gaudium et Spes, especially in how the Latin American Church moved beyond the traditional societas perfectas model of church/state relations indicative of past centuries with its new commitment to transforming the world. This article highlights certain texts of Gaudium et Spes and their influence upon the Medellín documents.

An update on the clerical sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in the United States and its impact on education

The November 10, 2020 publication of the 461-page Report On The Holy See’s Institutional Knowledge And Decision-Making Related To Former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick (1930–2017), commonly known as the McCarrick Report, painted an unflattering, if not criminal, picture of the dearth of leadership in the hierarchy of the American Catholic Church. This Report, which describes ‘another tragic chapter in the Church’s long struggle to confront the crimes of sexual abuse by clergy,’ examined the role of the disgraced, laicised, former Cardinal-Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C. The Report chronicles McCarrick’s egregious abuse of power as he took advantage of adult males, rather than children, as another dimension of the ongoing scandal that has rocked the American Catholic Church for more than the past quarter of a century.

Accepted Power: Black Authority and the Multiethnic Church

Black people, specifically American descendants of slaves, and the American church have had a complex and painful relationship. From the slave plantation, to Jim Crow, to the Civil Rights Movement, and Black Lives Matter, the relationship between Black Christians and the church seems to have improved. Black slaves are no longer being beaten or imprisoned for secretly having their own worship services, nor are Black Christians openly being told they can't sit on a pew in a White church, nor are Black Christians the only ones speaking out about racism and injustice, as many White Christians have joined in the fight. In an effort to unite Christians in America, the multiethnic church movement has gained momentum. But what does the dynamic between Black Christians and the American church look like now? I investigate this question through study of the contemporary multiethnic church movement. While Black and White Christians have come together in churches, it is not without relational issues that are the result of the unreconciled past.

A Culture of Conflict: Race Reconciliation and the White Evangelical/Southern Church

The American church, part of the body of Christ, particularly the White Evangelical and White Southern denominations, have had a questionable relationship with race and racism and share the same system and systematic issues with race as American society has generally. This struggle has most recently manifested itself in the conflict between the White church and the Black Lives Matter movement. I investigate this conflict through study of its history, ethnographic research in a multi-cultural church in Texas, and investigations into Critical Race Theory and Liberation Theology. Somehow huge segments of the Christian population have become disenchanted with the principles that Jesus gave us, that love was the greatest commandment, and that loving our neighbor as ourselves is a mandate. They have forgotten that God is a God of everyone, including the disinherited. This article speaks to the history of race and the church and how the conflict between the church and racism does not align with the principles of God.

Cluster-randomized trial comparing organizationally tailored versus standard approach for integrating an evidence-based cancer control intervention into African American churches.

The field of implementation science has devoted increasing attention to optimizing the fit of evidence-based interventions to the organizational settings in which they are delivered. Institutionalization of health promotion into routine organizational operations is one way to achieve this. However, less is known about how to maximize fit and achieve institutionalization, particularly in settings outside of the healthcare system. This paper reports on findings from a parallel cluster-randomized trial that compared an organizationally tailored with a standard (core components only) approach for institutionalizing ("integrating") an evidence-based cancer control intervention into African American churches. Churches randomized to the organizationally tailored condition identified three or more implementation strategies from a menu of 20, with an implementation time frame for each. The primary study outcome was assessed through the Faith-Based Organization Health Integration Inventory, a measure of institutionalization of health promotion activities in church settings, completed by pastors at baseline and 12-month follow-up. Seventeen churches were randomized and 14 were analyzed as 3 did not implement the study protocol. Though the percent increase in total integration score was greater in the tailored condition (N = 9; 18%) than in the standard condition (N = 5; 12%), linear mixed-effect models did not detect a statistically significant group × time interaction. Despite the challenges of integrating health promotion activities outside of healthcare organizations, the current approach shows promise for fostering sustainable health promotion in community settings and merits further study.

Abstract 2553: Using a “train-the-trainer” approach with urban and rural minority community health workers to implement the cancer-Community Awareness Access Research and Education (c-CARE) Project

Abstract Introduction: Community health workers (CHW) are often a key component to effective implementation of health promotion interventions; training on intervention delivery and self-efficacy enhances CHW effectiveness. The cancer-Community Awareness Access Research and Education (c-CARE) project utilized a train-the-trainer approach to equip CHWs to teach the four-week c-CARE lung cancer module. Project objectives included providing and facilitating: 1) education on risks of lung cancer, 2) low-dose CT (LCDT) screening for eligible participants, 3) smoking cessation, and 4) training CHWs to deliver the educational intervention and thus promote sustainability. Methods: Lay CHWs (n=63, 54 urban, 9 rural, 92% female, 56% having ≥Bachelors degree, 79% healthcare providers) were selected from 16 historically African American (AA) churches (n = 9 urban, 3 rural), Federally-Qualified Health centers (n=3) and one community center, all in Georgia or South Carolina. CHW inclusion criteria included pastor recommendation from the churches' healthcare ministry (primarily nurses and other allied health professionals) or community clinic workers who were public health practitioners, nurses, and paraprofessionals. CHWs participated in a 2-day implementation training. Training topics included: their role as a c-CARE facilitator, knowledge of cancer risk factors and lung cancer screening, and using the c-CARE materials to teach the sessions. Pre and post surveys assessed knowledge, satisfaction with the training, and self-efficacy regarding teaching the content. Responses were summarized; all significance tests were two-tailed using a significance level of 0.05. Result: Improvement in each of the six items was strongly significant (p &amp;lt; 0.001), with a mean improvement of at least 2 points on the 0-10 scale in: 1) understanding of their roles as c-CARE facilitators, 2) knowledge of cancer risk factors, 3) knowledge of lung cancer screening, 4) confidence in conducting a c-CARE group, 5) confidence in their abilities to implement a policy change, and 6) confidence in using c-CARE materials to teach participants. Participants also reported satisfaction with the c-CARE training they received. There were no significant differences between urban and rural CHW participants. CHWs conducted 64 sessions for 586 participants as a part of the c-CARE project. Discussion: Use of lay CHWs to deliver culturally competent cancer education and screening navigation was an important component of the c-CARE project. Increases in knowledge regarding cancer risk factors, screening requirements, and self-efficacy in leading the sessions were reported by the CHWs. Use of local lay CHWs ensures sustainability, positively affecting community knowledge, attitude and beliefs regarding lung cancer, prevention, and screening behaviors. Citation Format: Marlo M. Vernon, Ghadeer Albashir, Samantha J. Sojourner, Justin X. Moore, Stephen W. Looney, Martha S. Tingen. Using a “train-the-trainer” approach with urban and rural minority community health workers to implement the cancer-Community Awareness Access Research and Education (c-CARE) Project [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2021; 2021 Apr 10-15 and May 17-21. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2021;81(13_Suppl):Abstract nr 2553.

Sermons to Address Obesity in Partnership With African American and Latino Churches

Sermons to Address Obesity in Partnership With African American and Latino Churches

La fiesta religiosa como lugar teológico

The set of Christian religious practices that are usually classified as religion, piety or Catholicism has been one of the main subjects of theological thinking in Latin America. The approach developed on this topic has been essentially normative-pastoral. With the declaration of piety as a locus theologicus (EG 126), however, the need to deepen a fundamental theological reflection on this constitutive reality of the Latin American Church has become evident. This article presents the results of the research project entitled Aesthetic-theological foundations of popular piety, defining, first of all, a specific empirical point of reference, the religious feast, to then proceed to elucidate in what sense and how it can be constituted as a theological place.