Christian Organizations Research Articles

Christianity’s shift from the Global North to the Global South

The most significant trend within global Christianity over the last century has been its profound demographic shift from the Global North to the Global South. Although the percentage of Christians in the world population has remained fairly constant since 1900, where those Christians are found has changed dramatically. In 1900 more than 80% lived in the Global North, but by 2010 that figure had fallen to less than 40%. Despite Christianity’s inherent linguistic and cultural translatability, however, Southern Christianity was formed with and still retains many Northern trappings, so that it often appears foreign to non-Christians (and even, at times, to Southern Christians). In addition, Southern Christians have yet to assume the leadership (in areas as diverse as international Christian organizations and articulating theology) that their global numbers would seem to suggest. Southern Christians also hold a disproportionately small share of global Christian income and wealth, which can inhibit their ability to fund ministry where Christianity is growing most rapidly. Christianity’s shift to the South is not without opportunity, however. In many ways, Southern Christians’ cultures and ways of thinking resemble those of the biblical era more closely than do Northerners’, creating the potential for vibrant new theologies and ways of being the Church. Pentecostal and Charismatic spirituality also energizes many Southern Christians, although this is not without controversy. Finally, Southern Christians tend to live in closer proximity to adherents of other religions than do Northern Christians, opening doors for dialog and mission that the North often resists or avoids.

Christian Lobbyist Groups and the Negotiation of Sexual Rights in the UK

ABSTRACTAlthough sexual minority rights have not necessarily generated polarised views within Christian churches and organisations, the subject has tended to forge an arena of contestation between liberal and conservative constituencies. Theological differences have frequently been manifested through the mobilisation of ‘cause’ groups lobbying the political realm and public opinion in order to advance their contrasting standpoints. Based on a survey of documentation and supplementary materials produced for public consumption, this article considers responses of the conflicting rights petitions of Christian cadres either endorsing or opposing minority sexual rights and the relevant legislative enactments in the UK. The article seeks to illuminate how these competing constituencies further their causes while at the same time devaluing the rights claims of their adversaries.

Exploring the Dynamics of Leadership and Their Impact on the Anglican Schism in the Diocese of Harare in Zimbabwe

This paper examines the leadership controversy in the Anglican Church Diocese of Harare and evaluates the extent to which the exigencies of power impacted upon this conflict. This study is necessitated by the fact that the Anglican Church Province of Central Africa has been affected by an unprecedented conflict hinged on leadership wrangle and a crisis of legitimacy. This has resulted in the excommunication of Bishop Nolbert Kunonga who had deliberately withdrawn from the Anglican international communion to form the province of Zimbabwe. Key to this dispute was the allegation of gay marriages presumably blessed by the Church of the Province of Central Africa (CPCA) although it appears there were other multifarious factors behind the controversy. Given this background, this paper seeks to present a critical exploration of the cardinal factors at play within the context of the Episcopalian polity and try to link church governance and ecclesiology to the context of the Anglican conflict in Zimbabwe. It should be appreciated that, as the world is setting into the 21 st Century and Globalisation becomes inescapable, a new breed of leaders and leadership paradigm is needed in Christian organisations. There is a general consensus among scholars that the term leadership can be defined from various vantage points. But for the purposes of this study, the term leadership designates the art of inducing competence, an instrument of goal achievement, a form of persuasion. Leadership is the most important factor determining the future of any organisation. The style of leadership in a religious organisation is a critical determinant in enhancing the stability and growth of the church. To this end, leadership has to do with the manner and approach of providing direction, implementing plans for institutional development, staff development progress in pursuit of organisational excellence. Suffice is to say that, the Anglican church faced an epoch where the Diocese of Harare turned to be a stadium of politics and poly tricks as the contestation for leadership legitimacy tellingly led to the shipwreck of the once robust diocese.

“Russia's Most Effective Fifth Column”: Cold War Perceptions of Un-Americanism in US Churches

From the very beginning of the Cold War, fundamentalist Christian organizations in the United States were engaged in a strident polemical campaign against the modern ecumenical movement and its American supporters in the major mainline churches. Consistently, this movement and its Social Gospel supporters were perceived as allies or tools of the Soviet Union, or at the very least as unwitting co-conspirators in world revolutionary projects that posed a direct threat to US national security. In the late 1940s and the early 1950s, the American Council of Christian Churches and other key fundamentalist organizations of the era developed a set of key theological arguments about the perceived un-Americanism of said churches and their clergy. Later in the 1950s, the fundamentalists allied with others on the religious and political right to push for a series of Congressional and FBI investigations into perceived subversion as practised by these churches. While ultimately unsuccessful in terms of their originally stated goals, these prolonged fundamentalist campaigns became a crucial site for disseminating the faith-based conceptions of Americanism and un-Americanism that eventually cohered in the contemporary religious right. This paper will investigate the Cold War fundamentalist discourse on un-Americanism and subversion in an effort to illumine the contours of perceived religious otherness in this exceptionally religious nation.

The Role of the YWCA in the World War II Internment of Japanese Americans: A Cautionary Tale for Social Work

AbstractThe Young Women’s Christian Organization’s work on behalf of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated in federal relocation camps during World War II was progressive in its vision of racial equality and courageous in its proactive, vocal consistency. The YWCA was unique among social work organizations in seeing the internment as an ethical, moral, and political challenge to the profession and to the national democracy. In its conviction of the necessity for assimilation, however, the YWCA functionally supported the racist stances it opposed: the military’s rationale for the internment and Americanization schemes of eras past. Using primary archival records, this study outlines the scope of the YWCA’s work and analyzes its well-intentioned but problematic role in the history of the internment. The history makes clear that even the deeds of conscientious and skilled individuals are not necessarily free of bias and partiality. This analysis seeks to bring this lesson to the fore.

What Have Religious Groups Done After 3.11? Part 1: A Brief Survey of Religious Mobilization after the Great East Japan Earthquake Disasters

AbstractThis article serves two principal purposes: 1) to survey the many rescue, relief, and reconstruction initiatives undertaken by Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, and New Religious organizations in the two years since the March 2011 disasters that devastated northeast Japan, and 2) to introduce electronic and print resources to readers interested in learning more about specific religious disaster response campaigns. The pragmatic aid efforts carried out by religions contrast with moralistic interpretations offered by public figures, and they indicate that many religious groups regard their disaster aid not as temporary relief but instead as opportunities to begin positive new engagements with the Japanese public.

Anonymous Pastoral Care for Problems Pertaining to Sexuality

Anonymous pastoral care is one of the options for help in problems pertaining to sexuality. This paper explores the topics they seek help for, the religious aspects involved, and the relation between the normativity of their church tradition on the one hand and sexual and spiritual health criteria on the other. We analyzed helpseeking questions of two protestant Christian organizations in the Netherlands providing anonymous pastoral care: Refoweb and EO-Nazorg. Sexual themes were addressed in 19 and 2.3% of the submitted questions, respectively. Of the helpseekers, 56% is female, 15% male, and 29% unknown. Questions and problems for which people seek anonymous pastoral care focus primarily on premarital abstinence, gender roles, contraception, sexual orientation and masturbation. The authority of the Bible seems to be important for questioners, especially when dealing with ethical questions. Different relations between the normativity of the church tradition and sexual and spiritual health are discussed.

Cooperation in Ethnically Diverse Neighborhoods: A Lost‐Letter Experiment

Several studies suggest a negative impact of ethnic diversity on cooperation, but most of them rely on attitudinal and other indirect measurements of cooperation or are derived from the artificial laboratory setting. We conducted a field experiment based on the lost‐letter technique across 52 neighborhoods in Berlin, Germany. The study has two aims. First, we investigate whether the negative effect of ethnic heterogeneity on cooperation holds for concrete cooperative behavior in a real‐world setting. Second, we test the most prominent psychological mechanism that has been proposed to explain the negative effects of heterogeneity on cooperation, namely in‐group favoritism. We do so by experimentally varying the ethnicity and religion of the senders of letters. We find strong support for the negative effect of ethnic diversity on cooperation. We find no evidence, however, of in‐group favoritism. Letters from Turkish or Muslim organizations were as often returned as those from German and Christian organizations, and the ethnic diversity effect was the same for all types of letters.

Inter-church aid and international diaconia in the Church of Finland. A historical perspective

Abstract International diaconia is a concept that has been used by the Lutheran World Federation and other Christian organisations. The full meaning of international diaconia has remained unclear however. In this article, the concept and idea of international diaconia is analysed in the context of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland during the last seven decades. Four major changes have taken place during the period under research. The understanding of receiving and giving has been reconsidered, and the agenda of international aid has gone from purely inter-church aid to international diaconia with a strong element of humanitarian aid. The theology of international diaconia and its effect on church organisation are discussed, as well as the new connections between global and local diaconia.

Students, Apartheid and the Ecumenical Movement in South Africa, 1960–1975

This article examines ecumenical endeavour and student politics in South Africa in the 1960s and early 1970s to bring into fresh perspective sources of antiapartheid activism. The article explores Christian ecumenical developments in the twentieth century and specifically the crisis point reached in 1960 after the Sharpeville massacre. It turns to discuss the formation of two key black student leaders, Steve Biko and Barney Pityana, in the Eastern Cape and discusses their creation of the black-led South African Students' Organisation (SASO) in 1968. I explore a fraught but productive relationship between the growth of Black Consciousness and a developing commitment to social justice by student Christian organisations. A political culture of dialogue enabled the message of Black Consciousness to be quickly communicated to a broad cross section of progressive political actors in the early 1970s. A prime legacy of the ecumenical endeavour of the 1960s was its emphasis on unity and muting of strict orthodoxy, an approach that facilitated such cooperation. I argue that the theological radicalism of the ecumenical movement provided a reference point from which to understand and come to terms with the challenge of the emergent Black Consciousness movement.

Divinely Guided: The California Work of the Women's National Indian Association

Divinely Guided provides a useful overview of the Women's National Indian Association (wnia), an evangelical Christian organization founded in 1879 that sought assimilation of Native Americans to prevent their “extinction.” Valerie Sherer Mathes's goal is to bring the scholarly discourse on female reformers among the Indians, well known to ethnohistorians, into dialogue with a women's history that has neglected women's efforts in Indian work. Divinely Guided successfully locates women such as the wnia cofounder Amelia Stone Quinton and Annie Ellicott Kennedy Bidwell, vice president of the wnia in the West, in the historiography of women activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using personal papers, government documents, and wnia literature, Mathes reconstructs wnia assimilation efforts in northern and southern California. On reservations (Round Valley and Hoopa) and in missions these women were purveyors of a federal maternalism in which white women, acting in their roles as wife and mother, “uplifted” Indian women according to middle-class norms of civilization. As was true for the efforts of many other women reformers, these labors imparted organizing and lobbying skills, and brought these women into the political sphere, where they became influential in Indian policy. Mathes demonstrates that the wnia was as large and influential as the Women's Christian Temperance Union and deserves a monograph-length study. She contextualizes the wnia in the evangelical influences informing President Ulysses S. Grant's so-called peace policy, which allowed churches to administer Indian reservations beginning in 1872. As women were powerful in evangelical causes, this step opened the door for their Indian advocacy.

The Threat of Demographic Winter : A Transnational Politics of Motherhood and Endangered Populations in Pro-Family Documentaries

The article examines a set of documentaries that serves to promulgate a depopulation crisis narrative and heteronormative "natural family" solution for the World Congress of Families, a transnational network of primarily conservative Christian organizations engaged in "pro-family" politics. These videos provide a portable delivery system of rationales for preserving sexual norms aimed at countering claims for the sexual and reproductive rights of women and sexual minorities. The films, revolving around a theme of "demographic winter," warn of the collapse of social-security systems and ultimately the end of so-called Western civilization. The documentaries locate the problem principally in women's individual marriage and childbearing decisions and blame environmentalist, feminist, and LGBT-rights movements for spreading misinformation that fuels what the films declare to be problematic choices. The article argues that these documentaries employ a politics of fear in an attempt to secure social norms based on a set of gender and racial hierarchies. They mobilize fear of economic, moral, racial, and sexual chaos positioned against a "familiar" model of home, motherhood, and safety. The analysis highlights how emotional and demographic elements combine to shape an argument for patriarchy that resonates with a variety of global anxieties and political goals.

A Global Perspective on Violence Against Women with Disabilities: Evaluating the Response of Pastoral Care and Religious Organizations

Within the vulnerable population of women are distinctive populations of women including Aboriginal women, immigrant women, women in poverty, and women with disabilities, who are uniquely vulnerable with respect to risk. Of the world’s population, 10% or 650 million people have a disability, more than half of whom are women. Studying a vulnerable population that exists within a vulnerable population has come to be known as intersectionality. This paper will give an account of the intersectionality of the vulnerable statuses of women, and of disability, and the violence these women with disabilities experience as a result of their unique vulnerability. A description of this particular type of gendered violence will be explored and then addressed at the international level drawing on the work of the United Nations, followed by a brief overview at the national level. A synopsis of recommended responses will then be presented, followed by a short evaluation of several pastoral theological contributions as well as the responses of four Christian organizations.

Communication and marketing of services by religious organizations in India

Marketing communication is a vital strategic tool for religious organizations to achieve competitive differentiation. The study uses media richness theory with competitive response to develop hypotheses about the use of personal and non-personal channels by religious organizations. The study uses unique primary survey data on 568 Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh and Jain organizations spread over 7 states in India, collected between 2006 and 2008, to investigate the marketing communication strategy of religious organizations in response to their competitors' use of non-personal communication channels and provision of non-religious services. The findings suggest that if a competitor uses higher non-personal communication channels, then this evokes a retaliatory reaction with the incumbent, increasing their personal communication channels. Second, an incumbent who is more responsive to a competitor increasing their non-religious service provision will respond by increasing their non-personal communication channels and by decreasing their personal channels. The findings have implications for managers who need to select the richness of the media for their communications' strategy in the context of competitive response.

A Cox proportional hazards regression analysis of gender differences in treatment retention among clients in a faith-based residential drug treatment program in Taiwan

Faith-based treatment programs have played a visible and acclaimed role in Taiwan's long struggle against drug abuse and its social consequences. Christian organizations have been the main sponsors of faith-based recovery services based on a treatment model that emphasizes the transformative benefits of religious conversion. Despite its conceptual appeal, this therapeutic mechanism remains untested and very little is known about gender differences in faith-based treatment performance. This study bridges this research gap by exploring how men and women differ in their treatment retention, and by examining the association between in-treatment religious conversion and treatment retention. The sample comprises 707 clients admitted to Operation Dawn, a faith-based residential treatment, between December 2000 and March 2009. Gender differences in client background characteristics and substance abuse history, probability of religious conversion during treatment, and dropout hazards were identified. Overall, women encountered more challenges in faith-based treatment settings. A robust positive relationship between religious conversion and treatment retention was also found. The high treatment attrition rate, however, proved faith-based treatment to be a modality of high therapeutic specificity. Further research into the dynamics of in-treatment religious conversion is needed to allow informed matching of faith-based services with suitable clients and to identify best practices within this particular clinical framework.

Christian Churches and the European Union Immigration and Asylum Policy

This article examines how Christian churches have contributed to the European Union immigration and asylum policy. It briefly discusses the main developments of the EU policy in the area of migration and asylum, and then explains why issues of migration are important to the churches (particularly that these issues are closely connected with the Biblical call to take care of a stranger). The article identifies the main Christian organisations, which work in the area of migration and asylum at the EU level, as well as their areas of specific contribution. It is found out that the strategy, used by Christian organisations, is similar to that of other non-governmental organisations, but it also bears the impact of their specific status and ‘family links’ with churches. Overall, it is sometimes difficult to separate the influence of Christian organisations from the influence of their secular counterparts working in the area of migration and asylum. However, the importance of Christian organisations is particularly noticeable in the area of monitoring and assessment, even to an extent that Christian organisations can be regarded as more important than secular ones.

The Role of Contemporary Christian Organizations in the Development of Mass Communication in Nigeria: An Exploratory Study

The main aim of ‘real’ religion is development. This paper is a study of the contributions of contemporary Christian organizations in Nigeria to the development of Mass Communication in the country and in effect, their contributions to overall national development. Religious organizations have always in their various ways strived to contribute to national development. However, until recently, the contribution could not be said to be remarkable or significant in terms of helping to address issues of national needs. They were not able to make impactful contribution to national development due to regulatory constraints and their participation in developmental activities remained relatively dormant. A number of Christian organizations in the last few years have however contributed to recorded development in the Mass communication industry. While highlighting the various modes that the contribution has taken, the paper attempts to situate the various developmental roles of selected Christian organizations to the print and broadcast subsectors of mass communication in the general framework of development in Nigeria. The paper concludes that while the selected Christian organizations engage the print and electronic media in propagating their religious values, they actively contribute to growth in the advertising industry, training and education, employment generation and promotion of reading culture among others. Contributions to these indices of development make for agreement that these organizations have made input and are still contributing to national development through involvement in the media subsector. Keywords: religious organizations, publications, development, contributions

Polarization or bridging? Responses of Muslim and non-Muslim organizations to criticism of Islam in the Netherlands

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Islam has been a target of harsh criticism in the Netherlands, as in many other European countries. This article examines and analyses the way leaders of 10 Muslim and 11 non-Muslim organizations responded to criticism of Islam in the Netherlands in the period 2004–10. The focus is on the response to five episodes: the film Submission (2004), the Danish Cartoon Affair (2005–2006), the film Fitna (2008), the Internet film An interview with Mohammed (2008) and the Swiss ban on the building of minarets (2009). Several specific patterns of response are noted. The responses of Muslim organizations vary from resignation to defensive to offensive, and those of non-Muslim organizations from supportive to critical. These patterns are strongly linked to the organizations' leaders' framing of the situation, including the incidents themselves and other organizations, and their own mission and strategy, as well as, in the case of Fitna, to the policy of the Dutch government. All the organizations researched reject extreme forms of polarization and the mainstream Christian, Islamic and Jewish organizations in particular have strengthened their mutual ties in response to expressions of criticism of Islam.

Development, Religion, and Modernity in Palestine‐Israel

Development, Religion, and Modernity in Palestine‐Israel Timothy Seidel Introduction: defining the religious Research on peacebuilding and development organizations in the Global South seeks to assess the merits of either “faith‐based” (i.e., religious) or “secular” missions in conflict areas. This scholarship ostensibly evaluates the efficacy of organizations on their ability to engage local partners at either secular or religious levels. Arguments in this vein generally fall into one of two positions: on one hand, scholars hold up the unique modern‐secular capacity to intervene in places of “religious” conflict; on the other hand, scholars highlight the unique positionality of religious organizations, which enables them to connect with parties in “religious” societies and conflicts. In fact, these two positions are on two sides of the same coin. Both arguments are predicated on a distinction between the “secular” and the “religious” as a precondition of analysis. Here, the “secular‐religious” distinction itself is called into question as a product of modern thought and scholarship on religion and development is examined for its reliance on this distinction. What work does this distinction perform in peacebuilding work? How has this distinction come to command importance in this field? This critique attempts to illustrate the overlapping and shifting relationships that constitute religious identity and peacebuilding work in Palestine‐Israel. Unsettling this distinction allows us to explore the ways that “Muslim,” “Christian,” “religious,” and “secular” categories are products of contingent and fluid relationships, rather than static identities. I am not calling for a relativist position that strips from such terms their meaning or effect, but rather exploring the process by which these constructed frameworks come to have meaning and material effect in a specific time and place: Palestine‐Israel today. Talal Asad has argued that the liberal nation state is paradoxically required to define the genuinely “religious” in order to lay claim to the secular. Similarly, we believe self‐described “secular” peacebuilding and development organizations are compelled to define themselves in opposition to religious groups and religious parties in areas of their operation. They must define the “religious” in order to carry out their work as secular organizations. It is precisely their “secular” status that compels them to delineate and circumscribe the religious. This engagement is a tenuous process that leads to homogenized and static definitions of people and groups. It also limits organizations’ ability to provide advocacy and policy guidance to various parties in a conflict. Perhaps most importantly, it grants secular institutions the power to name and de/legitimize religious organizations. And this is integral to the dominant frameworks that development and peacebuilding have historically operated within. This speaks to what Ziauddin Sardar identified in his “Development and the Locations of Eurocentrism” as the “real power of the West,” a power “not located in its economic muscle or technological might,” but rather “in its power to define.” This power is leveraged to obscure the “margin” in order to constitute Europe as epistemological “center.” In other words, Europe as the site of universal epistemology is not possible without the margin. That which claims for itself the position of “center” is always enabled by the effaced contributions of the margin. Therefore, the secular‐religious distinction is itself made possible by obscuring other formations and ideas located at the margins. Recent discussion in “faith‐based” organizations builds from the enacted schism in Western tradition between the religious and the secular. A World Vision employee, Serge Duss wrote, “Unlike Western society, which separates the spiritual from the physical, Islamic society particularly, integrate the spiritual into every aspect of their lives in societies.” Evangelization or proselytization by Christian organizations is, of course, a geopolitical as well as religious question. Christian organizations administering programs in Muslim countries have drawn special interest. Duss notes, “it is not Christian evangelizations that Islamic countries fear, as much as Western secularization where there is no expression of divine in daily life.” Similarly, Bill Headley from Catholic Relief Services said, “It's we who, in our culture, approach these things as the assumption of separation…We, as an overseas Catholic agency, realize that many times the society itself has many of the same values we have. So it's already there before we...

Religious roots and Christian critics

In this article, I discuss the role of religion in relation to domestic welfare and international aid policies. Drawing on material from the Norwegian context – contributions given by Bishop Eivind Berggrav (1884–1959) and theologian Tor Aukrust (1921–2007), as well as discussions among Christian organisations following the establishment of Norwegian Church Aid in 1947 – I show that religion has not only been an obstacle to or an instrument for domestic or international development, but an integral and critical part of this. These findings challenge the dominant interpretation of the role of religion in explaining and understanding Norwegian and Nordic development policies.