“Just Reproduce After What I Taught You”

Abstract

Researchers consistently find that educational and familial settings unintentionally reproduce socioeconomic status (SES) via distinct socialization patterns in their community contexts. Yet there are surprisingly few studies examining this pattern as related to religious settings. This study extends the social reproduction literature by examining intended socialization of religiousbased youth programs across SES of the areas in which religious congregations are located. Data analyzed are from the Northern Indiana Congregation Study, a high-response-rate phone survey with all religious congregations located within three contiguous cities, combined with U.S. Census data for the postal code of the congregation location, and in-person interviews with stratifiedquota-sampled religious youth leaders. This analysis provides evidence for a spatially stratified pattern to religious youth socialization. Findings reveal how deeply socioeconomic reproduction permeates social life, including even the youth socialization practices of religious congregations, and indicates that low-income youth may be particularly disadvantaged in their available religious socialization.

Future of Work: Professionalization of Clergy and Nonprofit Collaborations

“…Generational transition suggests that younger leaders who succeed older leaders emerge from increasingly professionalized contexts such that they are more likely to collaborate. This reality also applies to leaders, regardless of their age, who predominantly serve younger audiences also raised in professionalized environments (Herzog 2022;Herzog et al 2020;Smith and Snell 2009;Snell 2009Snell , 2011. We further theorize that younger leaders and leaders serving younger audiences are more likely to collaborate.…”

Understanding Why Religious Involvement's Relationship With Education Varies by Social Class

“…Another transcendent resource from religious participation is that of coping skills (Smith, 2003a), which often come from belief in a loving or omnipotent being, a way to make sense of suffering, and inner strength to overcome challenges. Studies show that economically disadvantaged adolescents have higher levels of transcendent religious practice than more advantaged youth (Schwadel, 2008;Snell, 2011), so it may be that they are more likely to benefit from transcendent resources and that this partly explains why religious involvement has a stronger relationship with educational outcomes for more disadvantaged youth.…”