Gendered Responses to Decline in Protestant Congregations
In this study of 16 Protestant congregations, men and women responded quite differently to open-ended survey questions and in focus group discussions about the observed decline of their congregations. The quantitative data indicated that the women were more religiously devout, which one would expect...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2015
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| In: |
Research in the social scientific study of religion
Year: 2015, Volume: 26, Pages: 21-39 |
| Further subjects: | B
Religious sociology
B Social sciences B Religionspsycholigie B Religionswissenschaften B Religion & Gesellschaft B Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft & Religionswissenschaft |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In this study of 16 Protestant congregations, men and women responded quite differently to open-ended survey questions and in focus group discussions about the observed decline of their congregations. The quantitative data indicated that the women were more religiously devout, which one would expect to mean that women would be more negatively affected by substantial congregational decline. That conclusion was contradicted by the qualitative data, which demonstrated that declining congregations actually offered women opportunities for spiritual growth. In their survey answers, the women reported that they attend church more often than men, they rated the importance of faithful church attendance more highly than the men, and they considered religion more important to their personal lives than did the men. Yet it was the men whose religious faith seemed to be more threatened by congregational decline. These findings provide important new insights into the ways that men and women experience religious life differently, while also demonstrating that quantitative measures alone are insufficient for determining differing levels of religious devotion between men and women. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Research in the social scientific study of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/9789004299436_003 |