Focus
on Research
Penn State Intercom......October
11 , 2001
Churches
decline when
membership niche abandoned
By Paul Blaum
Liberal
mainline churches have lost conservative members because they have abandoned
that traditional 
membership
niche that they once served, a University study has found.
"Our studies indicate six basic ideological niches into which churches fall, ranging from ultraliberal to ultraconservative. Most church attendees, regardless of social class, are moderates and conservatives who form the great middle of the membership bell curve," said Roger Finke, professor of sociology in the College of the Liberal Arts.
"Because their demand for different forms of religion is remarkably stable, Americans tend to either remain in or seek out churches that suit their niche," he noted. "Of course, this demand curve represents only those that are seeking a religion. There will always be some that don't seek out religious answers or solutions."
While church-swapping occurs frequently in this country, people rarely swap niches. Instead, it is the churches themselves that shift from niche to niche, usually from conservative to liberal, the sociologist added.
As a religious group grows in numbers and acceptance, its "tension" or degree of separateness from secular society diminishes, and the church becomes yet another mainstream denomination. For a time, it ministers to a conservative and moderate niche, then, as it moves away from these larger niches to the smaller liberal niche, it stops growing, the researcher said.
"This happens for two reasons," Finke said. "First, large congregational size reduces a church's ability to monitor the loyalty of its members and swells the number of free-riders or members with little or no commitment. Second, the professionalization of clergy, while it results in better trained and educated ministers, often produces clergy with a more tepid religious commitment. Both of these factors pull down the initial level of religious ardor.
"As churches move from higher- to lower-tension niches, they will tend to accumulate at the liberal end of the spectrum. This growing number of organizations will attempt to serve a relatively static number of potential members who are notably lukewarm in their commitment. Consequently, low-tension churches will typically have declining memberships and will tend to disappear via mergers," Finke noted.
Finke is co-author of the book, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion, published by the University of California Press. His co-author is Rodney Stark, professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington.
The researchers based their conclusions on the General Social Surveys from 1972 through 1994, coding 16,037 churchgoers according to their location along the continuum of religious belief: ultraliberal (.8 percent), liberal (18.4), moderate (31.5), conservative (35.1), strict (12.9) and ultrastrict (1.3). Their coding corresponds closely with the three-category coding (liberal, moderate and fundamentalist) assigned by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), which conducted the GSS surveys.
Finke noted that the mainline Protestant churches, at the time of their foundings, served a conservative and sometimes even an ultrastrict constituency. An example would be the Methodist Church, which began as a sect during the 18th century "Great Awakening" in England and was imported by the Wesleys to the American colonies. American Methodism flourished in the 19th century, founded dozens of colleges and universities and in 1850 made up one-third of all churchgoers in the United States. That year, it had 117 members out of every 1,000 Americans.
"Throughout most of the 20th century, the Methodist clergy have pressed for increased 'relevance' and liberalism while downplaying the core Christian doctrines of sin and salvation," Finke said. "Their success in doing so has been mirrored by a corresponding decline in membership, with the result that by 1990 only 36 out of 1,000 Americans were Methodists."
Paul Blaum can be reached at pab15@psu.edu.
Generous retirement
incentives may make
other workers quit
Businesses that are overly generous with their assistance to early retirees may be influencing other workers to quit.
That's just one finding from a recent study examining the reactions to an early retirement program of 668 employees at a public utility firm who were ineligible for the program. The study is co-authored by Rocki-Lee Dewitt, associate professor of management and the associate dean of professional master's programs at The Smeal College of Business Administration, and Kelly A. Mollica, assistant professor at the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University and a former doctoral degree student at the University.
"Specifically, we studied the influence of perceptions of the generosity of the organization's assistance to retirees on the remaining employees' intentions to quit," DeWitt said. "We found that perceptions of overly generous early retirement assistance were associated with increased intentions to quit, particularly among more tenured employees."
DeWitt explained that this study extends research on employees' reactions to work-force reductions by focusing on employees remaining in an organization who were not eligible for an early retirement program. The study considered two issues: What influence does organizational assistance to early retirees have on the intentions to quit of remaining employees? How does the age and tenure of remaining employees influence the relationships between early retirement assistance and intentions to quit?
"Following an early retirement, remaining employees are likely to scrutinize the terms of the pension and other financial benefits provided to early retirees. This provides a financial bridge that helps departing employees adjust to their change in employment status," she said.
In the early stages of a voluntary work-force reduction, when remaining employees know that more aggressive involuntary job cuts may be forthcoming, their "sense-making" is likely to be focused on how they might be treated.
"Being too generous
to others may be viewed as leaving little for me when times get tough,"
DeWitt explained. More tenured employees are more sensitive than less
tenured employees to the perceived overrewarding of early retirees, reacting
with increased intentions to leave.
Protein
identified that begins
gene activation process
University researchers have identified the single protein that initiates the gene-activation process in yeast when it marks the start of a gene and allows the transcription process to begin. An important step toward a better understanding of the gene-activation process, the discovery also promises potential applications in the effort to combat diseases such as cancer and leukemia because a comparable protein exists in humans.
"We had known that proteins were attracted to the end of a gene in order to start the process, but the question was which protein did the work," said Jerry Workman, the Paul Berg professor of biochemistry and an associate investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "What we found was an interesting protein, Tra1, that has a human homolog, Trrap, which has been implicated as an important factor in the transformation of cells into cancer cells by several oncagene products, proteins that are active in a number of tumors."
For the full story, go to http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/Workman6-2001.htm