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This thesis attempts to understand what it is like to live and work as a ‘sincere’ and ‘committed’ Christian in Gamrie, a small fishing village of 700 people and six conservative Protestant churches, whose staunch religiosity is itself on the cusp of dramatic economic, social and spiritual change. More than this, it is an attempt to show how the everyday religious experiences of Christians in Gamrie are animated by – but not reducible to – their social context. It seeks to do so by considering how local folk theologies relate to larger social processes occurring within Scotland and the north Atlantic. Arguing that these realms are necessarily (and simultaneously) ideational and material, my theoretical focus is upon the relationship between belief and experience – a relationship mediated, first and foremost, in and through the significance of ‘The Word’. Where beliefs have objects and where objects ‘have’ materiality, beliefs are held to be essentially material. Equally, where material happenings in the world are framed by theological (say, eschatological) ideas, objects and events are held to be unavoidably implicated in belief. Thus, my aim is to present an analytic of the relationship between the lived local experiences of belief and objects, materiality and language.

This study was an analysis of current financing of building programs of selected Protestant churches in the State of Texas.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Abstract in English. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 45-53). Also available in print.

Thesis--Universität Hamburg. / Vita: p. [561]. Includes bibliographical references (p. 530-560).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-252). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Sociology." Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-211).

About one-fourth of Americans claim a conservative Protestant (CP) religious affiliation, making conservative Protestantism the largest religious tradition in the United States. CPs lag behind other religious groups in average educational attainment. Despite notable government efforts to ensure that no young American is “left behind,” relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to the CP educational gap. In this dissertation, I begin by using 30 years of data from the GSS to describe the CP gap, especially noting that the CP gap is largely driven by relatively lower rates of college attendance among CPs. After socio-demographic factors are taken into account, the CP gap in college attendance is larger than the more widely studied black-white gap in college attendance. Thus, the remainder of this dissertation focuses exclusively on the CP gap in college attendance. The most commonly offered explanation for the CP educational gap is that CPs resist schooling because of anti-educational elements in CP culture. I directly test several hypotheses related to the resistance theory, in addition to examining alternative hypotheses related to resource deficiencies, educational ambivalence, and demographic factors. Specifically, I analyze data from multiple waves of the Add Health study along with data from the companion AHAA study. In chapter 5, I find that White CPs are less likely to want to attend college than their non-CP peers. In chapter 6, I discover that CPs (regardless of race and gender) are less likely than non-CP peers to complete upper-level courses , but no more likely to post lower GPAs. Finally, in chapter 7, I directly investigate college matriculation and find that CPs are less likely than their non-CP peers to attend college, largely because of resource deficiencies but, to a lesser degree because of their lower aspirations and inadequate preparation. Ultimately, I find little evidence that CPs are directly resisting college attendance. Instead, they appear to be disadvantaged at fairly young ages due to relative resource deficiencies compared with non-CP peers. In light of these findings, future investigations would best be directed at understanding educationally related interactions between CPs and their parents. / text

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No description available.