An particularly objective journalist at Arkansas Online recently posted a report here: http://tr.im/tCJn regarding homosexuality and conservative Christian denominations (via the popular blog ‘BibleBeltBlogger.com‘).

The report shows that there has been a dramatic increase in membership of Assemblies of God churches, accompanied by a dramatic decrease in membership within the Episcopal church over the last few decades.

What really makes this topic interesting is that the Assemblies of God take a fairly strong stance against homosexuality, where as the Episcopalians are accepting of it. See this entry at Biblebeltblogger for more info: http://tr.im/tCQf

My Reactions

Wow, this is very interesting data.

I wonder if researchers could ever somehow find a way to conduct anonymous survey research, which is conducted in such a way as to be statistically valid, sampled via a representative cross-section of those included in these reported attendance numbers. I wonder what sorts of information people would report.

Some interesting questions I would like to ask are:

1. Provide a ranking from most to least influential in attending ‘this’ church, rather than some other church.
   • This could actually get much deeper. Factors could be grouped according to all kinds of cultural, demographic, political, philosophical, and of course, theological categories.
   • Some possible factors could be rather mundane such as style of music (full ‘rock’ band, with guitars, drums, and progressive style), attraction to “mega-churches” (which are like entertainment extravaganzas), versus humbler much smaller churches.
   • But the real MEAT of this type of survey would be a deconstruction, and possible attempt at inference based on the ‘official’ position, and unofficial practices of Churches on moral issues, such as: members with addictions, mental illness, evangelism versus purely humanitarian activities. If answers are vague or black-and-white, if the atmosphere is more liberal or traditional, permissive or conformist, personal or formal, etc. These factors may reflect changes in society or culture as a whole where they are strongest.
2. Do you believe that higher attendance or other types of success are caused by holiness, resulting in God’s favor? Or alternatively, does God choose his servants, and choose who will be blesses, according to his own mysterious ways? Success here can mean many things, such as financial growth, new converts, media coverage, community penetration (provision for private church run education for children of members, in-home support groups, etc.).
   • This question relates to the question of whether moral good exists independently of God, and then God complies. The alternative is that moral good, is perfectly synonymous with God’s will, and that God will’s something is what makes it good. Did God choose the Israelites because they were upright, holy, and good? Or did he choose them first, and that conveyed a special status to them, a dispensation as holy people? If there is no good outside of God’s will, then it is IMPOSSIBLE to be good outside of God’s will. If good exists as part of how God created all the Universe, then that is essentially the same as the good always being at all times, created and existing as such, only as God Will’s it, continually, and subject to change if God so decides. Recall, those evil doers who refused to kill every single last woman and child in the conquered lands (after the 40 yrs in the desert). How wrong they were to suppose they could reason out morality on their own, and still be good, when that conflicted with God’s will.
   • If this research proved useful, you might even decide to study these questions within other religions, and other cultures. Do cultures that are rich and powerful, view God as rewarding the ‘chosen’ one’s, here on earth with victory in war, riches, and power? Consider for instance a culture where far more people live in poverty, without ANY medical care, with much shorter life-expectancies. Would it be logical to expect such a culture to believe in a God (or create their perception of God) as one who is vengeful, who will rescue those who suffer, and bring down the evil powerful rich guys?
3. Lastly, I would like to attempt to include sections which measure attitudes. For example, you might investigate attitudes toward prejudices. Such a survey should avoid forced continuum’s which require a response between extremes (such as one end being “blacks have just as many opportunities as whites, if not more”, and the other extreme being “descendants of slaves deserve reparations”). Instead, each of these individual attitudes (and some double negatives) could be carefully crafted into “degree of agreement” likert scale prompts, from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. But you could study all kinds of attitudes, such as whether “poor people deserve to suffer poverty, because they are lazy”, or “learned helplessness is a myth, monkey’s in cages are faking it because they are too lazy to jump when the shock hits”. Could the proclivity to empathy be related to emotional maturity? How might one’s capacity for moral reasoning be related to a need for simpler, rule-based, black-and-white doctrine, over a more complex, context dependent, more relative set of interpretations?

Could one somehow get away with such comparisons between denominations?
Has any type of research ever really been conducted on a large scale?
Just curious.