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In Weimar Germany, the Catholic Church vehemently warned ordinary parishioners about the dangers of extremist parties. We establish that constituencies' religious composition is a key empirical predictor of Nazi vote shares—dwarfing the explanatory power of any other demographic or socioeconomic variable. Even after carefully accounting for observational differences, Catholics were far less likely to vote for the NSDAP than their Protestant counterparts. The evidence suggests that this disparity was, in large part, due to the sway of the Catholic Church and its dignitaries. At the same time, we show that attempts to immunize Catholics against the radical left failed to achieve the desired result. To explain the puzzling asymmetry in the Church's influence at the ballot box, we develop a simple theoretical framework of elite influence in electoral politics.

Sociologists have written surprisingly little about the role of social interactions in facilitating the success of racial diversity initiatives in contemporary organizations. The push for racial inclusion across multiple institutions illustrates that racial diversity is a widespread cultural mythology. However, social interactions are living component of cultural ideals, and successful interracial interactions are necessary to pull off diversity. In this article, I use ethnographic data gathered from parishioners of an interracial religious organization to look beyond “happy talk” and toward the tangible effort that is required to accomplish racial diversity on the ground. Specifically, I advance the concept of the diversity demeanor: racialized interaction rituals that smooth social interactions in interracial settings. Using the contributions of symbolic interactionism to examine race as a social relationship mediated through formal organizations offers a number of advantages. It reveals how the burden of making diversity happen falls on the shoulders of racial minorities who must “save” interactions and develop White actors’ understandings when they “mess up.” By developing the concept of the diversity demeanor, I bring attention to how macrolevel systems of stratification manifest within microlevel practices in the meso space of a religious organization.

This article examines the rise of a culture of local petitioning, through which growing numbers of ordinary people sought to win the support of state authorities through collective claims to represent the “voice of the people” at the local level. These participatory, subscriptional practices were an essential component in the intensification of popular politics in the seventeenth century. The analysis focuses on over 3,800 manuscript petitions submitted to the magistrates across fifteen jurisdictions with “sessions of the peace” in England, with nearly 1,000 dating from before 1640. Over the course of the early seventeenth century many, if not most, English parishes witnessed attempts to persuade the authorities through collective petitioning. Groups of neighbors across the kingdom formulated their grievances, organized subscription lists, and articulated their own role in the polity as “the inhabitants” or “the parishioners” of a particular community. In so doing, they not only directly shaped their own “little commonwealths” but also unintentionally helped to develop habits of political mobilization in a crucial period of English history.

This study presents the design and selected results of a comprehensive research on measuring the concept of sustainable entrepreneurship. We used the methodology of conjoint analysis and developed a hierarchical framework that lists all the multi-attributes that exist in the triple bottom line concept. In doing so, we collected data from 150 Greek food companies. The multi-attributes were categorized and ranked into the following four headings: internal social values (ISV), external social values (ESV), environmental values (ENV) and economic values (ECV). Specifically, we found that the creation of values that improve the safety and hygiene issues of products to consumers is the most important attribute for the ISV domain. Respectively, the most important attribute for the ESV domain is the creation of values that impact on the local economy. Accordingly, the creation of values for minimizing environmental impacts was found as the most important attribute for the ENV domain. And lastly, the establishment of ECV that increase long-run profitability was identified as the most important for the ECV dimension. Finally, all the categorized values offer rich feedback for entrepreneurship scholars and parishioners. And, to that extent, our findings are slightly different from those reported in previous researches to other contexts, as we have managed to build an aggregated instrument that promotes the hybrid nature of food companies towards international development.

Background The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically upended religious life and placed significant strain on religious congregations. However, the effects of the pandemic were likely not felt evenly across the religious landscape. Purpose We used data from the fourth wave of the National Congregations Study, gathered on the eve of the coronavirus pandemic in 2018-19, to identify the kinds of congregations that may have been especially vulnerable to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods Using bivariate and multiple regression analysis, we examined two aspects of congregations' preparedness for the pandemic: technological infrastructure and financial stability. Results We found that, while many congregations were technologically and financially equipped for a time of social distancing and economic recession, there were stark inequalities in levels of preparedness among congregations on the basis of race, class, size, urban/rural location, religious tradition, and the age of congregations' parishioners. In particular, Catholic congregations and congregations with older attendees tended to lack streaming or online communication capacities, and both rural and small congregations had more limited technological infrastructure and less financial cushion. Somewhat surprisingly, predominantly Black congregations were more likely to have worship streaming systems set up prior to the pandemic, though these congregations were more likely to lack other kinds of technological and financial infrastructure. Conclusions and Implications Though COVID-19's full impact on congregations will not be known for several years, these results highlight variations in congregations' readiness for the pandemic's challenges, and they show that COVID-19's impact likely has not been felt equally across the religious landscape.

This article builds on recent works which challenge the dichotomy between religion and modern urban planning. The article focuses on a case-study in the Alsatian city of Mulhouse during the nineteenth century. Over a period of 30 years, Catholic parishioners and clergy repeatedly petitioned the town’s Calvinist industrial and municipal elite for a church to be built in the paternalist cités ouvrières housing district, culminating in the eventual construction of the church of Saint-Joseph by 1883. Through a close analysis of the archival records of these petitions, the discussions they sparked and the shifting local and national political dynamics of the city, this article argues that religious groups used myriad tactics to engage in modern planning and that municipal authorities were won over by these tactics if they were politically expedient.

Purpose Embeddedness has gained prominence in entrepreneurship studies. However, the notion that the embeddedness metaphor relates to “market” structures prevails in studies in the area. Entrepreneurship scholars still know little about whether entrepreneurs are eventually embedded in other structures whose relationships go beyond the restricted dimension of the interested actor’s assumption. This study aims to propose investigating the social structures in which a specific type of entrepreneurship, the religious one, is embedded. Design/methodology/approach The research was qualitative, using interviews as an evidence collection instrument. A total of 17 entrepreneur-pastors responsible for business churches in Brazil and eight parishioners took part in the study. Findings Religious entrepreneurs are embedded in market structures, corroborating a perspective that associates embeddedness with the utilitarian notion. At the same time, entrepreneurs are embedded in two other social structures: reciprocity and redistribution. Practical implications This article emphasizes the relevance of going beyond the predominant perspective associated with the utilitarian and rationalized understanding of embeddedness in relationship networks. Originality/value This study makes essential contributions. Initially, it attests to the utilitarian perspective of Granovetter’s embeddedness while suggesting incorporating two other dimensions into the metaphor. By highlighting this, this article stresses the need to reinterpret the metaphor of embeddedness and how entrepreneurship scholars use it. Further, by emphasizing the need to consider embeddedness in networks beyond its still utilitarian perspective, this paper highlights unexplored opportunities for entrepreneurship scholars.

The Catholic Church, as a global institution rooted in sacramental and embodied traditions, faces distinctive challenges in integrating digital technologies into its liturgical practices. This study explores how intrinsic and extrinsic religious motivations influence Catholic parishioners’ satisfaction with online Eucharistic celebrations and their intention to continue attending them. Given the centrality of physical presence in the Eucharist understood as a real and symbolic encounter with Christ the transition to virtual formats raises theological and experiential complexities. Based on a quantitative survey of 1,781 parishioners in Bogotá, Colombia, the findings indicate that intrinsic motivation positively affects both satisfaction and continued participation in virtual Eucharists, while extrinsic motivation has a negative impact. These results underscore the role of internalized faith in sustaining spiritual engagement through digital channels. The study contributes to the literature on religious innovation by offering empirical insights into how Catholic believers negotiate sacred rituals in the context of technological mediation.

Social workers and pastors often labor together in church ministry. With many pastors leaving, this qualitative research study asked 35 former pastors of the Seventh-day Adventist church what precipitated their exodus and what might have helped. Interviews, transcribed verbatim, were analyzed using grounded theory and the constant comparative method. Three major themes emerged: challenges with church members, difficulties with administration, and deficits in job-relevant training. Church members could be antagonistic or unengaged and unsupportive. Church administration was sometimes experienced as excessively controlling, arbitrary, and punitive, with rigid expectations that stifled intellectual, theological, and methodological diversity. Participants recommended training in mental health (both for personal coping and for aiding parishioners) and in practical skills needed to manage the job. Christian social workers can play a key role in supporting pastors and in training congregants how to better relate to their spiritual leaders.

In the span of a year, COVID-19 would affect every corner of the globe. During this period, governments were confronted with difficult choices about how to respond to the evolving pandemic. In rapid succession, states imposed lockdown measures that ran headlong into the Constitution. Several states deemed houses of worship as non-essential, and subjected them_to stringent attendance requirements. In short order, states restricted the exercise of a constitutional right, but allowed the exercise of preferred economic privileges. And this disparate treatment was premised on a simple line: whether the activity was \"essential\" or \"non-essential.\" If the activity fell into the former category, the activity could continue. If the activity fell into the latter category, it could be strictly regulated, or even halted immediately. Houses of worship challenged these measures as violations of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. This Article provides an early look at how the courts have interpreted the \"essential\" Free Exercise Clause during the pandemic. This ongoing story can be told in six phases. In Phase 1, during the early days of the pandemic, the courts split about how to assess these measures. And for the first three months of the pandemic, the Supreme Court stayed out of the fray. In Phase 2, the Supreme Court provided its early imprimatur on the pandemic. In South Bay Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, the Court declined to enjoin California's restrictions on religious gatherings. Chief Justice Roberts wrote a very influential concurring opinion that would become a superprecedent. Over the following six months, more than one hundred judges would rely on Chief Justice Roberts's opinion in cases that spanned the entire spectrum of constitutional and statutory challenges to pandemic policies. In Phase 3, the Roberts Court doubled-down on South Bay. A new challenge from Nevada, Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley Church v. Sisolak, upheld strict limits on houses of worship. Once again, the Court split 5-4. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a separate dissent. He treated the Free Exercise of Religion as a \"most-favored\" right. Under Justice Kavanaugh's approach, the free exercise of religion is presumptively \"essential,\" unless the state can rebut that presumption. South Bay and Calvary Chapel would remain the law of the land through November. Phase 4 began when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was replaced by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The new Roberts Court would turn the tide on COVID-19 cases in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo. Here, a new 5-4 majority enjoined New York's \"cluster initiatives,\" which limited houses of worship in so-called \"red\" zones to ten parishioners at a time. Now, Chief Justice Roberts dissented. Roman Catholic Diocese effectively interred the South Bay superprecedent. Phase 5 arose in the wake of Roman Catholic Diocese. Over the course of five months, the Court consistently ruled in favor of the free exercise of religion. South Bay II and Harvest Rock II enjoined California's prohibitions on indoor worship. And Tandon v. Newsom recognized the right of people to worship privately in their homes. We are now in the midst of Phase 6. States are beginning to recognize that absolute executive authority cannot go unchecked during ongoing health crises. Going forward, states should impose substantive limits on how long emergency orders can last, and establish the power to revoke those orders. The COVID-19 pandemic will hopefully soon draw to a close. But the precedents set during this period will endure.