The Washington ASR meeting was another great success. Over 200 people registered, continuing a pattern of growth that began in 1996, and now seems increasingly typical for us. The Omni Shoreham was a beautiful venue, and at least one Council member proposed that we simply have all our meetings there from now on! This issue of News & Announcements will summarize the major reports presented to and actions taken by Council, provide a list of our committees, as charged in the by-laws, and try to give you some sense of where we have been and where we are headed.

Highlights of the meeting included the Paul Hanly Furfey lecture by Peter Berger, José Casanova’s Presidential Address, and a Sunday plenary session on the meeting topic featuring scholars from the United States, South America, and Europe. At both the business meeting and in Council we were able to recognize Joe Tamney as he completed the six years of service as editor of Sociology of Religion. Inasmuch as Nancy Nason-Clark succeeds him in this position, we could simultaneously recognize the end of her three-year commitment in the presidency and welcome her officially as the new editor.

We are happy to report that our membership continues to increase, this year more dramatically than in the recent past. We now are on the threshold of 800 members. Unfortunately, our library subscriptions continue to slip away, and this should be a concern to us all, since these subscriptions largely are the basis for our lack of dues increases on the one hand and a continued growth in program and services on the other. Please do everything you can to see that your institution has and will maintain a subscription to our journal. Fortunately, through a foresighted investment program begun by Ted Long, we continue to be in excellent financial health in the near term. But the library subscriptions slippage problem will take its toll in the long run.

This year was one of the triennial years when Council reviews the Fichter grant program in terms of topic and procedures. Council did three things in this regard: first, it reaffirmed the topic area of proposals to be women and religion, gender issues, and feminist approaches to religion; second, it enlarged the scope of eligible applicants to include persons doing dissertation research; third, it returned to an earlier mode of awarding grant moneys, wherein the normal mode of distributing the award will be upon the submission of paid receipts, with an allowance being made for applications for funds to be advanced for specific amounts and purposes prior to the time they are actually spent.

Lori Beaman will chair the Fichter Grant Committee this year. Persons interested in the Fichter competition may contact her at beamlg@uleth.ca. Recipients of this year’s Fichter grants were Melissa Deckman, "The Political Mobilization of Women Clergy," and Michele Dillon, "Gender Differences in the Development of Spirituality over the Life Course."

Your election ballots were counted, and the tallies were reported by Nominations Committee chair, Nancy Nason-Clark. Eileen Barker was elected 2002 President. She has named Grace Davie to serve as Program Chair for the Chicago meeting. Three council members were also elected for three-year terms. They are Penny Edgell Becker, Helen Berger, and Fenggang Yang. José Casanova will chair the nominations committee for the coming year, serving along with Ruth Wallace and Roberto Cipriani. Each year we elect a President-elect and three Council members; persons with suggestions for nominees should contact José quickly. Nominees should be able to attend the Anaheim, Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco meetings, 2001-2004. The person elected to the presidency this year will deliver his or her Presidential Address at the Atlanta meeting in 2003.

There were three papers in competition for the Robert J. McNamara Award this year. This is a designated fund award that may be given annually to an outstanding student paper. The award was earned by Paul Perl and Jamie McClintock for their paper "The Catholic ‘Consistent Life Ethic’ and Attitudes toward Capital Punishment and Welfare Reform," which they were able to present at this year’s meeting. Chair of the McNamara Award Committee for the 2001 selection will be Ronald Lawson, joined by Kevin Christiano, Catherine Faver, and Peter Kivisto.

From its operating budget the ASR makes funds available in the form of Ralph A. Gallagher grants to assist graduate student as well as foreign scholar members with meeting expenses. Recipients who attended this year were graduate students Véronique Altglas (France/UK), Kelly Besecke, Nanlai Cao, Henry Goldschmidt, Marie Friedmann Marquardt, Mark Regnerus, Dmitro Volkov, and Robert Woodberry, and overseas senior scholars Nonka Bogomilova (Bulgaria), Vivianne Crowley, Grace Davie (both UK), Ali KOse (Turkey), and Catalina Romero (Peru). Council has continued its appropriation of $6,500 for this purpose in 2001. Applications for this funding are properly directed in the first instance to the 2001 program chair, Patricia Wittberg.

Council also received an encouraging report from David Bromley, editor of the ASR’s Religion and the Social Order series. JAI Press, where it originated, has been sold to Elsevier, and they have extended a three-year mandate to the series. At the same time, the series entitled Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion has been discontinued. Dave anticipates that the Elsevier company will do a better job of both marketing the series to libraries and providing members with a simplified method for obtaining copies at the discounted price that is a part of our agreement with them. The next volume in the series, Religion on the Internet: Research Prospects and Promises, edited by Jeff Hadden and Doug Cowan, should be available by the time of the RRA/SSSR meetings this fall.

MORE THAN MICKEY MOUSE

Officers

President Anthony J. Blasi, Tennessee State University (2001)
President-elect Eileen Barker, London School of Economics (2001)
Executive Officer William H. Swatos, Jr., Holiday, Florida (2003)

Council

Past-president José Casanova, New School for Social Research (2001)
Editor Nancy Nason-Clark, University of New Brunswick (2002)
Book Review Editor Lori G. Beaman, University of Lethbridge (2002)
2001 Program Chair Patricia Wittberg, Indiana University, Indianapolis
2002 Program Chair Grace Davie, University of Exeter
James Cavendish, University of South Florida (2001)
Michele Dillon, Yale University (2001)
Milagros Peña, University of Florida (2001)
Michael Cuneo, Fordham University (2002)
Grace Davie, University of Exeter (2002)
Christian Smith, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2002)
Penny Edgell Becker, Cornell University (2003)
Helen Berger, West Chester University (2003)
Fenggang Yang, University of Southern Maine (2003)

Committees*

Development: Loretta Morris, Loyola-Marymount University (chair)
Lowell Livezey (2002), Nancy Eiesland (2003)

Fichter Grant: Lori Beaman, University of Lethbridge (chair)
Jim Spickard (2002), Manuel Vasquez (2003)

International Coordination: Grace Davie, University of Exeter (chair)
Luigi Tomasi (2002), Marie Friedmann Marquardt (2003)

McNamara Award:
Ronald Lawson, Queens College, CUNY (chair)
Kevin J. Christiano (2001), Catherine Faver (2002), Peter Kivisto (2003)

Membership:
Adair Lummis, Hartford Seminary (chair)
Esther Heffernan (2001), Wendy Griffin (2002), David Yamane (2003)

Nominations:
José Casanova, New School for Social Research (chair)
Roberto Cipriani (2001), Ruth Wallace (2001)

Publications:
William R. Garrett, St. Michael’s College (chair)
Rhys Williams (2001), D. Paul Johnson (2002), Randal Hepner (2003)

*Committee chairs serve annual terms, subject to reappointment.

MEETINGS

The Religious Research Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion will meet October 19-22 in Houston. Note that the meeting starts one day earlier than previously. The SSSR theme is "Religion and Transnationalism: Challenges of the 21st Century." The RRA theme is "Gender, Religious Organization and Practice." Check out the program on the SSSR website: http://fhss.byu.edu/soc/sssr. The hotel registration deadline is 18 September.

The BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group plans a Study Day 18 November 2000 (which does conflict with the AAR meeting in Nashville), at Birkbeck College, London. The theme is The Journey of Life: Ritual and Ceremony in the New Millennium. An attempt will be made to combine some site visits in London with this conference, so that attendees who choose to can make a weekend of it. Deadline for submissions is 15 September. Further information, including an abstract submission form, can be obtained from the SRSG’s website: www.socrel.org.uk.

INFORM (Information Network Focus on Religious Movements), UK, and CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions), Italy, in cooperation with a group of other related societies, principally in Europe, announce a 2001 International Conference, The Spiritual Supermarket: Religious Pluralism and Globalisation in the 21st Century—The Expanding European Union and Beyond, to be held at the London School of Economics, 19-22 April 2001. Persons interested in presenting papers need to have abstracts and a short c.v. submitted as soon as possible and in no case later than 31 December 2000. For further information: inform@lse.ac.uk.

OPPORTUNITIES

The Hartford Institute for Religion Research web site—www.hartfordinstitute.org —will host summaries of scholarly research which have direct application for clergy, denominational executives, and other religious leaders. The goal is clearly focused, one-page single-spaced reports, with accompanying materials. A $200 honorarium will be paid for any accepted submission. Contact Scott Thumma—sthumma@hartsem.edu —for further information.

The Academy of Religion and Psychical Research offers a $500 prize for an original academic paper on the topic Is the Philosophy of Reincarnation Compatible with Christianity? The paper is to be 3,000 to 5,000 words long. The deadline is 1 March 2001. Contact Boyce Batey—bateyb@courant.infi.net —for further information.

NEWS OF MEMBERS

Prema Kurien, University of Southern California, has been awarded a fellowship from the Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University, for 2000-2001, to work on a book based on her work "The Emergence of American Hinduism: Genteel Multiculturalism and Militant Fundamentalism." Penney Edgell Becker will also be working on a book at Princeton this year.