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Volume 39, Number 2  -- Winter 2005

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The Winter issue of News and Announcements contains a slate of candidates who will in turn be called upon to give future leadership to the ASR. The names this year have been provided through the work of Past President Joe Tamney (chair), Jim Beckford, and Helen Rose Ebaugh. They offer hard choices, but these choices are themselves a sign of the outstanding scholarship that is to be found among our ASR colleagues. Please vote! Please also follow the voting instructions so that your vote counts. Note that there is also a by-law amendment requiring action.

You are reminded of our 67th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, 13-15 August, particularly in this newsletter through the book exhibit request form. We depend primarily on your responses on this form for the exhibit, and we will try to do our utmost to obtain the books you request. At the same time, you should know that not all publishers are cooperative with us in regard to the book exhibit, so any word you can put in to y/our publisher(s) cannot hurt. We also offer publishers an opportunity to advertize in our program at very reasonable rates. If you want to make sure members at the meeting are aware of your book, encourage publishers to avail themselves of this option. Note the deadline of 15 April on both the ballot and the request form. The Spring issue of N & A will contain the preliminary program for the meeting, hotel and travel information. Do plan on coming to the meeting. We have a large number of submissions from a wide range of colleagues.

I am very pleased at this time to be able to announce the appointment of David Yamane, already serving ably at 2005 program chair, as editor-elect of Sociology of Religion. The editorship is a crucial service function both to the ASR and to our profession. This is a demanding position, and we are grateful both to David for being willing to devote his energies to this task and to Wake Forest University, where he is now on the faculty, for enthusiastic support of his work. David will begin to receive manuscripts shortly after he catches his breath from this summer's meeting. Please do not send him materials for the journal at this point or ask him to do double duty when he is considering your program submission.

I am also happy to report that the first volume of the new incarnation of our "Religion and the Social Order" series, State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies, co-edited by Fenggang Yang and Joe Tamney is in the works with Brill publishers, and there is a chance that it will be ready by our August meeting.

Receipt of a ballot with this newsletter is confirmation that your 2005 dues have been paid. If we do not show your dues as paid as of this mailing, instead of a ballot you have a dues notice. Payment of dues and receipt of same in the Executive Office prior to 1 April will bring you a ballot for a quick turn around by the 15 April deadline.

Bill Swatos

Executive Officer

CANDIDATES FOR PRESIDENT-ELECT

Ph.D., University of Notre Dame, is Professor of Sociology at Purdue University, where he has taught since 1968. He is a member of ASR’s Executive Council (2002-5) and a member and former chair of ASR’s Publications Committee (2002-5, 1987-88, 1984-85). His research interests include American Catholicism, religious stratification in America, and religion and social inequality. Jim’s eight books are Catholicism in Motion (forthcoming), Lay Ministers and Their Spiritual Practices (2003), American Catholics (2001), The Search for Common Ground (1997), Laity: American and Catholic (1996), Faith and Social Ministry (1990), American Catholic Laity in a Changing Church (1989), and Mobilizing Social Movement Organizations (1985). He has published articles in Sociology of Religion, Social Forces, JSSR, and the Review of Religious Research. Jim has been president of the Religious Research Association (1989-91) and the North Central Sociological Association (1984-85); editor of the Review of Religious Research (1977-80); and executive officer of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (1988-93). He has won the NCSA’s Distinguished Service Award, his department’s Excellence in Teaching Award, and Indiana’s Community Service Award. In spring 2001, he was Distinguished Visiting Professor in Religious Studies at the University of Dayton. His research has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, Christian Century, and U.S. Catholic.

Faculty Associate in Hartford Seminary’s Institute for Religion Research, Adair completed her Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia University in 1979. Adair’s research has focused on several areas including the regional organization of denominational work, women's spirituality groups in church and out, ethnic minorities in predominantly Euro-American denominations, and clergy as church leaders and mortals. In addition to book chapters and articles, Adair is co-author of three books on the careers and personal lives of clergy women and men, two of which are multidenominational studies: Women of the Cloth: A New Opportunity for Churches (1983), Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling (1998), and one based on research among Episcopal priests, Healthy Clergy, Wounded Healers: Their Families and Their Ministries (1997). She has also co-authored a book on a study of immigrant Muslims and their mosques, Islamic Values in American Life (1987), and another on church-going feminist Catholic and Protestant women, Defecting in Place: Women Claiming Responsibility for Their Own Spiritual Lives (1994). She has served as secretary-treasurer of the ASA Sociology of Religion Section, as program chair of SSSR, and is currently an RRA director-at-large. For ASR, Adair has served once as Fichter Grant chair, three times as chair of the Membership Committee, and is completing a term on Executive Council.

CANDIDATES FOR COUNCIL

WENDY GRIFFIN, Professor of Women’s Studies at California State University, Long Beach, received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine, in the interdisciplinary social sciences, with an emphasis on the sociology of sex and gender. One of the first academics to publish research in the fields of Goddess Spirituality and Pagan Studies, she has multiple publications, including the anthology Daughters of the Goddess: Studies of Healing, Identity and Empowerment, and has book chapters in press in both the United States and Australia. She is currently working on a book on women and Goddess rituals. In addition to her research and teaching, she is the co-chair of the consultation on Pagan Studies for the American Academy of Religion, co-editor of a series in Pagan Studies for AltaMira Press, and serves on the editorial board of The Pomegranate: An International Journal of Pagan Studies.

LUTZ KAELBER is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Vermont. He received his Ph.D. at Indiana University. His publications include Schools of Asceticism (Penn State Press, 1998), which was awarded the 1999 Best Book Award by the ASA Sociology of Religion section; the translation of Max Weber’s dissertation, The History of Commercial Partnerships in the Middle Ages (Rowman and Littlefied, 2003); and The Protestant Ethic Turns 100 (Paradigm Publishers, 2005), as co-editor with William H. Swatos, Jr. He has been an associate editor of Sociology of Religion since 1999 and currently chairs the Robert J. McNamara Student Paper Award committee.

FRED KNISS, Ph.D., University of Chicago, is Associate Professor of Sociology of Religion and Interim Dean of The Graduate School at Loyola University Chicago, where he also directs the McNamara Center for the Social Study of Religion. His previously published research has examined religious conflict, faith-based international relief and development organizations, and the so-called "culture wars." He is the author of Disquiet in the Land: Cultural Conflict in American Mennonite Communities (Rutgers, 1997), and is completing a book with Paul Numrich, also to be published by Rutgers, entitled Sacred Assemblies and Civil Society: How Religion Matters for America"s Newest Immigrants. He is currently serving as chair of the Publications Committee for the ASR, and has previously served on the boards of directors of the ASR and the RRA. He has held editorial positions on the AJS, JSSR, and Sociology of Religion.

GRAEME LANG, Associate Professor of Sociology at City University of Hong Kong, focuses mainly on religions in Asian societies. His publications include The Rise of a Refugee God (with Lars Ragvald, Oxford, 1993), and articles and book chapters on religion in East and Southeast Asia (e.g., "Challenges for the Sociology of Religion in Asia," Social Compass 51[4], 2004). He helped to found City University's Bachelor program in East Asian Studies (with sociology as the core discipline) in 1995, and the university’s Southeast Asia Research Centre in 2000. His research includes comparative-historical studies and environmental sociology (e.g., "Forests, Floods, and the Environmental State in China, Organization and Environment 15[2], 2002). He has been a member of ASR since the mid-1980s.

KATHERINE MEYER is a professor in the Department of Sociology and associate provost at The Ohio State University. Meyer’s books and articles have covered changes in the American Catholic Church from Vatican I to the present, with an emphasis on the period since the 1960s. Her work on religion extends beyond Catholicism. She has written extensively on the relationship between Islam and democracy in the Middle East and on the association between religion and mental health during the farm crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. Meyer has served as editor of the SSSR monograph series for six years, and has also held elective offices in the Sociology of Religion Section of ASA and in SSSR.

PAULA NESBITT is Visiting Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley (2001--). She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology (1990) and M.Div. (1987) from Harvard University. She has authored Feminization of the Clergy in America: Occupational and Organizational Perspectives (Oxford, 1997), edited Religion and Social Policy (Alta Mira, 2001), and has both published articles in and served as a reviewer for Sociology of Religion and numerous other journals. Currently, she is completing a textbook on the field, Religion in a Changing World. For ASR, she has served twice as Chair of the Fichter Research Awards Committee, as Chair of the Membership Committee, and on Council. She also served as Co-president of AAR’s Rocky Mountains-Great Plains Region, on ASA Religion Section Council, and as RRA Program Chair.

In an attempt to preserve the anonymity of ballots and accuracy of the voting process, the Nominating Committee has provided a two-envelope system for mailing your ballots. The outside envelope, addressed to the Executive office must contain your signature. Completion and use of this envelope is required for your vote to be counted. If this envelope is not included with this newsletter, contact the Executive Office immediately, and a replacement will be sent. If your institution requires you to use a university envelope in order to receive franking privileges, then you will need to place this signature envelope inside the university envelope. Use of the inner, "ASR Ballot" envelope is optional, but protects your anonymity.

At its August 2004 meeting, Council passed the following amendment to the ASR’s by-laws and referred it to the membership for ratification. Amend By-Law I, Committees, Section 2, Standing Committees, to add a subsection (f), as follows:

A Finance Committee consisting of three members who will serve terms of three years. A new member will be appointed each year by the President. The person appointed must be a member of Council and will become Chairperson of the Committee in his/her third year. The Committee will serve as an advisory committee to the Executive Officer. As appropriate, it will also engage in projects of fund-raising for the Association to help foster current endowments and funds for the journal, Sociology of Religion, for stipends to support foreign scholars and students to attend the annual meetings, and to supplement funds for the Paul Hanly Furfey Lecture. Approximately four weeks prior to the annual meeting of Council, the finance committee will review the budget prepared by the Executive Officer for the following year and the overall fiscal health of the Association. It will also review the Association’s investments and, in consultation with the Executive Officer, may consider recommended changes to propose to the Council, as appropriate.

Implementation: If adopted, the by-law will be implemented as follows: the Past President, the President, and the President Elect will each select one member of the initial committee, to serve respectively a one-, two-, or three-year term. Thereafter, all members will be selected by the president for three-year terms (coincident with their Council service). The ASR Constitution and By-Laws is available on the ASR website, if you wish to consult it: www.sociologyofreligion.com.

The Louisville Institute has announced recent grants that include a number of our members: Kathleen Garces-Foley and Gregory Stanczak have been awarded Dissertation Fellowships. General Grant recipients include Yaakov Ariel, Mark Chaves, Dean Hoge, Nancy Nason-Clark, and Margaret Poloma. Congratulations to all!

Michael O. Emerson is co-author of Against All Odds: The Struggle for Racial Integration in Religious Organizations (NYU Press).

Don Miller has been elected President of SSSR, and Dan Olson has begun a two-year term as President of RRA. This year’s RRA/SSSR meetings will take place in Rochester, New York, 4-6 November. Laura Olson chairs the SSSR program, and Keith Wulff, RRA. Nancy Ammerman is the current SSSR Presi-dent, and Mark Chaves will deliver this year’s H. Paul Douglass lecture for RRA. For further information see www.sssrweb.org or http://rra.hartsem.edu.

Laura Olson has published Women with a Mission: Religion, Gender, and the Politics of Women Clergy (University of Alabama Press).

John Walliss has published Apocalyptic Trajectories: Millenarianism and Violence in the Contemporary World (Peter Lang).

Ronald C. Wimberley, who made significant empirical contributions to the "civil religion" debate in the 1970s and 1980s, has been elected President of the Southern Sociological Society.

BOOK EXHIBIT SUGGESTION/REQUEST FORM

Members are invited to request books, whether their own or by others, to be included in the ASR-sponsored joint book exhibit at the annual meeting. You may request as many books as you like, as long as they are in print and you supply the necessary information. There are no guarantees that they will be exhibited, as we are dependent upon publisher cooperation.

If you prefer, you may submit preprinted materials about a book or books, but make sure all the information indicated here is included. Specifically, we must have the publisher's full mailing address to process your request. You may alterna-tively reproduce this form to list additional books. You may also fax the book request form to the Executive Office at 309-932-2282.

For each book supply:

Author(s): ________________________________________________ (last names are sufficient)

Main title: ___________________________________________________________________________

Publisher: ___________________________________________________________________________

Publisher’s address (essential):

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