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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 Eileen Barker (chair), Penny Edgell, and John Simpson. 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 this year also includes a by-law amendment.

You are reminded of our 65th Annual Meeting in Atlanta, 15-17 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. You should know that not all publishers are cooperative with us in regard to the book exhibit. 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 opportunity. 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.

Receipt of this newsletter is confirmation that your 2003 dues have been paid. Thank you for your support of ASR. Think now about a colleague whom you might goad into joining you and us. Also think about library subscriptions. Our end-of-year memberships showed slippage for the first time in several years (down from 801 to 768), and our library subscriptions also continue to slip, though less dramatically. Library subscriptions, however, are especially critical to the ASR’s continued financial health—and reasonable prices for your dues!

It is with great regret that I must report the sad news of the death of our former president Jeffrey K. Hadden, 26 January. As some of you know from the annual meeting last summer, Jeff had developed pancreatic cancer during the prior year, to which he eventually succumbed. Jeff always worked at the cutting edge of the discipline, from his Gathering Storm in the Churches, to work on televangelism, new religious movements, and Internet religion. We hope to have a session to memorialize him at this summer’s meeting. Those of us who knew Jeff will miss not only his keen intellect but also his wry humor and warm kindness. We also have recently received notice of the death of colleague Mark Reid in February a year ago. May they rest in peace.

Bill Swatos

Executive Officer

The Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR) is organizing an international research congress, 28-30 August, around the theme Religious Change in Pluralistic Contexts. Themes will center around either the behavioral or the cognitive dimension of religion and be divided into sections on antiquity, the middle ages, and modernity. Persons who wish to submit paper proposals must do so immediately upon receipt of this newsletter. Contact b.arnaud@let.leidenuniv.nl or check the Web site www.leidenuniv.nl/gg (item: onderzoek: LISOR).

Works of Love: Scientific and Religious Perspectives on Altruism, a conference sponsored by the Metanexus Institute will be held 31 May to 5 June at Villanova University. Authors accepted for inclusion on the program will receive registration, room, and board. "The Sociological Study of Faith-Based Communities" is one of the specific themes. The deadline for submissions is 15 March. Contact: www.metanexus.net/conference2003.

The Religion and Media Interest Group of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication is seeking research papers for its section of the association’s annual meeting, 30 July to 2 August in Kansas City, Missouri. A $100 award each will be given to an outstanding faculty and an outstanding student paper. Contact Eric Gormly <gormly@unt.edu>. Essays or commentaries without research findings will not be considered for the program or the award. Deadline: 1 April.

The fourth revision of the ASA/ASR teaching resource Syllabi and Instructional Materials for the Sociology of Religion, edited by Lutz Kaelber <lkaelber@zoo.uvm.edu> and Doug Cowan <cowande@ umkc.edu>, is now in process. Lutz and Doug would be happy to receive contributions in the form of syllabi, exercises, assignments, classroom activities, software, etc., that do not require copyright clearance.

Persons particularly interested in international conferences may find a helpful listing on Jean-François Mayer’s "Religioscope" site: www.religioscope.com/agenda/actuel.htm.

The Mormon Social Science Association announces the creation of a network of scholars interested in international and cross-cultural expressions of Mormonism, including political-legal issues, local cultural heritage, issues of retention and growth, and comparative studies with other nonestablishment religions (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, and Pentecostal groups). Non-Mormon scholars are especially welcome, as are bilingual and multilingual scholars. Contact Henri Gooren <h.gooren@ compaqnet.nl>, the coordinator of the network, or Armand Mauss <almauss@cox.net>.

The video production firm Creative Street, in cooperation with the Polis Center at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), is launching a "first-time-ever" public teaching video series Faith & Community: The Public Role of Religion, consisting of eleven research-based modules. Further information? www.creativestreet.com.

Casassa Professor of Social Values, Loyola Marymount University, John completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Loyola University Chicago. Among his books are The Evolution of Dutch Catholicism (California 1978), An American Strategic Theology (Paulist 1982), One Hundred Years of Catholic Social Teaching (Orbis 1991), and Religion and Nationalism (Orbis 1995). He is currently editing a book on globalization and social Catholicism to be published in 2004. In addition to over sixty chapters in books, John has published articles in SA/SoR, Wilson Quarterly, Journal of Religion and Law, Journal of Policy History, AAPS Proceedings. A recent sociological account appeared in his "Public Religion and Religion in Public" in a special issue of the Wake Forest Law Review on religion in public (summer 2001). During his career, John has taught or been a fellow or held an endowed chair at the University of Louvian, the Center for the Advanced Study of Religion at Chicago, Woodstock Center, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars (Washington), and the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton. He has recently been named a future visiting holder of the Thomas More Chair in Jesuit Studies at the University of Western Australia. From 1979-96 John was the editor of the special issue devoted to sociology of religion of the international Catholic journal, Concilium. He was for fifteen years editor of the Paulist Press Isaac Hecker Series in American Culture and currently serves on the editorial board of the University of Notre Dame Press’s series on social Catholicism. John gave the ASR’s Furfey Lecture "The Bible and Sociology" in 1997, and in 2000 was the recipient of CARA’s annual Lubzetak Award for excellence in research on the Catholic church. He is currently a member of ASR’s Council and has previously chaired the SSSR’s annual best book award. His current research has been a study of Catholic Charities USA.

Professor of Sociology and twice Chair, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, prior to which he earned a B.A. at Harvard and his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, and served as instructor through full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, from 1962 to 1972, including a two-year leave as Executive Officer of the American Sociological Association. Among his dozen books are Social Class in American Protestantism (Rand McNally 1965), Religion in Social Context: Tradition and Transition (Random House 1968—with Phillip Hammond), A Bridging of Faiths: Religion and Politics in a New England City (Rutgers 1992—with Rhys Williams), Sacred Companies: Organizational Aspects of Religion and Religious Aspects of Organizations (Oxford 1998—coedited with Peter Hall, Terry Schmitt, and Rhys Williams), and Crossing the Gods: World Religions and Worldly Politics (Rutgers 2001), winner of the 2002 Distinguished Book Award from the SSSR. Twice a Fulbright awardee for study in India (1993, 2003), he has also been a frequent consultant and grantee of the Lilly Endowment. Currently on the Council of ISSR/SISR, he has been President of both the SSSR (1997-99) and the Eastern Sociological Society (2000-01). He was ASR’s Furfey Lecturer in 1993.

JAMES A. BECKFORD is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK. He earned his Ph.D. (1973) and D.Litt. (1985) from the University of Reading. His books include The Trumpet of Prophecy (1975), Cult Controversies (1985), Religion and Advanced Industrial Society (1989), Religion in Prison (1998—with Sophie Gilliat), and Social Theory and Religion (2003). He has edited New Religious Movements and Rapid Social Change (1986—with Thomas Luckmann), The Changing Face of Religion (1989), and Secularization, Rationalism, and Sectarianism (1993—with Eileen Barker and Karel Dobbelaere). He served as President of ASR 1988-89 and Vice-President of the ISA 1994-98. Jim is currently President of ISSR/SISR (1999-2003).

RAM CNAAN is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work, where he directs the Program for the Study of Organized Religion and Social Work. He received his doctorate from the School of Social Work at the University of Pittsburgh, and his B.S.W. and M.S.W. from Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Ram has published numerous articles in scientific journals on a variety of social work issues. His books include The Newer Deal: Social Work and Religion in Partnership (Columbia 1999) and The Invisible Caring Hand: American Congregations and the Provision of Welfare (NYU 2002). Previously he has researched and published in the areas of information technology in social work practice, mentally ill homeless persons, and practice evaluation. He also serves on the editorial board of seven academic journals.

PAULINE CÔTÉ is Professor in Political Science and Sociology of Religion at Laval University (Quebec). Her articles and chapters on constitutional issues involving Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as on the Canadian model of multiculturalism, have been published in JSSR, Social Justice Review, Social Compass, and Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions. She has edited Frontier Religions in the Public Space (University of Ottawa Press 2001), with several contributions from ASR members. Current projects include a book on the dynamics of litigation and religious culture transformation of Jehovah’s Witnesses (with James T. Richardson) and a coedited collection on the public management of religious diversity (with T. Jeremy Gunn).

DOUGLAS E. COWAN received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Calgary in 1999, and is currently Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Sociology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is the author of three books: Bearing False Witness: An Introduction to the Christian Countercult and The Remnant Spirit: Conservative Reform in Mainline Protestantism (both forthcoming, Praeger 2003), and A Nakid Entent Unto God: A Source/Commentary on "The Cloud of Unknowing" (Longwood 1991). In addition to several refereed articles and chapters, he coedited Religion on the Internet (JAI 2000—with Jeffrey Hadden), is currently coediting Religion Online/Online Religion (with Lorne Dawson), and is working on Cyberhenge: Neopaganism on the Internet (forthcoming, Routledge 2004), as well as the ASA/ASR teaching the sociology of religion packet (with Lutz Kaelber). Since the death of Jeffrey Hadden, he has also taken over as editor-in-chief of the Religious Movements Homepage project at the University of Virginia.

WILLIAM H. SWATOS, JR. has served as Executive Officer of the ASR since 1996 and was nominated by the 2002 nominating committee for reelection. Bill received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Kentucky in 1973 and was named a distinguished alumnus of that department in 1989. His publication record includes several dozen articles and book chapters, and over 20 books of which he has been editor, coeditor, author, or coauthor, most recently Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments (with Kevin Christiano and Peter Kivisto) and the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. From 1989 to 1994 he served as editor of Sociological Analysis/Sociology of Religion, and for three years prior to that as book review editor, serving part of that term simultaneously as an elected member of Council. Immediately prior to becoming Executive Officer, he was chair of the Development Committee. Bill is also Executive Officer of the RRA and a Fellow of the SSSR.

That by-law I section 2b be eliminated in its entirety (and the succeeding subsections of Section 2 be renumbered accordingly), and that section 3b be amended to add the following: Upon the assumption of office, the President, in consultation with the other members of the Program Committee, shall appoint a Local Arrangements Chair, who shall work with the Program Committee to maximize the benefit to the Association’s annual program of the advantages of the city in which the meeting shall be held. This person may solicit the cooperation of other persons who shall be known as the Local Arrangements Subcommittee. [NB: The ASR Constitution, By-laws, and descriptions of the functions of current committees may all be found on the ASR Web site—www.sociologyofreligion.com. Choose the "Learn More About the ASR" link on the home page.].