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Volume 36, Number 2 Winter 2002

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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 Anthony Blasi (chair), Bill D’Antonio, and Mary No Neitz. They offer hard choices, but these choices are themselves a sign of the outstanding scholarship that is to be found among our ASR colleagues. The Executive Officer is particularly grateful to the committee for the timelines of its work. Please vote! Please also follow the voting instructions so that your vote counts.

You are reminded of our 64th Annual Meeting in Chicago, 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. Note the deadline of 1 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 (in the meantime, see the ASR website: <www. sociologyofreligion .com>). Remember, too, that paper pro-posals will be received by the Program Chair, Grace Davie <g.r.c.davie@exeter.ac.uk>, until 15 February.

Please be attentive to the fact that the deadline for Fichter grant applications is a 1 March postmark. Also, Gallagher grant requests should be submitted with your annual meeting abstract. Information about these grants was included in the Fall newsletter and is available on the Web site.

Receipt of this newsletter is confirmation that your 2002 dues have been paid. Thank you for your support of ASR. Think about a colleague you might goad into joining you and us. Also think about library subscriptions. Our end-of-year memberships came out exactly where they did last year (801), but our library subscriptions continue to slip. Library subscriptions are critical to the ASR’s continued financial health—and reasonable prices for your dues!

Because the Fall issue of N&A went out in different formats related to dues status, I want to repeat here, so that none will be excluded, the sad news of the death of our former president Pat McNamara, 16 November, as a result of a sudden, but very aggressive brain tumor. Pat’s former student Rhys Williams will be organizing a memorial session at the summer’s annual meeting. A few days after Pat’s death another of our members, the Rev. George Younger, also succumbed to cancer. The Rev. Younger was more well known in RRA circles, but maintained memberships in both organizations. May they rest in peace.

Bill Swatos

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We are in the process of developing: (1) An ASR Listserve. If you wish to receive your newsletters and other notices from ASR via email, send a notice to this effect to the Executive Office. (2) An ASR Electronic Members’ Directory. This will be a open listing on the ASR Web site of any member’s name, affiliation, email address, and interests. You may include one or two bibliographical citations to your work to include as well, but do not send works, or abstracts of works, as attachments. Bibliographical citations should be sufficiently complete that they can be followed up without the mediation of the Executive Office.

The International Shinto Foundation is advertizing its annual student Shinto Essay Competition, with prizes of $1,000, 500, and 300, for essays of 8 to 10 double-spaced pages on one of the following subjects: Shinto’s Influence on Art and Culture, The Role of Rituals in Shinto, or Comparative Study of Shinto Myths and Other Mythologies. Contact the International Shinto Foundation, New York Center, 777 United Nations Plaza, Ste WCRP-9A, New York, NY 10017. The deadline for submissions is 31 May.

Esoterica, an electronic journal <www.esoteric.msu.edu> is seeking manuscripts and book reviews treating the areas of alchemy, Gnosticism, contemporary esoteric groups, and methods and approaches to the study of esotericism. If you are interested in submitting something, email studies@esoteric.msu.edu.

The ISSR has established a New Researchers Network in the sociology of religion, particularly attuned to the needs of graduate students and others new to the field. Check it out at http://groups.yahoo.com/ group/NewResearchersNetwork.

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Kevin J. Christiano, William H. Swatos, Jr., and Peter Kivisto, Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments (AltaMira).

Luca Diotallevi, Il rompicapo della secolarizzazione italiana: Caso italiano, teorie americane e revisione del paradigma della secolarizzazione (Rubbettino).

Dean R. Hoge, William D. Dinges, Mary Johnson, and Juan L. Gonzales, Jr., Young Adult Catholics: Religion in the Culture of Choice (University of Notre Dame Press).

Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton (eds.), Meaning and Modernity: Religion, Polity, and Self (University of California Press). In addition chapters by the editors, this book includes chapters by ASR members John A. Coleman and Robert Wuthnow, and an epilogue by Robert Bellah.

James McClenon, Wondrous Healing: Shamanism, Human Evolution, and the Origin of Religion (Northern Illinois University Press).

Stephen Sharot, A Comparative Sociology of World Religions: Virtuosos, Priests, and Popular Religion (New York University Press).

Linda Woodhead, Paul Fletcher, Hiroko Kawanami, and David Smith, Religions in the Modern World: Traditions and Transformations (Routledge).

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Professor of Sociology, Wittenberg University, Jerry completed his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. Jerry’s research has focused on religion in Russia/USSR and East-Central Europe, with a few forays into the politics of religion and family in the United States. He has recently been engaged in the comparative study of religion and family. With Sharon Houseknecht, he co-edited Family, Religion and Social Change in Diverse Societies (2000) and wrote the entry on "Family and Religion" for the Encyclopedia of Sociology (2nd ed., 2000). They are now completing an article on religion and motherhood orientation in nine societies that attempts to test major theories in the sociology of religion. In the area of Russian studies, Jerry co-edited two volumes with Michael Sacks: Contemporary Soviet Society: Sociological Perspectives (1980) and Understanding Soviet Society (1988). More recently, he has published articles on the Russian religious market and Russian religious culture. Current projects include a monograph on Orthodoxy and civil society in Russia and a collective volume (joint editorship) on the sociology of Eastern Orthodoxy. The latter includes some papers originally presented at ASR meetings and reflects his recent efforts to stimulate scholarship in Eastern Orthodoxy. Jerry has been a member of ASR since 1975 and has been a regular participant in the annual programs. He has served as ASR Membership Committee chair and a member of the International Liaison committee. For related organizations, he served as local arrangements chair for the 2001 SSSR meetings and is currently the membership chair for the ASA Sociology of Religion section.

Professor of Sociology at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, Joe completed his Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame. He has previously served as chair of the sociology department at Marquette University and on the faculty of the University of Singapore. Joe’s research in the sociology of religion has focused on the reasons for religiosity and on religious change, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. His major book-length studies are The Resilience of Christianity in the Modern World (SUNY Press, 1992), an account of the persistence of Christian belief and practice in contradistinction to predictions of secularization theories; American Society in the Buddhist Mirror (Garland, 1992), an assessment of the appeal of Buddhism in the United States; and The Struggle over Singapore’s Soul: Western Modernization and Asian Culture (de Gruyter, 1996), which describes the conflict among a capitalist dominant ideology, the state’s "Asian" civil morality, and the response of oppositional groups espousing a counterculture that includes religious and humanist values. Joe has published extensively in the journals of the social scientific study of religion. His articles on religion in the United States emphasize religion-and-politics issues—the religious right generally and abortion-related topics specifically. Because Muncie is the locale of the historic "Middletown" studies, a significant portion of his research has used that site as a database. In non-U.S. settings, he has written on the sociology of Islam in Indonesia, and on Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism in East Asia generally and Singapore specifically. From 1995 to 2000, Joe was editor of the ASR journal, Sociology of Religion, and he is currently editor of the ASA Sociology of Religion Section newsletter.

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GARY D. BOUMA is Research Professor of Sociology at Monash University, priest in the Anglican diocese of Melbourne, chair of the Christian Research Association, and vice-president of the World Conference on Religion and Peace (Australia). Trained at Calvin College in classics, Princeton in theology, and Cornell in sociology, his research in the sociology of religion examines the management of religious diversity in plural multicultural societies, intercultural communication, religion and public policy, women and religious minorities, and gender factors in clergy careers. He has been a member of ASR since 1969.

JAMES D. DAVIDSON received his Ph.D. from Notre Dame, is Professor of Sociology at Purdue, and a longtime member of ASR. Jim has written several books on American Catholics, many journal articles, and numerous articles in religious magazines. He also writes a syndicated column called "Research for the Church." He is past president of the Religious Research Association and the North Central Sociological Association, and has also served as editor of the Review of Religious Research and executive secretary of SSSR. In ASR he has been chair of the Publications Committee in the 1980s and is again a member of that Committee.

BARBARA JONES DENISON is currently Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Continuing Education, as well as Assistant Professor of Sociology, at Lebanon Valley College. Barbara earned her Ph.D. in 1985 from Northwestern University and held faculty positions at Indiana University Northwest and Gettysburg College, followed by an administrative appointment in the Penn State system. A twenty-year veteran of ASR, she was appointed to the Membership Committee before serving as ASR’s executive officer from 1988 to 1995. Barbara has published in Social Compass, as well as writing book reviews for Sociology of Religion and the Journal of Contemporary American Religion. She has presented at ASR, SSSR, and the North Central Sociological Association, most recently on gay/lesbian issues within denominational Christianity.

D. PAUL JOHNSON is Professor of Sociology and Chair of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at Texas Tech University (since 1990). He is currently President of the RRA, was RRR editor 1990-1999, and has publications in such journals as SA, RRR, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Deviant Behavior, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, and others. He is author of Sociological Theory: Classical Founders and Contemporary Perspectives (1981) and is currently working on a contemporary theory book. Current projects include research on local church cooperation in social service activities and generational differences in religiosity. Paul is a member of the ASR Publications Committee.

ADAIR LUMMIS is Faculty Associate in Hartford Seminary’s Institute for Religion Research. Adair’s research has been published in five co-authored books and several articles and book chapters. These publications include a study of mosques, three different studies of clergy, feminist spirituality groups, and most recently (2001) regional denominational offices’ attempts to impact public policy. In 2002, she is continuing a Lilly-funded study of judicatory executives in seven denominations and a survey for the Episcopal Church of lay and clergy women’s roles now as compared to fifteen years ago. For ASR, she has served once as Fichter Grant chair and twice as chair of the Membership Committee.

PAUL-ANDRÉ TURCOTTE holds doctorates in sociology (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1979) and theology (Institut Catholique de Paris, 1987). He has held teaching positions at Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Ottawa, and Montreal, and is now Professor on the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences of the Institute Catholique de Paris, specializing in American sociology and sociology of world religions and Christianity). He is a member of the editorial board of Social Compass and previously of Studies in Religion and was a member of the board of directors of the Canadian Federation of Social Sciences (1989-91). His publications include over one hundred articles, ten books, and twenty edited volumes. His most recent publications include editing two issues of Social Compass, one on the sociology of Catholic religious orders (June 2001) and the other on mediations and features of belief (December 2001).

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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.

You do not have to vote in order to submit this exhibit form, nor do you need to complete this form in order to vote, but the 1 April postmark deadline applies to both! If you prefer, you may submit preprinted materials about a book or books, but make sure all the information indicated here is included; you may alternatively reproduce this form to list additional books. You may also fax the book request form—but not the ballot!—to the Executive Office at 727-844-7332.

For each book supply:

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

Main title: ___________________________________________________________________________

Publisher: ___________________________________________________________________________

Publisher’s address (essential):

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

Main title: ___________________________________________________________________________

Publisher: ___________________________________________________________________________

Publisher’s address (essential):

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

Main title: ___________________________________________________________________________

Publisher: ___________________________________________________________________________

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