ASR NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
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Volume 36, Number 4 Summer 2002
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CHICAGOLAND EXPRESS: THE 2002 ANNUAL MEETING AND BEYOND
The Chicago ASR meeting was another great success. About 220 people registered for forty-one sessions. The renovated Essex Inn still had aspects of its "quaint" charm, but it served our purposes well and supplied a physical setting conducive to ASR gemeinschaft. 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 Michael Sells, Eileen Barker’s Presidential Address, and an Authors’ Reception on the opening day that recognized the seven authors-meet-critics sessions that were a record for our meetings.
Our membership seems stable, decreasing slightly this year after a relatively dramatic increase last year. We were just across the threshold of 800 members by the end of last year and hope we can be there again at that time in 2002 as well. Our library subscriptions have again slipped slightly, continuing a pattern that has often appeared across the last decade. 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 in spite of the downturn in the national economy. But we will need to be vigilant with our funds during this period in order to preserve the heritage that has enabled us to advance on so many fronts in recent years. An ad hoc committee composed of Eileen Barker and John Coleman will report to Council next August on issues related to ASR investments and the structure of our financial operations.
Our Membership Committee, chaired last year and this coming year by Peter Beyer, will continue to look at issues of graduate student recruitment and retention, as well as our colleagues across the seas. Council has authorized the appointment of a graduate student member of Council, as a presidential appointment, beginning in 2003. One of the changes introduced this year was a reception the opening eve of the meetings, following Council, so that newcomers could begin to get acquainted with ASR leadership and ask questions about the meetings before they actually start. We intend to repeat this next year as well, though possibly lessening the total number of receptions through the meeting.
Members will have noticed journal issues getting longer as a result of collaboration between the Publications Committee and the editor. It is important, if this is to continue, that a sufficient flow of high- quality papers comes into the editorial office. We are happy to announce that Nancy Nason-Clark has agreed to serve, upon recommendation of the Publications Committee, as editor for another triennium. We are still puzzling over the future of the annual series, currently known as "Religion and the Social Order." We thought we had an arrangement worked out, but then circumstances necessitated the anticipated editor’s withdrawal. As chair of the Publications Committee for 2003, David Bromley will be looking for volunteers to take on an Editor-in-Chief’s role and for a new publisher as well.
Jim Spickard chaired the Fichter Grant Committee this year; Manuel Vásquez will do so next year. Recipients of this year’s Fichter grants were Inger Furseth, "A Comparative Study of the Role of Religion in the Lives of Immigrant Women in Los Angeles"; Yohai Hakak, "Masculine Identities in the Ultra Orthodox Community in Israel"; Enid Logan, "Holy Sacraments and Illicit Encounters: Religiosity, Race and Sex in Cuba, 1902-1940"; Elizabeth Prevost, "Anglican Women Missionaries and the Culture of Spirituality in Africa, 1875-1930"; and Robert Woodberry, Heather Kane-O’Donovan, and Stefanie Knauer, "On Their Own: 19th and 20th Century Women’s Missionary Work." The committee expressed regret that it did not receive a sufficient number of proposals of high quality to merit the disbursal of the entire purse of $13,000, which will remain at the same level for 2003. Members of that committee in addition to Manuel will be Paula Nesbitt and Julia Howell. This is the year of the triennial review of the process and topic of the Fichter program. Persons wishing to make input to the Committee (which will in turn make a proposal to Council) should forward their ideas to Manuel (mvasquez@religion.ufl.edu).
Your election ballots were counted, and the results were reported by Nominations Committee chair, Tony Blasi. Joe Tamney was elected 2004 President. He has named Fenggang Yang to serve as Program Chair for the San Francisco meeting. Three council members were also elected for three-year terms. They are Jim Davidson, D. Paul Johnson, and Adair Lummis. Eileen Barker will chair the nominations committee for the coming year, serving along with Penny Edgell and John Simpson. Each year we elect a President-elect and three Council members; persons with suggestions for nominees should contact Eileen quickly (e.barker@lse.ac.uk). Nominees should be able to attend the 2003-2006 meetings. The person elected to the presidency this year will deliver his or her Presidential Address at the Philadelphia meeting in 2005.
The Robert J. McNamara Award this year went to Paul Y. Chang, for a paper entitled "Christian Praxis and Theology During the Yusin Era (1972-1979): Developing the Dialectical Approach to Social Movements." This is a designated fund award that may be given annually to an outstanding student paper. Chair of the McNamara Award Committee for the 2003 selection will be Marion Goldman joined by Peter Kivisto, David Sikkink, and Amanda van Eck Duymaer van Twist.
From its operating budget the ASR makes funds available in the form of Ralph A. Gallagher grants to assist graduate student members as well as foreign scholars with meeting expenses. Recipients who attended this year were graduate students/younger scholars Christopher Helland, Mia Lövheim (Sweden), Olga Tchepournaya (Russia), and Robert Woodberry, and overseas senior scholars Lizhu Fan (China), Dorothea Filus (Japan), and Sinisa Zrinšcak (Croatia). In addition, based upon Council action last year, three nonmember scholars were invited by President Barker for a special session to address the theme of the program. These were Jeremy Gunn (Emory Law School), Hubert Seiwert (University of Leipzig), and Balazs Schanda (attorney-at-law, Budapest). This same model will prevail for 2003. Applications for this funding should be directed to the 2003 program chair, Lina Molotokos-Liederman. It is important that persons desiring Gallagher funding make their needs known as early as possible and do so in the context of both a clear abstract for their presentation and a detailed accounting of how they intend to provide the necessary additional funding actually to attend the meeting. Gallagher Grants are supplemental grants, intended primarily to pay "on the ground" expenses at the meetings and will not meet the entire costs of travel to the meetings.
GOING SOUTH
Now that this year’s meeting is over, we want to draw your attention to the Atlanta meeting, 15-17 August. This promises to be another excellent meeting. The formal program call will be included in the next issue of News & Announcements, but it is already on the Web site—and it’s not too early to put it on your calendar. Contact Program Chair Lina Molokotos-Liederman—liederman5@aol.com —with program suggestions and proposals. The meeting will be held at the Omni CNN Plaza, directly across the park from the ASA venue. This year we were able to collaborate with ASA Sociology of Religion Section on a joint reception, and we will look into joining with them again following our Furfey Lecture, which will this year come the night before the Religion Section’s day on the ASA program.
MEETINGS
The Religious Research Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion will meet November 1-3 in Salt Lake City. The SSSR theme is "Practicing Religion in the 21st Century." The RRA theme is "Theory and Applied Research." Featured plenary speakers will be Robert Orsi and D. Paul Johnson. The hotel is the Hilton Salt Lake City Center, and the hotel registration deadline is 10 October. Check out the program on the SSSR website: www.sssrweb.org
The BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group plans a Study Day 16 November at Cardiff University (Wales). The theme is "Religious Professionals in the Contemporary World." The deadline for submitting proposals is 20 September. More information and forms can be obtained from the Study Group’s Web site: www.socrel.org.uk
A conference on From Vernacular Religion to Contemporary Spirituality: Locating Religion in European Ethnology will be held 10-11 January, hosted by the Belief Beyond Boundaries Research Group of The Open University, Milton Keynes (UK). Abstracts for proposals are due 30 September. Contact: arts-rel-studies-conferences@open.ac.uk
A conference on Religiosity in the Secularized World will be held 21-23 March, in Frankfurt am Main, sponsored by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Objektive Hermeneutik. Papers may be in English or German. Translation will be provided. The deadline for submitting proposals is 31 October. For further information see: www.objektivehermeneutik.de
The Eleventh Annual Contemporary and New Age Religions conference, this year entitled Alternative Spirituality and New Age Studies, will take place at The Open University, Milton Keynes, 30 May-1 June. Session proposals are due 30 September; individual paper abstracts (200 words) are due 30 November. Please respond to jlewis@uwsp.edu
Reformed Congregations Engage a Changing World, the Fourth Triennial Conference of the International Society for the Study of Reformed Communities will be held in Edinburgh (Scotland), 27 June-2 July. Send 250-word abstracts by 15 September to Donald Luidens, Hope College: luidens@hope.edu
The 27th ISSR/SISR Conference, Religion and Generations will be held 21- 25 July in Turin, Italy. The deadline for abstracts is 31 October. For further information, contact the Executive Office (swatos@microd.com), and we will forward you the appropriate email. For participation in the joint ASR/ISSR sessions contact Jim Richardson directly (jtr@unr.edu).
ASR COUNCIL MEMBERS, OFFICERS AND COMMITTEE CHAIRS, 2002-2003
NEWS OF MEMBERS
A number of colleagues received grants and awards from the Louisville Institute during the past year. These include Richard W. Flory, "The Recovery of Ritual: The Religious Quest of the Post-Boomer Generation," Anthony E. Healy, "The Church in Post-Industrial America," Christel Manning, "An Investigation of the Impact of Modern Methods of Biblical Study on Pastoral Leaders and Ordinary Believers in the United States," Penny Edgell, "Pathways to Innovation: Understanding Radical Change in Local Congregations," John H. Evans, "Human Cloning and the Religious Public: An Empirical Study," Jennifer McKinney, "Clergy Connections and Mainline Revivals," Jeanette Reedy Solano, "Encountering the God of Life on the Streets of East L.A.: Angeleno Latino/a Popular Religion," Marie Friedmann Marquardt, "Shifting Landscapes, Revising Selves: Religion, Place, and Public Participation among Mexicans in the New South," Prema Kurien, "Establishing an ‘Ethnic’ Christianity: The Challenges Facing Immigrant Indian Churches in the United States," Omar McRoberts, "Black Religion and Social Welfare Policy Since the New Deal," Mary Jo Neitz, "‘Look What the Lord Has Done’: Church and Community in a Post-Rural Landscape," David Sikkink, "Congregational Responses to September 11," Robert Woodberry, "Data on Protestant and Catholic Missionary Activity and Its Impact on North American Religion," and David Yamane, "Becoming Catholic: Ritual and Experience in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults." Congratulations to all. Information on grant programs currently available may be obtained from the Louisville Institute Web site: www.louisville-institute.org
SSSR 2002 Research Awardees included ASR members Elaine Howard Ecklund, Marie Friedmann Mar-quardt, and Eric McDaniel. Congratulations to them as well.
Members’ book publications since the last issue include:
Peter Beyer, ed., Religion in the Process of Globalization (Ergon), additional chapters by members José Casanova, Frank Lechner, Peggy Levitt, Roland Robertson, John Simpson, and George Thomas.
Anthony J. Blasi and Bernard F. Donahoe, A History of Sociological Research and Teaching at Catholic Notre Dame University, Indiana (Mellen).
David Bromley and Lewis Carter, eds., Toward Religious Ethnography (Elsevier Science/JAI [the ASR "Religion and the Social Order" series), additional chapters by members Marion Goldman, Christel Manning, Susan Palmer, and E. Burke Rochford.
Ali Köse, trans. & ed., Sekülerizm Sorgulan_yor (Ufuk Kitaplar_), includes translations of works by members Robert Bellah, Kevin Christiano, Jeffrey Hadden, Rodney Stark, and Bill Swatos.
Gordon Mitchell and Eve Mullen, eds., Religion and the Political Imagination in a Changing South Africa (Waxmann)
William H. Swatos, Jr. and Luigi Tomasi, eds., From Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism: The Social and Cultural Economics of Piety (Praeger), additional chapters by members Anthony Blasi, Lutz Kaelber, Liliane Voyé, and Michael York.
Richard L. Wood, Faith in Action: Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America (University of Chicago Press)
ATLAS
Sociology of Religion is one of a series of founding publications to be a part of the American Theological Library Association Serials (hence ATLAS) On-Line project. Through subscription to this project individuals and institutions have access to complete back issues of both Sociological Analysis and Sociology of Religion since the inception of the former journal—that is, about 35 years’ worth of journals. ASR members may obtain a discounted annual subscription to this service at $100. This rate is valid through 31 December 2002. The subsequent annual subscription would be $120. If you wish to take advantage of this offer, email ATLAS at atla@atla.com —or check their Web site, www.atla.com.
EXECUTIVE OFFICER’S NOTES
Yet another meeting has passed successfully. A paper by Dean Hoge and Jacqueline Wenger even made the front page of the Chicago Tribune on Saturday. It was good to see the colleagues who were there. We missed some familiar faces. I do want to express special appreciation to those outside donors who assisted in support of our meeting. Fred Kniss and Loyola Chicago’s MacNamara Center for the Social Study of Religion were exceptionally generous in support of the Presidential reception. The ASR has a long-standing interinstitutional relationship with Loyola, which was the home of our founding President, Ralph A. Gallagher, and of the person who probably did more than anyone else to keep us alive in the transition from being the ACSS to ASR, Robert J. MacNamara—names that you know from the awards that honor their contributions. We also had support for the Furfey reception through Omar McRoberts from the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, and through two grant programs, led by Lowell Livezey and Steve Warner, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. We shared that reception with the ASA Sociology of Religion Section and appreciate their support in that respect. Jim Mathisen of Wheaton College was able to supply folders and pens for attendees’ materials. ASR could not offer the kind of benefits during our meetings that we do were it not for the work of its annual development chairs—this year, Lowell Livezey—and we owe them a great debt.
A topic that was frequent in our discussions about the future of ASR was how the Association can best relate to and support students—especially graduate students. Our greatest inadequacy in this respect is a lack of information. We need to know more about the processes of organizational information dissemination to, and decision making by, graduate students as they relate to the different organizations. We know that the ASA Section has a significantly higher proportion of graduate student members than we do. What we do not know is why. I would like to take this annual opportunity of mine to address the membership to ask that those who are graduate students and those who have direct contact with graduate students seek to learn and inform us about these processes. Right now, ironically for social scientists who are supposed to be data based, too many of us are sharing our ignorance about the problem, and too few of us have any data. We can waste an enormous amount of time talking about what we don’t know. We know far more about what doesn’t work than we do about what will work. I intend to pursue some of these questions through my office as time permits, but we would be ever so grateful for any concrete information that anyone can provide us about the student organizational membership decision-making process. If you are a graduate student in the sociology of religion and know of other graduate students in the field who have not joined ASR, email me and tell me why they haven’t. If you teach students to whom you have recommended ASR membership and know they haven’t joined, email me and tell me why. If you don’t have information, please don’t write to tell me what it "could be." We have plenty of theories already. What we need is information. Hard data would be wonderful. Soft data are worth something. A state of no data seems to this sociologist to be ignorance. Let’s try this year to move from ignorance to intelligence.