Congregations and Competition: Manhattan Religious Congregations, 1939–1963

• In Event: 2329 - Section on the Sociology of Religion Referred Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 1. Congregations

Abstract

The theory of religious economies attempts to explain religion within the framework of rational-choice theory, but a number of studies have chipped away at the theory. Scholars have done little to test the theory quantitatively at the level of the congregation, which I argue is a more relevant level of analysis than the denomination. I employ an original data set of the life histories of all of the religious congregations in Manhattan from 1939 to 1963, and I match those data with U.S. Census data at the tract level. A series of survival analyses partly support the hypothesis that, the more congregations of the same “religious tradition” are located nearby given congregation, the higher is that congregation’s probability of demise. I also test whether having more congregations of any type nearby (not only of the same religious tradition) is associated with a congregation’s probability of demise, but there is little or no evidence for such an association. In addition, there is no evidence that advertising raises a congregation’s chance of survival. I discuss the results of this study in conjunction with the results of other studies and conclude that congregations do compete but that it is now probably time to abandon the theory of religious economies as the default lens for analyzing religious organizations.

Author

• Casey Philip Homan, University of California, Berkeley