Civic Congregations: Congregational Dynamics and Individual Civic Involvement

Participation in U.S. civic life is influenced by individual religiosity, and many congregations are corporately active in their communities. Most explanations of the religion and civic life relationship focus on a sole level of analysis, but the cross level relationship between congregations and their members' public participation is more pertinent to general sociological theory. Taking congregations and members as instances of stable collectives and active individuals, this dissertation addresses questions about the relation of social groups and members, and the connection between religion and public participation. I operationalize civic involvement from an action theory perspective and call for a more general understanding of civic engagement as collectively sustained, goal oriented, civic culture maintaining social action. Theorizing congregations as social networks embedded in pre-existing and emergent cultural environments, I use Hierarchical Non-Linear Modeling to test cross level hypotheses about independent congregational effects on individual voluntary association, community organizing, and evangelism. Findings demonstrate the presence of contextual effects, and support expectations about the role of congregational culture and social networks as influential of individual action. Specifically, those attending congregations affiliated with Mainline Congregations are more likely to report voluntary association membership while those at Conservative Protestant congregations are more likely to report evangelism. A network approach to congregations proves useful, and those at congregations with dense networks are less likely to report standard forms of civic involvement, but more likely to report evangelism. If a congregation's leader is active in the local community, then those who attend are also more active in civic affairs. Finally, congregational education heterogeneity decreases the odds of public participation, while race heterogeneity increases the odds of individual evangelism. The dissertation calls specifically for further consideration of the relationship between congregations and individual civic participation, and generally for common use of contextual modeling to adequately portray the role of religion in social life.