Mental Illness and the Ministry of the Local Church

Due to the stigma associated with mental illness in America, religious leaders and their congregations might be fearful of caring for and worshipping alongside a person with mental illness. This article recounts some of the challenges encountered by the pastor of a small congregation in attempting to provide care for a church member suffering with schizophrenia. It is proposed here that congregations need to grow in courage as they attempt to serve people who struggle with mental illness, just as people with mental illness exhibit courage in venturing out to participate in church life.     

Self-Selection, Church Attendance, and Local Civic Participation

Prior research has shown that church attendance affects voting participation, but has a negative or no effect on more demanding forms of political participation. I argue that this differential for nonelectoral activity partially results from biases in how scholars conceptualize and analyze church attendance variables. To properly measure the influence of church attendance on nonelectoral participation, scholarship needs to account for self-selection biases that hinder accurate analyses. Consistent with the literature, a selection model finds that once fundamentalism's motivating effect is considered, church attendance plays no role in a respondent's participation in local government meetings. The present work provides a partial explanation for why attendance has no effect on more demanding political activity. These findings demonstrate that scholarship should focus attention on prior factors that influence congregants' attendance decisions.     

The Church and the Trinity I: The Church of the Spirit

We are commemorating the tenth anniversary of the death of the outstanding young preacher Geoffrey Preston by publishing this trilogy. It was written not very long before he died and has not appeared in print before. Its other two parts, 'The Church of the Son' and 'The Church of the Father', we will be publishing in our July/August and September numbers.