Journal ArticleDOI
Why the Jehovah's witnesses grow so rapidly: A theoretical application
TLDR
In this article, the authors apply a general theory of why religious movements succeed or fail to explain why the Jehovah's Witnesses are the most rapidly growing religious movement in the western world.Abstract:
This paper applies a general theory of why religious movements succeed or fail to explain why the Jehovah's Witnesses are the most rapidly growing religious movement in the western world. In addition to qualitative assessments of Witness doctrines, organisational structures, internal networks, and socialisation, we utilise quantitative data from a variety of sources to assess such things as the impact of failed prophesies, how “strictness”; eliminates free‐riders and strengthens congregations, the demographic make‐up of the Witness “labor force”;, and the effects of continuity with local religious cultures on success.read more
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Religion and Comparative Politics
TL;DR: A recent resurgence in religious fundamentalism and "new religious politics" has led more scholars to consider religious actors as important as mentioned in this paper, and a new body of scholarship, known as the "religious economy" school, seeks to address these problems by developing theories built on solid micro-level foundations of human behavior.
Book
Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism
TL;DR: A note on Translations and names Acknowledgments PART ONE: BEGINNINGS 1. Making Sense of Cultural Agency 2. Imagining Social Life I: Confronting Akrasia, Crime, and Violence 4. Imagined Social Life II: Addressing Personal and Social Issues 5. Imaginating Evangelical Practice 6. The Social Structure of Conversion 7. Two Lives, Five Years Later 8. Toward a Relational Pragmatic Theory of Cultural agency as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
Why religious movements succeed or fail: A revised general model
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors refine and greatly expand the scope of their 1987 theory of why religious groups succeed or fail, which was limited to new religions (cult movements) and applied to all movements, including sects.
Journal ArticleDOI
Children of Jehovah’s Witnesses and adolescent Jehovah’s Witnesses: what are their rights?
TL;DR: The Jehovah’s Witnesses Society (JW), a fundamentalist Christian sect, is best known to laypersons and healthcare professionals for its refusal of blood products, even when such a refusal may result in death.
Book
Religions and Development
TL;DR: The role of faith-based organizations (FBOs) in development is discussed in this article, where the authors discuss the role of FBOs in the 21st century.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Why Strict Churches Are Strong
TL;DR: The strength of strict churches is neither a historical coicidence nor a statiscal artifact as discussed by the authors, but rather a natural phenomenon that makes organizations stronger an more attractive because it reduces free riding.
Journal ArticleDOI
Sacrifice and Stigma: Reducing Free-riding in Cults, Communes, and Other Collectives
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an economic analysis of religious behavior that accounts for the continuing success of groups with strange requirements and seemingly inefficient prohibitions and demonstrate that efficient religions with perfectly rational members may benefit from stigma, self-sacrifice, and bizarre behavioral restrictions.
Book
The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation
TL;DR: Stark and Bainbridge as mentioned in this paper used information derived from numerous surveys, censuses, historical case studies, and ethnographic field expeditions to chart the full sweep of contemporary religion from the traditional denominations to the most fervent cults.
Journal ArticleDOI
Risk and Religion: An Explanation of Gender Differences in Religiosity
Alan S. Miller,John P. Hoffmann +1 more
TL;DR: Les A.A. proposent d'envisager les differences au sujet du risque en relation avec les differences de religiosite as mentioned in this paper, i.e., the attitude adoptees par rapport au risque attenuent fortement les differences between the sexes.
Book ChapterDOI
Becoming a world-saver: a theory of conversion to a deviant perspective
John Lofland,Rodney Stark +1 more
TL;DR: A model of the conversion process through which a group of people came to see the world in terms set by the doctrines of one such obscure and devalued perspective-a small millenarian religious cult is outlined.