2009 DIVISION36 CONVENTION PROGRAM
FOR THE 116TH ANNUALCONVENTION OF THE
AMERICANPSYCHOLOGICALASSOCIATION
AUGUST 6–9, 2009, TORONTO
Jack Rakosky
6737 Stratford Road, Concord Township,
Ohio 44077
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Religious capital is
conceptualized in this paper as consisting of human capital, social capital,
cultural capital and spiritual capital used by entities from single persons,
through small groups, congregations to global denominations. This particular
conceptual scheme is illustrated with the exemplar of bible study as a
particularly promising locale for studying all these four forms of religious
capital (i.e. human, social, cultural and spiritual) at both the personal and
institutional levels. Wuthnow (1994) has estimated that there are more than
900,000 bible study groups enrolling 15-20 million persons in the United States.
The particular exemplar of Little Rock Scripture Study was chosen for a pilot
study. Its four elements (daily person study, small group discussion, large
group lecture or video, and prayer) closely align with the conceptual scheme of
religious capital consisting of human, social, cultural, and spiritual capital.
Little Rock Scripture Study is the oldest, and most widely used Catholic bible
study in the world, with groups in 54 countries and an estimated 10,000 small
groups of varying sizes in the United
States. The implementation of Little Rock
Scripture study in a large Catholic parish of several thousand families
provided an opportunity to assess its utility as a place to study the forms of
religious capital. Focusing upon the four elements of the model, interviews
were obtained from 26 out of 27 persons who had participated in a seven week
study. Daily personal study, small groups, the videos, and conversation prayer
all received very favorable evaluations despite being held in physical
locations that received very unfavorable evaluations. This argues for reliable
and robust interventions by this well established program. The data suggest
Complex relationships among forms of religious capital are likely.
___________________________________________________________________________
INTRODUCTION
In this paper, religious
capital is conceptualized as consisting of the resources of human capital,
social capital, cultural capital and spiritual capital when used for religious
purposes by entities from a single person through small groups and
congregations to global denominations.
In recent decades, social
scientists from a variety of disciplines have expanded the forms of capital
from physical and financial capital to concepts of human, social, and cultural
capital. Unfortunately that expansion has not been accompanied by sufficient
conceptual clarity about the differences among these forms of capital and about
their relationships to one another.
For example, the
resource provided by investment in an education has been view as being
primarily related to human capital by Becker (1964/1993), to social capital by
Coleman (1990), and to cultural capital by Boudreau (1986). For Becker,
investments in education, training, and experience, made a person more valuable
to employers, and generated for that person a stream of greater income. For
Coleman, research showed that educational achievement was determined not so
much by the quality of the school system, or the talents of the pupils, but by
the family and church which supported the student endeavors. The student was
able to draw upon the store of social capital in his or her networks in order
to better acquire human capital in the educational system. Boudreau looked at
what was offered in the educational system and argued that it was primarily
elite culture, the values and beliefs of ruling elites, and that it served to
perpetuate their position and advantages in society.
Are then human
capital, social capital and cultural capital competing or complementary
explanations of what is happening and what is important in education? More conceptual
clarity is needed, including what wealth is being accumulated, where it is
being held, and how it affects persons, actions and social structure. Who has
access to the wealth? How is the wealth controlled? Who benefits from the
wealth?
One part of the
difficulty of conceptualization arises because from its origins capital has
been used to describe both macro-level entities (e.g. social class, i.e.
capitalists versus labor) and micro-level decision making (e.g. the capitalist
had to decide among many resources and opportunities, laborers competed with
each other for subsistence wages). All the above contemporary theories have
been classified as neo-capitalist because they view resources and decision
making as being widely distributed so that everyone is a capitalist to some
degree. However how micro-level decision making influences or is influenced by
macro-level conditions is much more complex. Another part of the difficulty
arises from a failure to adequately articulate what is meant by ‘capital. For
some capital is simply wealth stored in a particular form. Other theorists
however are have more complex models that involves both investment processes of
acquisition of capital as well as the marketing (i.e. exchange) processes of
its use.
Recently some
researchers have begun to conceptualize religious and/or spiritual capital. These
conceptualization not only have to tackle the problem of whether not these are
the same thing, they also have to specify how these related to previous forms
of capital. In addition, conceptualizing religious and/or spiritual capital
also has to deal with the meaning of these two words in both contemporary
social sciences as well as among the general public. As Hill and Pargament
(2003, 2008) point out, although historically the term religion has generally
been used in psychology as both an individual and institutional construct, recently
religion has been used more as an institutional construct and spirituality has increasingly
been used for the personal subjective aspect of religious experience. However, Hill
and Pargament rightly say that for most people institutional and personal
aspects of religion are closely related. One the advantages of the proposed
conceptualization of religious capital is that it provides a common framework
of discussing religion at both the personal and institutional levels without
identifying one with the other.
This particular conceptual scheme is illustrated with the
exemplar of bible study as a particularly promising locale for studying all these
four forms of religious capital (i.e. human, social, cultural and spiritual) at
both the personal and institutional levels. Wuthnow (1994) has estimated that
there are more than 900,000 bible study groups enrolling 15-20 million persons
in the United States.
The particular exemplar of Little Rock Scripture Study was chosen for a pilot
study. Its four elements (daily person study, small group discussion, large
group lecture or video, and prayer) closely align with the conceptual scheme of
religious capital consisting of human, social, cultural, and spiritual capital.
Little Rock Scripture Study is the oldest, and most widely used Catholic bible
study in the world, with groups in 54 countries and an estimated 10,000 small
groups of varying sizes in the United
States. Use of a large group lecture or
video also makes it similar to the Sunday school model of which there are
estimated to be 800,000 groups in the United States enrolling between
18-22 million persons. Bible study in general, therefore, offers many
opportunities for studying the personal and social aspects of religious
experience. The four elements of Little Rock Scripture Study widely used by
this countries and the world’s largest denomination offers both sufficient
structure to do multiple sites comparison studies as well as potential
variability that might be open to systematic study
Defining Religious Capital: A Bible Study
Exemplar
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FORMS OF RELIGIOUS CAPITAL
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Human Capital:
e.g. talents and virtues
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Attached to person
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Social Capital:
social networks
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Attached to institutions
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Cultural Capital:
shared beliefs and values
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Attached to thoughts and emotions
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Spiritual Capital:
relationship with divine
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Personal but influenced by social &
cultural
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Human capital, as a form of wealth that might be used for
religious purposes, is conceptualized as the asset provided by a person’s
skills and abilities including their virtues such as honesty and punctuality. Becker
(1993) points out a key aspect of human capital; it cannot be separated from a
particular person in the way that financial and physical capital can be
separated. However Becker included in human capital items such as beliefs and
values that Boudreau would define as cultural capital, and Coleman would
consider as social capital. Human capital as defined here inheres in a person
in such a way that it is useful without the cooperation of others; which is not
true of social and cultural capital. Human capital can be a form of religious
capital either because it is intrinsically related to religion such as reading the
bible or because religiously neutral skills such language, or literary skills
are used for some religious purpose such as understanding the bible.
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BIBLE STUDY EXEMPLAR:
LITTLE ROCK SCRIPTURE PROGRAM
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Daily Personal
Study:
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20 minutes of day, bible commentary and
study guide
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Small Group
Discussion:
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50 minutes a week either at homes or break
out groups
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Large Group
Video/Lecture:
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20 minutes a week every together
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Prayer during all
phases:
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Conversational prayer in small groups
emphasized
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Note: see http://www.littlerockscripture.org/en/Default.aspx
for complete details, program materials, and contact
information
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Daily personal study for 15-20 minutes a day usually of a book of
the Bible using a commentary and study questions is the first element of Little
Rock Bible Study. Finding the time, reading the text and the commentary, and
thinking about the study questions are all human capital skills. The
commentaries help people develop skills in literary analysis and historical and
social cultural understandings of how text might have been understood when it
was written. These skills are also developed later on in small groups when the
questions are discussed, and in the large group video which from a summary and
review. However in many ways the daily personal study offers an opportunity to
investigate the role of human capital in religious formation (i.e. the
development of religious capital). Wuthnow reports that participants in church
sponsored small groups such as bible study often give more importance to their
social interaction that the content which is often view as more important by
church leadership. However that might be because bible study does not permit
the development of human capital that could earn of return on the investment.
Persons who develop sufficient skills to leader others in the study of the
bible , or take other roles in the congregation because of it might be far more
motivate.
Social capital is conceptualized as the asset provided by a
network of social relationships. Social capital becomes religious capital to
the extent that it is used by either institutions or persons for religious
purposes. Religious institutions such as a weekend worship service or a bible
study group generate social networks, that can be used for both religious and nonreligious
purposes. Networks generated by religious institutions are obviously intended
for religious purposes, but members can use the networks for getting job leads or
finding a mate. Similarly the social networks generated by non-religious
institutions can be used for religious purposes by some of their members. Social
capital is tied to institutions, and networks, although individuals can be said
to possess social capital to the extent they participate in institutions and
networks. In a book edited by Smidt (2003), authors tended to conceptualize
religious capital as social capital with some acknowledgment that it also
related to beliefs and values.
Weekly group study for about a hour is the second element of
Little Rock Bible Study. Although it can be done in groups that meet in
people’s homes, often it is done as in the case of this research in a parish
location where several small groups combine afterwards for a large group
lecture or video. These small groups discuss the questions that the participants
have worked on during their personal study in the preceding week. The selection
and use of the questions provides a large opportunity to study the relationship
among the acquisition of human capital, .e.g. a better understanding of
literary forms in the bible, and the formation of social capital, e.g. greater
trust and openness in talking about personal experiences, as well as the growth
in cultural capital, e.g. shared beliefs and values about the meaning of
scripture as applied to contemporary life.
Cultural capital is defined as the asset provided by shared
beliefs and values. Again some cultural capital is intrinsically religious because
it consists of religious belief and values generated by religious institutions.
However many shared beliefs and values that are not intrinsically religious may
be put at the service of religious purposes, either by persons or institutions,
e.g. many religious traditions adapt local culture such as music to their
purposes.
A weekly lecture or video is third element of the Little Rock Bible
Study. The videos provided by the Little
Rock series provide a variety of persons, priests,
religious and laity interpreting the bible within the context of Catholic
tradition. They model a common religious experience of shared values and
beliefs within a diversity of personalities and life experiences. They suggest
to those who study the bible within the framework of Catholic tradition that
they too may find a place for their experience. This weekly large group
experience especially if a lecture format is used provides a opportunity for
studying religious capital as shared beliefs and values.
Spiritual capital is defined in this approach as the asset
provided by a personal relationship with the transcendent. It is similar to human
capital since it cannot be separated from the particular person. On the other
hand, a relationship to a divine person or entity has some similarly to social
capital. Both institutions and some individuals (e.g. prophets, saints) have
claimed to mediate an individual’s personal relationship to God. Also some religious
virtuosi have had substantial impacts on social institutions, due in part to
their claimed relationship to the divine. Within Catholic theology, founders of
religious orders such as Saint Ignatius the founder of the Jesuits have been
seen as possessing a particular charism, of gift from God which they model for
Catholics who practice forms of Ignatian spirituality. Various forms of prayer, some more personal
and others more institutional, provide good examples of the complexity of
spiritual capital
Prayer is the fourth element of Little Rock Scripture
study. While prayer is
considered essential to daily personal study, and also the large group
experience, particular attention has been given by Little Rock to the development of
Conversational Prayer as a way of sharing during the small group
experience. Again the Little Rock model offers many opportunities
for studying the development of spiritual capital, especially in the from of
prayer to the other forms of religious capital found in bible study.
METHOD
The implementation
of Little Rock Scripture study in a large Catholic parish of several thousand
families provided an opportunity to assess its utility as a place to study the
forms of religious capital. The researcher, a member of the parish council, had
helped the parish to identify bible study as a priory need for adult faith
formation, and offered to assess satisfaction with the new program by opened
ended questions administered individually by phone interviews.
Focusing upon the
four elements of the model, interviews were obtained from 26 out of 27 persons
who had participated in a seven week study, but did not include six people who
had served as facilitators of study. The researcher attended most of the
session, moving from group to group and was likely perceived both as a part of
the management, and as a member of parish council
The complete questionnaire
and responses to all the interview questions were presented in an eight page
report available to anyone in the parish who wanted to read it. Individual
responses were anonymous. Previous experience in doing parish research had
indicated that people seeing their opinions in print was very rewarding, and
that the size of the parish and the sample made the likelihood of anyone
identifying another person’s response very remote. This report can be obtained
from the author by any researchers who may want it.
RESULTS
Overall Evaluation. Daily personal study, small groups, the
videos, and conversation prayer all received very favorable evaluations despite
being held in physical locations that received very unfavorable evaluations.
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Table 1. Total Positive and Negative
Comments
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Aspect
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Positive
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Negative/Neutral
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Daily
Personal Study
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30
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5
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Small Group Study
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34
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10
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Large Group Event
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30
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5
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Conversational
Prayer
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25
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10
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Room
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13
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23
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Note: Some people
made more than one comment
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This pattern of
results argues for reliable and robust interventions by this well established
program, and suggests that the positive results were not simply a function of
the desire to give positive feedback to the managers of the program. The
managers of the program did not in fact do all the preparation and training,
that were recommended by the program materials, although some had extensive
prior experience with small groups, and some experience with bible study. .
Daily personal study
Although the participants
found daily study rewarding; they found it difficult to find time. However much
expressed this difficulty in a positive fashion with comments like ”really
enjoyed the chapters that I read” “difficulty getting it done, but did enjoy
it” “good discipline to do it on a daily basis” “difficult to fit it, did two
days in one” and “very good, even took the book on vacation.”
Data on how many
actually did it daily are incomplete: 8 persons reporting daily, 6 every other
day, and 4 did cram sessions. This suggests that a more refined measure of
mastery of the discipline of daily personal study might expect about a third to
do it every day, about a third to cram before the weekly group meeting with the
remainder doing it every other day or on several days. However any measures
also need to capture the positive aspects of the struggle not simply the final
results.
The study booklet
was very positively evaluated with 28 positive comments to only none negative.
The questions booklet had 18 positive comments to 8 negative. There were a
variety of questions, and a variety of negatives, e.g. “too basic, like high
school,” “too theoretical unlike life situations” “personal questions surfaced
many negative feelings” but they were
balanced by comments like “ difficult but worked once I got into group” “very
helpful, made you think” “helped focus
the material” etc. The questions booklet plays a pivot role since it is used
both in the daily personal study and in the small group. Deciding what
questions work in either personal or group study may spark a lot of interest,
and therefore function as a natural place to do systematic variation that meets
a researchers theoretical interests.
Small Group Study
The largest number
of positive comments about the small groups were related to the diversity of
opinion and experience present in the groups: “really good listening to other
people with different opinions”, “a lot of people had a lot to offer”, ”very
beneficial to hear everyone’s opinion.” The negatives generally dealt with
process: “dominated by a few people,” “groups needed to stick to the subject,
too much personal experience.” The Little
Rock approach emphasizes adult education rather than a
classroom approach; the last comment expresses the desires of at least some for
a more orderly and formal approach.
Participants were
asked if they knew anyone in their small group before the session. The
responses were about evenly divided between those who said yes (13) and those
who said either no (6) or that they thought someone was a familiar face.(4).
For six of the thirteen who knew someone, that person was a spouse. So at least
for a large parish or congregation, small groups are like to provide people
with an opportunity to expand their social network, and therefore for
researchers to study social capital formation.
For planning
purposes people were asked to choose among the following alternative for a
future ten week session: staying with the same people for all ten sessions
(chosen by 6); being in one group for five weeks, then switching to another
(chosen by 8), be with a different group for each session (chosen by 7). Four
people said that it did not matter. Some
definite expressed a preference for what some researchers have called bonding
capital: “a small group growing closer over the whole ten weeks” “important to
stay with small group for consistency, getting to understand other peoples
styles” “getting to know people and building a tem, family”. Some expressed a
preference for bridging capital: “change and meet other people” “ prefer to
move around” “good to move around and take advantage of all groups.” It would
be a mistake however to categorize people into one or the other type. Many
articulated a desire to do both, i.e. to know people more deeply and also to
know more people. People often expressed a desire to have sufficient choice so that
they could do both. Again there seem to
be many opportunities to study the growth of social networks in these bible
study groups.
Large Group Event
The format of Little
Rock Bible Study provides for a large group event in which the small groups
meet together to hear a video or a lecture which integrates the study material.
The video series provides a good model of contemporary Catholic culture, with a
variety of speakers (priest, religious, layman and lay women, all with varying
interests) doing the speaking. It suggests model the same thing at the parish
level with a variety of approaches among parish ministers. Data were collect
about the involve of the participants in parish ministries. There were a total
of 11 involvement is worship ministries (choir, usher, reader, etc); a total of
31 involvements in faith formation ministries (both children’s and adult); 11
involvements in service ministries (soup kitchen, hospital, bereavement, etc);
7 involvements in administrative ministries (e.g. fund raising). There were
only 4 persons not involved in some form of parish ministry. The data suggest
not only that bible study brings in a wide cross section of the parish, but
also appeals to some parish members who are not already involved in any parish
activities, and therefore could be used to build a parish culture around bible
study.
Conversation Prayer
Participants were
asked what they thought of conversation prayer, and how well they were at
practicing conversational prayer. Some of the responses suggested an orderly,
underlying process in acquiring this skill: “Not my cup of tea” “ I don’t know
that I would be that interested” “Zero, this is not something I am used to
doing, but it is good for others to do for my benefit as well as theirs” “Interesting,
not yet comfortable in doing it myself” “Satisfied with interior participation,
listening to group” “I like it but one
has to be comfortable doing it” “Beautiful to hear everyone saying different
things, but things you can identify with,” “easy to pray with my wife, have to
practice to become comfortable. You can tell a lot about people from their
prayer,” “Confident at home with husband
but not in group” “I do it often with myself and my kids” “Enjoyed it,
gradually got a little more courage to express myself” “ “Very good, from the
heart, uncomfortable at first” Very natural” Very good, lot of Catholics need
this, worthwhile.”
DISCUSSION
The expansion of the
concept of capital has been done with little thinking about its basic meaning
or the relationships among the forms of capital. Many people, especially
religious people are likely to associate capital with Karl Marx and outdated
notions of class struggle. Likewise many might see the capital concept as a way
to turn everything, e.g. humanity, society, culture and now religion and spirituality
into money!
Pierre Bourdieu
(1986) has several helpful insights to help us better conceptualize capital. He
conceptualizes all forms of capital (including that of money) as accumulated
labor. Human labor is something that can be viewed positively by people having either
secular or religious values. Viewing our money, our possessions, our social
networks, our beliefs and values as accumulate human labor (of others as well
as our own) might have practical as well as theoretical value. .
Bourdieu sees the
social world as accumulated history, largely mapped out in terms of the current
distribution of various forms of capital, i.e. the accumulated labor of
mankind. History therefore is not simply the passage of time. Past events are
important, and they have future consequences. While history is cumulative, it
is not simply progress. Bourdieu like Marx knows that capital tends to
accumulate for some people much more than others. Bourdieu, however, like most
neo-capitalist theorists see capital as being more widely distributed than Marx
and persons as having some freedom, although within large constraints that
provide a great deal of inertia because of the ways in which capital has been
and tends to continue to be accumulated.. While Boudieu’s language about history is not explicitly
religious, it is very congenial to the importance that Christianity gives to
history, to human freedom and the consequence of actions, as well as to the
possibility of progress and its inherent difficulties.
Stewardship of one’s
time, talent, and treasure has been a popular topic among religious people. The
four forms of religious capital may be viewed as a more sophisticated understanding
of stewardship that focuses upon long term outcomes rather than current
process. Where is one investing one’s labor?
In what forms of capital is labor being accumulated? What positive
results are occurring for oneself and others from that invested capital?
Our bible study
exemplar suggests that investment in the forms of religious capital and the
relationship among them are likely to be complex. .People varied greatly in
their ability to do daily study. For some, being prepared by daily study led to
greater enjoyment of the small groups, greater attendance and more
relationships. For others who could not invest as much time in personal study,
the group helped them understand the material. For still others, the group
experience gave them alternatives that had not arisen in their own study. Still
others resented people talking too much about themselves rather than the
material. Some became more involved in the parish because of the process.
Others became more prayerful. The bottom line would appear to be that even with
an apparently simple process like bible study, there are multiple ways to accumulate
religious capital.
Little Rock
Scripture study has the research advantage that its format is convenient for
separating out the forms of religious capital because its personal study is
more heavily weighted toward human capital, its small group is more heavily
weighted toward social capital, its large group is more heavily weighted toward
cultural capital, and its conversation prayer is more heavily weighted toward
spiritual capital. The small booklet of study guide questions that bridge the
personal daily study with the small group discussions as well as the large
group lecture appear to be a good point for interventions to modify, improve
and study the experience by focusing upon
human, social, cultural and spiritual capital.
REFERENCES
Becker, G.(1993). Human
Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Reference to
Education (Third Edition). Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Boudieu (1986) “The
Forms of Capital”in Handbook of Theory and Research in for the Sociology of
Education, pp.241-258, edited by J.G. Richardson. Westport: CT. Greenwood, Press.
Coleman, J.S.
(1990). Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press.
Hill, P.C. &
Pargament, K.I. (2003). Advances in the conceptualization and measurement of religion and spirituality. American Psychologist, 58. 64-74.
Smidt, C.
(2003) Religion as Social Capital: Producing the Common Good. Waco, Texas: Baylor University
Press.
Wuthnow, R. 1996. Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and
American’s New Quest for Community. New
York: The Free Press