Excellence in leadership is not about perfection but about a relentless commitment to growth, integrity, and service. It is a reflection of God’s glory. Godly leaders do not settle for mediocrity; they pursue excellence because their work is ultimately an offering to God.

Drawing from my professional history as Christian University sociology faculty and senior administrator,, the book analyzes the role of fear in Christian Universities and offers an alternative path forward in a changing culture.

Claiming Citizenship focuses on Indian American civic and political activism in the U.S. public sphere around U.S.-based and India-based issues. Indian Americans are a rising political force whose patterns of activism do not follow the unified model of mobilization of other powerful American ethnic groups. The book presents an excellent template to understand how religion, national identity, race, and pan-ethnicity interact in ethnic politics, in addition to examining the role that generational status plays in determining some of these patterns.

In recent years, the relevance of religious freedom has spread well beyond academia, becoming a reference point for international relations, multi-level policy development, as well as interfaith negotiations. Meanwhile, scholarship on religious freedom has flourished on the boundaries of sociology, law, comparative politics, history, and theology. This book presents a systematic sociological analysis of religious freedom, bringing together classical sociological theories and empirical perspectives developed during the last three decades. It addresses three major questions involved in any sociology of religious freedom. First: considering its complex and controversial nature, how can religious freedom be defined? Second: what are the recurrent sociological conditions and relevant social perceptions that will foster an understanding of religious freedom in varying political, legal, and socioreligious contexts? And third, what are the mechanisms of social implementation of religious freedom that contribute to making it a fundamental value in a society? Olga Breskaya, Giuseppe Giordan, and James T. Richardson suggest that a sociological definition of religious freedom requires us to take into account historical, philosophical, legal, religious, and political considerations of a given society-and that the social dimensions of religious freedom are as important as the legal ones.

To fully understand American Christianity, it’s essential to understand Robert Schuller. The Church Must Grow or Perish: Robert H. Schuller and the Business of American Christianity examines Schuller’s indelible imprint on the American church, and how he developed a model of ministry—both lauded and critiqued—that transformed Christian life and community across this country. Schuller’s story is the starting point for powerful trends that continue to shape much of American religion today: televangelism, seeker-sensitive outreach, megachurches, the suburbanization of white Christianity, pastoral entrepreneurship, and market-oriented Christianity in pursuit of growth. Authors Mark T. Mulder and Gerardo Martí explore Schuller’s drive to develop a theology, a persona, and a set of practices that he believed were necessary to keep Christianity vibrant long into the future. They trace Schuller’s career arc from his beginnings as an Iowa farm boy to his years as a charismatic Southern California preacher—one who believed that in order for the church to thrive, pastoral leaders needed to borrow from the best practices of big business, including the entertainment industry. This fascinating biography is essential reading for those who want to fully understand a transformative force in American Christianity.

This article, appearing on page 73 of the winter 2024/2025 issue of "The Arrow" journal, presents an author's memoir of an Imagine Peace musical storytelling project, against a backdrop of more than 70 years of life investigating different faith traditions.

This book explores the intersection of advocacy and academic practice within the social sciences, focusing on the ethical dimensions and potential consequences of researchers engaging in political action on behalf of the groups they study. Investigating the ethical and practical implications of advocacy in academic work, specifically within the social sciences. It examines how scholars, guided by their research and vision for social change, engage politically to support the groups they study. The book addresses the debate surrounding academic advocacy: is it harmful or a necessary pursuit? Through a detailed study of a historical advocacy movement, it analyzes the global campaign to gain legitimacy for new religious movements (NRMs) between 1980 and 2000. It is an important read for scholars of New Religious Movements and those interested in the way religion is studied.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2025, Vol.92 (2), p.251-275

Since the turn of the new century, the ethnic Chinese population in France has become increasingly heterogeneous in migratory trajectory and socioeconomic profile. Accordingly, the focus on economic activities among tight-knit groups in the traditional model of an ethnic enclave economy might not be adequate to capture new developments in Chinese entrepreneurship that also involve transnational religious practises. Drawing on a multi-year ethnographic study of the Chinese Christian community in Paris—a major business centre of Chinese wholesale products in Europe, this article explores the Chinese congregational life in one of the most secularised areas of Europe in order to provide an alternative explanation for the relationship of religion and Chinese entrepreneurship. It shows that the main stakeholders spearheading diasporic church growth are those first-generation male Chinese family entrepreneurs who place paramount emphasis on maintaining ethnic cultural roots and a traditional patriarchal social order. The image of Chinese Christian entrepreneurs with both intense economic aspirations and religious zeal navigating daily life in diaspora provides a timely counterpoint to the popular view of global Chinese migrants as purely economic agents.

This article sheds new light on the diverse modes in which migration and religion intersect in shaping everyday transnational practices by exploring the articulations of religion and business migration in an emerging Chinese-led transnational mission field. Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Wenzhou, Rome and Paris, I show how a large group of transnational Chinese merchants has adopted a vigorous homegrown evangelical Christianity as the spiritual and social anchor of their territorial mercantile culture in diaspora. These merchants have actively engaged in producing religious activities and events that link China to Europe and in resacralizing secular real estate and attaching evangelistic meanings to Europe's historic urban spaces. For rural-originated migrants who embrace a global hierarchy of places, the evangelical discursive distinction between the mundane and the transcendent spheres finds expression in their perceived opposition between the peripheral local and the modern global centre in the global market economy. © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Abstract: Using a national opinion survey conducted in 2009 in Kyrgyzstan, we focused on responses from ethnic Kyrgyz respondents in the south where major riots between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks occurred in 1990 and 2010. We performed latent class analyses on these responses to assign Kyrgyz into Muslim religiosity categories and construct a social distance scale to measure Kyrgyz’ levels of acceptance of Uzbeks living in Kyrgyzstan. We discovered that, in spite of ongoing unresolved interethnic grievances in the south, Kyrgyz who were members of the highly active Muslim religiosity category exhibited a significantly higher probability for accepting the closest relations (kin through marriage) with Uzbeks than Kyrgyz who were members of the non-religious category. Because other researchers indicated that religion did not play any role in causing the riots in 2010, we believe that Muslim religiosity could potentially play a role in developing beneficial relations between these ethnic groups.

Despite their lack of religious belief, many choose to engage in this practice, often seen as a typical representation of Jewish physical embodiment. This study delves into meaning ascribed to their seemingly counterintuitive choice. The findings suggest that religious knowledge and identity can be derived from the marking of the body, rather than a declaration of faith.

An article by Jeremy Senn and Jörg Stolz in sociological science gives a new explanation for "loose coupling" of stated policies and actual congregational behaviour regarding female religious leadership.

Congregations are story-telling communities. The stories they tell, which link a community's past, present, and future, can play an important role in whether a congregation flourishes or not. "The Stories Congregations Tell" features detailed case study research from seven dynamic Canadian congregations across theological traditions and geographical regions. Readers will encounter narratives that congregations tell themselves through a myriad of congregational and social transitions, accounts that shape how congregations interpret, frame, approach, and ultimately flourish in ministry. On the surface congregational descriptions appear specific to local contexts. Yet, cultural analysis reveals several commonalities across distinct congregational cultures that appear resilient in the face of challenge and change. These factors include visionary leadership, clear congregational identity rooted in spiritual formation, hospitable community among members, and intentional systems and structures oriented toward a congregation's mission. This book offers social scientific analysis and theological reflection on the stories congregations tell and the function those stories play for a congregation's culture, along with practical and hopeful applications to arise from this research.

Preaching Social Issues equips preachers to craft sermons that help congregations talk about topics of public concern based on strong biblical and theological foundations and prudent sermonic strategies. Informed by years of research with clergy and congregations, Schade provides practical and pastoral guidance for preachers to find their prophetic voice for their context with integrity and wisdom. Preaching Social Issues offers an assessment tool for gauging risk and capacity for preaching about social issues and suggests three approaches – Gentle, Invitational, and Robust – and includes strategies, tactics, and case studies that illustrate different approaches for preaching about contemporary topics.

Based on a national survey of 1500+ American Catholics and nearly sixty interviews with Catholic leaders (broadly construed to include cardinals, leaders of lay apostolates, USCCB staff, etc.), Catholicism at a Crossroads looks at the way everyday Catholics and their leaders are engaging with experiences of parish life and perceptions of the institutional Church, moral authority, race and racism, civic and political attitudes and engagement, sexuality and family, and then some longitudinal trends (this is the most recent survey in a series that began in the 1980s).