Resources for Congregational Visit Paper

Anatomy of an Empirical Research Paper

  1. Introduction (establish what you are doing, the research question, and major conclusions)
  2. Literature Review (situate your work in a conversation)
  3. Theory (your explanation and expectations)
  4. Data and Methods (how you collect and analyze data)
  5. Results
  6. Discussion and conclusion

What Should this Paper Include?

  1. Introduction (establish what you are doing, the research question, and major conclusions)
  2. Importance of looking at congregational life
  3. Methodology (how are you tackling the initial question?)
  4. The congregation you are visiting and its religious tradition (provide some background on the congregation and its religious tradition - use data
  5. Expectations (what do you think you will find?)
  6. Results (describe what you found during the service)
  7. Discussion (do your results match your initial expectations?)
  8. Conclusion (what do you think your results tell you about political stimuli in churches? Discuss limitations and ways to overcome them in future research)

Brewer et al.’s Classification

To ensure that we can compare our data with the rest of the class, we will be using the same classification of Brewer et al. (2003). The classification is as follows: \

  1. Category 1: passing/bland mentions of sociopolitical topics but no real engagement (not central to the service)
  2. Category 2: explicit mentions of sociopolitical topics but no call to action (e.g., prayers for elected officials)
    • 2SJ: Social justice messages, whether it be with a person-to-person or person-to-society focus
    • 2PM: Personal morality messages
    • General messages like prayers or divine guidance for government officials
  3. Category 3: explicit mentions of sociopolitical issues with explicit call to action - 3P: Calls to political action (i.e., voting, contacting elected officials, attending a protest) - 3S: Calls to social action (i.e., visiting the elderly, feeding the homeless, environmental work, etc.)

Classification of Protestant Denominations

If you attend the religious service of a Protestant denomination, make sure to identify it as either mainline or evangelical Protestant. You can use Pew’s website to help you classify it.