Sacred companies : organizational aspects of religion and religious aspects of organizations / edited by N.J. Demerath III [and others].

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Religion is intrinsically social, and hence irretrievably organizational, although organization is often seen as the darker side of the religious experience - power, routinization, and bureaucracy. Religion and secular organizations have long received separate scholarly scrutiny, but until now their confluence has been little considered. This interdisciplinary collection of mostly unpublished papers is the first volume to remedy the deficit. The project grew out of a three-year inquiry into religious institutions undertaken by Yale University's Program on Non-Profit Organizations and sponsored by the Lilly Endowment. The scholars who took part in this effort were challenged to apply new perspectives to the study of religious organizations, especially that strand of contemporary secular organizational theory known as "New Institutionalism." The result was this groundbreaking volume, which includes papers on various aspects of such topics as the historical sources and patterns of U.S. religious organizations, contemporary patterns of denominational authority, the congregation as an organization, and the interface between religious and secular institutions and movements. The contributors include an interdisciplinary mix of scholars from economics, history, law, social administration, and sociology.

The relevance of organization theory to the study of religion / Paul DiMaggio -- Religious groups as crucibles of social movements / Mayer N. Zald & John D. McCarthy -- The corporation sole and the encounter of law and church / Perry Dane -- Institutions and the story of American religion: a sketch of a synthesis / Harry S. Stout & D. Scott Cormode -- Identifying characteristics of "religious" organizations: an exploratory proposal / Thomas H. Jeavons -- Religion and the organizational revolution in the United States / Peter Dobkin Hall -- Does institutional isomorphism imply secularization?: churches and secular voluntary associations in the turn-of-the-century city / D. Scott Cormode -- Ethnocultural cleavages and the growth of church membership in the United States, 1860-1930 / Judith R. Blau, Kent Redding, & Kenneth C. Land -- Snatching defeat from victory in the decline of liberal Protestantism: culture versus structure in institutional analysis / N.J. Demerath III -- Denominations as dual structures: an organizational analysis / Mark Chaves -- The Presbyterian re-formation: pushes and pulls in an American mainline schism / Mark N. Templeton & N.J. Demerath III -- Organizational change in theological schools: dilemmas of ideology and resources / Rhys H. Williams -- Congregational models and conflict: a study of how institutions shape organizational process / Penny Edgell Becker -- four economic models of organization applied to religious congregations / Charles E. Zech -- Why strict churches are strong / Laurence R. Iannaccone -- Beyond mutual and public benefits: the inward and outward orientations of nonprofit organizations / James D. Davidson & Jerome R. Koch -- Religious congregations as nonprofit organizations: four English case studies / Margaret Harris -- Secularization, religion, and isomorphism: a study of large nonprofit hospital trustees / David Swartz -- Church-agency relationships and social service networks in the black community of New Haven / Patricia M.Y. Chang [and others] -- Transformative movements and quasi-religious corporations: the case of Amway / David G. Bromley -- Cultural power: how underdog religious and nonreligious movements triumph against structural odds / Rhys H. Williams & N.J. Demerath III -- Transcending sacred and secular: mutual benefits in analyzing religious and nonreligious organizations / N.J. Demerath III & Terry Schmitt.

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