Graphing work-life balance

I'm a sucker for a good pie chart (good pie too, for that matter).

Here's one that graphs out how much time we spend with various activities in our lives.

Thanks Ken!

Saturday stuff

Well, Gus finished 9th grade this week, and he had a pool party to celebrate. He invited over a group of 12 friends who included.... girls. Yep, he invited girls to all his parties through about 5th grade, but then something happened. I think they got cooties, but I'm not sure. Well, they seem to have recovered and are now on the friend list again.

Cathy pointed out the significance of this in our party planning--we needed to buy veggies and dip, not just the usual junk. We also had to order a cheese pizza to go along with the usual meat-lovers.

Gus is now a sophomore. Ugh... I can remember my sophomore year--all too well.

Floyd watched a film involving someone who is homeless. He thought about it, and then declared that if he was homeless and really hungry, he might have to eat rotten raccoon. (I'm not sure where this reference came from, but I'm worried that it's code for my cooking.)

I got a new computer at work, an iMac, and it's really fun. The difference between Macs and PCs isn't that great anymore (compared to the original mac vs. ms-dos), but it's still fun to use.

Review of UnChristian: Reaction to it

(Part 3 in a series)

The book UnChristian was realized at the end of 2007, and it has already generated its a lot of attention.

The book has been noticed in the mainstream media. Here's an interview with Gabe Lyons on CNN news, which calls the book a "wake-up call to a lot of pastors around the country when they want to reach young people."





Throughout the blogsphere, writers have testified to its impact on them. It:
- is life changing.
- has caused them lose sleep.
- is a wake-up call to Christians.
- is a prophetic call to the church.
- causes self-examination.
- is provocative and impressive
- is challenging

Why, the book even has its own website now.

Given the amount of attention that it has garnered, it's worth asking if it's right? Does Christianity have an image problem with non-believers?

Next: What works well

Review of UnChristian: Summary of findings

(Part 2 in a series)

It seems that many of the statistics discussed by Christians revolve around one of two issues:

1) Christians are not very Christian (an example)

2) The Church is rapidly declining (an example)

This book, UnChristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons is a variation on the first theme. It holds that people outside of the church, especially young people, view Christians as acting in an unChristian manner. They write that "Christianity has an image problem," and this book details the specifics of this problem.

The authors base their study on data collected by the Barna Group, which Kinnaman heads. They don't give a lot of details about how they collected their data, but they appear to have collected a nationwide phone survey that included 440 respondents who did not fit Barna's definition of being a born-again Christian. As I've discussed elsewhere, this definition includes people who agree with a couple of theological statements, regardless of whether they define themselves as Christian or whether they attend a church. This definition excludes people not affiliated with a religion, affiliated with non-Christian religions, and many non-Evangelical Christians, including Catholics and mainline Protestants.

Based on interviewing these 440 non-Evangelicals, the authors conclude that the Evangelical church and its members are thought of very poorly. One-third to one-half of the sample had a bad impression of Christianity, Evangelical Christians, and Born-Again Christians (p. 25). These apparent bad feelings stem from six broad impressions about Christians (p. 29).

The 440 respondents identified Christians as:
- Hypocritical (saying one thing and doing another)
- Too focused on getting converts (viewing people as targets)
- Antihomosexual (bigoted)
- Sheltered (old fashioned, boring, and out of touch with reality)
- Too political (motivated by conservative political agenda)
- Judgmental (quick to judge others)

These negative perceptions alter how people interact with Christians and their willingness to become Christians themselves (p. 11).

The majority of the book unpacks these themes, addressing one per chapter. It also uses the insights of the authors as well as various Christian leaders in how Christians can get these perceptions.

Next: Reactions to UnChristian.

Why do prisoners convert to Christianity?

I came across an article "Why God Is Often Found Behind Bars: Prison Conversions and the Crisis of Self-Narrative." (Citation)

The authors interviewed 75 prisoners who had converted to religion in prison, and the resulting narratives had several themes:.

As summarized in the abstract, prisoners converted because:
- creates a new social identity to replace the label of prisoner or criminal,
- imbues the experience of imprisonment with purpose and meaning,
- empowers the largely powerless prisoner by turning him into an agent of God,
- provides the prisoner with a language and framework for forgiveness, and
- allows a sense of control over an unknown future.

Interesting. Some of them are similar to conversion narratives from the general population. The one about forgiveness seems particularly suited for the prison situation.

Review of unChristian:What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters, by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons

Part 1 in a multipart review

Today I’m starting a review of David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyon’s book, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters.

Kinneman is the president of the Barna Group, whose research I have blogged about before. Lyons is the head of the Fermi Project, a group dedicated to “working together to make positive contributions to culture.” (Hard to argue with that).

I’ve had several readers of this blog suggest reviewing this book because it’s had a high profile in the Evangelical world, and it relies heavily on survey data, something I that frequently write about.

In engaging this book, I will focus mostly on the question of whether we can believe its findings. An alternative approach, taken elsewhere, assumes the findings to be accurate and focuses on their implications. I’ll leave that question to Church leaders, and I’ll simply take a more-fundamental research-methods approach to critiquing this book.

I offer my standard disclaimer about cultural norms in academia regarding critiques. For whatever reason, academics view critical attention as something to be valued, and so our offering it, as I do here, represents appreciation for the work in question. Put differently, if I didn’t think that this book had any value, I probably wouldn’t bother writing about it.

My hope is that after this series, readers of unChristian will have a better sense of what they can and can't learn from it.

I'll also use this review as occasion to look more generally at perceptions of Christianity, using data available in various data sets.

Let me know if you have any specific questions about the book--I'll see if I can answer them.

Next: Methods & findings

Gender and sailing

Floyd, being a Cub Scout, is taking part in a sailing regatta. This involves building a small, wooden sailboat and letting it float around a pond with other boats.

Well, in building it, Floyd took several minutes to put it together, but he then took a long time in sharpening the front of the boat. He sanded the wood very carefully to get it "razor sharp", in his words.

Cathy and I were sitting there when he announced what he was doing. We both saw only one possible explanation for it, and our explanations were different.

Cathy thought Floyd was sharpening the bow so that the boat could move through the water more efficiently.

I thought he was sharpening it so that it could properly ram other boats.

Guess who was right? :-)

Graphic hang gliding footage (vid)

My brother was up for the weekend hang gliding, and he put together this video of his flying.

I spent the time as "ground crew" since I don't have my own glider yet. That's me holding on to the glider as we drive up the hill.

Somehow my brother has become a really good videographer in addition to hang glider pilot...

Man slain in spirit, falls, and sues

From thesmokinggun.com:

JUNE 5--Last June, Matthew Lincoln was attending an evening service at his nondenominational Tennessee church when he approached the altar where a visiting minister was offering individual prayers for parishioners. Assigned "catchers" were present on the altar in case congregants fainted, fell, or otherwise lost control. When the minister, Robert Lavala, slightly touched his forehead, the Knoxville-area man "received the spirit and fell backwards." Except nobody was there to catch him, Lincoln charges in a $2.5 million lawsuit filed yesterday against Lakewind Church and its pastors. Lincoln, 58, claims that he fell backwards, striking his head against the "carpet-covered cement floor," according to the Circuit Court complaint, which was first reported by Courthouse News Service. A copy of Lincoln's lawsuit can be found below. Since he already suffered from a "degenerative disc disease of his neck and back," Lincoln, a former church board member, contends the fall exacerbated the pre-existing condition and has caused him "severe and permanent" injuries. As a result of the fall, Lincoln, a recording engineer, claims that he is no longer able to care for his disabled daughter. Lincoln alleges that Lakewind and its pastors were "negligent in not supervising the catchers to be sure that they stood behind the person being prayed for...should they have a dizzying, fainting, or falling in the spirit as had occurred on many occasions before." Lincoln's lawyer, J.D. Lee, told TSG that the church's insurer, Zurich of North America, rejected an insurance claim, asserting that Lincoln should have realized that no catchers were situated behind him. (5 pages).

****

Believe it or not, I've actually wondered what would happen in situations like this. I suppose that churches should start offering legal representation for healing services...

Saturday stuff

No Saturday stuff this week because I'm up in New Hampshire with my brother hang gliding...

Um, I think that you have something to tell me, part II

Last week I posted about a terrifyingly effective method of obtaining confessions in romantic relationships.

Well... it gets worse. Law enforcement officials have discovered this method too.

Earlier this week I was driving up to New Hampshire to go hang gliding. It's about 2.5 hours away, and within a couple miles of the hill, I passed a very slow driver in a double-yellow-line section of the road. I looked up to see a police car with its lights on several cars behind me, and I knew I was busted.

I pulled over, the police officer came to the window, and what did he ask? "Do you know why I pulled you over?" Yes, an ambiguous prompting to confession, just like "um, I think that you have something to tell me." And it worked well, very well.

I laughed and said that I passed a car on a double-yellow line. He agreed and turned to go back to his car, but I wasn't done confessing.

I told him that I was also driving too fast, and that I passed that car because I was approaching it too quickly and didn't want to slam on my brakes.

He grunted and went back to his car, probably hoping that that would stop the confessions.

When he came back, returning my license and registration, he said that "driving too fast is always the wrong answer" but that he appreciated my honesty, so he was just giving me a warning.

For once my utter inability to keep a secret worked out well....

More on religion and giving

Michael Kruse posted an interesting review of Who Really Cares by Arthur Brooks regarding Christian giving, and he wrote the following in a comment of a previous post of mine. As usual, Micheal is saying good things:

Arthur Brooks wrote: "First, imagine two people: One goes to church every week and strongly rejects the idea that it is government’s responsibility to redistribute income between people who have a lot of money and people who don’t. The other person never attends a house of worship, and strongly believes that the government should reduce income differences. Knowing only these things, the data tell us that the first person will be roughly twice as likely as the second to give money to charities in a given year, and will give away more than one hundred times as much money per year (as well as fifty times more to explicitly nonreligious causes).

Or take two other people who are identical with respect to household incomes, education, age, sex, and race. One receives assistance from the government in the form of housing support, welfare payments, or food stamps; does not belong to a house of worship; and is a single parent. The second is a working poor person (although his or her total household income is just as low as the first person’s, he or she does not receive government assistance), belongs to a house of worship, and is a married parent. According to the data, the second person will be, on average, more than seven times as likely to make a donation to charity each year." (10-11)

Michael Kruse wrote: "Brooks reports that the key indicator of giving is not political affliation but weekly attendance at worship. Conservative and liberal weekly attenders are the highest givers although conservatives give slightly more.

The thesis that conservatives are so other worldly they don't give doesn't hold up in his analysis. In fact, I'd suggest the operative issue might be that liberals believe it is government's role to provide for the poor so they don't believe they should have to give. Justice and benevolence toward the poor is expressed through collective taxation rather than personal giving."

Passing the Plate, a book preview

Christian Smith is coming out with what sounds like a fascinating book on Christian giving. Here's the summary from Amazon (I don't know the release date). Sounds like it takes an almost applied approach to why Christians don't give more money, pointing out all the good that can be done if they did and suggesting ways of increasing it.

From an applied perspective, the question of "why don't Christians give more" is more interesting than "do they give more than other groups."

"Passing the Plate shows that few American Christians donate generously to religious and charitable causes--a parsimony that seriously undermines the work of churches and ministries. Far from the 10 percent of one's income that tithing requires, American Christians' financial giving typically amounts, by some measures, to less than one percent of annual earnings. And a startling one out of five self-identified Christians gives nothing at all.

This eye-opening book explores the reasons behind such ungenerous giving, the potential world-changing benefits of greater financial giving, and what can be done to improve matters. If American Christians gave more generously, say the authors, any number of worthy projects--from the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS to the promotion of inter-religious understanding to the upgrading of world missions--could be funded at astounding levels.

Analyzing a wide range of social surveys and government and denominational statistical datasets and drawing on in-depth interviews with Christian pastors and church members in seven different states, the book identifies a crucial set of factors that appear to depress religious financial support--among them the powerful allure of a mass-consumerist culture and its impact on Americans' priorities, parishioners' suspicions of waste and abuse by nonprofit administrators, clergy hesitations to boldly ask for money, and the lack of structure and routine in the way most American Christians give away money.

In their conclusion, the authors suggest practical steps that clergy and lay leaders might take to counteract these tendencies and better educate their congregations about the transformative effects of generous giving.

By illuminating the social and psychological forces that shape charitable giving, Passing the Plate is sure to spark a much-needed debate on a critical issue."

Thanks Jeremy for the heads-up.

Does religion make you happier?

Here is an interesting thread of discussion about religion and happiness (sent to me by David... Thanks!).

Arthur Brooks, in his book Gross National Happiness, makes the empirical observation that in the U.S. there is a positive correlation between religious involvement and happiness.

Will Wilkinson in a review says that's true, but the religion-happiness link is not universal. In Europe there is no correlation.

Ross Douthat, of the Atlantic, frames the issue as one of religious culture. The U.S. has a stronger religious culture, and so being outside of it causes alienation and less happiness. Not so in Europe.

I don't know the literature well enough to evaluate this discussion, but it raises interesting issues about the effects of religion and how it might vary by culture.

Don't play at church

It's official. If you're going to do church, don't just play at it. Someone could get hurt!

(Thanks Jay!)

A story about Christian giving

Here's a story that more accurately reflects my approach to giving...

Preacher:" Brother Brown,I want to make sure you understood my sermon on charity today. If you had two farms, and Brother White had no means of support, wouldn't you give him one of your farms?"

Brother Brown: "I most certainly would."

Preacher: "What if you had two tractors, and Brother White had no way to harvest his crop. Wouldn't you give him one of your tractors?"

Brother Brown: "Why, sure I would."

Preacher: "What if you had two horses and Brother White's only horse died. Wouldn't you give him one of your horses?"

Brother Brown: "Well, no. You see, I have two horses."

(from Dahl and Ransom)

Saturday stuff

Floyd and I were watching Indiana Jones (the first one) on video, and Floyd had a funny moment of disbelief. In an early scene where Indy is first going off to find the ark, he shows his boss how ready he is for trouble by packing a gun in his suitcase. In the next scene he gets on an airplane. Floyd's started response: "Dad, he's taking a gun on an airplane!"

A fundamental lesson in hang gliding is to always strap yourself in to the glider before you launch. (Bad things happen when you don't). French skydiver Michel Fournier was going to set a world altitude record by jumping from 130,000 feet. Problem is, the balloon took off with out him. Oops.

Over the past few years, I have been regrading our yard with a shovel and wheelbarrow. It's a pretty big yard, so it's taking awhile. At this point, I've had 100+ cubic yards delivered, and a couple dozen more dug up from one place and dumped to another. Well... I got 14 more yards delivered last week, and the only thing that surprised me was how happy it made me to have more dirt. Another sign of aging?

Ben Byerly continues to post good stuff about race and religion and culture and religion.

Brian Jones, a remarkably prolific blogger, has a series worth reading: Blog Series Pastors Gone Wild-- most of them are things I hadn't really thought of (plus, a great title!)

Do Christians give more to the poor?

One of the pastors at our church is doing a (very good) sermon series on finances, and he asked me to look up some data for him. That got me to thinking again about money and Christianity...

Periodically people ask if Christians are more generous with their money, and one of the stonger answers to this question comes from Regnerus, Smith, and Sikkink (1998, "Who gives to the poor).

They examined data from a study of about 2,000 Americans, and the study asked respondents who much money they gave to organizations which help the poor. There were three possible answers: “A lot”, “some”, and “none.” They found that Christians gave more than non-religious, and the more that Christians attended church, the more they gave. Members of other religions gave more, though it's unclear which religions are represented in this category.

TABLE 1 GIVING MONEY TO ORGANIZATIONS WHICH HELP THE POOR AND NEEDY (WITHIN LAST TWO YEARS) (IN PERCENT)

Gave a lot some none

Protestant:

Fundamentalist 22.6 67.8 9.6

Evangelical 28.7 62.4 8.8

Mainline 21.9 68.5 9.6

Liberal 24.6 59.9 15.6

"Other" 20.6 56.6 22.9

Lower-attendance 19.0 69.2 11.8

Catholic:

Higher-attendance 22.4 71.7 5.9

Lower-attendance 7.5 73.7 18.8

All other religious 44.6 49.0 6.4

Nonreligious 9.5 77.7 12.9

A small thing...

Gus showed this to me yesterday, and while I realize that it's not significant in the larger scheme of things, it's had me chuckling all day.

1) Go to Google

2) Type "French military victories"

3) Hit the "I'm feel lucky" button. (Doesn't work with the "Google search" button).


:-)

Um, I think that you have something to tell me...

Under the heading of things that really, really scare me:

I was talking with a couple students at the end of the semester. They had stopped by my office to drop off their papers, and we ended up chatting for about an hour. (It made me realize how rarely I get to talk with students more than about the immediate concerns of the class). Not surprisingly, for college students, they started talking about romantic relationships.

One of the students told of this strategy that she uses in her relationships. Periodically, she will put on a disapproving face, be very serious, and tell the guy that they need to talk. She then says: "I think that you have something that you need to tell me."

The guy, being a guy, figures she knows everything, and he immediately starts confessing everything he's done wrong.

Here's my question: Is this legal? Aren't there rules about what can and can't be done in relationships? It's like the superpowers agree not to use poison gas in war because that's just going too far.

I am deeply thankful that 1) I've never encountered this strategy, and 2) my wife is busy at work this week, so she won't see this post.