Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

This research presented here is the product of a data set drawn from an undergraduate course designed to encourage students to create, reshape and identify the core components of what they would consider an ideal or essential community. Ranging three concurrent semesters of teaching with nearly two hundred students involved, this study reveals the identification of the church as a significant institution in building community cohesion. In doing so, students do not identify such in religious or faith-based context, but rather as a central community center used for building social capital. The fundamental question at the core of this research seeks to understand what bearing churches, as social institutions, have on a citizen’s political involvement, and to what extent membership involvement helps to build social trust and tolerance of other groups in society. This study also considers various denominational factors in correlating community involvement and outreach. Given the participation of an emerging generation of adults, there is a potential inquiry into Robert Putnam’s finding that a decline in religious affiliation was a contributing factor to the demise of social capital in American society.