A Social Network Analysis of Friendship and Spiritual Support in a Religious Congregation.

Religious congregations are social settings where people gather together in community to pursue the sacred (Pargament, 2008). Such settings are important to understand as they provide a context for individuals to develop relationships, share ideas and resources, and connect individuals to larger society (Todd, 2017a). Yet, research to date has not deeply examined the inherently relational nature of religious congregations. Thus, in this study, we used social settings theory (Seidman, 2012; Tseng & Seidman, 2007) to develop and test hypotheses about relationships within one Christian religious congregation. In particular, we used social network analysis to test hypotheses about relational activity, popularity, and homophily for friendship and spiritual support types of relational links. Our findings demonstrate how relational patterns may be linked to participation in congregational activities, occupying a leadership role, a sense of community and spiritual satisfaction, stratification, socialization, and spiritual support. Overall, this advances theory and research on the relational aspects of religious congregations, and more broadly to the literature on social settings. Limitations, directions for future research, and implications for theory and religious congregations also are discussed.

Social justice and religious participation: a qualitative investigation of Christian perspectives.

This investigation examines how self-identified Christians in the Midwest U.S. understand and work for social justice, with a focus on their process of social justice development and the role of religious congregations in promoting social justice. Using a grounded theory analysis of 15 in-depth interviews, results indicated multiple understandings of social justice such as meeting basic needs, fixing social structures and systems to create equal distributions of resources, promoting human rights and dignity, and as a religious responsibility. Participants also described a process of social justice development facilitated by exposure to injustice, mentors, educating others, and the importance of finding a social justice community. Distinct personal barriers to social justice engagement were identified such as resources and negative emotions, whereas congregational leadership was important for congregational involvement. General frustration with congregations was expressed regarding low social justice engagement; however, participants balanced this frustration with hope for the positive potential of congregations to promote social justice. Together these findings show multifaceted understandings of social justice and a dynamic process of social justice development for these self-identified Christians. Implications for future research and partnership with religious individuals and congregations also are discussed.

Counseling psychology trainees' perceptions of training and commitments to social justice.

This mixed methods study examined social justice commitments of counseling psychology graduate trainees. In the quantitative portion of the study, a national sample of trainees (n = 260) completed a web-based survey assessing their commitments to social justice and related personal and training variables. Results suggested that students desired greater social justice training than what they experienced in their programs. In the qualitative portion, we used a phenomenological approach to expand and elaborate upon quantitative results. A subsample (n = 7) of trainees who identified as strong social justice activists were interviewed regarding their personal, professional, and training experiences. Eleven themes related to participants' meanings of and experiences with social justice emerged within 4 broad categories: nature of social justice, motivation for activism, role of training, and personal and professional integration. Thematic findings as well as descriptive statistics informed the selection and ordering of variables in a hierarchical regression analysis that examined predictors of social justice commitment. Results indicated that trainees' perceptions of training environment significantly predicted their social justice commitment over and above their general activist orientation and spirituality. Findings are discussed collectively, and implications for training and future research are provided.