Major Projects
Multicultural Climate Survey drawing winners
The online phase of the Multicultural Climate Survey has been completed as of Saturday, May 9, with 2,127 responses. Here's the final response rate chart:
We are now moving toward collecting paper responses from staff members who do not have regular access to email. Final results of the survey will be shared with the Calvin community in the fall.
Of 50 winners of $20 gift certificates to the Campus Store; only 18 responded to the survey and received their certificate, though. Here are the winners:
| Faculty | Staff | Students |
|---|---|---|
| Margaret Goetz Delvin Ratzsch Jolene Vos-Camy |
Heidi Rienstra Nancy Westra |
Monica Bressler Nathan Elzinga Emily Howell Nicholas Kramer Jessica Leugs Holland Mayer Hope McElroy Kathleen Merz Rachel Mudde Rebecca Timmermans Eric Van Giessen Laura Weglarz Melissa Winegar |
Five winners also enjoyed a lunch with President Byker at the Manor House on Thursday, May 7. The winners were:
- Megan Marie, faculty
Jun Yeb Kim, student
Caleb Kuntz, student
Rachael Mutschler, student
Andrea Sizemore, student
Thanks to all the respondents for your time and attention!
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“Clergy Participation in Local Politics” paper and presentation
Following up on the Gatherings of Hope report for a general public readership, CSR and our research partners are beginning to produce academic studies from the 2007 Kent County Congregations Study. CSR Director Jim Penning will present our paper on "Clergy Participation in Local Politics" at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association; the presentation is part of a panel on clergy activism that will take place at 8:00AM on Friday, April 3.
Key findings from the paper: Kent County clergy are quite active in contacting public officials; about 60 percent of the 496 ordained clergy in the study data said they had contacted a public official about an issue of interest to their congregation. Like other citizens, members of the clergy are strongly influenced by their educational level; those with Master's and doctoral-level education were 22 to 24 percent more likely to contact public officials than those with less than college education; those with Bachelor's-level education were 8 percent more likely.
Congregational context is also important; for example, clergy from congregations with large percentages of high-income persons were dramatically less likely to contact public officials, probably because they do not perceive serious needs to do so; the percentage of theologically liberal participants in the congregation was also an important influence. Clergy serving congregations that experienced internal conflict in the last two years were actually more likely to contact public officials. The paper also models which kinds of officials were contacted (city, state and federal, for example) and what issues the contacts were about. Education was the most frequently cited cause for contacting officials, with much higher levels of contact by clergy from congregations with Black and Hispanic pluralities and near schools with high proportions of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.
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The Clergy & Public Affairs Survey is underway!
The Clergy & Public Affairs Survey is underway! In cooperation with Corwin Smidt, the Henry Institute, and several cooperating scholars, CSR is in the midst of launching a major quadrennial post-presidential-election survey of clergy in several denominations.
We have already mailed surveys to the clergy of many denominations, including the Christian Reformed Church, the Reformed Church of America, the Disciples of Christ, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. As the project progresses, we will continue processing and mailing out surveys to clergy of the remaining denominations. As of February 20, over 300 responses have already arrived, and even more are expected in the coming days! Special thanks to all clergy who have responded and increased our ability to understand and analyze religious thoughts on public affairs.
Please see the FAQ page for more specifics on this project and its collaborators.
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Visualizing vision statements
Happy 2009 from CSR!
An online tool called Wordle is all the rage; we found it after FlowingData gave Wordle honorable mention in its 5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year. We couldn't resist feeding the 55 of the "most quotable" vision statements from respondents to the Kent County Congregations Study into Wordle. Here's the result:
Click the image to see a larger version on Wordle.
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Video from KCCS presentation to religious leaders
Kent County Religious Leaders Symposium on Vimeo.
November 10 was a great day. About 150 religious leaders from 72 diverse congregations in Kent County gathered with other civic, community and academic leaders at the Pinnacle Center in Hudsonville for the Kent County Religious Leaders Symposium. Many participants have suggested further meetings to keep energy high, and efforts to fulfill this wish are under way.
Thanks to Calvin student videographer Kyle Berkompas for recording the event and creating this short video synopsis.
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