Understanding how congregations promote community involvement and prosocial behavior

This dissertation concerns how religious congregations can promote community involvement and prosocial behavior among their attenders. Whereas many studies have sought to understand differences in community involvement and prosocial behavior between religious people and non-religious people, this dissertation focuses on attenders of religious congregations. This focus contributes to the literature on religion, community involvement, and prosocial behavior in a number of ways. First, it helps to explain why some attenders become involved in the community and engage in prosocial behavior, while other attenders do not. Additionally, it investigates how congregational context and activities relate with community involvement and prosocial behavior. This dissertation examines involvement in congregationally sponsored community service activities. Using a sample of attenders and congregations from the 2008/2009 U.S. Congregational Life Survey (USCLS), this dissertation seeks to understand how congregations can encourage their attenders to become involved in these community service activities and whether they can use these activities to encourage attenders to engage in private prosocial behavior, that is, in prosocial behavior that is not through organizations or activities.;I begin this dissertation by introducing its main concepts and by providing an outline of its contributions to the literature (Chapter 1). Next, I discuss the 2008/2009 USCLS and the statistical methods used in this dissertation, including multilevel modeling and multiple imputation (Chapter 2). Following these introductory chapters, I present three empirical chapters. Since congregationally sponsored community service activities are rarely examined in other studies, in the first empirical chapter (Chapter 3), I explore involvement in these activities and describe how involvement in these activities varies among religious traditions. Results from this chapter indicate that Mainline Protestants and Black Protestants are the most likely to be involved in these activities. After exploring involvement in congregationally sponsored community service activities, I turn to understanding why some attenders are involved in these activities while other attenders are not (Chapter 4). The findings suggest that congregational friendships, values/emphases, and context matter for understanding whether attenders are involved in these activities. In the last empirical chapter (Chapter 5), I consider how involvement in congregationally sponsored community service activities relates with private prosocial behavior. Attenders who are involved in these activities are more likely to provide social support, to give charitably, and to be civically engaged. Finally, a concluding chapter (Chapter 6) discusses how congregations can promote community involvement through these activities and use these activities to stimulate private prosocial behavior among attenders.