The black church is influential in shaping health behaviors within African-American communities, yet few use evidence-based strategies for HIV prevention (abstinence, monogamy, condoms, voluntary counseling and testing, and prevention with positives). Using principles of grounded theory and interpretive description, we explored the social…

Through a qualitative study utilizing in-depth interviews, practitioner opinion was gathered regarding how Christian institutions of higher education, primarily Baptist seminaries, may better utilize formal and continuing education to prepare clergy for pastoral leadership. The sample of ten subjects for this study, drawn from the 550 active…

"Emerging: Negotiating Identity in a 21st Century American Seminary" is an ethnographic investigation involving a diverse group of students as they experience their first year of graduate-level theological education at a Protestant seminary in the United States. The study analyzes the observations and student interviews that form the core of the…

A study was conducted of clergy involvement in the Boston school desegregation controversy of the mid-1970's. Data were collected from interviews with a random sample of 75 black and white Protestant and Catholic ministers in Metropolitan Boston. The research, as described in this paper, tests and lends support to the validity of a role reference…