United Methodist Church polity bars "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" from ordination and prohibits same-sex wedding celebrations in their churches or by their clergy. Recently, the consequences for disobeying church polity have increased in severity and the denomination is expected to split. This paper profiles three churches who…

Informed by interpretive phenomenological analysis and sociocultural theory, this study examines the language experiences of seven Methodist youth. Analysis of 9 months of observations and 30 interviews yielded a set of experiences that represent the intimacy and complexity of youths' religious discourses. As an essential feature of this…

Previous research has demonstrated that individual religious beliefs and practices are associated with educational outcomes. However, less is known about the manner in which the overall religious cultural influence of a religion can affect an individual's educational aspirations. Using multilevel analyses on two waves of the National Study of…

Drawing on social and cultural perspectives of literacy, conceptualizations of religious literacies, and Gee's notion of Discourses, I develop a framework for exploring 16 Latter-day Saint and Methodist youths' religious literacies as social and cultural practice. This work grows out of the increasingly important role that religion plays…

Corporal punishment has been the focus of considerable study over the past decade. Some recent research suggesting that the use of corporal punishment may have significant long-term negative effects on children has prompted increasing exploration and interest in the issue. We used tobit regression analysis and data from the 2000 National…

An attempt was made to describe the experience of Christian religious education for its participants. This research is both ethnographic and hermeneutic. Thick descriptions gathered from ethnographic methods like participant observation, in-depth interviews, and journal keeping served as text for analysis. Weekly visits of one to four hours were…