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250 12 Conclusions Religious Leadership and Civic Social Capital ALEX STEPICK, SARAH J. MAHLER, AND TERRY REY Through case studies of Christian congregations and a survey of college freshmen , this volume has examined the relationships between civic engagement and religion for immigrants and African Americans. Through the concept of civic social capital (CSC), it most fundamentally addresses these relationships within the context of the social and cultural transformation of U.S. society in the wake of the largest influx of immigrants in its history. CSC focuses on social capital that specifically ties individuals to the larger civic society in which they are embedded. We created this concept to overcome what we view as deficiencies in the ways others have extended but also muddled the notion of social capital. For sociologists, the concept is an extension of economists ’ notions of financial and human capital. The original and still primary use of social and the other forms of capital has been to explain individual economic achievement. The political scientist Robert Putnam, however, employed the same phrase but theorized it fundamentally differently. His formulation emphasized the social capital of communities, not individuals; and he was more concerned with the general civic life of a community than with economic achievement. We share Putnam’s interest in civic relations, but we seek to develop a concept that avoids the communalistic pitfalls of his application of the term “social capital.” In this vein we employ the term “civic social capital” (CSC) largely to shift focus away from social capital’s emphasis on economic benefits to individuals toward activities that are civic. Since this is a volume of primarily ethnographic studies and the first attempt to analyze civic social capital, we employed a broad, inclusive definition of “civic” activities, one not limited only to participation in electoral politics. We have sought to reveal empirically a range of civic relationships and, in particular , to understand why some congregations turn inward and others reach out. That is, while congregations are known to generate bonding social capital CONCLUSIONS 251 to help members deal with their problems, we were particularly interested in understanding what causes congregations to engage in activities that bridge and link them to people and institutions beyond themselves. In this chapter, we integrate the findings of the empirical chapters to construct theoretical generalizations concerning the relationships between civic engagement and religion for immigrants and African Americans. A Typology of CSC The volume’s congregational case studies and chapter on the survey of college freshmen reveal an array of CSC activities that can be located on a continuum that measures social distance. The continuum begins with activities that bond those who are socially and religiously similar and then moves to activities that bridge and link people who are different in the greater Miami community and, further afield, beyond Miami and the United States. Each congregational case study examines the different types of social capital—bonding, bridging, and linking. Every congregation demonstrates some form or forms of bonding social capital. While bonding can be considered to have a civic element in that one may bond or come together with people one did not know before and who may be different in some ways, bridging and linking social capital, by definition, are more civic; they join people who are socially and possibly religiously different. Many congregations examined in this volume exhibited bridging CSC. Importantly but not surprisingly, fewer congregations are involved in civic social activities that create linking social capital to organizations that provide access to material power and resources. Clearly, some congregations and some individuals display far more CSC than others. Each chapter includes explanations for the author’s findings, but they add up to more than a sum of particularistic conclusions. In table ., we offer a typology that organizes our empirical findings on two dimensions: () geographic focus and () categories of civic social activities that also reflect different types of social capital. As in all typologies, exceptions and nuances in the data are underplayed in order to show predominant patterns. Bonding Social Capital: Social and Congregational Activities An important concept in religion is the axis mundi, the locus of a group, around which the group orders the rest of the world. For immigrants who have gone through complex processes of geographic, social, and cultural uprooting and transplanting, there is a powerful need for a rudder that stays firm despite passage through turbulent seas. We have observed in all the congregations studied and in the youth survey as well that religion...

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