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Contextual Issues

Information of Demographics and  Trends  

The Gallup Poll

Percept

Census Bureau

American Demographics 

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life

The Pluralism Project - developed by Diana L. Eck at Harvard University to study and document the growing religious diversity of the United States

Religion & Pluralism - a resource guide created in response to suggestions from journalists seeking new, varied, and accessible sources on religion, society, and culture.

Roper Starch Worldwide mission  -  Mission is to shape data into intelligence and to tie research -- thorough, objective, and top quality -- to productive results; includes some research reports

AAPOR - American Association for Public Opinion Research

Survey Research Center - University of California at Berkeley.

ICPSR - Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.

The GSS (General Social Survey) - Personal interview survey of U.S. households by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC);  scientifically relevant data available to the social science research community.

The Culture Page - A variety of links and articles on organizational and international culture

Three World Views - An exploration of values groupings research done by Anderson & Ray. Also see Anderson and Ray's site at  Cultural Creatives  - As of the year 2000, there are 50 million adults in the United States who have the worldview, values and lifestyle of the Cultural Creatives. (There are probably about 80-90 million Cultural Creatives in the European Union as well.)

National Opinion Research Center

Public Agenda -- a public opinion research and citizen education organization; founded by social scientist and author Daniel Yankelovich and former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.

Gospel and Culture

The Salesian Center - approaches faith and culture as being mutually beneficial. Eschewing the sense of superiority implied by a fundamentalist view of faith or a classicist view of culture, the Center adopts as its own the dual outlook fashioned by Pope John Paul II, namely, that "A faith that does not become culture is a faith not fully accepted, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived" and that "The heart of every culture is its approach to the greatest mystery, the mystery of God."

The Von Hugel Institute   - The website for the Von Hugel Institute in Cambridge, dedicated to research in the applications of Catholic social teaching to global justice and peace issues

The Gospel and Our Culture - The network has its origins in the Gospel and Our Culture programme initiated by Lesslie Newbigin in Britain in the 1980's. Today it continues to draw much inspiration from his writings.

Millennium 3 - Millennium-3 is the creation of a group of Episcopal bishops who wish to encourage thoughtful and informed conversation, among all ordained people, about the future of the church in its third millennium.

Maslow Meets Jesus - An adaptation of the psychologist Abraham Maslow's needs hierarchy to the members of a congregation; by  J. Hugh Magers, assisted by Ms. Terry Parsons

Faithworks - A print and electronic magazine for contemporary Christians; To engage Christians in dialogue with their world and empower them to integrate faith and life.

Cohorts

Generations: From Silent, through Boomer and X, to Millennial - Tries to define how the different generations feel, react and what they believe and perceive regarding a wide variety of issues.

Connecting with the post-Boomer generations: a guide to our postmodern context for mainline Christians (Episcopalians especially)

Generation Jones - An unknown generation website

Shoot the Messenger - To engage and interpret popular culture in all its forms; aims to resource and empower those living out and intentionally communicating the Gospel in postmodern society; an alternative critique of popular culture.

Adam Rifkin's Generation X Page - A number of links; "Quite frankly, at the moment I think we're too much in the midst of it all to define ourselves"

GenX Worship - Thoughts on the values of GenX's related to worship

BridgeWorks -  a company dedicated to teaching business owners, marketing executives, and corporate and association audiences about "what happens when the generations collide…in the workplace, in the marketplace, and at home."

Gathering the NeXt Generation - a network of Episcopal Gen Xers. It connects people and resources to further the mission of Christ 

Contextual Issues

Grid for Assessing Contextual Issues

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