Determining Frames of Reference for Religiously Based Organizations: A Case of Neo-Alinsky Efforts to Mobilize Congregational Resources

Abstract

This article provides an organizational analysis that addresses the challenge of studying community-based groups lacking the characteristics of formal, rational organizations, doing so through the use of social and moral theory. It first addresses prominent schools of research in the contemporary sociology of religion as influenced particularly by resource mobilization and rational choice theories. In the course of so doing, it demonstrates the adequacy and limitations of resource mobilization theory for understanding religiously based organizations.