Date

12-7-2023

Department

Rawlings School of Divinity

Degree

Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (EdD)

Chair

William Higley

Keywords

relative deprivation, irrelevance, deficiency, perception, de-churched

Disciplines

Education

Abstract

The variances among religious groups in the U.S. have been presumed to have weakened, yet class and ethnic variances have been largely overlooked by sociology (Wilde et. al., 2018, as cited in Pyle & Davidson, 2014). Though some research focuses explicitly on African American (AA) men, (Fitzgerald, 2010; Davis, 2020; Truss, 2018) the researcher discovered little evidence emphasizing AA men who are de-churched (Trends in the black church: More faithful, but not immune to decline, 2021; Dechurched: Witness & Outreach, 2021, para 1). The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study is to understand why AA males are increasingly becoming religiously unaffiliated and no longer see the relevance of attending church. The goal of this research is to cognize the basis for dwindling church presence among AA males to understand their declining attendance and avoidance of church and their conception of the relevance of attending church. The theory guiding this study is Robert K. Merton’s relative deprivation theory, which states that whether perceived or actual, is the deficiency of resources deemed essential to sustain a comparable quality of life (e.g. material, lifestyle, possessions) to what other socioeconomic groups or individuals with those groups are familiar (Longley, 2020).

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