Streamable Services: Affinities for Streaming in Pre-Pandemic Congregational Worship

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The reference in line 62 to "more enthusiastic worship" needs some preliminary definition, then reference to your more substantive description later in the article. At this point in the article the reference seems an overly broad generalization.

Line 128 you suggest that those who attend worship are "disproportionately elderly" yet the data you report later suggests that less than 50% are over the age of 60. Your claim here also made me wonder about the relationship between the technological abilities/capacities of the elderly and their willingness to follow online worship events.

Line 183 and all subsequent references, including in the bibliography, to Ruth and "Hong" are incorrect. The author's name is Swee Hong Lim; Lim is his family name. 

Line 401 your reference here to four models, and the subsequent reference to additional models becomes confusing. It does not become clear what the models represent until the subsequent narrative. Some brief description prior to the analysis of the models would be helpful to the reader.

Author Response

See the attached document for my responses to all of the suggestions from both reviewers.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Technically, this article is very good. The hypothesis is clearly stated, the sources and the bibliography are extensive, and the data analysis follows a typical  format of bivariate and multi-variate analysis. The findings are clearly shown in three figures and three tables. 

I have reservations about the content. First, about the use of “elective affinity” instead of correlation. The author rightly points out that Weber’s thesis about the Protestant ethic cannot be reduced to “a cold, statistical relationship.” Thus, coding the Calvinist ethic as “1"  and non-Calvinism as “0,” and capitalism as “1" and the absence of capitalism as “0” would be a cold statistical relationship.  Yet this is what the author offers, namely statistical relationships with  no interest in what the numbers mean, e.g. coding Christian religions (Catholic, Evangelical Protestant, Black Protestant, and Mainline Protestant) from 1 to 4. The Christian religions are reduced to four numbers.

My second reservation is about the independent variable, streaming and/or recording. This variable is non-essential in all Christian denominations. If this is true, then this study centers on something that is of no great significance to the churches studied. Other non-essential variables mentioned in this study are: congregation size, income, ownership of building, year founded, multi-sites, rural location, population over 60, and members with low income, and more. Any of these could be used as independent variable for as many different studies.– If the main interest of this research about streaming is in relation to COVID  pandemic use, then we would like to have data before, during, and after the pandemic; and even then, I do not know how useful such data would be and to whom.

Previous research found that the use of streaming was related to economic resources. This was obvious. Cultural factors are also at work – again, obvious without research. But to reduce “culture” to “enthusiasm” and the latter to emotional enthusiasm is questionable. There are many forms of religious enthusiasm besides applauding, shouting Amen, jumping, etc. It is strange that the author ignores Durkheim’s “effervescence” which has more scholarly weight than emotional enthusiasm.

“Culture” is not defined. The author tends to  identify culture with “organizational culture” (as indicated by three references in the bibliography). The churches differ in organization, from episcopal hierarchy  to denominationalism.  But organizational culture cannot be reduced to emotional enthusiasm.

In sum, this article is technically good – to the satisfaction of quantitative analysts.

Author Response

Please see the attached file for detailed responses to all the comments by both reviewers.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf