Committed believers: Determinants of the organizational commitment of Dutch evangelicals

Abstract

This study tries to find out why certain congregations in the Netherlands have a more committed membership than other congregations and, thus, are less affected by processes of religious disaffiliation. To do this, data gathered among members of six evangelical megachurches together with data from a national probability sample are analyzed to address two questions. First, to what extent are Dutch evangelicals more committed to their religious organization, in terms of money and time spent at church, than members of mainline churches in the Netherlands? And second, which decisive factors determine these instances of organizational commitment of Dutch evangelicals? Results show that evangelicals indeed spend more money on and time at church than mainline Christians. As regards the second question, it turns out that donating money is mainly determined by income, whereas time spent with church groups is mainly determined by the degree of embeddedness in socio-religious networks.