Religious Competition and Creative
Innovation:

Los Angeles and Seoul, South Korea

Richard Flory, Principal Investigator of USA

Brie Loskota, Co-Investigator

Center for Religion and Civic Culture

University of Southern California

Sunggun Kim, Principal Investigator of Korea

Overview

This
research project will test Sir John Templeton’s proposition that competition
between religious groups stimulates creative innovation, contributing to religious
change and development. Our primary laboratory for exploring this proposition
is Southern California, a region withover 20 million peopleand one of the most
religiously diverse populations in the world. We will also include a comparison
component with Seoul, South Korea. This project builds on research that the
Center for Religion and Civic Culture (CRCC) has conducted on religion
throughout Southern California and on global Pentecostalism?the world’s fastest
growing religious movement?but with a broader focus on multiple religious
traditions and, at least initially, with a thorough investigation of two
specific geographic areas: Southern California and Seoul, South Korea. We will
create new methodological approaches, including survey instruments, data
collection techniques, and web accessible visual database technology, as well
as a new theoretical model which can be further adapted to cities or regions
around the world with different levels of constraint on religious freedom. Our
goal in this project will be to delvebeyond analyses of religious competition
that focus on gain or loss in membership, and to discover the various types and
expressions of religious competition and cooperation, and how these may lead to
innovative forms of religious belief, practice, and organization.