Dimensions of bonding social capital in Christian congregations across Australia

The research aimed to identify the structure of social capital within Christian churches in Australia. The focus is the social capital that exists within the congregation as opposed to its connections to the wider community or society, that is, to use Woolcock and Narayan (2000) terminology, the bonding rather than the bridging social capital. A total of 3363 church attendees were surveyed to identify the different ways that social capital can be generated such as through participation, informal friendships or congregational projects in any sphere of church activity including questions about both the respondents' own actions and their perceptions of the congregation and demographic questions including denomination. The dimensions of Bonding were identified through exploratory factor analysis and then refined and confirmed through structural equation modelling. The three factors related to an underlying Bonding construct were Collective Agency, Congregational Unity and Personal Connections. A fourth factor in the model was the desire for Homogeneity, which was related to Congregational Unity but not significantly related to Bonding.