Some Factors Associated with Student Acceptance or Rejection of War

it would certainly be spurious to equate the church with other formal voluntary organizations.31 It is hard to deny, however, that the recognition that the Negro is able to obtain from his church and voluntary associations is almost impossible for him to obtain in any other sphere. It is possible that for the whites the church serves a very different function from that of the voluntary association. Our findings strongly support the thesis that affiliation patterns differ substantially between the two races. Our conclusions, however, require qualification. Other variables over which we were not able to exercise control may well have played a part in the conclusions we reached. Those that come to mind include size of community, region, ratio of Negroes to whites living in the community, and the residential stability of the Negro subgroup. To illustrate, only a small proportion of the population in the community studied was Negro and this proportion has remained relatively stable over the past few years. Factors such as these might also help to account for the discrepancy that exists between our findings and those reported in other investigations. 31 Increasingly, sociologists who have been studying voluntary associations rightly have been reluctant to count religious organizations (church affiliation) as voluntary groups. Lenski presents an incisive rationale for the position that religious organizations are different from other voluntary formal organizations. Lenski, op. cit., pp. 17-19.