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DOI 10.1007/s12108-007-9000-3
Abstract This paper explores whether the field of sociology harbors a dismissive
attitude towards religion. Specifically it examines whether introductory sociology
textbooks present the classic secularization theory over the more recent religious
economies explanation of religious change. The classical secularization thesis
suggests that religion is declining in importance in modern societies and may
disappear completely. The religious economies perspective proposes that religion has
actually become more influential and dynamic over time. While both theories are
well represented in the sociology of religion literature, we explore whether generalist
sociology textbooks reflect this reality. This article provides a content analysis of 31
introductory sociology textbooks published between 2003 and 2006. We assess the
presence and promotion of the above theories in these textbooks. Our analysis
reveals that 20 (65%) of the 31 textbooks in our study present only secularization
theory, while seven (23%) of the textbooks cover both secularization theory and
religious economies theory. We assess the ramifications of such a lopsided
arrangement and conclude by encouraging a more open dialogue on this issue.
Introduction
Scholars have complained that the field of sociology has a long history of attacking
religion and promoting the position that religion is of little significance in modern
R. Featherstone (*)
University of Northern Iowa, 356 Baker Hall, Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0513, USA
e-mail: richard.featherstone@uni.edu
K. L. Sorrell
University of Wisconsin—Stout, Wisconsin, USA
Am Soc (2007) 38:78–98 79
societies. Lenski (1963) proposes that European sociology was antagonistic towards
religion “from its inception” and that it promoted the idea that religion was becoming
“a negligible force in the modern world” (Lenski 1963: 3). Hadden (1987: 592)
suggests “a very large proportion of both first- and second-generation [American]
sociologists were doubters or disbelievers.” He states that these sociologists believed
“religion had fallen on hard times and, quite possibly, it had weakened beyond the
point of resuscitation” (Hadden 1987: 594). In a recent book examining seculariza-
tion, Smith (2003) tested the position that sociology has long discounted religion as a
vital force in modern society. Analyzing the content of early American sociology
textbooks, he contends that the authors of these textbooks promoted the idea that
religion’s “influence and credibility in the modern world are for good reasons rapidly
declining” (Smith 2003: 139). Similarly, some historians have argued that during the
early twentieth century academic elites contributed to the marginalization of religion
within American higher education (Marsden 1994; Reuben 1996).
These allegations are not directed solely at the discipline’s past. Sociology
continues to be accused of harboring a negative attitude towards religion (Stark and
Finke 2000). Hamilton and Form (2003), for example, criticize the five bestselling
introductory sociology textbooks for advancing the idea of religious decline without
providing any evidence for it. Instead of viewing religion as a dynamic force in
modern societies, sociology has accepted the secularization hypothesis that religion
is declining as people become more technologically dependent and scientifically
minded (Jagodzinski and Greeley 1997). Stark and Finke (2000) suggest there are at
least two problems with this perspective. First, they argue that contemporary
research proves that religion is not becoming less important in modern society.
Second, they contend that sociology’s anticipation of religious decline is largely
based on an ideological inclination rather than empirical observation. Consequently
Stark and Finke (2000:54) warn that this long held, mistaken prejudice will
adversely influence the “tone of conversation, instruction, and research” of religious
topics within academia.
In sum, it has been suggested that sociology as a field of study dismisses religion
and advances a secularization theory which predicts religious decline in modern
societies. This article has been written in order to investigate this claim. To set the
context for our study and better educate the reader about this controversy we begin our
paper by describing the secularization thesis and its more recent challenger, the religious
economies perspective. The next section describes these two theories, summarizing both
their history and current standing within the sociology of religion subfield.
1
Davie (2003) has pointed out that secularization is a largely Eurocentric perspective, since other nations
in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia do not fit the model and are largely ignored by the theory.
Am Soc (2007) 38:78–98 81
I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about
secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization
and modernity go hand in hand. With more modernization comes more
secularization. It wasn’t a crazy theory. There was some evidence for it. But I
think it’s basically wrong. Most of the world today is certainly not secular. It’s
very religious.
Another well-known sociologist who switched sides was Rodney Stark. In fact,
Stark (1998: 394) admits in an earlier edition of his introductory sociology textbook
that he used to support the secularization thesis for awhile but later changed his
position.
Today, Stark is one of the leading opponents of the standard secularization model.
Others soon followed the lead of Berger and Stark. By the late twentieth century the
tide of opinion began to turn as more and more sociology of religion researchers
became disenchanted with the theory of secularization (Greeley 1996).
While no specific date has been offered as to its emergence in the literature,
rudiments of a new theory were beginning to take shape in the 1980s. Often called
the religious economies model (Montgomery 2003), this theory has alternatively
been referred to as “the new paradigm in the sociology of religion” (Warner 1993),
“the rational choice approach to religion” (Roberts 2004), and the “market model of
religion” (Johnson 2003). For simplicity we title this perspective the religious
economies approach since this is how several of its original authors most commonly
refer to it (see Finke and Stark 1988; Stark and Iannaccone 1994).
One of the basic tenets of the religious economies approach is that barring
political interference a society will naturally possess many different religious options
from which its members can choose (Finke and Stark 1988). In a pluralistic setting,
organized religion is thought to flourish as multiple religious groups provide diverse
spiritual products and actively compete with one another for religious consumers. No
matter how energized and competitive a religious group might be, however, not all
82 Am Soc (2007) 38:78–98
religious messages are equally attractive to all people. While most religious groups
will be able to attract at least a modicum of followers, some groups are more
successful at attracting religious participants than other groups.
According to the religious economies theory most people are drawn to religious
groups that focus on otherworldly issues. Such organizations are thought to be more
successful at maintaining and acquiring adherents than religious groups that focus on
the affairs of this world (Stark and Finke 2000). This occurs because people are
naturally attracted to religious groups that focus on the issues of the sacred rather
than on the issues of the secular world. People are especially interested in religious
groups that can promise them spiritual returns on their earthly investments
(Iannaccone 1994). Strict religious organizations are able to promise their members
a significant level of spiritual rewards in exchange for accepting and following a
stringent code of conduct (Stark and Finke 2000). For example, conservative groups
like the Assemblies of God often connect a member’s adherence to the
organization’s lifestyle expectations to the assurance of eternal rewards (Iannaccone
1994). Liberal or mainline groups, such as the United Church of Christ, however
demand few requirements from their members and offer just as meager spiritual
assurances. Consequently, liberal and mainline denominations are expected to lose
membership over time while strict, sectarian groups are expected to grow.
This is not to suggest that mainline groups will totally disappear or that everyone
will eventually join a conservative church. Religious economies theory suggests that
conservative groups generally grow because they are better able to encourage
member loyalty and participation. In essence the high tension sects usually attract
and maintain members better than low tension religious denominations (Iannaccone
1994). What makes this especially complicated is that religious groups are
themselves in an ever changing process of transformation. Over time, most sectarian
groups transform into more mainstream denominations where members receive
fewer moral expectations and experience less tension with the outside world. As this
process occurs the group begins to lose members as the original message is
neglected and participants see a decreased return on their spiritual investments. Out
of this decline often arise new sectarian groups that attract the dissatisfied and
religiously disenfranchised members of modern society. These new groups
reemphasize traditional values and once again attract followers as they offer
religious answers and spiritual assurances that the mother denomination has set aside
(see Stark and Finke 2000 for a more complete explanation of these principles and
propositions). Ultimately, religious economies theory suggests a cycle of religious
change within a religiously deregulated society, but no overall decrease in religious
involvement is proposed.
This process of transformation is precisely what many researchers have found
taking place throughout our nation’s past (Iannaccone 1994; Kelley 1972; Roof and
McKinney 1987). While some religious denominations have lost adherents over
time, other religious groups have experienced a simultaneous increase in
membership (Finke and Stark 2005). Consequently, according to the religious
economies approach, religion is not experiencing a linear decline in the USA as
secularization predicts. Instead, participation in religion is largely shifting between
religious organizations based on how well these groups are able to meet the religious
needs and interests of the population.
Am Soc (2007) 38:78–98 83
While religious economies theorists do not predict that everyone will become
religiously active in a religiously diverse society, they do assume that the inherent
demand for organized religion is fairly robust within every population (Stark and
Finke 2000). The focus of the theory is on the supply side rather than on the demand
side of religion (Finke and Iannaccone 1993). Hence human involvement in
collective religion waxes and wanes based on the amount of preferred choices that
religious organizations are able to supply a particular community, not on a nation’s
level of modernization (Finke and Stark 2003). Contrary to the secularization thesis,
the religious economies model proposes that a community’s religious involvement is
dependent upon two factors. The first is the degree to which the religious
marketplace is unregulated, and the second is how competitive available religious
suppliers are at pursuing potential adherents. This is a much different approach than
the secularization theory which suggests that modernization and scientific
advancement reduce religious involvement and the influence of religious institutions.
Whatever its ultimate validity, in the past decade the religious economies theory
has transformed the sociology of religion literature. In 1993, The Churching of
America 1776–1990: Winners and Losers in our Religious Economy, by Roger Finke
and Rodney Stark (1992), won the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion’s
Distinguished Book Award.2 In the same year, Stephen Warner wrote in the
American Journal of Sociology that the religious economies theory was establishing
itself as “the new paradigm” in the social scientific study of religion (Warner 1993:
1055). The perspective has since been heavily covered in numerous sociological
journals, and today the three most popular textbooks in the sociology of religion
include sections discussing this perspective (Johnstone 2004; McGuire 2002;
Roberts 2004).3 More specialized works highlighting contemporary research in the
sociology of religion often devote entire chapters to cover the differences between
secularization theory and religious economies theory (see for example, Christiano et
al. 2002; Demerath 2001; Groski 2003).
Without question, the religious economies approach has become a highly
acclaimed paradigm within the sociology of religion literature. It has even displaced
the secularization model as the leading explanation for religious change. Interest-
ingly, the theory has become so dominant that it has garnered its own set of
dedicated critics (see Blau et al. 1992; Bruce 2000; Chaves 1995; Lechner 1997). In
a recent chapter, Demerath (2001) complains that it is not even popular to question
the religious economies theory anymore. A brief review of the sociology of religion
literature demonstrates that the religious economies approach is not an obscure or
underreported perspective in its field. Most sociology of religion scholars now
consider it an equal alternative to the secularization perspective (Monahan 2001).
The question remains, however, whether the larger field of sociology presents this
reality.
2
An updated version of their book, The Churching of America, 1776–2005: Winners and Losers in our
Religious Economy, was released in the summer of 2005.
3
Roberts (2004) actually devotes an entire chapter of his text to describing the differences between
secularization and what he calls the rational choice approach to religion.
84 Am Soc (2007) 38:78–98
4
This was done in a limited way by Hamilton and Form (2003).
5
Whenever possible we use the most recently released edition we could acquire. However, due to the
dynamic nature of the textbook industry and the inherent deliberativeness of the journal review process we
cannot guarantee that all of the texts we use are the most current available as of this writing.
6
This is the case at the first author’s university where the sociology department typically fills nine
introductory sociology courses per semester.
Am Soc (2007) 38:78–98 85
courses in religion (see Spickard 1994 for an excellent discussion of this issue). We
also do not include textbooks written specifically for sociology of religion courses,
because we are interested in how religion is presented by the larger field of
sociology, not specialists.7 Moreover, our analysis does not include readers,
anthologies, or collections composed solely of historical writings since these are
commonly omitted in other sociology textbook reviews (Lewis and Humphrey 2005;
Wright 1995a) and often do not represent the state of the field today.
To create our population of textbooks we contacted all the major college-level
academic publishers to see which textbook offerings they provided for introductory
sociology. We also contacted colleagues who teach introductory sociology courses
and asked them which textbooks they use in their classes. Finally, we did a title
search for the term “Sociology” and “Society” among several major Internet sites
that sold college textbooks to see whether there were any other publishing houses
that offered an up-to-date introductory textbook. Altogether we found a total of 31
textbooks that met our criteria.8
Our qualitative method of analysis is consistent with similar studies that compare
textbooks in their coverage of a specific topic (see Drakeford et al. 2005; Wright
1995b). Once a population of texts was identified a content analysis was employed
on the chapters or sections covering the subject of religion. We searched for and read
the religion sections of each textbook. Interestingly, two textbooks had no chapter or
even a significant section on religion (McIntyre 2006; Newman 2004).
Two textbooks presented a chapter covering both families and religion (Anderson
and Taylor 2005; Lindsey and Beach 2003). Six textbooks combined the topics of
religion and education in the same chapter (Brinkerhoff et al. 2005; Henslin 2006;
Hughes and Kroehler 2005; Kendall 2004; Schaefer 2004; Thio 2005), while 21
textbooks dedicated an entire chapter to the issue of religion (all others).
After identifying the sections discussing religion, we read each part individually
and separately coded whether the secularization and/or the religious economies
models were presented. Since the religious economies approach does not always go
by that label, we identified passages that presented the theory regardless of
nomenclature. For each textbook, we compared the coverage of secularization with
the coverage of the religious economies approach. This coding approach is similar to
the one used by Lewis and Humphrey (2005) in their study of how introductory
sociology textbooks cover the topic of the environment. Using a technique similar to
the one offered by Schweingruber and Wohlstein (2005) we also coded whether the
textbook authors endorse or refute the religious economies model. Inter-reviewer
7
Of the undergraduate-level sociology of religion textbooks we did look at (Johnstone 2004; McGuire
2002; Roberts 2004), all of them described both secularization theory and religious economies theory.
Interestingly, these authors usually presented religious economies theory as the rational choice approach.
8
We are not suggesting that we have found every possible introductory textbook available on the market.
However, we are confident that our convenience sample includes all of the most popular textbooks on the
market today (Lewis and Humphrey 2005). As many instructors already realize, several of the larger
publishers offer both a full and abridged version of the same text. Because shortened textbooks do not
always contain exactly the same information as their parent textbook (Withrow et al. 2004), we analyze
both the shorter “essential” version and the more complete version separately in our analysis.
86 Am Soc (2007) 38:78–98
Table 1 The presentation of secularization and religious economies theories in recent introductory
sociology textbooks
Anderson and Taylor 2005 Anderson and Taylor 2004 Brinkerhoff et al. 2005
McIntyre 2006 Brym and Lie 2005 Charon 2004
Newman 2004 Curry et al. 2005 Farley 2003
Thio 2005 Eitzen and Zinn 2004 Giddens et al. 2003
Ferrante 2003 Hughes and Kroehler 2005
Henslin 2005 Stark 2004
Henslin 2006 Thompson and Hickey 2005
Ingram and Keller 2003
Kendall 2004
Kendall 2005
Kornblum 2005
Lindsey and Beach 2003
Macionis 2005
Neubeck and Glasberg 2005
Schaefer 2004
Schaefer 2005
Shepard 2005
Steele and Price 2004
Sullivan 2004
Tischler 2004
reliability was very high. All but two of the textbooks were coded in the same way,
establishing a 94% agreement level.9
Findings
Our analysis reveals that introductory sociology textbooks fall roughly within one of
three categories. It is worth mentioning at this point that none of the textbooks
presented the religious economies approach exclusively. In other words, if the
religious economies theory was mentioned so too was the secularization theory.
Table 1 shows the basic categorization for each textbook. Of the 31 textbooks
reviewed, four fail to discuss either the theory of secularization or the religious
economies approach. This is partly due to the fact that there is an overall lack of
coverage concerning religion by these authors. For example, McIntyre (2006) offers
no unified section on the topic of religion in her textbook on sociology. Newman’s
(2004) text is over 500 pages in length, yet he offers less than three pages on the
topic of religion, with no discussion of secularization or religious economies theory.
Other authors discuss religion in more detail, but focus their attentions on topics
outside of religious change. Thio (2005) briefly mentions that some religious groups
9
The two textbooks in dispute were subsequently coded separately by an outside professor familiar with
the religious economies and secularization theories. The result of this third coding established how the two
textbooks were ultimately categorized.
Am Soc (2007) 38:78–98 87
are declining and that some are growing, but he avoids the subject of secularization
and never mentions contemporary research by religious economies theorists.
Anderson and Taylor (2005) leave out a discussion of secularization and religious
economies theory from their abridged “Essentials” textbook. This streamlined
version of their larger text provides a limited discussion of religion that avoids both
secularization theory and the religious economies model. This is an uncommon
approach for most introductory textbooks, however, for while religious economies
may not garner much coverage in sociology textbooks, secularization theory is pretty
much ubiquitous.
The second category of textbooks can be grouped together as those which discuss
the secularization theory, but leave out the religious economies approach. Twenty
textbooks are in this category; this represents nearly two thirds of the textbooks in
our analysis. All of the resources in this second category have the same thing in
common—they provide some level of discussion regarding secularization theory, but
they omit any reference to the religious economies theory. The overall depth to
which these textbooks discuss secularization moves along a continuum from two
sentences to four pages.
The textbook by Eitzen and Zinn (2004) provides an extreme example of
textbooks offering only a limited discussion of secularization. They write, “There is
evidence for the ‘secularization of religion’ by social class. Polling data reveals [sic]
that the more education and income one has, the less likely one is to find religion
important and to hold traditional religious beliefs” (503). This is the first and last
mention of secularization in their chapter on religion. Although Eitzen and Zinn
(2004) provide only a vague discussion of the secularization perspective there is no
discussion whatsoever of religious economies theory in their textbook.
The other textbooks in category two provide more discussion of secularization,
with some authors devoting several pages to the subject. Moreover, some of the
coverage appears to be more than just informative, it borders on direct advocacy for
the theory. Several examples are worth noting. In a section titled, “Secularism,”
Tischler (2004) advances the following position.
Explaining how some secular political movements may perhaps take the place of
religion, he opines, “In this increasingly secular modern world, however, sacred
legitimacy appears to be unnecessary for establishing meaning and value in life”
(344). Confronted by research that suggests that sectarian groups are growing,
Tischler attributes the rise of these groups to the fact that some people need to
belong to groups that will determine moral choices for them (2004: 346). Religious
economies theory is never provided as an alternative position.
88 Am Soc (2007) 38:78–98
In a similar vein, Brym and Lie (2005) not only present secularization as a
reasonable theory, but spend a good deal of their text defending it from criticism.
Interestingly they note that the secularization thesis was
readers, “People who are free to determine their own religious beliefs and practices
may attend church less often or not at all, but total secularization does not occur.”
Rather than just reassuring readers that religion will survive, some authors in this
group actually go so far as to suggest that religion is growing in importance in some
way. Henslin’s (2005) technique is to propose that religion is expanding at the
micro-level. “Although the secularization of its culture means that religion has
become less important in U.S. public life, personal religious involvement among
Americans has not diminished. Rather, it has increased” (539, emphasis in original).
Shepard (2005: 453) takes a broader approach. He concludes his chapter on religion
in this way,
Through secularization, the sacred and the profane are increasingly intermixed
in modern society. The existence of secularization does not mean, however, that
a society is not religious. Although many observers have noted a decline in the
role of religion in the United States, others contend that religion may be
stronger than supposed.
The paradox here is that while these authors are somewhat unsure about the
accuracy of the secularization thesis, they fail to provide its alternative. The authors
totally omit the religious economies perspective. Fortunately, some textbooks do a
better job of presenting a more fully informed explanation of religious change.
Our third and final category is comprised of the textbooks which provide both the
secularization theory and the religious economies approach to religion. Of the 31
textbooks examined, only seven presented these two theories together. This
represents less than one fourth of the introductory textbooks in our analysis.
Rather than ignoring the issue of religious change or describing only a model of
religious decline, these textbooks present both secularization and religious
economies theories. Interestingly, while the textbooks in this third category cover
both perspectives, they clearly differ in the ways they present the theories. The
textbooks by Farley (2003) and Thompson and Hickey (2005) touch on both theories
briefly and offer no particular emphasis as to which of the two perspectives is better.
This may be due to the fact that both textbooks provide a somewhat undeveloped
presentation of religious economies theory.10 The other five textbooks in this group
are not as cursory in their coverage, nor do they present the theories in an equally
weighted fashion.
It is probably not surprising that the textbook by Rodney Stark (2004), one of the
founders of the religious economies approach, heavily criticizes the classical
secularization thesis. Stark’s textbook provides a very thorough description of this
debate. He expounds on secularization theory, critiques it, and then suggests how
religious economies theory provides a more adequate explanation of religious
change. Stark explains how religious economies theory actually improves the
10
The textbook by Thompson and Hickey (2005) barely made it into our third category (covering both
theories) because their discussion only made vague references to the religious economies theory (see pages
450 and 460–461 in their textbook).
90 Am Soc (2007) 38:78–98
become less important, but that choice has become more central to religious
life; and for many people, choice brings ever greater commitment. Stark and
Finke (2000:42–43) consider religion to be like other areas of modern life:
informed consumers weighing costs and benefits, choosing to follow a religious
path because they determine this is best for them, committing themselves, and
persisting in religious belief not so much because it is simply foisted on them
but because they continue to recognize religion as important to them, even in a
modern society (271).
people rationally pick and choose among different religions, as if they were
shopping around for a new car or a pair of shoes” (537). After admitting that religion
currently remains a vital force in modern society, Giddens et al. (2003) make a
startling statement in the conclusion of their chapter. “It might appear strange,
therefore, to suggest that the influence of religion in the modern world is actually
declining. However, sociologists generally agree that such a decline has taken place,
considered at least as a long-term trend” (563). Additionally, religious economies
theory is entirely omitted from their summary section, but Friedrich Nietzsche’s
pronouncement that “God is Dead” is presented without qualification.
This paper has attempted to assess whether the field of sociology promotes a view of
religion that assumes its decline. While there are undoubtedly many possible ways to
test this hypothesis, we chose to examine the coverage of religious change in
introductory sociology textbooks. We found that about 77% of introductory
sociology textbooks either do not elaborate on religious change or present only the
secularization theory (this represents all textbooks from categories one and two
above). On the other hand, approximately 23% of the textbooks in this study discuss
both the secularization thesis and the religious economies approach (this represents
all textbooks within category three above). Statistically, this means that by a ratio of
more than three-to-one introductory sociology textbooks omit the sociological theory
that proposes religion is strong and stable within modern society.
This is a relevant finding because it suggests that general sociology is not in
accord with the contemporary research produced by scholars within the sociology of
religion area. As mentioned previously, within the social scientific study of religion
the religious economies model is arguably the dominant paradigm for explaining
religious change. All recent textbooks specializing in the sociology of religion cover
this theory. In contrast to the secularization thesis, this theory proposes that religion
is a strong and stable institution. It is therefore significant that such a large
percentage of general sociology textbooks do not mention religious economies
theory.
Possible reasons for this omission are worth considering. First, it may be that
many of the current introductory textbook authors are simply unaware of this theory.
As Wright (1996) and many other textbook reviewers have complained, introductory
textbooks are grossly behind the times when it comes to reporting current research.
Although 21 of the 31 textbooks in this study offered an entire chapter on religion, it
may be that the topic of religious change is unfamiliar to these authors. It is probably
fair to assume that few sociological writers have ever taken a graduate level course
in the sociology of religion. Hence, a general lack of familiarity with the topic is
probably a primary reason for why so many introductory sociology textbook authors
present an outdated explanation of religious change.
A second possibility for these textbooks’ misrepresentation of religion is related
to the nature of the textbook industry. Hamilton and Form (2003: 708) point out that
textbook writers possess “a heavy dependence on the handed-down categorical
usages and, obviously, the avoidance of complexity, nuance, and detail.” The
Am Soc (2007) 38:78–98 93
11
Compare these results regarding academics to findings of the General Social Survey (2004) which
reports that twenty-three percent of Americans attend religious services less than once a year and only
three percent say they do not believe in God.
94 Am Soc (2007) 38:78–98
Acknowledgement We are grateful to Kevin Dougherty for helpful comments on an early version of
this manuscript.
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