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Books Reviewed Religion by Region. A series edited by Mark Silk and Andrew Walsh (AltaMira Press): Religion and Public Life in the Middle Atlantic States: Proving Ground for Pluralism. Edited by Randall Balmer and Mark Silk. Religion and Public Life in the Midwest: America’s Common Denominator? Edited by Philip Barlow and Mark Silk. Religion and …
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Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. By Robert D. Putnam. Simon & Schuster. The phrase “bowling alone” — the title of an article Robert Putnam published in 1995 in a relatively obscure academic journal — quickly became shorthand for the arresting claim that civic engagement is in decline. Putnam’s point was that …
Continue reading “Are We ‘Bowling Alone’ — And Does it Matter?”
Book Chapter
An introduction to Peter Berger’s approach to religion. Wuthnow provides a careful and understandable explanation of Berger’s approach. At the end, three concepts are raised in a critical evaluation suggesting both strengths and weaknesses in Berger ‘s approach.
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Wuthnow surveys the work of major sociologists of religion, offering how these contributors relate to one another. This discussion demonstrates the development of this area of study. The argument offers his perspective on where sociology of religion is headed as a field, and what the results of those steps may be.
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After noting how religious discourse has been neglected by sociologists, Wuthnow considers why it is important to work in this area, and how this deficit might be remedied. He turns to books by Northrop Frye and Susan Rubin Suleiman as sources which complement each other, offering critical insight for careful reflection on how persons from different perspectives can begin to understand one another.
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Do religions evolve? In this chapter we find a discussion of where the theoretical discussion of this question with attention to three contributors to the field. How does one make a case one way or the other? This question provides the foil for analysis of how the theoretical constructs function. Wuthnow’s conclusion is that, “American religion has become more complex, more internally differentiated, and thus more adaptable to a complex, differentiated society.”
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Max Weber created sociology of religion. Wuthnow turns to an fresh analysis of Weber’s contribution by examining recent studies of Puritanism by five scholars. The chapter ends with a careful evaluation of how Weber’s theory interacts with these contemporary studies in a way which suggests next steps in the field.
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Wuthnow presents four sociological theories relevant to his topic: modernization, world-system, structural contingency, and lifeworld colonization. When he turns to evaluation, he identifies how each of these theories clarify assumptions and suggest fresh ways of approaching careful analysis of religious change.
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Wuthnow suggests how awareness of international social dynamics can strengthen sociological analysis. He suggests that three foci offer fresh possibilities for understanding: on generalizable patterns, on deeper changes, and on alternative interpretations. His careful suggestions open up fresh understandings for the religious practitioner as well as the sociologist.
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At the beginning of the 20th century, religious leaders in the U.S. confidently looked forward to a “Christian century.” At the end of that century it seems more appropriate to ask whether the next one will hold any place for Christians at all. I do not mean that values long associated with the Christian tradition, …
Continue reading “Church Realities and Christian Identity in the 21st Century”
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Ministry is a people-intensive profession. But ironically, a large number of professional ministers appear to be rather lonely people. A recent study of morale among United Methodist ministers in Minnesota indicates that while almost all enjoy their work and feel satisfied with their professional performance, they are also afflicted with self-doubts and loneliness. Experiencing the …
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Church growth studies, Nancy Ammerman notes, have often followed "success stories" that correlate with key demographic changes. In this respect, church growth is almost predictable. "Where there is a pool of white, middle-class, home-owning families-with-children on which to draw, mainline churches are likely to grow, no matter what their theological orientation." Ammerman prefers, however, to …
Continue reading “Communities that Change, Congregations that Adapt”
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In 1962, when Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council with a resounding call for aggiornarnento, few of the bishops in attendance imagined that the work of "updating" the Roman Catholic Church would become a constant preoccupation. Today, however, the "always reforming church" finds itself once again at a dramatic turning point in …
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In the days before the Kansas School Board’s August decision to strip the teaching of evolution from state science standards, the presidents of the Kansas university system issued a statement. “The simple fact is,” they said, “people can believe both in God and in evolution.” Lots of Americans believe that they can do just that. …
Continue reading “Debating Evolution: The God Who Would Intervene”
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Pentecostalism and related “Spirit-filled movements” are rightly seen as a hard-driving engine fueling the global spread of Christianity, but their adherents are often wrongly seen as apolitical, otherworldly enthusiasts bent on “speaking in tongues,” according to two separate studies on the century-old phenomena. A groundbreaking survey of such believers in 10 countries, including the United …
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Church attendance in the U.S. is, apparently, stable and strong. Year after year 40 percent of Americans tell pollsters that they attended church or synagogue in the last seven days. From this evidence, American religion seems quite hardy, especially compared to the statistics from European nations. If the poll data can be believed, three decades …
Continue reading “Did You Really Go To Church This Week? Behind the Poll Data”
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What does it mean to study “economic culture”? Our institute’s agenda is relatively simple. We study the relationship between social-economic change and culture. By culture we mean beliefs, values and lifestyles. We cover a broad range of issues, and we work very internationally. I’m fanatical about very few things, but one of them is the …
Continue reading “Epistemological Modesty: An Interview with Peter Berger”
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(ENTIRE BOOK) This book is a collection of essays by Joachim Wach representing each major phase of his scholarly career. Wach emphasizes that both historical and systematic dimensions are necessary to its task, and he argues that the discipline’s goal is "understanding."
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All Organized religions assume that religion teaches man distinct values that he might not otherwise have—moral values that guide him, in his everyday relations with his fellow man, toward higher, nobler or more humane levels than he might reached without religion. But is it true? Do the religious have distinct moral values that set them …
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In 1970 I published an intellectual autobiography that served as the introduction to my collection of essays titled Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World. I want to make a first effort at bringing that essay up to date. I will, however, take two essays I published in the 1970s (both included in …
Continue reading “Finding the Church: Post-Traditional Discipleship”
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To be asked to tell how one’s mind has changed over a decade is an invitation to narcissism. To accept the invitation would seem to imply a quite solemn view of one’s own importance. My incurably Lutheran sensibility tells me that such a view is sinful, and my even more incurable sense of the comic …
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There is good reason to believe that Americans are receiving an overly optimistic picture of charitable giving in the U.S. As a result, church members do not have accurate information to help assess their own giving or to evaluate broader trends. Solid information about giving is also crucial in light of current discussion about the …
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Wuthnow proposes that the term “rediscovery” rather than “revival” clarifies what is happening in religion today. He provides some personal background which informs this choice, then outlines his case using insights from other sociologists as well as social commentators.
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This introduction by Kitagawa is a biography of Wach. He began his teaching career in Germany which ended in 1935 under pressure of the Nazis because of his Jewish lineage, even though the family had been Christian for four generations. Thereafter he taught in the U.S. at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and later at the University of Chicago.
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Book Review: American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future, by Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney (Rutgers University Press, 279 pp.’ $27.00; paperback, $10.00) The recognition that the term “mainline churches” is something of an anachronism now extends to the funny pages. In the past two decades, while conservative churches have experienced steady growth, …
Continue reading “Looking for the Mainline with Roof and McKinney”
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Mahayana Buddism’s philosophy and its way of looking at the world along with its attitudes toward God, toward mankind, and toward the world are discussed along with how its piety determines its ethic.
Book Chapter
The student admires in the teacher the greatness and significance of his learning; and his merit consists in his willingness to give freely of this treasure. The student is dear to the teacher to the extent that he is willing to open himself to the teacher’s communication; the student’s value depends on his individual success or failure to appropriate the subject matter. This entire relationship is born and lives by means of the common interest in the object of study. A diversion from it results in the disintegration of the relationship between them.
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Objective information on the dynamics of church membership growth — and lack thereof — is crucial, especially in a time of decline. Leadership myths and factional claims too often become the language of misunderstanding and the weapons of internal conflict. Well-intentioned denominational programs for membership recruitment have been based on fragmentary evidence, parochial success, and …
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When the news first reached us in Ukiah, California. on November 19, 1978, no one really grasped the magnitude of the Jonestown tragedy. At the time no one could believe it. Congressman Leo Ryan and his aide had been shot down on an airstrip at Port Kaituma, Guyana. A number of people who had accompanied …
Continue reading “Miracle, Mystery and Authority: Recalling Jonestown”
Article
The disturbances and outbursts in America in the 1960s were hardly unique in modern history. Indeed in a century where irrationalities and horrors of all sorts–mass executions, mass imprisonments, wars of annihilation, revolutions, rebellions and depressions — have been common, the events of that decade in America: might even be overlooked. But it is precisely …
Continue reading “New Religious Consciousness: Rejecting the Past, Designing the Future”
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Appearing three times a year, the scholarly journal This World is funded by the Institute for Educational Affairs and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Therefore it has plenty of money, and it used some of it wisely to commission an independent survey of theological seminary professors in the United States (Summer 1982, …
Book Chapter
Whatever the teachers approach, it will have to be adapted to the special needs and demands of each successive generation. However there are certain requirements for teaching the History of Religions: Instruction in the field must be 1. integral; 2. competent; 3. existentially concerned; 4. selective; 5. balanced; 6. imaginative.
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All theories of understanding which try to analyze its nature and the stages of its development will have to begin with a concept of existence, and this means, implicitly if not explicitly, with a metaphysical decision. As I see it, there exist three possibilities which I should like to call the materialistic, the psychophysical and the spiritual interpretations of existence.
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Pundits dubbed the 1980s the Decade of Greed. Yuppies, Rolex watches, Avia sneakers, Michael Milken, Charles Keating and the Trump shuttle defined the period. Now, faced with a multitrillion-dollar national debt, we have apparently decided that pocketbook issues should occupy our attention. A new president has been elected to put our financial house in order; …
Continue reading “Pious Materialism: How Americans View Faith and Money”
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In the course of my career as a sociologist of religion I made one big mistake and had one big insight (arguably not such a bad record). The big mistake, which I shared with almost everyone who worked in this area in the 1950s and ‘60s, was to believe that modernity necessarily leads to a …
Continue reading “Protestantism and the Quest for Certainty”
Book Chapter
The challenge by Christian critics of Hinduism — Radhakrishnan’s own faith — impelled him at the time of his student-days at Madras to "make a study of Hinduism and find out what is living and what is dead in it." Again and again in writings, he has traced historically phases of development in Western (Greek and Christian) and Indian (Brahmanic, Hindu and Buddhist) religious thought, and has analyzed in systematic fashion basic notions in Hinduism and Christianity.
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(ENTIRE BOOK) Wuthnow proposes that the term "rediscovery" rather than "revival" clarifies what is happening in religion today. He provides personal background which informs this choice, then outlines his case using insights from other sociologists as well as social commentators. This volume offers a contemporary survey of sociology of religion, as well as challenging suggestions for further work.
Book Chapter
Wach divides American religious groups into a trichotomy — ecclesiastical bodies, denominations, and sects. The nature of American religion is discussed as a function of these divisions.
Book Chapter
Sociology of religion shares with the sociology of other activities of man certain problems and, in addition, has its own problems due to the peculiar nature of religious experience and its expression. The greatest differences and varieties can be found in the structures of religious groups. The French School of Sociology of Religion, the German, the English, the North American, are discussed, along with expressions of concern to those interested in the systematic development of the temporal, the spatial, the ethnic and cultural, and the religious viewpoint.
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The churches have often been likened to a sleeping giant—an institution with a vast but dormant potential for creating brotherhood, social justice and a more humane society. With its huge membership and presumed moral authority it is assumed that if the giant roused itself, it could be a potent social force. Some of our earlier …
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The mainline churches are facing a new kind of Christ-and-culture problem. Since the accommodating Christ-of-culture formulation no longer serves us very well, we have been forced to rethink a Christian response to an increasingly pluralistic and religiously demonopolized environment. Not just religion but the culture generally is in the grips of change. Francis Fitzgerald describes …
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The most popular novel of the past few years had nothing to do with violence or sex; it was a religious parable about a celibate bird. And the best-selling nonfiction book had nothing to do with he latest recipe or the newest diet; it was (and is) a recent version of the oldest book of …
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With religious organizations focusing their efforts on individual spirituality, on meaningful worship experiences, on music, youth pro grams and small groups, is it likely that reli gious commitment is going to challenge people to be con cerned about economic justice as well? Do religious peo ple think about their responsibility to the poor at all? …
Continue reading “What Religious People Think About the Poor”
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Some ideas are so potent as to be world-changing. For Rodney Stark, Christianity encompasses just such a set of ideas. In his view, Christian beliefs and images of God shaped the course of Western civilization. And not only that; they changed it for the better. Stark is a leading sociologist of religion who draws on …
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Wilhelm Von Humboldt was a Protestant in whose worldview Hellenism strongly colored Christianity. He looked to metaphysics or philosophy for justification. Language, to him was the medium in which he followed the growth and articulation of human freedom. He devoted profound and penetrating thought to the nature of speech, to the structure of language, to its psychological and sociological problems, to its typology and its function in the development of human civilization.
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Analysts of industrial nations often are perplexed by the continuing high level of religious activity in the United States. According to historians, this persistent vitality of congregational life is the result of overlapping waves of renewal rather than a steady growth from pioneer strengths. A recent survey, known as Faith Communities Today (FACT), reveals that …
Continue reading “Worship and Renewal: Surveying Congregational Life”
