Roger Finke

RELIGIOUS ECONOMIES AND SACRED CANOPIES: RELIGIOUS MOBILIZATION IN AMERICAN CITIES, 1906*

For generations, sociologists have believed that cities are less hospitable to religion than are rural areas and that where many faiths compete for followers, the credibility of each is reduced. In this essay we attempt to explain why these received truths are, in fact, nostalgic myths. We try to demonstrate that religious participation is and ought to be higher in cities and that competition among religious bodies increases levels of religious mobilization. Our analysis is based on the 1906 U.S. Census of Religious Bodies, and the units of analysis are the 150 largest cities-all of those having an estimated population of 25,000 or more.

Supply-Side Explanations for Religious Change

Traditional scholarship approaches religious history from the demand side, attributing developments to the shifting desires, perceptions, and circumstances of religious consumers. This article advocates an alternative, supply-side approach that emphasizes the opportunities and restrictions confronting religious organizations and their leaders. Supply shifts lie at the root of major religious changes in America. Colonial revivalists, Asian cult leaders, and contemporary televangelists all prospered when regulatory changes gave them freer access to Americas religious marketplace. The article concludes with a discussion of recent judicial decisions that threaten to restrict the future supply of religious innovation in America.

Mobilizing local religious markets : Religious pluralism in the Empire State, 1855 to 1865

Recent theoretical developments propose that when the state deregulates religion pluralism and competition will emerge and overall levels of religious participation will be high. In this essay we return to nineteenth century America when a religious free market was first emerging to examine how pluralism generated higher levels of church attendance. We use data from the state census of 1865 to explore the religious situation in 942 towns and cities of New York State. Our results strongly support the pluralism thesis demonstrate demographic effects on church attendance and explain the conflicting findings of past research on the relationship between pluralism and religious participation. (authors)

CROSS-NATIONAL MORAL BELIEFS: The Influence of National Religious Context

International surveys have documented wide variation in religious beliefs and practices across nations, but does this variation in the national religious context make a difference? Building on existing theory, we explain why religion should have both micro- and macro-level effects on morality not sanctioned by the state and why the effects of religion differ from other forms of culture. Using two international surveys and hierarchical linear modeling techniques we sort out the effects of national context and personal beliefs on morality with and without legal underpinnings. We find that national religious context, the respondents age, and religious beliefs and practices are the most consistent predictors of the sexual morality index. For morality sanctioned by the state, however, the effects for personal beliefs and practices are attenuated, and the effects of the national religious context are no longer significant.

Religious Persecution in Cross-National Context: Clashing Civilizations or Regulated Religious Economies?

Despite the high visibility of religiously charged international social conflicts, the unique role of religion often is overlooked in social science research and theory. Some studies ignore religion, others conflate religion with other identities. Virtually all lack adequate data. We respond to these deficiencies by testing a theory-driven model of a particular form of social conflict, religious persecution. We investigate the proposition that religious regulation leads to religious persecution. Using measures coded from the 2003 International Religious Freedom Reports, we consider how both social regulation and government regulation of religion in 143 countries affect the level of religious persecution. We also consider and test competing hypotheses, particularly Huntingtons clash-of-civilizations thesis. We find strong support for the religious economies arguments and only limited support for the clash-of-civilizations thesis and other competing arguments.

Accounting for the uncounted: Computing correctives for the 2000 RCMS data

The 2000 Religious Congregations and Membership Study (RCMS) provides the most complete enumeration of religious congregations and their members by counties. Yet, this invaluable data collection suffers from two serious limitations. First, many denominations and religious groups did not participate in the study, resulting in serious undercounts of the total membership. Second, the undercounts are closely related to race and ethnicity. These two limitations distort both the descriptive and inferential statistics calculated from the RCMS data. This research computes two correctives for the RCMS study. The first provides a more accurate estimate for the national church adherence rate by counting the uncounted. The second corrective improves adherence rates for counties, states, and urban areas by adjusting for the racial and ethnic groups undercounted. After accounting for the uncounted, we estimate that the national adherence rate is 63 percent rather than the 50 percent estimated by using the RCMS data alone.

The Effects of Professional Training: The Social and Religious Capital Acquired in Seminaries

Debates over seminary education have been at the heart of some of the most heated denominational battles and schisms, often focusing on doctrines being taught at the seminaries. This research moves beyond the debates over specific teachings and explains how seminaries cultivate distinctive social capital (e.g., resources secured through social networks) and religious capital (e.g., mastery of and attachment to a specific religious culture). Using historical and contemporary examples, we illustrate how seminaries provide clergy with social and religious capital that is distinctive from that of the laity. Finally, using Brunette-Hill’s 1994 survey of Milwaukee clergy and the Educational Testing Service’s 1996 survey of exiting seminarians, we test two propositions on seminary training and religious capital.

Demographics of Religious Participation: An Ecological Approach, 1850-1980

In an attempt to explain who is joining which church and why, research on religious participation has often focused on the individual. In this essay I use an ecological approach to look at the social context of religious adherence in 1850, 1890, 1926 and 1980. I argue that both mobility and composition of an areas population influences the churchs ability to attract and retain members. Through use of census data, I demonstrate that migration, natural increase and sex ratio all affect an areas rate of church adherence. When applied to the historical development of America, these results help to explain why the frontiers have served as a home for religious experimentation and have attracted the missionary efforts of churches.

Catholic religious vocations: Decline and revival

This essay attempts to explain the dramatic, recent decline in Catholic vocations-in the number of persons becoming priests, nuns, or monks. Appropriate data force rejection of gender-based explanations, such as increased secular career opportunities for women. Cross-national data show that the declines began in Europe and North America immediately following actions taken at Vatican II which greatly reduced the rewards of the religious life while maintaining the high costs of vocations (including celibacy, obedience, and poverty). That the declines in vocations were long delayed in Portugal and Spain (as well as in less developed nations) adds credibility to our proposed explanation that young Catholics became far less likely to take up the religious life because they recognized that vocations now entailed a negative cost/benefit ratio. Seeking stronger confirmation of this explanation, we propose that vocations will continue to flourish to the extent that a positive cost/benefit ratio has been retained or restored. A positive ratio can be achieved by reduced costs or by restoration of benefits. The former has not occurred, but in some orders and dioceses, a return to tradition has led many young Catholics to once again find the religious life attractive, as is demonstrated by data on ordinations and on the growth of religious orders.

Handbook of the Sociology of Religion: The Dynamics of Religious Economies

An immense intellectual shift is taking place in the social scientific study of religion. During the past few years many of its most venerated theoretical positions – faithfully passed down from the famous founders of the field – have been overturned. The changes have become so dramatic and far-reaching that R. Stephen Warner identified them “as a paradigm shift in progress” (1993:1044), an assessment that since then “has been spectacularly fulfilled,” according to Andrew Greeley (1996: 1). This chapter reviews a small portion of this major paradigm shift: the dynamics of religious economies. Elsewhere (Stark and Finke 2000) we offer a more complete theoretical model, developing propositions explaining individual religious behavior, the dynamics of religious groups, and a more comprehensive examination of religious economies. Here our goals are far more modest. First, we will briefly contrast the new paradigm with the inherited model. Next, we offer a few of the foundational propositions for understanding religious economies. Finally, we use recent research to illustrate the dynamics of religious economies. A PARADIGM SHIFT The Old Paradigm Since the founding of the social sciences, the study of religion has been dominated by a paradigm where religion is explained as an epiphenomenon, serving as a salve for social ills, and relying on the unchallenged religious authority of a monopoly to make religious beliefs plausible. As an epiphenomenon, Durkheim (1912/1976) and others viewed religion as an elaborate reflection of more basic realities.