Studying Religion, Making It Sociological 23
Despite the relatively high degree of specialization that isolates all subfields from
one another, there is nevertheless some interplay among the concepts that prevail in
various subfields. Is sociology of religion mostly a borrower or a contributor? There is a
good deal of evidence that research on religion has borrowed heavily from other areas
of sociology in recent years. Research on evangelicalism, for instance, has borrowed
from the literature on subcultures to explain why evangelicalism persists – indeed,
flourishes – in a pluralistic cultural setting (Smith 1998). Understandings of markets
and consumer behavior have been applied to the study of spirituality (Roof 1999a).
Neoinstitutional perspectives on organizations have been imported to account for con-
flicts within congregations (Becker 1999). But sociology of religion also has exported a
number of insights to other parts of the discipline. The idea of charisma has been widely
used to understand leadership styles in organizations and social movements (Zablocki
1980). Understandings of ritual and religious symbolism have been applied to studies
of secular organizations (Bell 1997). And ideas about theological conflicts have been
extended to the study of cultural conflicts more generally (Hunter 1991).
Examples such as these, taken by themselves, prove little except that studies of
religion are not quite as isolated from larger sociological discourse as skeptics sometimes
suppose. But an important part of what makes the study of religion sociological is not
just evidence of conceptual borrowing. It is, rather, the extent to which studies of
religion actually help to illuminate the most critical issues in sociology. On this score,
issues concerning race, gender, and social class – the issues that perhaps occupy more
attention in sociology than any others at present – are especially worth considering.
Studies of religion have contributed to understandings of race in several significant
ways, not least of which is the continuing racial separation that characterizes most
American congregations and denominations. Any effort to make sense of racial seg-
regation or the presence or absence of cross-racial ties in social networks sooner or
later acknowledges that religion constitutes an important factor. In addition, the role
of religious organizations as a resource in lower-income communities marked by racial
identities is also increasingly recognized (Anderson 1992, 1999). African-American
churches, for example, play an important role in mobilizing social and political activity
in many urban neighborhoods (Patillo McCoy 1998; Harris 1999). Some research also
documents the role of cross-racial religious alliances in generating social movements
and as a base for community mobilization (Marsh 1997).
The relationships between gender and religion have been examined to an even
greater extent in recent years than those involving race. Gender is an important con-
sideration for studies of religion because women take a more active interest in nearly all
forms of religious expression than do men and because many of the more interesting
developments in religion in recent years have been spearheaded by women (Davidman
1991; Eller 1993). The gendered character of religious leadership and of religious argu-
ments about clerical authority remain of special interest as well (Chaves 1997). Studies
of gendered behavior in other contexts also increasingly pay attention to the role of re-
ligion. Research on attitudes toward abortion, for example, reveals the extent to which
these attitudes are reinforced through interaction with like-minded persons in religious
settings, while studies of the family, in which new questions are being raised about the
roles of fathers and the consequences of divorce, show that parental behavior varies
considerably depending on patterns of religious involvement (Luker 1984; Ginsburg
1998; Wall et al. 1999; Wilcox 1998).