Handbook of the Sociology of Religion

CHAPTER SEVEN Church Attendance in the United States Mark Chaves and Laura Stephens Although there is more to religious belief a ...

86 Mark Chaves and Laura Stephens United States attends religious services on a weekly basis had, until recently, enjoyed this s ...

Church Attendance in the United States 87 church on any given Sunday. Hadaway et al. assessed the accuracy of this number by com ...

88 Mark Chaves and Laura Stephens as the denominator in a count-based attendance rate while simultaneously using the number of s ...

Church Attendance in the United States 89 church attendance is not tenable. It is, after all, themorehighly educated who are mos ...

90 Mark Chaves and Laura Stephens The bottom line here is that recent research has overturned an earlier conventional wisdom abo ...

Church Attendance in the United States 91 of churchmembership. In 1789 only 10 percent of Americans belonged to churches, ris- i ...

92 Mark Chaves and Laura Stephens pattern: Voting, attending a political meeting, attending any public meeting, serving as an of ...

Church Attendance in the United States 93 very well attend services more or less regularly, if not weekly – has remained stable. ...

94 Mark Chaves and Laura Stephens practice and belief – misses something crucial about religion’s social significance. Con- side ...

Church Attendance in the United States 95 significance may be those seeking to change a society’s institutional arrangements by ...

CHAPTER EIGHT The Dynamics of Religious Economies Roger Finke and Rodney Stark An immense intellectual shift is taking place in ...

The Dynamics of Religious Economies 97 unquestioned authority and plausibility. Berger (1967: 48) noted that “When an entire soc ...

98 Roger Finke and Rodney Stark In recent years, secularization has been defined and redefined in several ways (Hanson 1997; Tsc ...

The Dynamics of Religious Economies 99 that one’s faith becomes valid and secure. There is little reason to believe, therefore, ...

100 Roger Finke and Rodney Stark When comparing the old and new paradigms, the contrasts are many. Rather than treating religion ...

The Dynamics of Religious Economies 101 religious firm can satisfy all market niches (see Stark and Finke 2000). More specifical ...

102 Roger Finke and Rodney Stark 3: To the degree that deregulation of the religious economy occurs in a previously highly regul ...

The Dynamics of Religious Economies 103 of all faiths, competition results in eager and efficient suppliers of religion just as ...

104 Roger Finke and Rodney Stark group loyalty, just as high levels of Catholic commitment in Ireland and Quebec both symbolized ...