Handbook of the Sociology of Religion

(WallPaper) #1

24 Robert Wuthnow


Social class, perhaps curiously, has received less attention in studies of religion than
one might have imagined, given the continuing importance of social class as a reality
and as a topic of sociological inquiry. Although the relationships between social class
and religion were emphasized in classical sociological work (especially that of Marx and
Weber), relatively few empirical studies in recent years have examined these relation-
ships. Yet some research on the ways in which people themselves make sense of their
class position suggests that religious beliefs and religiously based assumptions about
morality play an important role in these understandings (Lamont 1992). The relevance
of religion to perpetuating or combating social class differences is also evident in a
number of recent studies concerned with the relationships between religion and vol-
unteering, philanthropic giving, community organizing, civic engagement, and under-
standings of social justice (Ronsvalle and Ronsvalle 1996; Verba et al. 1995; Wuthnow
1991, 1994, 1998).
These are but some of the ways in which sociology and the study of religion in-
tersect theoretically. If theory is misunderstood as the search for a tightly constructed
set of deductive principles around which to organize all aspects of human behavior,
then there is indeed likely to be a sense of unease when students try to study religion
and make it sociological. But if theory is understood as a set of sensitizing concepts,
then these concepts are merely tools that can enrich the study of religion. Indeed, a
great deal of what we now know about such important topics as congregational life,
religious experience, the role of religion in politics, the religious underpinnings of self-
development, and the place of religious organizations in communities, to name a few,
stems from inquiries in which sociological concepts have been employed.


MISUNDERSTANDINGS ABOUT METHOD


For many students and those in the larger public who may be interested in religion, the
characteristic most likely to be associated with a “sociological” study is its use of certain
methods. These methods may be attractive to some and repugnant (or mysterious) to
others. But here again, there is considerable misunderstanding.
One common misunderstanding, especially among students or scholars relatively
unfamiliar with the discipline, is that sociology implies number-crunching. This im-
pression, like most stereotypes, is partially rooted in fact: Many of the research arti-
cles dealing with religion, especially in the discipline’s nonspecialized journals, utilize
quantitative data, effectively analyzing it for patterns and trends in such behavior as
attendance at religious services or beliefs about God. But sociology of religion, per-
haps to a greater degree than many other subfields, has maintained a desirable balance
between quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative studies, often involv-
ing large-scale surveys, provide valuable descriptive evidence on the religious beliefs
and practices of the U.S. population or the populations of other countries; indeed, a
surprising amount of attention has been devoted in recent years to developing more re-
fined estimates of basic facts as how many people actually attend religious services and
whether or not rates of religious participation are holding steady or declining (Gallup
and Lindsay 1999; Hadaway et al. 1993, 1998; Hout and Greeley 1998; Woodberry 1998;
Putnam 2000). At the same time, ethnographic approaches involving extensive partic-
ipation and firsthand observation are helpful for understanding the internal dynamics

Free download pdf