152 Darren Sherkat
structures with mobilized social movement organizations, just as contemporary stud-
ies in the sociology of religion juxtapose believing and belonging (e.g., Davie 1994; Stark
and Finke 2000). Religious movements have a distinctive character – at least some of
the benefits they provide are supernatural explanations and compensators that yield
value for those who believe (Stark and Bainbridge 1985,1987; Stark and Finke 2000).
Humans find explanations for the meaning of life – and even more trivial things –
highly valuable, and are willing to exchange actual rewards (time, money, or other re-
sources) for these explanations. Of course, answers to the meaning of life are typically
suspect, and only valuable if they are also taken to be true by trusted others. Hence,
these explanations are, to a large extent, collectively produced goods (Iannaccone 1990;
Stark and Finke 2000).
Religious socialization is the process through which people come to hold religious
preferences. To understand the development of religion at the individual level, we have
to know how preferences are formed and how they change. Notably, this view of reli-
gious preferences does not equate them with choices of religious affiliation, and instead
takes preferences to be separate. Religious preferences are the favored supernatural ex-
planations about the meaning, purpose, and origins of life – explanations that cannot
be proven nor disproved. These preferences will help drive choices in the realm of
religion – motivating religious devotion, public religious participation, and affiliation
with religious organizations. In this section, I will briefly describe the development and
dynamics of preferences, and how choices are influenced by both preferences and other
social factors. In making religious choices, religious preferences are not the only factors
taken into account. Religious decision making is also influenced by social pressures –
nonreligious rewards and punishments that are attached to piety or impiety. I will deal
with these social constraints on choices separately.
Sociologists interested in the dynamics of preference structures have to engage in
the messy task of getting inside people’s heads and accounting for tastes (Elster 1983),
which contrasts with the view of preferences favored by neoclassical economists (e.g.,
Stigler and Becker 1977; Iannaccone 1990). Preference structures for supernatural expla-
nations do not spring mechanistically from the events or structural strains that occur
at particular time points. This “immaculate conception” view of social movements is
rejected by serious historical work (Taylor 1988), and studies in the sociology of reli-
gion that privilege macro-social revolutions in religious understandings (e.g., Wuthnow
1976; Bellah 1976; Roof 1993) are unsupported by empirical examinations (Bainbridge
and Stark 1981; Sherkat 1998).
As a socialization perspective would suggest, people learn preferences for religious
goods, and if religious preferences shift they do so in predictable ways in response to in-
dividual experiences or social influences. Beginning early in the life course, parents and
valued others promulgate religious beliefs and understandings, and these commitments
foster preferences for particular religious goods (Sherkat 1998; Sherkat and Wilson
1995). Parents, friends, spouses, and peers are valued sources of information about
collective goods. Social network ties are important for generating shifts in preferences,
and close friendships can (although not usually) motivate radical shifts in preferences
for collective goods (Stark and Bainbridge 1980; Snow et al. 1986; Rochford 1985). Later
in this chapter I will discuss varied agents of socialization at length.
People tend to prefer the familiar, and religious preferences are generally reinforced
through routine religious experiences (Elster 1983; Sherkat and Wilson 1995; Sherkat