Sociology of Religion in America : A History of a Secular Fascination with Religion [1 ed.] 9789004271036, 9789004271005

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Sociology of Religion in America

Numen Book Series Studies in the History of Religions

Series Editors Steven Engler (Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada) Richard King (University of Kent, UK ) Kocku von Stuckrad (University of Groningen, The Netherlands) Gerard Wiegers (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

VOLUME 145

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/nus

Sociology of Religion in America A History of a Secular Fascination with Religion By

Anthony J. Blasi

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: A man and women converse at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. © jcarillet

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Contents Society between Sanctity and Secularity: An Introduction  vii William H. Swatos Author’s Introduction  1 1 Doctoral Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959  12 Theoretical and Conceptual Citations in Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion  20 Who Were Cited as Sociologists of Religion?  26 Number of Sociology of Religion Citations in the Dissertations  37 Methods of Data Collection and Analysis Used in the Dissertations  37 Traditions and Denominations Under Study  40 2 Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984  43 Universities Granting Doctorates to the Authors  46 How Consolidated Were the Locations for Publishing?  51 Classical Sociological Theory in the Articles  52 Citations of Theorists Other than the Classical Theorists  57 Citing Sociologists of Religion  64 Theoretical Paradigms and Topics  85 Methods of Data Collection  91 Methods of Data Analysis  93 What Religions Were Being Studied?  96 Specialties Other Than Sociology of Religion  102 Conclusion  105 3 Community Studies and the Sociology of Religion  106 Earliest Studies  111 Earliest University-Based Studies  113 Jewish Community Studies  115 Middletown  121 Studies of Sects  124 Mill Towns in the Piedmont  127 Different Cultures  130 Rural American Communities  133 Religion and Community Division  137 Urban Studies  140 Overview  145

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4 Research Organizations  146 United States Bureau of the Census  146 W.E.B. DuBois and the Atlanta Studies  149 The Interchurch World Movement  151 Committee on Social and Religious Surveys  156 Institute of Social and Religious Research  157 Bureau of Applied Social Research  162 Survey Research Center, University of California, Berkeley  166 U.S. Department of Agriculture  168 University of Michigan Survey Research Center/Detroit Area Study  170 Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science  170 The National Opinion Research Center  171 Bureau of Social and Religious Research, Garrett Biblical Institute  173 Other Agencies  176 5 Professional Associations  180 American Catholic Sociological Society  181 Association for the Sociology of Religion  189 Religious Research Association  193 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion  198 International Society for the Sociology of Religion  205 Research Committee 22 of the International Sociological Association  206 Association for the Scientific Study of Jewry  206 Summary Overview  208 6 Observations  210 Appendix I American Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959  219 Dissertations Included in the Study  219 Dissertations Unavailable for the Study  226 Appendix II Origins of the American Catholic Sociological Society and the American Catholic Sociological Review  227 References  230 Name Index  251 Subject Index  258

Society between Sanctity and Secularity: An Introduction William H. Swatos The discipline of sociology has various national roots—Durkheim in France, Weber in Germany, and Marx and Spencer as two antipodes in England. One thing that unites them all in spite of their very different programs, theories and backgrounds is that each one of them took religion seriously as a variable that sociology had to take into account in its theorizing. It was obvious that religion was unique to the human species around the world. At the same time, however, what all these European sociologists shared in common was that their worlds were still largely dominated by state church traditions. Although there was certainly a measure of religious freedom throughout most of Western Europe by the turn of the twentieth century, belonging to a non-state religion in Europe was quite different from belonging to one of the many churches or sects of the United States. Even today in much of Europe state church traditions play an important symbolic role in the national identities of its various states. The United States, by contrast, was and remains quite different. Organized religion itself may be more important to the average American citizen, but at the same time choosing that tradition is a “personal” matter. One might think of the difference between arranged marriages versus those of “falling in love.” It’s not that people in arranged marriages are necessarily miserable or that people don’t “fall” out of love, but some very different kinds of processes and attitudes are involved. Not surprisingly in this regard, in spite of its European roots, sociology became by the middle of the twentieth century a particularly American discipline. Much of this can be traced to Talcott Parsons and not only his importation of Max Weber’s classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, but also his attempt to integrate that with Durkheimian functionalism—something that is true whether or not one thinks Parsons actually got it right. From his bastion at Harvard, Parsons sent out newly minted PhDs to the hinterlands where the mixture of the rural sociology of Weber’s Junkers and Durkheim’s murngins mixed with a developing nation where cities were rising on prairies and along rivers to bring the United States’ harvest of crops and minerals to an ever-shrinking world, which was at the same time sending thousands of immigrants to reap the blessings of “The First New Nation,” as Seymour Martin Lipset would describe it. Its European roots notwithstanding, sociology became a distinctively American discipline, which worked (and continues to work) in multiple directions. The earliest flirtations of sociology and the Judeo-Christian traditions in the United States were

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largely reformist in character, though there was also an element of radical critique of the contradictions between religious teachings and social conditions—this was particularly so in relation to urban problems. Early sociologists teamed with reformist religious and political leaders to ameliorate not only the suffering of masses of new immigrant populations but also to expose the causes of the worst of these conditions. They were in the main successful, though perhaps excessively so in the institution of prohibition. By the mid-1940s, however, sociology became more empirically orientated, perhaps with the study of Kate Smith’s famous “God Bless America” war-bond radiothon by Robert Merton and his colleagues becoming an almost overnight classic in the annals of sociological research. The differentiation of the sociology of religion as a specialty in American sociology generally may certainly be traced through the reformers to Talcott Parsons’s translation of Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, through the radiothon and into the present. The growth of the specialty in America also reflects the unique status of religion as a voluntary association in American society. Not surprising in some respects, then, would be the possible differentiation of sociological associations particularly concerned with the study of religion. The major organizations today—the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR), the Association for the Sociology of Religion (ASR), and the Religious Research Association (RRA)—reflect different emphases and trends in American religious life. The RRA, for example, derives from what was originally an ecumenical Protestant effort to assess religious data and evaluate religious programming in terms of intended (and sometime unintended!) results. Gradually Roman Catholics and others became part of that endeavor, and so it remains. The SSSR largely derives from a New England base that certainly included Parsons but also reached out to psychologists and anthropologists (and later to “religious studies” scholars as that discipline began to emerge). ASR’s roots lay specifically in the Roman Catholic tradition, as it began its existence as the American Catholic Sociological Society, shifting to its present title in 1971. There have, of course, been marked religious changes in the United States across this period. To the old order that Will Herberg described in his 1955 classic study of American religion, Protestant-Catholic-Jew, must be added at the very least MuslimBuddhist if we are to describe religious bodies in this country today. On the other hand, what is also important to recognize is that as these traditions that are relatively new to American shores (at least in any numbers) settle into the United States, there is also a degree of transformation that takes place that gives a uniquely American character to their faith and practice. Indeed, we can see especially in conflicts within some of these traditions precisely this process at work, wherein one segment of the population wishes to retain practices associated with a culture-of-origin, while another wishes to modify the religious tradition to accommodate the realities of a twenty-first century

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American life-world. These struggles provide new grist for the American sociologist’s mill and suggest that we will continue to see an outpouring of research from our colleagues in the discipline. With this future in mind, Tony Blasi’s contribution in bringing this volume into publication is to be welcomed not only as a work on where we have been but also as a guide to research efforts in the future that can be most productive in articulating the character of both our discipline and our society.

Author’s Introduction This is my account of how sociology of religion developed in America. It is a history, but a history the way a sociologist would tell it. So it is not about a few great individuals who made unique contributions against all odds. There were in fact cases that approximated that story line, but that is not the focus here. It is not an intellectual history in the sense of some ideas and theories that evolved over time. There were cases of that too, but again that is not the focus here. Sociologists look at social processes, more or less coordinated actions in which many people participate. They look at social movements, organizations, groups working in concert and, often enough, groups working at cross purposes. That kind of phenomenon is what characteristically turns up in my account. Sociologists often use tables of statistics to reveal patterns in collectivities of people. I will be using a number of tables in two of the chapters, but the reader will not need a background in quantitative analysis to understand what the tables show. The mathematical presentations will not go beyond frequency counts and percentages. A friend of mine who heads a law firm and teaches accounting law has introduced me to others on occasion as someone who works in something called, as he strains his voice, sociology of religion. The emphasis in his voice would convey a mixture of disbelief and discovery, as if I were engaging in something implausible and exotic. A sociologist—isn’t that something the village atheist grows up to be? Can the typical sociologist be objective about matters supernatural? Can anyone interested in religion be objective about anything? I do not mind the attention and consequently feel no compulsion to defend my professional pursuit. But the suspicious regard is widespread and lay beneath much that happened in the history of American sociology of religion. So we need to contemplate what sociology is, what religion is, and what the sociology of religion would be. Sociologists want to understand what is going on in the world around them. Normally, something is always going on, and if nothing seems to be happening the appearance of such a vacuum needs to be explained. Who has a stake in nothing seeming to happen? What intentions set in motion both what happens and efforts to hide what happens? This is normal human curiosity, and in a sense every wide-awake person is a sociologist. Pursuing a curiosity about the human environment in a serious way is sociology. Note that it is a curiosity about that which is human. Consequently, a sociology of religion is about the religiousness of humans, not the divine nature of suprahuman beings. It simply does not matter for purposes of the research whether the sociologist

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adheres to a religion that is under study, adheres to some other religion, or has no religion at all.1 All religions are human, and so all religions can be studied. Professional sociology is also a pursuit that is carried on seriously. Easy answers that have a merely rhetorical appeal or that are arrived at simply may in some cases be correct, but not because of their appeal or ease. More often than not they are wrong. If one believes that one’s own religion has survived the ages because it is the true one, there is a certain appeal in that; however, the sociologist would look for the social processes at work in that history of survival. If one believes that it is all a matter of reinforcement, that people believe because they are rewarded for believing, much like a rodent that runs through a maze because it is fed whenever it does so, that analysis has an appeal based on its simplicity—and some undergraduate students major in behavioral psychology because they can readily master that kind of explanation. But that will not do because it does not really explain why one set of activities is “rewarded” and another set not. Something that explains everything explains nothing. The sociology of religion is essentially sociology, no different from other areas in the discipline except that it takes religious activity as its matter of inquiry. And what is religion? There is a debate about that. Some define it in terms of ultimate concerns, others in terms of belief and cultivation of what is taken to be the divine. Still others argue it performs a function of culturally integrating people under values. I have argued elsewhere that it is an orientation of the mind toward what extends beyond the possibility of and mental powers of comprehension. For the purposes of the history that follows, what matters is that the people of the United States in the past century took a number of traditions, mostly Jewish and Christian traditions and ones analogous to them in other parts of the globe, to be religious. Using that as our criterion for what is religion, we have a procedure that is not philosophically elegant but enables us to understand a given history. As I said above, the widespread suspicion that a scientific sociology of religion would be an implausible endeavor lay under much of the story to be told. When sociologists organized themselves in a professional society in 1906, transforming a caucus inside the American Economic Association into a free-standing American Sociological Society (now American Sociological

1 Unwittingly exemplifying the suspicious regard mentioned above, an anonymous reviewer engaged by the publisher questioned what I say here and expressed disbelief that the nonreligious sociologist would have an analysis of religious phenomena that would not differ from that of the personally religious sociologist.

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Association), they placed little emphasis on the study of religious activity.2 There was something called Christian Sociology that was concerned with social reform, but the professional sociologists wanted to dissociate themselves from any such thing. They were not social workers or activists in what they were about as sociologists, though many of them were personally engaged in the Progressive Movement in their civic engagements. The major churches of the day were engaged in social reform, and to establish themselves as scientists the sociologists kept their professional distance from the churches and what the churches were about—religion. Some of them certainly had religions; some of them were ordained ministers. But their sociology was about how humans acted toward one another, how those humans organized or became disorganized, and how they created “mind” (what we now term culture). So religion as a human institution tended to be neglected in the sociologists’ professional association. How, then, did American sociology of religion come about? That is the story to be told. Incidentally, there is a myth to the effect that sociology arose out of the Social Gospel Movement. William H. Swatos, Jr., has assembled the evidence that definitively shows that sociology emerged out of a scientific interest, not out of such an ethical movement as the Social Gospel. He demonstrated that early American sociologists sought to address social problems by providing objective information. Their effort would have been undermined by the turnof-the-century “Christian Sociology,” and once exposed to the latter such persons as Albion Small, Richard Ely, and John R. Commons, not to mention Lester Ward, distanced themselves from it (Swatos 1983). Only a small fraction of the participants in the various Christian Sociology institutes of the nineteenth century were involved in the founding of the American Sociological Society. In 1909, when the Society’s annual meeting had “Religion in Modern Society” as its theme, the Society’s Council stipulated that it had to be from a value-free position. Only five of the fourteen papers presented at that meeting were on the theme—a departure from previous practice (Swatos 1989). The thematic papers clearly had nothing to do with the Social Gospel: “Religion and the mores,” by William Graham Sumner, the champion of social Darwinism; “The study of Homeric religion” by Albert G. Keller; “The role of magic” by James 2 “While religion was a key subject area for sociology’s intellectual founders in both the U.S. and Europe, the expectations arising from modernization and secularization theories that religion would fade pushed the sociology of religion out of the mainstream of the discipline” (Josephsohn and Williams 2013: 123). This seems truer of Europe, with interest in religion on the part of Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, but it has yet to be demonstrated that religion was a “key subject area” for the early American sociologists.

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Thomson Shotwell; “Influence of superstition on the evolution of property rights” by David Hutton Webster; and “Notes on the recent census of religious bodies” by George A. Coe (listed in Swatos 1989). Early on, there were individuals who earned doctoral-level degrees in sociology and who studied human religiosity. Their professors could not reasonably object to their doing such a thing since religion was, after all, a human activity about which one could be scientifically curious. So the professors allowed dissertations to be written in the sociology of religion, but that does not mean that they would encourage the authors of such dissertations to go into academia or that they would help clear the way for them to have academic careers. For example, one of the principal departments in the country was, and is, that at the University of Chicago: At the University of Chicago . . . 10 per cent (31 of 305) of the masters and doctoral theses written between 1893 and 1935 can be classified as sociology of religion. But those who chose topics dealing with religion were to experience very different career patterns from their fellow students. No less than forty of the Chicago graduates during this period were to go on to distinguished careers in the discipline. Only one had done a thesis in the sociology of religion. (Reed 1974: 159) Such a statement leaves unclear the precise difference between a distinguished and an undistinguished career; anyone replicating the study may come up with a different ratio from one in forty. In the main, however, one can accept it as a true statement. One who studied religion was likely to end up in a small denominational college, perhaps in a theology school, neither of which had graduate programs in sociology, which is the environment in which a sociologist could become “distinguished.” In Chapter 1, I look at the American dissertations that were written in the sociology of religion between 1895 (the date of the earliest one I could identify) and 1959. I stopped at 1959 because after that there were journals in the specialty, which provide a better indication of what was going on in the field than could dissertations. I explore where the dissertations were written, what theoretical orientations, methods of data collection, and techniques of analysis they used, and what religions they studied. Concerning where they wrote their dissertations—i.e. in what universities—I could make comparisons with the institutional provenance of all other early American professors of sociology because I had already developed a database with that information in the course of preparing a study in connection with the observance of the centenary of the American Sociological Association (see

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Blasi 2004, 2005a, 2005b). The mere listing of American dissertations in the sociology of religion prior to 1959 had not been done before; I provide such a listing in chronological order in Appendix I so that anyone can work with it. For trends after 1959, I examine articles in the sociology of religion and look for similar information about their authors and contents. Because of the bibliographic database in the sociology of religion that I have accumulated over decades (accessible from the web page of the Association for the Sociology of Religion or the “Research Hub” button on the webpage of the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA)—it was possible to amass a huge number of article titles and locations for the next quarter century after 1959. To read the articles with reasonable care, I limited the study, sampling only those authored by Americans, from every fifth year after 1959: 1964, 1969, 1974, 1979, and 1984. Several important controversies turned up during that era pertaining to theories in the field—specifically the Protestant Ethic thesis as applied in survey research—and pertaining to methods of analysis—cross tabulation versus multivariate regression analysis. Chapter 2 recounts these developments. Before the era of nation-wide surveys sociologists conducted much of their research in community studies. Nation-wide surveys would have required lowcost long-distance telephone connections at a time when such calls could be pricey. Communications satellites and microwave relays ultimately changed that. Even if one were to use in-person interviews in a survey, the sample sizes could not be large if the analysis were to be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time, and that requires computers. Of course, most of us have computers on our desks now, but IBM card sorters, let alone real computers, became available only in the late 1950s. Consequently there was a prior tradition of community studies in American sociology, and many of them included studies of religion. There are community-level phenomena that are easily missed in modern national surveys; so there may be good reason to revive the community study approach in sociology. In any event, Chapter 3 takes up the community study tradition as it involved the sociology of religion. Chapter 4 focuses on research organizations, beginning with the Bureau of the Census of the United States. The United States government included studies of religious bodies or organizations in the census, beginning in 1850. Difficulties plagued the efforts at first, but excellent reports came out concerning religious bodies in 1906, 1916, 1926, and 1936. The reports for 1906 and 1916 make comparisons with figures from 1890 in order to detect trends in the growth and shrinkage of religious bodies. The Bureau of the Census only became a continuously existing federal agency for the 1900 Census; in that sense we can begin to speak of it as research institute that from time to time

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conducted research on religion. Its efforts dealt largely with descriptive statistics, and that characteristic would be true for most research by the Census Bureau and by other entities up into the 1950s. Some actual sociological research was being conducted early on in connection with church efforts at social reform and church planning in general. According to Yoshio Fukuyama (1963), Graham Taylor at the Chicago Theological Seminary was conducting sociological studies before 1900, and Walter Laidlaw of the New York Federation of Churches devised the method of census tracts for the purpose of making local trend analyses across decades; he persuaded the U.S. Bureau of the Census to adopt that method for the 1910 Census. Of course, tracts of that kind are used even today in the federal censuses. However, studying social problems in order to coordinate charitable activities by churches is not exactly sociology of religion. Graham Taylor is best known for teaching a sociology of social problems at the Chicago Theological Seminary in the 1890s, organizing charities out of his Chicago Commons settlement house, and supporting urban problems research conducted by Julia Lathrop, Sophronisba Breckenridge, and Edith Abbott in connection with his Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy (later to be merged into the University of Chicago), but it is his earlier study in Hartford, Connecticut, where he served as a professor at the Hartford Theological Seminary, that was an early effort in the sociology of religion. In 1889 he led six seminary students and three others from the Connecticut Bible Society in ascertaining nationalities, denominational identities, local church affiliation, attendance, and Sunday School participation in the Hartford population, along with both “destructive forces” such as saloons and houses of prostitution and preventive agencies and descriptions of their work (G. Taylor 1890; see Wade 1964). While this is an interesting precedent, we cannot speak of a research organization focusing on the sociology of religion under Graham Taylor; when he studied religion in Connecticut he did not have an organization and when he had an organization in Chicago he did not sociologically study religion. When using the term survey today, polling immediately comes to mind; someone calls on the telephone or rings our doorbell and elicits our views about some theme. This image was not always what survey brought to mind, however. There was something of a popular movement for social surveys prior to 1920 in the U.S. In an effort to help readers organize social surveys competently, Carol Aronovici, who was associated with the American Unitarian Association, defined a social survey as a stock taking of social factors that determine the conditions of a given community, whether that be a neighborhood, village, city, county, state

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or nation, with a view to providing adequate information necessary for the intelligent planning and carrying out of constructive and far-reaching social reforms. (Aronovici 1916: 5) A survey in that sense had a reformist intent and was thus associated with progressive or even socialist politics. Conservative newspapers editorialized against Graham Taylor’s surveys in Chicago, and as we will see in Chapter 4 conservative politicians went out of their way to prohibit the conduct of community social surveys by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Social surveys may or may not highlight religion. A systematic 1919 review of eighty social surveys found that 36 of them included informational items or questions that fell into the category, “religious life and organizations” (C. Taylor 1919: 59). Meanwhile, not mentioned by Fukuyama, W.E.B. DuBois, himself not a churchy individual, made the Black church the theme of the 1903 Atlanta sociological conference. DuBois, who never did join the American Sociological Society (evidently because of the association of a leading figure in the Society, Robert Ezra Park, with DuBois’s rival Booker T. Washington), had been conducting high quality research as early as 1896 for his study of African American life in Philadelphia (1967 [1899]). Clearly religion was a very important aspect of African American social organization and hence would not be left out of his studies. Similarly the rural sociologists could not study rural U.S. society in any adequate way without including studies of religion. Fukuyama notes the involvement of the Presbyterian churchman Warren H. Wilson, author of a dissertation on the Quakers, and Edmund deS. Brunner, later a key figure in the sociology of religion, and Edwin Earp of Drew Theological Seminary, in the establishment in 1912 of the Rural Sociological Society. Scholars with little or no training began studying churches sociologically, developing their own methods as they went along. Charles Otis Gill and Gifford Pinchot studied rural churches in Vermont and New York, publishing their work in 1913. After World War I, the Interchurch World Movement’s Town and Country Division began a huge number of surveys, managing to spend millions of dollars of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,’s fortune in the process and going bankrupt in 1920. Rockefeller set up a Committee on Social and Religious Surveys to salvage what could be used, making the whole project more permanent as the Institute of Social and Religious Research from 1921 to 1934, with H. Paul Douglass, Edmund deS. Brunner, and C. Luther Fry as major researchers. There was more than meets the eye going on with all this. The Great Depression gave cause for research on the effects of the economic decline on churches and the challenges to church social services. Arthur E. Holt and Samuel C. Kincheloe at Chicago Theological Seminary conducted

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important studies at the time. Later, after World War II, demographic knowledge was needed for church planning as religion underwent something of an expansion in the United States. Research innovation turned to religious attitudes as well, in research directed by Charles Y. Glock at the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University and later at the Survey Research Center of the University of California, Berkeley. Denominational research offices and that of the National Council of Churches also experienced something of an expansion during that period (Fukuyama 1963). The story of all this will be told in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 turns from the establishment and demise of research institutes that did important work in the sociology of religion, to the origins of the professional societies. There are no less than three of them—one sociological and two interdisciplinary, but the latter have more sociologists as members than scholars from any other discipline. There were unique circumstances behind the organization of each, but because of the similar purpose shared by all three there was some irritations among them, especially between the two interdisciplinary organizations. Each has its own journal, and fortunately there is a sufficient supply of worthy article manuscripts to justify three journals today; but that was not always the case. Because of archives lost in a truck fire in the case of the Association for the Sociology of Religion and the existence of three journals each having its own special commemorative issues, the information on the respective (and joint) histories is partly unavailable and wholly scattered in different secondary literatures. I try to bring it together as much as it can be in the chapter. In the concluding chapter, I endeavor a summary statement, noting trends. Recently David Smilde and Matthew May (2010) analyzed articles in the sociology of religion published from 1978 to 2007. Their study overlaps with mine by only a few years since mine ends at 1984. They also limit their scope to five journals,3 while I include every article that appears in the online bibliographic database I mentioned above. Because of the different methodologies used in the two studies, it would be risky to try to make substantive comparisons between them or to trace trends from the earlier period that I cover and the later one they cover. Moreover, Smilde and May approach their analysis with a particular issue in mind—that of “weak” and “strong” cultural programs. A weak program has social structure having an impact on culture while a strong one would reverse the causal direction. They find that a strong program in the sociology of religion increased across the time period they studied; i.e., some 3 American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Sociology of Religion, and Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

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aspect of religion was more often the primary independent variable in studies after 1982 and especially after 2002 (Smilde and May 2010: 5). When researchers have strong programs, they can look for positively or negatively evaluated effects of religion. Positively evaluated effects appeared in 46.3% of the articles having a “strong program,” compared to 15.9% having negatively evaluated effects.4 These percentages were fairly stable over time. Unlike Smilde and May, I do not attempt to describe strong or weak programs or to identify positive or negative effects of religion in studies identified as falling within the “strong program” category. In fact, much of the sociological research conducted before 1978 is descriptive; it did not focus on causal processes. By way of illustration, the Middletown study by Robert and Helen Lynd (1929) gave a fairly negative view of the public culture of Muncie, Indiana, including its religion, but they propose no causal relationships. Social class was an important theme in the Middletown study, but class did not cause religion nor did religion cause class. Many of the foibles the Lynds found in Muncie struck them as small townish, quaint, parochial; their depiction reflected the contrast between their own cosmopolitan culture and Muncie’s parochial context. Smilde (2013) observes that a “strong program” of research is subject to a number of criticisms. The feminist critique sees received culture as the mental world of patriarchy. This is an aspect of a more general critique that would see any image of culture as autonomous and disengaged from particular lives in the world as an expression of people who dominant social positions. A postcolonialist critique would see the idea of religious autonomy as an artifact of the history of Western modernity. A postmodern critique would highlight the problem of translating lived experience into textual material (Smilde 2013: 47). Smilde proposes that a realist alternative program, a “broad program,” is better. One can only wonder how he would evaluate the earlier research covered in my study. Referring the data reported in Smilde and May (2010), Bender, Cadge, Levitt, and Smilde (2013) point to the fact that most of the research in the American articles in the sociology of religion studied American religion. They accuse this 4 Smilde and May (2010: 20) note that public funding of research on health outcomes of religiosity resulted in articles presenting religious factors as primary independent variables having positively evaluated outcomes. This is an artifact of the studies having been conducted in the United States, where such outcomes obtain because of the social support often associated with religion and the “intrinsic” nature of religion often cultivated in the U.S. Social connection and religion as an end in itself are related to positive health outcomes, but if an instrumental use is made of religion, there may be no influence on outcomes or even negative ones; see my summary of the research (Blasi 2011).

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Author ’ s Introduction

literature of universalizing U.S. measures, such as church attendance, and universalizing Protestant Christianity. I must say that their limiting their analysis to American sociological literature will artificially produce such a “finding”; Bender et al. should have surveyed the foreign literature, which is considerable. They also call for moving outside congregational phenomena and becoming more critically engaged. They claim that in a secular and rationalist discipline, sociology, the sociology of religion faced “uphill battles in justifying the value of studying religion beyond its negative roles in disempowerment, inequality, and irrationality” (Bender, Cadge, Levitt, and Smilde 2013: 27). So, they claim, sociologists of religion responded by portraying religion as overwhelmingly positive. They claim that this changed early in the 21st century. Such claims go well beyond the data reported by Smilde and May (2010). I use the word “claim” because they provide no evidence of all this.5 I can say from personal experience that my colleagues in sociology departments often did not see the study of religion as important and that administrators allowed me to teach courses in the field only rarely, but that did not affect the positive or negative portrayal of religious phenomena in my work. What resides behind such claims? I return to what I mentioned at the outset, my attorney friend straining his voice while pronouncing sociology of religion, as if to ask “How can there be such a field?” Some decades ago I gave a lecture at a graduate center for religious studies at the University of Toronto. The lecture was about sociological theory in the study of religion. Two younger prominent scholars could barely contain themselves until the question and answer time at the end of my presentation; they went on the attack, saying that because I did not attack the veracity of religion I was engaging in apologetics. Their claims were not difficult to refute; I had been talking about social scientific theory, not theology. Their training had been largely in the philosophy of religion, and in philosophy of religion the point is to evaluate the truth claims of religions. The philosophy of religion is an important aspect of religious studies, and so it was natural for the two scholars to look for an apologetical agenda where they did not find a critique of religion. One of the two subsequently read through a theoretical book manuscript I had prepared (Blasi 1985) and agreed that there was nothing in it that either attacked or defended religion; he even included a later book of mine in a series he edited. The other has nevertheless insisted over the years that I am a crypto-apologist. By the very nature of anything “crypto,” no evidence can be produced to warrant such a claim. What my study will show is 5 In the same volume Vásquez (2013) claims that the self that is presupposed in sociology is a secularized Protestantized self. He similarly offers no evidence of this in twentieth and twenty-first sociology of religion.

Author ’ s Introduction

11

that a number of sociologists have found religion fascinating as an object of a secular social science. Even those who are religious are interested in religion from the perspective of a secular aspect of the culture in which they share, much as an accountant may be interested in the finances of a religious organization from the perspective of accounting. The suspicion about a crypto-apologetic agenda in the sociology of religion is not limited to a few of my acquaintances. Williams and Josephsohn (2013: 63) maintain that the sociology of religion “largely became an enclave for sociologists personally sympathetic to religion.” They offer no evidence for their claim. They claim there is a dearth of studies of religion and ill health, again without evidence.6 They also claim there are no studies of religion and homophobia, again without evidence.7 Mary Jo Neitz (2013) suggests that the social location of sociologists of religion—whether they are adherents of a dominant religious culture or a marginal one, or outsiders to a culture under study—is an important variable, and it might be, but she proceeds to anticipate findings of an empirical inquiry that has not been conducted, as to whether it actually turns out to be important and how it might be so. Goldstein, Boer, and Boyarin (2013) believe there is a need for a journal devoted to exploring ideological biases that are implicit in “mainstream” studies of religion, including the sociology of religion. Let them explore! So far, as the evidence will demonstrate, there is a secular, non-fideist fascination with religion, and even, if not especially, it is the religionists who have wanted objective sociological information on religion.

6 I can refer them to Roemer (2011), who actually reviews the literature. 7 I invite them to search with the “homosexuality” search term in the bibliographic database in the sociology of religion, posted by the Association for the Sociology of Religion and by the Association of Religion Data Archives.

Chapter 1

Doctoral Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959 In order to present a systematic summary of the development of American sociology of religion, it is necessary to identify who the sociologists of religion were and what they did over time. There is, of course, no master list of sociologists, let alone sociologists of religion. There were certainly sociologists in the United States, some of whom studied religious behavior and organization, from the turn of the twentieth century onward; however, there is no simple way to make a comprehensive inventory or draw a random sample from such an inventory. One would not obtain a representative picture, for example, by gathering information from social activists from the Progressive Era, university based researchers from the following era, and undergraduate teachers from a still later era. That would lead us to believe that the field changed from activism to research and then from research to teaching. Such a development could conceivably have taken place, but one would not know it to be so from a data collection procedure that would artificially produce such an account. What I have chosen to do is select one kind of sociologist and one kind of sociological activity, and then identify the changes that occurred within those categories over time. Consequently, the focus in this chapter is on people who conducted classes about sociology in institutions of higher education (hereafter “professors of sociology”) and the dissertations they wrote. Clearly there were sociologists who did not hold academic appointments in institutions of higher education, and there were sociological works that were not dissertations. Since the point is not to create a comprehensive enumeration but rather to trace trends over time, those procedural limitations are not a problem, so long as it is understood that this chapter is not intended to be an exhaustive treatment of all sociology or all sociology of religion in America. Developing a list of professors of sociology is more easily said than done. First it was necessary to find when and where sociology was taught. Efforts to collect course descriptions were made by Fulcomer (1894), Tolman (1902), and Bernard (1945). The collections of course descriptions often provided names, if often only by surnames, of the professors who taught the courses. Further investigation of these early courses and their professors reveals that prior to the 1920s, it was often the case that there were no departments of sociology, or no departments at all. Departmentalization within colleges of arts and

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004271036_003

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sciences was not a common feature of higher education in the nineteenth century. Most institutions of higher education were liberal arts colleges in which different courses were simply distributed among faculty members. The new research universities, however, were intended to be larger institutions with graduate programs in which a number of scholars specializing in a field could collaborate in departments. Johns Hopkins had been founded in 1876 as a graduate school, and a number of the early American sociologists graduated in history from its history department. The department was characterized by the “new history” of Herbert Baxter Adams, with a focus on research into the life experiences of ordinary people. Among the scholars who earned history doctorates between 1883 and 1910 at Johns Hopkins and later taught sociology were Amos Griswold Warner, Elston Ralston Lowell Gould,1 and Sidney Sherwood, who stayed at Johns Hopkins to teach sociology there; Albion Small, who was the founding department head at the University of Chicago; Arthur Burnharn Woodford, who taught at Indiana University, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York University; Frank Wilson Blackmar, who taught at the University of the Pacific and later founded the first American department of sociology at the University of Kansas; and some eleven others. Edward A. Ross, who taught at Wisconsin, Nebraska, Cornell, Indiana, and Stanford, and William Kirk, who taught at Pomona College, also earned their degrees at Johns Hopkins, though in economics rather than in history; and Thaddeus Peter Thomas earned his Ph.D. there in political science and taught at Goucher College.2 It should be noted also that John Dewey, whose Johns Hopkins degree was in philosophy, taught philosophy courses at the University of Michigan that were for all intents and purposes sociology courses, and that the future noted sociologist Charles Horton Cooley enrolled in them as an undergraduate. We can infer from this that the Johns Hopkins doctoral programs, sharing a focus on sociology, had a major impact on the establishment of the field, even if handicapped by the absence of a program bearing the title sociology. The first American doctoral program explicitly in sociology was founded in 1892 at the University of Chicago. The fact that it was termed sociology gave it an advantage in placing its graduates in new sociology departments as departmentalization became more common early in the twentieth century (see Blasi 2004). Another early major program was at Columbia University, where sociology had been taught from 1880 in a joint department; the first doctorate 1 Gould would become involved in Woodrow Wilson’s presidential campaign. 2 This information comes from a database on early American sociologists, which will be described below.

14

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explicitly granted in sociology there appears to date from 1901. Some of the earliest professors of sociology earned doctorates in Europe and attended lectures in sociology from the famous Privatdozent Georg Simmel (among others, William Kerby of Catholic University and Robert Park of the University of Chicago), or they at least studied in Europe (e.g., George Herbert Mead, who never taught sociology but certainly taught sociologists at the University of Chicago; and William Isaac Thomas, also of the University of Chicago).3 Books in sociology had been published since the 1830s in Europe, but what counts as a book varies greatly. The category includes collections of articles, doctoral dissertations published as books, monographs, government reports, and pamphlets. Book is simply too heterogeneous a category for our purposes. Scholarly journal articles comprise a less heterogeneous category, but sociology journals in the U.S. began in the 1890s with the American Journal of Sociology and have expanded greatly in number since then. It is difficult to establish a ratio of journal space per sociologist in order to determine whether there was any consistency over the decades with that indicator of publishing opportunity. Moreover, the expectation that one publish in refereed journals in one’s field is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of American higher education. Specialized journals in the sociology of religion and the scientific study of religion were not established until 1959 and 1960. However, the twentieth century Ph.D. dissertation remained a relatively constant phenomenon from before academic departmentalization up to the present. The Ph.D. had once been an honorific conferred by liberal arts colleges on their long-serving faculty through much of the nineteenth century, but by focusing on Ph.D. dissertations we are focusing on the research doctorate more or less as we know it today. The first dissertation in the sociology of religion dating from 1895 (Pelton, 1895) was something of an editorializing tract (Blasi 2007: 16–17 gives a summary) and should be considered an outlier. Similarly, the 1935 dissertation Reification and Supernaturalism as Factors in Social Rigidity and Social Change written at the University of Pennsylvania (Woodard 1935) would 3 The earliest sociology courses (as opposed to departments and Ph.D. degrees) appear to have been offered by Arthur Latham Perry in 1865 at Williams College, by Robert Ellis Thompson in 1874 at the University of Pennsylvania, by William Graham Sumner in 1875 at Yale University, and by John Putnam Gulliver at Andover Newton Theological Seminary in 1879. Perry graduated from Williams in 1852; Thompson earned a Master’s from Pennsylvania in 1868 and received a Ph.D. from Hamilton College in 1879. Sumner graduated from Yale in 1863, as did Gulliver in 1840. Those who studied in part in Europe came a bit later: Albion Small met Simmel as a fellow student in Berlin in 1880 and later at the University of Chicago sent Charles A. Ellwood, Edward C. Hayes, and Howard J. Woolston to attend Simmel’s lectures; Frederick A. Bushee also attended Simmel’s lectures (Levine, Carter, and Gorman 1976: 815).

Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959

15

not strike one today as a scientific work, but the other dissertations in the sociology of religion that I have been able to access represent what would be termed today theoretical or empirical works in sociology and thus provide a consistency over the decades that satisfies our methodological requirements.4 It should be noted that not all of the dissertations were written in sociology departments and not all of their authors’ principal teaching responsibilities were in sociology. The early dissertations, as noted, were sometimes written in joint departments or in departments that did not bear the name “sociology,” as was already noted with reference to the early history department at Johns Hopkins University. At the University of Michigan sociology was housed in the economics department because the principal sociologist, Charles Horton Cooley, did not want to be burdened with the administrative work of serving as a department head. And some professors in small institutions held teaching positions in economics or history and taught a sociology course or two as well. This multi-disciplinary context is reflected up to the present time with two of the professional societies—the Religious Research Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion—having multidisciplinary memberships and journals. There is considerable overlap between sociology and anthropology, fields that differ largely in the latter field’s concentration on pre-literate and tribal societies, as well as an overlap between sociology and such hybrid specialties as social history and social psychology. Consequently some of the dissertations included in the analysis presented in this chapter were not administratively “sociological” works, since they were selected on the basis of having been written by authors who taught sociology and having the study of religion as their object. In the present day of computers and word processing programs, it is easy to forget the nature of dissertation writing in the past. Many scholars did not type and therefore had to depend on spouses, secretaries, or typists-for-hire to produce their final copy from hand-written manuscripts. Multiple copies had to be made through the use of carbon paper, since there were no photocopiers. Any change or correction involved either typing the whole page over again or making erasures on each copy. Even typing tape and “white out,” with which mistypes could be covered over, did not exist when most of the dissertations in question here were written. An examination of the library circulation copy of Ephraim Fischoff’s dissertation (1942), Max Weber and the Sociology of Religion with Special Reference to Judaism, is very revealing. This enormous opus (821 typed pages) is part carbon copy of the typescript and part an earlier 4 As far as is known, the Rev. Pelton never taught sociology. James Wroten Woodard taught at Temple University in Philadelphia, the University of Minnesota, and Vanderbilt University.

16

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typescript draft corrected in pencil or fountain pen. Many pages are the backsides of hotel and corporate stationery—one needs consider the shortage of materials during World War II. At points the ribbon copy is very light. Extensive footnotes summarize the positions of various scholars—mostly European— who criticized Weber’s Protestant Ethic thesis; the author didn’t expect the reader to have access to the literature.5 Most of the earliest dissertations had to be sent to a printer or publisher to be published as books. By the 1940s, they were usually typescripts and carbon copies that had been deposited in the libraries of the universities granting the Ph.D. In the mid-1950s, most universities expected copies of accepted dissertations to be sent to University Microfilms (now UMI Dissertations Express) to be made available for sale as microfilms as well as being deposited in typescript form in the libraries of the universities granting the Ph.D. Consequently, the dissertations dating from the late 1930s through the early 1950s are the most difficult to obtain.6 Did the early sociologists of religion tend to earn their degrees in one or two identical institutions or did they earn them in diverse places? Were there a few cohorts of them or was the supply continuous? How many were there? To answer such basic questions, there are two databases available as resources. As part of an earlier project, I had compiled a list of professors of sociology who taught in American institutions of higher education that were founded before 1950 and who had earned their highest degrees before 1960. I based the list on published lists of course descriptions (Fulcomer 1894; Tolman 1902; Bernard 1945), American Sociological Association directories, disciplinary histories, departmental histories, biographies, institutional histories, etc.; and to make sure the major research universities were not over-represented I consulted archival and library copies of annual bulletins or catalogs from smaller institutions, and even yearbooks, at college and university libraries within reasonable driving distance from my residence in Nashville, Tennessee, or places I had visited over the course of several years. If I had a name but little other information, I contacted college and university archivists. I cannot claim that the database is comprehensive, and it would have been impractical to draw a

5 Ephraim Fischoff taught at Monmouth University in New Jersey, CUNY Hunter College, and American International College in Massachusetts. 6 For reasons that I have been unable to discover, a number of dissertations from this period could not be obtained through Interlibrary Loan; I was able to locate a number of them through the online Worldcat service in libraries that were geographically close enough for me to make special trips to read them or to visit libraries for the purpose while traveling for other reasons.

Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959

17

random selection, given the geographical expanse of the United States of America and the dispersion of educational institutions within the nation.7 The other database is a bibliography in the sociology of religion. I began compiling this in the 1970s and with the help of Michael W. Cuneo added information and published two bibliographic volumes that, because of space limitations, were not exhaustive of the whole database as it existed in the 1980s (Blasi and Cuneo 1986, 1990). I have been updating and also adding early items to this database in subsequent years. At the present time the database can be accessed through a link on the webpage of the Association for the Sociology of Religion and the “Research Hub” section of the webpage of the Association of Religion Data Archives.8 There is no way to determine how comprehensive the bibliography is, but I am confident that it is about as complete a listing for the English language items as can be found anywhere. A search through this database for Ph.D. dissertations enabled me to identify the earliest American dissertations in the sociology of religion (see Blasi 2008). I also sought out the titles of all the dissertations authored by the early American sociologists who are listed in the other database and found a few on the sociology of religion to add to the bibliographic database. Moreover, the 2008 article only included items up to 1929. Consequently, the data on dissertations used here represent a more extensive list than found in the 2008 volume. For the complete list, see the Appendix I to this volume. I combined information from the two databases into Table 1.1. Up to 1899 most of the Ph.D. degrees earned by American professors of sociology were earned at Johns Hopkins. Only five of the pre-1900 dissertations written by professors of sociology were in sociology. From 1900 through the 1950s, private research universities that were not affiliated with any church dominated the production of sociology doctorates, with the University of Wisconsin also making an appearance in the top 20% in the 1940s. More than half of the sociology professors’ doctorates were in sociology only after the 1910s cohort. Calculating percentages from the data in Table 1.1, it appears that the percentage of dissertations that were written in the sociology of religion ranged from 6.0% in the 7 I have previously reported findings based on the data (Blasi 2004 and 2005), and since then I have been adding information so that the data reported below are more extensive than those reported previously. 8 I am grateful to Professor Cuneo for his assistance in the 1980s and Jackson Ammerman for his assistance in the first posting of the data at Hartford Seminary in the 1990s. Tennessee State University generously served as the host after Mr. Ammerman left Hartford. The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA), Roger Finke director, is the present host, greatly expanding the capabilities of the database.

18

Chapter 1

first decade of the twentieth century, to 7.6% in the 1950s.9 When the number of doctorates increased substantially in the 1920s, the percentages in the sociology of religion stabilized at above 5% in the 1920s and 1930s and above 7% in the 1940s and 1950s. So over the decades, a substantial proportion of Ph.D. dissertations in sociology, five to seven per cent, were in the subdiscipline. TABLE 1.1

Doctorates of early American professors of sociology

Decade Number of Ph.D. Ph.D.s

Ph.D.s in Sociology

1870s 1880s 1890s

5 16 80

– – 6.3% (5)

1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s

83 71 232 412

40.9% (34) 58.6% (42) 58.2% (135) 72.3% (298)

1940s

459

83.2% (382)

1950s

744

86.2% (641)

Top 20% Producers Total Theses Total of Degrees in Sociology Sociology Number Ph.D.s in of Religion of Religion Sociology Publications

Heidelberg (2) Johns Hopkins (9) Chicago (9) Johns Hopkins (14) Columbia (23) Columbia (20) Chicago (39) Chicago (53) Columbia (37) Chicago (72) Wisconsin (38) Chicago (84) Harvard (66) Columbia (60)

– – 3 – 15 15 33 37 29 64 36 74 64 59

– – –

–

5 4 13 22

25 36 94 168

34

321

64

722

2 14

After the turn of the twentieth century, the dominant sociology departments were those at Columbia University, the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin (the last of these beginning in the 1940s), and Harvard University (founded 1931 but among the dominant departments beginning in the 1950s). 9 These numbers do not include doctoral dissertations that may have been written in sociology but not by people who are known to have taught the subject in an institution of higher education. Thus the Pelton dissertation of 1895 is not included, nor that of Floyd Appleton at Columbia (1906), Clarence Andrew Young at the University of Pennsylvania (1912), and William Andrew Daniel at the University of Chicago (1925).

Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959

19

In the first decade of the century, only five sociology dissertations focused on religion; one was written in the sociology department at the University of Chicago, one at the University of Pennsylvania, and three at Columbia University. In the 1910s, there were only four such dissertations, one each written in the sociology departments at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Denver, and the University of Wisconsin, and one in the divinity school at the University of Chicago. There are not enough in these two decades to calculate meaningful percentages for the separate institutions, but it is notable that the origins of sociology are not usually associated with the University of Pennsylvania or with the University of Denver. One of these dissertations provides an overview of Christian missions to Japan while another develops a demographic profile of church attendance in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The author of the Allentown study, James Herbert Bossard, remained at the University of Pennsylvania, teaching sociology. There is also a third dissertation in the sociology of religion written at Pennsylvania, by Clarence Andrew Young (1912), not known to have ever been a professor of sociology. The Denver dissertation is essentially a handbook for conducting community surveys in order to organize church-sponsored social services for a community; the author, Charles E. Carroll, held a ministerial post in Denver but had been a student of George Elliott Howard of the University of Nebraska (the 1917 president of the American Sociological Society) and expresses his intellectual indebtedness to Howard in the Preface (C. Carroll 1915: xi). From the 1920s onward, the list of departments in which dissertations in the sociology of religion were written does not differ from the list from which sociology dissertations in general appeared. In the 1920s, it includes Chicago (both sociology and the religion departments), Columbia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In the 1930s only one was written in the sociology department at Chicago but three in the religion-related departments at that university; the list again includes Columbia and Wisconsin, but not Michigan. Pennsylvania, Southern California, Harvard, and Catholic University also produced sociology doctorates, including ones with dissertations in the sociology of religion. Peabody College for Teachers (now a part of Vanderbilt University) also produced sociology dissertations, one in the sociology of religion, but in departments other than sociology. The list in the 1940s includes Chicago (both sociology and religion-related departments), Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Harvard, Catholic, New York University, Yale, Duke, Pennsylvania State, the University of Nebraska, and the New School. The list from the 1950s, as in the previous ones, has the same list for sociology in general and for the sociology of religion; it is much more extensive, however, adding Vanderbilt, Minnesota, Texas, California, Washington State, Stanford, Washington University at St. Louis, Ohio State,

20

Chapter 1

Michigan State, Iowa State, Northwestern, Missouri, the University of Iowa, Cornell, Indiana, Florida State, and Notre Dame. In the 1950s, several sociology dissertations were written in the Yale Divinity School, one of them in the sociology of religion. The fact that a sociology dissertation could be written in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago is at first view surprising. In addition to those mentioned above, another three were written there in the 1930s and one more in the 1940s. The works in question are not particularly churchly or lacking in sociological content and sophistication. However, Chicago’s sociology department could well have struck scholars with humanitarian concerns as an uninviting setting. After the death in 1915 of Charles Richmond Henderson, “who was appointed by President (William Rainey) Harper without consulting (Albion) Small . . .,” there was a deliberate effort to make sociology “objective” and scientific (Faris 1967: 12). Some of the humanitarian interests later shown by Charles Ellwood, Emory Bogardus, and E.W. Burgess may have in part resulted from their study with Henderson. This line of activity, however, has not remained congenial to objective sociology. Academic training in social work, once generally allied with sociology in one department, has almost universally withdrawn into separate departments and schools, leaving behind the chill that is characteristic of the feelings between divorced couples. (Faris 1967: 13) In any event, a sociologist with a doctorate officially labeled as “church history” or “divinity” was sometimes an attractive appointee in small denominational colleges. And some of the scholars who earned such degrees wrote dissertations on topics other than religion.

Theoretical and Conceptual Citations in Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion

What theoretical positions and traditions informed the early dissertations in the sociology of religion? Who were considered important enough sociologists for their conceptual frameworks and theoretical arguments to be cited in these works? Table 1.2 provides a frequency count of dissertations citing various sociological theorists for each decade from the 1890s to the 1950s. Only theorists who were cited by five or more dissertations are included in the list. The single dissertation in the sociology of religion from the 1890s cited the social­

21

Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959 TABLE 1.2

Dissertations in the sociology of religion with theoretical and conceptual citations (5 or more citations 1890s–1950s) 1890s

Sumner, W.G. Spencer, H. Giddings, F. Durkheim, É Ross, E.A. Tarde, G. Cooley, C.H. Marx, K. Park & Burgess Park, R.E. Thomas, W.I. Thomas & Znaniecki Znaniecki, F. Sorokin, P.A. Mead. G.H. Young, K. Ogburn, W.F. Simmel, G. Parsons, T. Weber, M. Faris, E. Tönnies, F. MacIver, R.M. Bogardus, E. Becker, H. Burgess, E.W. Merton, R.K. Malinowski, B. Pareto, V. Mannheim, K. Blumer, H. Hughes, E.C. Ogburn & Nimkoff

1 1

1900s

1910s

3 5 2 1 1

2 2 1 1 1 1

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

Total

1

4 1 3 4 5 2 7

4 3 2 5 3 1 5 5 5

4 1

14 10 14 20 14 6 23 7 20 10 16 12 5 14 13 12 9 7 24 20 14 10 10 9 8 7 7 7 5 15 10 8 5

2 3 4 2 2 3 2 1 2 1 1 1 2

4 4 8 4 2 4 1 5 4 3 1 2 4 3 2 3 1 2 2 1 1

1 4 4 2 2 4 6 5 1 3 1 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 3

9 1 1 6 1 6 4 5 6 1 4 7 4 2 2 19 16 5 6 5 5 5 5 3 4 2 13 7 6 2

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evolutionists William Graham Sumner and the Englishman Herbert Spencer. From the 1900s through the 1940s dissertations cited Franklin Giddings, no doubt because of his presence and influence at Columbia University. Edward A. Ross, known for his writings on social control, and the famous French sociological functionalist Émile Durkheim also begin to be cited in the first decade of the twentieth century. The University of Michigan sociologist Charles Horton Cooley, famous for his dialectical (“looking glass”) model of the self, and the nineteenth century student of the social “relations of production” Karl Marx begin to be cited in the 1910s, though Marx is for the most part absent from the decades of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1950s. From the 1920s the citations take on a distinctly Chicago focus: Park, Park and Burgess, Thomas, Thomas and Znaniecki, Znaniecki, Mead. The Russian refugee Pitirim A. Sorokin, at Minnesota and not yet at Harvard, is also cited. Robert Ezra Park wrote a dissertation in the social movement tradition at Heidelberg, worked as an assistant to Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Institute, and was a highly influential urban sociologist and student of race relations at the University of Chicago. “Park and Burgess,” of course, is the important text/reader first produced by Park and Ernest W. Burgess in 1921 by the University of Chicago Press; it was “. . . not conceived as a mere collection of materials . . . but as a systematic treatise . . .” (Park and Burgess 1924: v). Prior to this text, the content of general sociology varied considerably, but after it and because of it some standardization began to set in (Faris 1967: 37), in part because the text was used by sociologists at other universities (Faris 1967: 41). William I. Thomas studied Volkerpsychologie under Wilhelm M. Wundt in Leipzig, Germany, earned an early Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago, and authored works on topics ranging from primitive societies to the urban “unadjusted” girl. He and Florian Znaniecki helped turn sociology in an empirical direction with their monumental Polish Peasant in Europe and America (Thomas and Znaniecki 1918–20). Pitirim A. Sorokin earned his doctorate in St. Petersburg and worked in the short-lived administration of General Kerensky in Russia. Considered an enemy of the state, he was expelled from his native land and managed to find academic appointments in the United States, eventually founding the sociology department at Harvard University in 1931 (Johnston 1995). From the 1930s dissertations in the sociology of religion cited Kimball Young and William Fielding Ogburn frequently, and cite Elsworth Faris, Talcott Parsons, Max Weber, and Robert King Merton, among others for the first time in the dissertations. Young, later a president of the American Sociological Association, was at the University of Wisconsin in the 1930s; himself a grandson of Brigham Young, he provides brief recollections of dissertations written

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23

under him on Mormon life in his oral recollections (K. Young 1995: 34–35).10 Ogburn, also a future president of the A.S.A., was a professor at the University of Chicago from 1927 to his retirement in 1951; he cultivated an appreciation of the value of statistics to sociology in the department at Chicago, having acquired that appreciation himself from Franklin Giddings at Columbia University (Faris 1967: 113). Elsworth Faris graduated from the University of Chicago as a psychologist in 1914, having studied under John Dewey, George H. Mead, and James R. Angell. When W.I. Thomas had to leave Chicago, Faris was invited to take his place to maintain the tradition of social psychology at that University. He served as president of the A.S.A. in 1937. The famous functionalist, Talcott Parsons of Harvard University, would become the dominant figure in American sociology in the 1950s. It may be surprising to twenty-first century readers that dissertations did not cite Max Weber until the 1930s. Weber was an important personage in German sociology who had published the controversial Protestant Ethic essays in 1904–05 and a lengthy chapter on the sociology of religion in the famous 1922 volume Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft;11 many dissertations would cite him in the next three decades. The neglect of Weber was not peculiar to American sociology of religion; American sociology in general neglected his writings. Kivisto and Swatos (1988: 29) point out that, while the American sociologists of the founding generation were familiar with German sociology and probably with Weber’s work, their sociology was incompatible with Weber’s. They tended toward system while Weber did not; they were endeavoring to establish sociology as a separate field while Weber was multi-disciplinary; many of them accepted the evolutionary perspective of Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner while Weber did not; and Weber was a critic of modernity while they were not. Weber organized a vast array of historical detail around pure types, allowing for law-like generalizations to be made about types while acknowledging that such generalizations could not be applied directly to empirical data. This was a brilliant solution to the dilemma of the great Methodenstreit in German social science between the advocates respectively of the nomothetic 10 11

Unfortunately, these are two dissertations that I was unable to obtain (Hulett 1939 and Tappan 1939). The 1904–05 essays are available in the Baehr-Wells translation (Weber 2002); most English-speaking sociologists of religion are familiar with the Parsons translation of the 1920 version (Weber 1958). The Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft chapter on religion was translated by Ephraim Fischoff and published as a free-standing book in 1963 (Weber 1963). The Fischoff translation was later incorporated, with alterations, into the Roth/Wittich translation of the entire Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Weber 1978).

24

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and idiographic views of what social science could be; however, the controversy did not appear to interest American scholars. Weber also began a turn to subjectivity as a matter of interest in social science, but the Americans did not take that turn until the 1950s. In the 1940s the dissertations in the sociology of religion cite the theorists at Harvard (Sorokin and Parsons) more often than before, along with the Chicago list; and the Europeans on whom Parsons based his system appear more frequently—Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and even the reductionist Vilfredo Pareto. Dissertations citing Talcott Parsons and Max Weber are even more notable in the 1950s, as well as ones citing Karl Mannheim. Mannheim had to leave Germany in the 1930s and taught at the University of London up to his death in 1947. His most noted book, Ideology and Utopia was translated by two University of Chicago sociologists (Louis Wirth and Edward Shils) into English and published in 1936 (Mannheim 1936). It is not at all clear why there would be such an increase in dissertations in the sociology of religion citing Karl Mannheim in the 1950s. Mannheim’s focus—the sociology of knowledge—has never been a main concern in American sociology, although Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1967) would popularize a variation of it in the 1960s. The sociology of knowledge perspective, of course, is a natural for the study of religion, and it may well be that Mannheim’s treatise had been filling a niche that Berger and Luckmann would fill at a later point in time. But something was in fact going on to bring about the interest in the works of Durkheim, Weber, and Pareto. Sociological thought had developed in the era of European colonialism; its evolutionary perspective and comparative method made the domination of the globe by the Western powers seem natural. The presupposition was that the European nations and the United States were more advanced and superior for reasons that lent themselves to scientific explanation. That viewpoint had no plausibility after the massive tragedy of the First World War, followed a decade later by the rise of totalitarian governments in Europe and a global economic depression. Sociology was being institutionalized in the massive expansion of higher education in the United States at the same time as the discipline was losing its received theoretical framework. An epistemological break from the past was needed, based not on differences between non-western societies and Western ones but on differences within the U.S.A. The new focus was on internal problems and social control. Talcott Parsons interpreted the theories of Weber, Durkheim, Pareto, and Alfred Marshall in a functionalist paradigm of non-coercive social control. At the same time, C. Wright Mills used the theoretical framework of Weber and reviewed that of Karl Marx in his critique of American society. After the involvement of the arrival of European refugee scholars in the American academy, the result was a canon of

25

Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959

classics, with Weber, Durkheim, sometimes Simmel, and later Marx in the list (Connell 1997). Table 1.3 provides frequency counts of the citations of theorists from sociology of religion dissertations in the four major departments—Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, and Wisconsin. Only theorists whom five or more of the dissertations cite are included. Dissertations at the sociology departments of the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin frequently cite the Table 1.3

Selected theory citations by major departments Chicago

Park, R.E. Burgess, E.W. Mannheim, K. Hughes, E.C. Cooley, C.H. Simmel, G. Park & Burgess Thomas, W.I. Weber, M. Ogburn, W.F. Sumner, W.G. Faris, E. Thomas & Znaniecki Bogardus, E. Mead, G.H. Young, K. Ross, E.A. Giddings, F. Spencer, H. Parsons, T. Sorokin, P.A. Merton, R.K. MacIver, R.M. Durkheim, É

1 1 2 4 7 3 9 5 7 1 2 7 3 1 2 3 3 2 3 1 2 1 2

Columbia

Harvard

1 2

1 1 1 3 1

2 6 3 2 1 1 2 2

Wisconsin

4 3 2 3 1 1 1 1 2 3 2

7 4 2 2

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­The list of theorists includes only those whom five or more American dissertations in the sociology of religion cite.

1 3 1 3 2 2

26

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same theorists, and the Columbia and Harvard dissertations do not cite many of these. Interestingly, the Chicago and Wisconsin dissertations tend to cite Charles Horton Cooley, who was at the University of Michigan, while Columbia and Harvard dissertations overlook him. Less surprisingly, dissertations tended to cite major figures in the departments where the dissertations were written; thus Chicago dissertations cite Everett Cherrington Hughes and Elsworth Faris, Columbia dissertations Franklin Giddings, Harvard dissertations Talcott Parsons and Pitirim A. Sorokin. The tendency toward in-house citations appears less frequently in the Wisconsin dissertations.

Who Were Cited as Sociologists of Religion?

Before the 1920s One would not expect the earliest dissertations in the sociology of religion to cite many, if any, works in the field since there were still few such publications to be cited. Examining sociologists of religion cited in dissertations from the three decades before 1920 (Table 1.4),12 one is struck by the fact that no Europeans are to be found. Rather, one finds five Americans, and they are quite a disparate collection at that. Richard T. Ely (1854–1943) was a Presbyterian in childhood who converted to the Episcopal Church as a student at Columbia University (graduated 1876, Master’s degree 1879). He studied economics in Germany at the University of Heidelberg (Ph.D. 1879, the same year as his Columbia Master’s). He spent his academic career at Johns Hopkins (1881–92), the University of Wisconsin (1892–1925), and Northwestern University (1925– 1933). He was one of the founders of the American Economic Association (1885) and the Christian Social Union (1891). The latter organization advocated the application of Christian principles to the resolution of social problems. Ely’s sociology was framed from a social evolutionist perspective. W.E.B. DuBois (1868–1963) was cited by Frederick Morgan Davenport (more on him below). DuBois graduated from Fisk University in 1888, earned a second bachelor’s at Harvard in 1890, studied in Berlin, and earned the Ph.D. in history at Harvard in 1895. He taught briefly at Wilberforce University (1894– 95) and conducted research for his now-famous The Philadelphia Negro before serving as professor of sociology at Atlanta University (Clark Atlanta University) until 1910 (see Wortham 2005). Of course, he is best known as a social activist. 12

The list of cited sociologists of religion in Table 1.4 is extensive despite an effort to keep it short. One effort was to limit the list to scholars who were cited at least twice in the 1890s–1950s dissertations in the field.

27

Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959 Table 1.4

Citations of sociologists of religion in sociology of religion Ph.D. dissertations 1890s–1950s

Author of Works in Sociology of Religion With 2+ Citations

1890s

Ely, R.T. 1 DuBois, W.E.B. Davenport, F.M. Case, S.J. Wilson, W.H. Brunner, E. deS. Fry, C.L. Elwood, C.A. Robertson Smith, W. Wallis, L. Cavan, R.S. Morse, H.N. Weber, M. Troeltsch, E. Niebuhr, H.R. Durkheim, É. Tawney, R.H. Douglass, H.P. Becker, H.P. Kincheloe, S. Gillin, J.L. Lynd & Lynd Faris, E. Fanfani, A. Maurer, H.H. Nelson, L. Betts, G.H. 5 more, each first in the 1930s Wach, J. Pope, L. Clark, E.T.

1900s

1

1910s

1920s

1 1 1 1

1 1 2 1 2 2 1 1 1

1930s

2 1 1 2 1 1

4 3 3 1 3 3 3 1 2 3 1 1 1 2 2

1940s

2 1 3 4 2 2 2 1 1 7 10 7 5 2 3 1 1 3 1 2 2 1 3 2 2

1950s

2 2 1 1 1 2

25 17 17 12 9 5 7 5 1 2 3 1 1 2

20 18 11

Total

2 5 6 5 3 8 8 5 4 3 2 2 36 30 27 18 14 11 10 7 6 5 5 4 4 4 3 23 20 13

(Continued)

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Table 1.4 (Continued) Author of Works in Sociology of Religion With 2+ Citations

Yinger, J.M. Leiffer, M. Young, P.V. Landis, B.Y. Boisen, A. Nottingham, E. Wirth, L. Anderson, N. Douglass & Brunner Schnepp, G. Wiese & Becker Holt, J.B. Chaffee, E.G. Parsons, T. Loescher, F. Landis, J.T. Fauset, A.H. Weller, F.L. Stroup, H.M. Spencer, H. Robertson, H.M. Bushee, F.A. Mays & Nicholson 16 more, each first in the 1940s Malinowski, B. Bultena, L. Brewer, E.D.C. Eister, A. Thomas, J.L. Lenski, G. Cuber, J.F. Francis, E.K.

1890s

1900s

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

Total

1 3 5 2 2 1 3 2 4 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 1 1

12 5 2 4 4 5 3 3 1 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 2 2

13 8 7 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3

9 9 7 7 7 7 6 6 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 (Continued)

29

Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959 Table 1.4 (Continued) Author of Works in Sociology of Religion With 2+ Citations

1890s

Nuesse & Harte Merton, R.K. Kane, J.J. Herberg, W. Holingshead, A.B. Harte, T. Goode, W.J. Cantril, H. Daniel, V.E. 17 more, each first in the 1950s

1900s

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

Total

4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

The work that Davenport cited was not one of the sociological studies of religion authored by DuBois but rather the Souls of Black Folk (1903). Frederick Morgan Davenport (1866–1956) earned the Ph.D. in 1905 from Columbia University in political science (which department housed sociology). His dissertation, Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, describes religious movements in terms of “sympathetic likemindedness”—i.e., suggestibility. The phrase sympathetic likemindedness came from the sociologist Franklin Giddings, who taught at Columbia. Davenport served on the faculty at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and Hamilton College, New York; however, he is best known for his career in New York State politics as a member of the Progressive Party and later in the Republican Party. Canadian-born Shirley Jackson Case (1872–1947) earned the Ph.D. at Yale, writing the dissertation Sources of Information for a Pre-Pauline Christology. During his career teaching New Testament at the University of Chicago, he wrote extensively about Christian origins from a naturalist perspective. Finally, Warren Hugh Wilson (1867–1937) earned the Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia University (1907). He would become a Presbyterian official ­responsible for rural church work, authoring numerous books on rural church life. His dissertation, Quaker Hill. A Sociological Study (Wilson 1907), is a very readable social history of a Quaker community in rural New York, near the

30

Chapter 1

border with Connecticut.13 He taught sociology at New York University and Columbia University. The 1920s Citations of Sociologists of Religion While only five scholars (who were cited more than once in all the dissertations up to 1959) were cited as sociologists of religion in the three decades of the 1890s, 1900s, and 1910s, nine were cited in the single decade of the 1920s. This is to be expected since there were thirteen American dissertations in the sociology of religion authored by American professors of sociology dating from the 1920s and only four in the 1910s and five in the 1900s.14 Frank Morgan Davenport and Shirley Jackson Case are cited again. Newly cited sociologists of religion in the 1920s are Edmund deS. Brunner, C. Luther Fry, Charles A. Elwood, W. Robertson Smith, Louis Wallis, Ruth Shonle Cavan, and Henry N. Morse. In one sense, the tally of citations in the 1920s is misleading since most of the dissertations in the sociology of religion from that decade cite no sociologists of religion at all. Most of the citations come from two dissertations, one by C. Luther Fry writing at Columbia University (one of the people cited) and the other by Samuel Clarence Kincheloe writing at the University of Chicago. Edmund deSchwinitz Brunner (1889–1973) earned the Ph.D. at Moravian College in 1914, where he had also earned a bachelor’s and a divinity degree. In 1919 he began serving as director of the Town and Country Survey Division of the Interchurch World Movement. Two years later he began as director of Town and Country Studies of the Institute of Social and Religious Research. There will be more about these organizations in Chapter 4. In 1931 Brunner assumed a post in Teachers College, Columbia University, with a joint appointment in the sociology department of the University. In effect, he was the professor of rural sociology at Columbia until 1958. He helped plan the founding of the Rural Sociology Section of the American Sociological Society in 1912 and later of the Rural Sociological Society. He served as president of the latter organization in 1946. He was a prolific author of studies in rural sociology and of rural church life. It is not surprising that he would be cited in the dissertations, even as early as the 1920s. C. Luther Fry (1894–1938) also worked for the Interchurch World Movement and its successor the Institute of Social and Religious Research. He had graduated in 1916 from Muhlenberg College, where he assisted Professor James H. 13 14

There is a North Carolina college named for him. See Table 1.1. Of course there were two more dissertations authored by people who did not, as far as is known, teach sociology in a college or university—one in the 1890s and one in the 1900s. These are not included in Table 1.1, but their citations are included in Table 1.4.

Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959

31

Bossard in the latter’s study of the churches of Allentown, Pennsylvania; the study led up to Bossard’s 1918 dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania (see Bossard 1918: 104–05). Fry earned the Master’s (1917) and Ph.D. (1924) in sociology at Columbia University. He served as founding chair of the sociology department of the University of Rochester, 1933–38. As an author of many studies, it is also not surprising that he would be cited in the dissertations, even as early as the 1920s. Charles Abram Ellwood (1873–1946) was a well-known sociologist and prolific author who served as president of the American Sociological Society in 1924. His general focus was on social problems and social reform. He graduated from Cornell University (1896) and earned the Ph.D. at the University of Chicago (1899). He is not known principally as a sociologist of religion, but he published an essay in the Scientific Monthly (1918) that observed religion progressing in a way as to transcend individual, class, and national ethics and replace these with a social, international, humanitarian ethic. W. Robertson Smith (1846–1894), the only European cited by the dissertations so far, was a Scottish biblical scholar and Arabist who held a position in oriental languages and Old Testament at Free Church College in Aberdeen, Scotland. He is recognized as a sociologist retrospectively largely because of his influence on the French sociologist, Émile Durkheim. His focus was on religion as practice and community rather than belief. His most notable work was The Religion of the Semites. Louis Wallis (b. 1876) had written on social evolution and held an appointment in sociology at Ohio State University prior to 1912. He articulated a sociological approach to the Bible in books and articles dating from 1905 to the 1930s. Ruth Shonle Cavan (b. 1896), a resident of Hull-House, earned the Ph.B. in English at the University of Chicago in 1921, and after beginning graduate courses part time earned the Master’s in sociology there in 1923, writing on the theme of sect, and the Ph.D. in 1926. She divided time between husband and family in Rockford, Illinois, where her husband taught at Rockford College, and Chicago, where she performed a variety of research functions. Eventually she joined the Rockford College faculty in 1947 and stayed there until 1962. In 1964 she joined the faculty at Northern Illinois University, until 1971. She authored books on family and crime as well as an impressive number of scholarly articles on a variety of topics (Moyer 1991). Her articles on religion have the Anabaptists, courtship and marriage, and Native American life as their themes. The 1920s citation of her sociology of religion is a reference to her Master’s thesis, cited by Samuel Clarence Kincheloe, writing at the University of Chicago in 1929.

32

Chapter 1

Finally, Hermann Nelson Morse is cited by C. Luther Fry in the latter’s 1924 dissertation at Columbia University. Morse (1887–1977) was an official in the Department of Church and Country Life of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church in America in the 1910s and the budget director of the church by 1924. He authored a volume published by the Committee on Social and Religious Surveys, with which Warren H. Wilson and C. Luther Fry were associated; the series of volumes had the endorsement of Charles A. Ellwood. The Committee will be discussed in Chapter 4. The authors cited by the dissertations in the 1920s are quite disparate, but there appears to have been among them a network centering in the predecessors to the Institute of Social and Religious Research. Warren H. Wilson and C. Luther Fry are among those cited, and both earned their Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University and conducted research for the Institute’s predecessors. Edmund deS. Brunner taught at Columbia and conducted research for the Institute’s predecessors. Charles A. Ellwood appears to have no connection with the Institute’s predecessors or with Columbia University, but he lent his name to their work by way of an endorsement. The work of these researchers focused on rural and small town communities and involved cross-denominational efforts among mainline Protestants to collaborate in surveying and addressing rural social problems. The 1930s Citations of Sociologists of Religion The 1930s witnessed a much expanded field of sociologists cited in the dissertations in the sociology of religion. To six who had been previously cited and cited again (W.E.B. DuBois, Shirley Jackson Case, Warren H. Wilson, Edmund deS. Brunner, C. Luther Fry, and Charles A. Elwood) twenty more are added. Most notably authors of dissertations began to cite the sociologies of religion of Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch, H. Richard Niebuhr, and Howard P. Becker. These scholars, cited as authorities, brought the whole discussion of types of religious institutions, especially the distinction between church and sect, into the sociology of religion. Weber’s study of the relationship between Calvinist religion and the emergence of capitalism (1958) was also accompanied by citations of European authors who were involved in that discussion (R.H. Tawney and Amintore Fanfani). The applied tradition associated with the Institute for Social and Religious Research was represented not only by references to Brunner and Fry but to the work of H. Paul Douglass.15 15

Max Weber, of course, was a founder of German sociology and a theorist in the Kantian philosophical tradition. His Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is both famous as a classic study and controversial. Ernst Troeltsch was a theologian and church historian, but his typological approach to his historical data in The Social Teachings of the Christian

Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959

33

There are also references to community studies, focusing on attitudes and local culture; specifically, several dissertations cite the Lynds’ famous Middletown study (Lynd and Lynd 1929), which was funded by the Institute of Social and Religious Research. In an era before the emergence of nation-wide polling, researchers concentrated on communities that they thought typical of the nation as a whole or a region.16 Robert and Helen Lynd deemed Muncie, Indiana, their “Middletown,” typical of American communities: “A typical city, strictly speaking, does not exist, but the city studied was selected as having many features common to a wide group of communities” (1929: 3).17 By the 1930s, the literature in the field was large enough that dissertations on specialized topics could cite earlier dissertations. Thus, for example, Frederick Denton Dove (1932), writing on the Church of the Brethren, cites John Lewis Gillin’s dissertation (1906); Ray H. Abrams (1933) cites Dove’s dissertation, as does Pauline Vislick Young in her dissertation (1932), and two dissertations— one on rural Catholic parishes (Wolters 1938) and one on Mormon social control (Hanson 1930)—cite Lowry Nelson’s dissertation study of rural Mormon villages (1929). There appears to be a tendency for dissertation authors to cite dissertations written at their own institution: Abrams at Pennsylvania citing Dove’s Pennsylvania dissertation, Hanson at Wisconsin citing Nelson’s Wisconsin dissertation; this could be a function of professional networks and, in the case of Wisconsin, the limited circulation of unpublished dissertations before the era of the microfilm publication of them.18

16 17

18

Churches (1919, ET 1931) has had a major impact on the sociology of religion. H. Richard Niebuhr was an American theologian whose Social Sources of Denominationalism (1929) applied a somewhat similar typological approach to American historical data. Howard P. Becker taught at Smith College, the University of Chicago, and the University of Wisconsin. R.H. Tawney was a British historian, while Amintore Fanfani was an Italian economic historian who wrote from a Fascist perspective in his early years but after World War II was an advocate of center-left Christian Democracy and served a number of times as prime minister of Italy. H. Paul Douglass conducted studies for the Institute of Social and Religious Research; his works are described by Brunner (1959/2008). The late Edward Shils once pointed this out to me. Robert Staughton Lynd taught at Columbia University; Helen Merrell Lynd taught at Vassar College and Sarah Lawrence College. Much more will be said about the Middletown study in Chapter 3. Frederick Denton Dove taught at Bridgewater College in Virginia; John Lewis Gillin taught at Ashland University in Ohio, Ohio State University, Iowa State University, and the University of Wisconsin; Ray H. Abrams taught at Bryn Mawr and the University of Pennsylvania, both in Philadelphia; Pauline Vislick Young taught at the University of Southern California; Gilbert Francis Wolters taught at what is now Benedictine College in

34

Chapter 1

The 1940s Citations of Sociologists of Religion In the 1940s there are a number of citations of the applied studies published by the Institute of Social and Religious Studies, authored by researchers who had been cited in earlier years: Brunner (3), Fry (4), Morse (1), Douglass (3), Douglass and Brunner (4). Citations of works in the sect and Protestant Ethic tradition increased remarkably: Weber (7), Troeltsch (10), Niebuhr (7), Tawney (2), Fanfani (2). The functionalist school of thought also becomes more common: Durkheim (5), Nottingham (1), Parsons (1). New studies of African American religion and attitudes toward African Americans appear: Loescher (1), and Mays and Nicholson (1), Fauset (1), while DuBois is not cited in the decade. Pauline V. Young’s study of the Russian “Jumpers” in Los Angeles (which will be described in Chapter 3) is cited no less than five times. Several authors who will figure greatly in citations in the next decade make their initial appearance in the 1940s: Wach, Pope, Clark, Yinger. Frank Samuel Loescher earned the doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946. His dissertation was published as a book two years later: The Protestant Church and the Negro. A Pattern of Segregation. Though the dissertation was not connected with the research he had conducted for the Institute for Social and Religious Research, he was clearly within its network of scholars.19 Moreover, a cited work dealing with African American religion, The Negro’s Church by Benjamin E. Mays and Joseph W. Nicholson (1933), had been published by the Institute in the 1930s.20 That volume is sociological in nature, though neither author appears to have been formally trained as sociologists. The liberal churches’ and the African American churches’ involvements in what would become the Civil Rights Movement were making their appearance in the sociology of religion. The other work on African American

19

20

Kansas; Asael T. Hanson taught at the University of Alabama; and Lowry Nelson taught at Brigham Young University and the University of Minnesota. The “Foreword” to Loescher’s 1948 book describes him as “a Protestant, a member of the Society of Friends. For six years he taught in an Episcopal boys’ preparatory school, and for six years he was a professor of sociology in a Methodist college. He is now a secretary for race relations of the American Friends Service Committee, and lecturer in sociology at Temple University. In 1944 he was selected as research worker for the Federal Council of Churches’ commission on the church and Minority Peoples” (Scarlett 1948: 9). He would later teach at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. Benjamin Elijah Mays (b. 1894) from Epworth, Georgia, attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. He earned a Ph.D. in religion from the University of Chicago, taught at Howard University, and later became president of Morehouse College, where he was a mentor to Martin Luther King. In 1930 he began a study of the Black Church for the Institute of Social and Religious Research, together with a fellow minister, Joseph W. Nicholson, collecting data from 800 African American congregations.

Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959

35

religion, Black Gods of the Metropolis by Arthur Huff Fauset (1971[1944]), was a dissertation in anthropology written at the University of Pennsylvania by a teacher and activist. Pauline Vislick Young was born in Russian Poland in 1896 and arrived in the United States immediately prior to World War I. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 1919 and worked as a researcher for the State of Illinois. She earned a Master’s and Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Southern California, where her husband was a professor of sociology. Her fluency in Russian was an asset in her dissertation research, which resulted in the widely cited work, The Pilgrims of Russia-Town (1932). The sociology department at the University of Southern California was something of an island of Chicago sociology, and the volume is an ethnographic study in the Chicago style. Her book became controversial in some circles, as will be noted in Chapter 3. The 1950s Citations of Sociologists of Religion Some of the sociologists of religion whose works had been cited in the dissertations first in the 1930s and then more frequently in the 1940s appeared with even greater frequency in the 1950s: Weber in 25 dissertations, Troeltsch in 17, Niebuhr in 17, Durkheim in 12, Tawney in 9, H. Paul Douglass in 5, Howard P. Becker in 7, and Samuel Kincheloe in 5. We have not yet given information about Becker and Kincheloe. Howard Paul Becker (1899–1960) earned the A.B. in 1925 and M.A. 1926 at Northwestern University, and the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1930 with a dissertation on ancient Greek religion. After earning his Master’s he studied in Cologne, Germany, under Leopold von Wiese, Paul Honigsheim, and Max Scheler. He adapted, expanded, and translated two works by von Wiese (Beziehungslehre and Gebildelehre) as Systematic Sociology (1932); a typological approach to religion was widely cited from that volume. He also co-authored a well-known history of social thought (Becker and Barnes 1938, 1952). He was elected the 1960 president of the American Sociological Association and died in office. Samuel Clarence Kincheloe (1890–1981) graduated from Drake University and earned the M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. His doctorate was from the sociology department, where he wrote a dissertation on the prophet as a social type. He spent most of his teaching career at the Chicago Theological Seminary (1928–1956), where he proved to be a pioneer in applying scientific research methods to the study of the Christian churches. He served as president of Tougaloo College (1956) and taught sociology of religion at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, 1960–64. Also frequently cited in the 1950s dissertations were Joachim Wach, Liston Pope, Elmer T. Clark, J. Milton Yinger, and Murray Leiffer. Joachim Wach

36

Chapter 1

(­1898–1955) was a German scholar in religious studies (Ph.D. Leipzig 1932, where he also taught). Since he was of Jewish ancestry, he had to leave Germany and accepted an appointment at Brown University in 1935. He taught at the Chicago Divinity School, 1945–1955, which accounts for his influence among American scholars. An important aspect of his work was his sociological approach to religious groups (see Wach 1944). Liston Pope (1909–1974) graduated from Duke University (1929) and also earned a B.D. there (1932). He served as a Congregationalist clergyman until joining the Yale Divinity faculty in 1938. He served as a professor of social ethics and, from 1949 to 1967, Dean of the Divinity School. His Ph.D. dissertation (1940) was published as Millhands and Preachers (1942), now considered a classic study of religion and labor issues. More will be said about that study in Chapter 3. Elmer T. Clark (1886–1966) was a Methodist clergyman and church executive as well as prolific religious historian. He earned the B.A. at BirminghamSouthern College, the M.A. at George Peabody College for Teachers (Nashville), and the B.D. and Th.D. at Temple University. He had used questionnaire technology in conducting research into religious conversion. His book The Small Sects in America (1937) provided basic social and historical information on numerous religious groups in the United States; it was used as a reference source by many sociologist of religion. J. Milton Yinger (b. 1916) earned the B.A. at DePauw University (1937), the M.A. at Louisiana State University (1939), and the Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin (1943). He taught at Ohio Wesleyan University from 1941 to 1947, and Oberlin University from 1947 to 1987. The 1950s dissertations cite his book, Religion in the Struggle for Power (1946), a work written in the typological tradition of Weber, Troeltsch, and Niebuhr. Topics include the Reformation, the Protestant Ethic thesis, economic ethics, and war. In later years Yinger would be known in the sociology of religion for his text, The Scientific Study of Religion (1970), which developed a general approach to the field around the insights of the earlier book. He served as president of the American Sociological Association in 1976. Murray Leiffer (b. 1902) earned the M.A. in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1928 and the Ph.D. in sociology at Northwestern University in 1932. He was professor of sociology at Garrett Theological seminary in Chicago and wrote numerous books and research reports on the condition of congregations, missions, and religion in general. We will have more to say about him in Chapter 4.

37

Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959



Number of Sociology of Religion Citations in the Dissertations

One would expect the earliest dissertations to have few citations of sociologists of religion simply because the field was new. Indeed it can be seen in Table 1.5 that the one dissertation from the 1890s cited only one sociologist of religion and that the six from the first decade of the twentieth century averaged fewer than one. The mean numbers and medians generally increase up into the 1950s, but it is not until the 1940s that an impressive increase occurs. This would suggest that a critical mass of works by specialists were either not written or not available for citation until the 1940s. Table 1.5

Mean and median number of sociologists of religion cited in sociology of religion Ph.D. dissertations, by decade

1890s

Mean number* Median number Number of dissertations

1 1 1

(Co-authored works recorded as one author) 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s

0.7 0 6

1.8 2 5

1.3 1 14

2.9 3 18

1950s

7.7 6 23

9.3 8 56

* Not including two dissertations for which citation information was missing; only printed excerpts were available.



Methods of Data Collection and Analysis Used in the Dissertations

Empirical inquiries, including those that use historical methods, would, of course, employ some kind of data collection while theoretical works would not. Judging from Table 1.6, only three dissertations used no data collection method and hence were theoretical works. Dissertations often cited pre-existing official statistics, but only once, in the first decade of the twentieth century, did a dissertation use official statistics as the principal source of information. Interviews, historical methods, and religious literature began to serve as the sources or objects of study in that first decade, and in the 1910s a community survey and a use of attendance counts, information analogous to that used in the studies carried out under the Institute of Social and Religious Research, make an appearance. Dissertation research used questionnaires—without sampling—beginning in the 1920s, along with participant observation, case

38

Chapter 1

studies, mapping, and the secondary analysis of questionnaire data. Life histories, made popular in sociology by Thomas and Znaniecki in the 1910s, appear in the sociology of religion dissertations in the 1930s. Also in the 1930s, the appearance of sampling suggests that the authors were collecting data with statistical inference techniques in mind. They also began to use scales in the dissertations in that decade. In the 1940s, research on Catholic institutions resulted in the use of two additional kinds of data acquisition—the parish census and the study of case files from a church marriage tribunal. The 1950s saw the use of indexes (summing non-interval numerical items), a sociogram, and the secondary analysis of ethnographies. The last of these presupposes the accumulation of prior ethnographic literature. Table 1.6

Number of sociology of religion dissertations using identified methods of data collection, by decade (Many dissertations used more than one method.)

Total* None Official statistics Interviews§ Historical Literature Community survey Attendance counts Questionnaire Participant observation Case studies Mapping Sampling Life histories Scale Collected previously published data Parish census Community census

1890s

1900s

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1 1

15

11

36

48 1

60 1

139

5 8 3

8 11

6 14 2

1 24 20 3 2

2 1 1 1

5 3 1

3 4

14 8

2 1

1 15 3 11

1 2 5 1

1 3 1 1

1 2 2

2 2

1

(Continued)

39

Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959 Table 1.6 (Continued) 1890s

Institutional case files Index Sociogram Secondary analysis: Questionnaires Ethnographies

1900s

1910s

1920s

1

1930s

1940s

1950s

1

1 3 1

1

* Not including dissertations for which citation information was missing; some dissertations were available only as printed excerpts. § Not including total community surveys, which often used interviews.

In many cases across the decades, especially when the authors collected historical and participant observation data, no analysis was required. The narrative or description, especially pertaining to some unusual or controversial group, was sufficiently informative (see Table 1.7). Typologies, statistical means or other descriptive statistics, correlation of some kind, ratios, percentages, or rates, and graphs began to appear in the 1920s. Shear philosophizing occurred once, in the 1930s. Also in the 1930s, authors began to use interview excerpts for illustrative purposes, along with maps, frequency tables, comparisons of means (with no significance tests), cross-tabulation (with or without chisquare indicators of significance), and cross-tabulation with a measure of association. The discernment of historical trends or stages first appeared in the 1940s, as did comparisons. The 1950s saw the introduction of comparisons of means with significance tests, content analysis, and factor analysis in the dissertations. The use of chi square in the 1930s is consistent with the finding above that the use of sampling began in that decade. Before computers were available for use in statistical analysis, chi squared, rough measures of association based on cross-tabulation, and comparisons of means were the most practical kind of quantitative analysis. It would be the 1970s before authors could use computers, more or less routinely, for employing statistics that used deviations from the mean in analysis—Pearson product moment correlations and linear regression.

40

Chapter 1

Table 1.7

Frequency of Methods of Analysis in Ph.D. Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, by Decades (Dissertations may have more than one method.) 1900s 1910s

None, or none apart from data collection 6 Typology Statistical means or other descriptive statistics Correlation of some kind Ratio, percentage, or rate Graph Interview excerpts for illustration Maps Philosophizing Frequency tables Comparing means, no significance tests Comparing means, with significance tests Cross-tabulation, no χ2 Cross-tabulation, with χ2 Cross-tabulation, with measure of association Historical trends, stages Comparison Content analysis Factor analysis



5

1920s

9 2 2 2 1 1

1930s

1940s

1950s

11

17 2 1

13 3 7

2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

8 12 2 3

3

1 1

2 9 7 16 2 4 2 2 1

Traditions and Denominations Under Study

Table 1.8 shows what religious traditions and, within Christianity, what denominations were under study. Eleven dissertations specified no tradition; thirty studied non-Christian traditions, and of those twelve focused on the Mormon tradition and nine on Judaism. Fully ninety-two focused on various Christian denominations or, in the case of nineteen of those, Christianity in general. Consequently it can be said that the vast majority of dissertations focused on religious traditions (Christian, Mormon, Jewish) that were common in the United States in the twentieth century. Among the Christian denominations,

41

Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959

dissertations began to focus on the Episcopal Church, the Brethren, and the Quakers early on, in the first decade of the century. Studies focused on the Generic Protestants, Methodists, Mennonites, and Catholics in the 1920s, though it should be noted that the one study of Catholicism was an anthropological study of folk religion among Sicilian immigrants rather than a study of more typical American Catholicism. It was not until the 1930s that dissertations began to focus on more typical American Catholicism and such disparate groups as the “Molokans” (Russian Jumpers), the Disciples of Christ, the Hutterites, generic Calvinists, and the Protestant Black churches. In the 1940s one finds studies of Cumberland Presbyterians, Shakers, the Oxford Group, European Lutheranism, Puritans, and Presbyterians. It is not until the 1950s that dissertations focused on the Southern Baptists, the American Baptists, the Lutheran Church (U.S.A.), the Church of God (Anderson), fundamentalists, and the Holiness movement. Generally, it appears that what was once termed the “Protestant Establishment” received attention in the dissertations early on and the remainder beginning in the 1930s. Table 1.8

Traditions & denominations under study in Ph.D. dissertations in the sociology of religion, by decade (Dissertations may treat more than one.) 1890s

No tradition specified Buddhist Confucian Shinto Jewish Mormon Ancient Greek Christian Science Tribal Hindu Christian No denomination specified Episcopalian Brethren

1

1900s

1910s

1920s

1930s

1 1 1 1

1

1

1

2

1 2

1 3 1 1 1

1

1

3

1

2

2 1 1

4

3

1940s

1

1950s

7 1 1 1 4 7 1 1 5 1 1

(Continued)

42

Chapter 1

Table 1.8 (Continued) 1890s

Quaker Catholic Protestant Methodist Mennonite Black Protestant “Molokan” Disciples of Christ Hutterite Calvinist Lutheran (European) Cumberland Presbyterian Shaker Oxford Group Puritan Presbyterian Fundamentalist Southern Baptist American Baptist Lutheran (U.S.A.) Church of God (Anderson) Holiness Amish

1900s

1

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1 1 3 1 1

1 2

1 7 2 2 1

1 9 7 3 3

1 2 1 1 1 1

1 2 1 1 1 1 1

2 1 1 1 1 1 1

Chapter 2

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984 In Chapter 1 it was only possible to trace the early history of American sociology of religion through dissertations because there were no journals in the field and books were so diverse, ranging from pamphlets to major research reports and systematic tomes, that they could not be meaningfully tallied up for purposes of discovering patterns. With a few exceptions, dissertations were consistently empirical research reports. It was possible to find out from them that, for example, the American university centers of research in the sociology of religion were no different from those of sociology in general: Columbia University, the University of Chicago, from 1940 the University of Wisconsin, and from 1950 Harvard University. There were also a few early dissertations in the field at the University of Pennsylvania. One may surmise that the initiative for dissertation research in the specialty came from the graduate students rather than any research projects housed in the degree-granting departments. In the present chapter, the focus will be slightly different, highlighting work in the field not by graduate students earning doctorates but by everyone publishing relevant articles in journals and collections of readings. Most of these authors had earned doctorates in sociology, as we will see, and had written dissertations either in the field or in some other specialty within sociology. This stage of the study is made possible by the fact that specialized journals were established in time for us to trace developments after 1959. The present journal Sociology of Religion began in 1940 as the American Catholic Sociological Review; the first editor, Paul Mundie, did not want American Catholic sociologists to be isolated from the mainstream but wanted the new journal to serve as an added forum because “Catholics have a body of truths to serve as guides in the study of social theory and, because of this, society for them can never be a goal-less or purposeless organism, nor can society be an end or purpose in itself” (Mundie [1940]1989: 321). By the 1960s, however, there appeared to be less of a distinctively Catholic sociology at the meetings of the sponsoring organization, the American Catholic Sociological Society, and in its journal, though there was an interest among the membership in the sociology of religion and of Catholicism.1 We will trace this change, described by those who went through it as an “evolution,” in a later chapter. Here we need only observe 1 Information on the American Catholic Sociological Society, as well as the other professional associations mentioned immeidately below, is provided in Chapter 5.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004271036_004

44

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that the name and nature of the journal changed in 1964, when it became Sociological Analysis and served as a journal in the sociology of religion. The intent had been for Sociological Analysis to serve as the journal title through a transitional period, as noted by the 1964 editor, Paul Reiss, in a 1991 letter (quoted in Swatos 1993). While the actual transition was quick, the name was not changed to Sociology of Religion until 1993, when a referendum of the renamed Association for the Sociology of Religion approved it. So an Englishlanguage journal devoted entirely to the field assumed its definitive form in 1964, obtaining a definitive name in 1993. Meanwhile, the tradition of the pre-World War II Institute for Social and Religious Research persisted in the Committee for Cooperative Field Research, which became the Religious Research Fellowship and finally, in 1959, the Religious Research Association. The Association began publishing the Review of Religious Research in the summer of 1959 (see Whitman 1959a). While the journal was multi-disciplinary from the outset, the bulk of the articles published in it was and still is by sociologists. The applied focus of its founders has been retained in the form of summaries of denominational research reports that appear in a separate section after the main articles. The first issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion dates from October, 1961. The “Introductory Word” notes that “a generous grant from the J.A. Kaplan Fund” was instrumental in launching the journal (Kallen and Pemberton 1961). While there was more of an evident university basis for the new journal than for the Review of Religious Research, given the officers of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion listed in the issue, the SSSR Vice President was Lauris B. Whitman, the 1959 Religious Research Association President who had introduced the Review of Religious Research. So in addition to Sociological Analysis (the future Sociology of Religion) there were newly in place two interdisciplinary journals that published a number of articles in the sociology of religion. Even with three specialized journals in place, articles in the sociology of religion appeared and continue to appear in general sociological journals, such as the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, and Social Forces. In addition, American sociologists of religion occasionally participated in international meetings and published their work in overseas journals. From 1965 to 1971 the Internationales Jahrbuch für Religionssoziologie published works in both German and English. Sociaal Kompass was established in the Netherlands in 1953 and came to be published as Social Compass from Louvain, Belgium, from the 1960s; American sociologists of religion publish in it regularly. There are also general international sociological journals,

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984

45

the ephemeral Sociologia Religiosa, and the interdisciplinary Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions. In addition to scholarly journals, collections of essays in the field have been gathered together in thematic volumes. Depending on the intended audience of the volumes, the chapters appearing in them could be highly technical and comparable to journal articles, or less technical and appropriate for a more general readership. For example, The Religious Dimension. New Directions in Quantitative Research, edited by Robert Wuthnow (1979), was aimed at scholars in the field; its chapters were intended to summarize and criticize areas of research in the sociology of religion where a large body of literature had already appeared, to replicate and extend such earlier work, and bring quantitative data to bear on unexplored issues (Wuthnow’s Preface, p. xiii). Religion, Culture and Society. A Reader in the Sociology of Religion, edited by Louis Schneider (1964), was a college text for use in upper level undergraduate courses.2 The Wuthnow volume was comprised entirely of previously unpublished works while the Schneider volume was a composite of new and previously published ones. Less attached to sociology as a discipline was American Civil Religion edited by Russell E. Richey and Donald G. Jones (1974), neither of whom were sociologists; it included non-technical chapters by the sociologists Robert N. Bellah, David Little, and W. Lloyd Warner. For purposes of developing a listing of journal articles and previously unpublished works collected in volumes pertaining to the sociology of religion, I used one of the databases that I had employed in Chapter 1, the online bibliography in the sociology of religion available on the websites of the Association for the Sociology of Religion and the Association of Religion Data Archives. All journal articles in the field and previously unpublished chapters in volumes of collected works by Americans that appeared every fifth year were included, beginning with 1964, the fifth year after the last year of the dissertations included in the research reported in Chapter 1. The terminal year for inclusion was 1984, so that the trajectory from 1959 is a quarter century.

2 In fact in the summer of 1968 I was in such a course, conducted by Schneider himself, that used that reader as a text. A protégé of Robert K. Merton, Schneider’s presentations had an emphatically functionalist perspective.

46

Chapter 2

Universities Granting Doctorates to the Authors

In Chapter 1, the institutions where dissertations were written were under consideration; here it is the institution where an article or chapter author had (or in some cases would) earn a doctorate. In most cases, of course, the authors were teaching at some college or university other than the one where they had earned their highest degrees. Table 2.1 reports the institutions by year of the article’s appearance (1964, 1969, 1974, 1979, and 1984). The degree-granting institution of authors who published more than one article or chapter in a year will be counted more than once. Unlike the corresponding table in Chapter 1 (Table 1.1), this table does not represent a sum of people’s alma maters but of publishing activities that can be associated with authors’ alma maters. The difference may strike one as subtle, but as an indicator of whether there were any hubs of activity in the field this represents an improvement over what was available for the period prior to 1959. Table 2.1

Ph.D. granting institutions of authors cited in sociology of religion articles: Number of citations in the given year

Institution

Harvard University University of Chicago U. of California, Berkeley University of North Carolina Columbia University University of Minnesota University of Wisconsin Cornell University University of Michigan University of Notre Dame Washington State U. Vanderbilt University New School for Social Res Indiana University University of Texas Duke University

1964

1969

1974

1979

1984

Total

7 8 4 3 4

7 6 7 2 8 7 4 2 2 8

7 11 5 10 7 10 7 8 7 1 4 6 7 2 3 2

18 9 10 12 4 3 2 1 2 4 5 4 3 8 4 5

9 8 8 4 7 5 4 3 3 2 7 4 3 3 4 2

48 42 34 31 30 25 22 18 17 17 16 15 14 13 13 9

5 4 3 2

1 1

1

1

(Continued)

47

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984 Table 2.1 (Continued) Institution

Rutgers University University of Massachusetts Brown University U.C.L.A. Pennsylvania State U. University of Oregon University of Tennessee Catholic University of Amer Iowa State University University of Kentucky University of Nevada, Reno University of Pennsylvania University of Nebraska Emory University Northwestern University Princeton University Tulane University

1964

1969

2 1 1 1

1

1974

1 2

3 3 1 6 4 3

3

2 3 3 1 3

1

3

1979

1984

Total

1 4

8 3 4 3 2

9 9 8 8 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 6 5 4 4 4 4

4 3 1 1 3 1 2 3 4 1 3

1 1 2 3 1 1

1

Simply noting how many universities are represented by totals in double digits—some fifteen institutions—it appears that the tally of the Ph.D.-granting institutions from which sociologists of religion came expanded. This reflects the well-known expansion of higher education for the generation of the “baby boom.” For the sociology of religion, the expansion did not occur in sociology only through the enlargement of graduate programs at Chicago, Columbia, Wisconsin, and Harvard, but also through additions or expansions at the University of California at Berkeley, North Carolina, Minnesota, Cornell, Michigan, Notre Dame, Washington State, Vanderbilt, the New School for Social Research (now the New School University), Indiana, and the University of Texas. The list is roughly evenly split between public and private institutions, with much of the expansion occurring in the public sector. The alma mater with the highest frequency over the quarter century is Harvard. While that institution did not figure at all in the study of dissertations in the sociology of religion before 1950, it was well represented between 1950 and 1959. Harvard did not even have a sociology department before 1930, when

48

Chapter 2

one was established with the Russian immigrant Pitirim A. Sorokin as the key figure. The Harvard economics student Talcott Parsons went to London for a Master’s degree, studying under, among others, the functionalist anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and later earning a Ph.D. at Heidelberg with a dissertation on Max Weber and Werner Sombart. Parsons returned to Harvard as an instructor in economics and worked his way into the sociology program, doing his best to make a case for the removal of Sorokin. The outcome was the creation of two separate programs—sociology under Sorokin and later under George Caspar Homans, and the interdisciplinary social relations program under Parsons. An example of a sociologist who graduated in the Sorokin ambience was the Jesuit Joseph H. Fichter, while Benton Johnson (Guy Benton Johnson, Jr.) represents the Parsons trajectory. Parsons was at the high point of his influence in American sociology in the 1950s and 1960s, and his students were well placed in the academy. That had the odd consequence of the relatively conservative theoretical model of functionalism being dominant in the texts and in the scholarly culture of sociology in the 1960s and 1970s, just as undergraduate and graduate students were seeking a more counter-­ establishment perspective. Judging from Table 2.1, the Harvard influence in the sociology of religion peaked in the late 1970s. The University of Chicago was still a major graduate department in sociology in the period covered by Table 2.1. In 1950, the remaining core of the famous Chicago department had been around a long time. Burgess had been on the faculty since 1916, Ogburn since 1927, Wirth and Blumer since 1931, Warner since 1935, Hughes since 1938. Four of these— Burgess, Blumer, Wirth, and Hughes—had been Chicago students before becoming faculty. Some of the “new faculty” were old faces too. Although Hauser had been in Washington for a decade before his own return in 1947, he too had been an instructor and a graduate student in the 1930s. (Abbott and Gaziano 1995: 221) Then change came rapidly. As the number of graduate students boomed, William F. Ogburn and Ernest W. Burgess retired, Herbert Blumer went to Berkeley, and Louis Wirth died. The turnover of faculty was more or less continuous for some time (Abbott and Gaziano 1995: 222). Table 2.1 suggests that the presence of the Chicago tradition—and it was tradition more than anything else—reached a high point in the early 1970s. How much of this presence was the result of the remarkable productivity of Andrew M. Greeley?3 Among 3 Andrew M. Greeley (1928–2013) was a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago who earned the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago and was affiliated with the National

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984

49

the 42 works by Chicago doctoral alumni in Table 2.1, eleven were by Greeley. If we were to subtract them from the total, Chicago would still appear in the top five in the table, between the University of California at Berkeley and the University of North Carolina rather than between Harvard and Berkeley. The simple size of the Chicago sociology program is reflected in the sociological articles and chapters in volumes of collected works published from 1964 to 1984. The University of California at Berkeley did not even have a real sociology department until 1946 because Frederick Teggart, the dominant figure in anything like the field there until 1940, insisted that it must be a Department of Social Institutions. That fact alone kept the program small and out of the mainstream. After the unit was renamed the Department of Sociology and Social Institutions in 1946, the University actively recruited such sociologists as Seymour Martin Lipset, Reinhard Bendix, Philip Selznick, and Herbert Blumer, making the department a center of gravity in sociology (VanAntwerpen 2005: 153). In Table 2.1, doctoral alumni of the department published articles and collection chapters more frequently than the other departments, save Harvard and Chicago. How did this happen? There is no evidence that it was contemplated in the University administration’s plans to make the department a center in the sociology of religion. Rather, Charles Y. Glock, who earned a Ph.D. at Columbia while working in Paul F. Lazarsfeld’s Bureau of Applied Social Research, was hired to establish a similar center at Berkeley in 1958. He envisioned various social science departments coming to the new Survey Research Center with projects. “My hopes were quickly dashed by the total lack of response to my letter telling the faculty that the Center was ready for business. No one called and no one dropped in. Absolutely no one” (Glock 2007: 167). As time went on, some faculty and graduate students brought in small projects for the Center. One of these was a secondary analysis of survey data Nicholas Jay Demerath, then a graduate student, was interested in performing. However, Glock had to seek outside entities willing to commission survey research projects. One of the early ones came from the Anti-Defamation League, largely through personal relationships Glock had from his years at the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia, where he had participated in some surveys for an ecumenical group of religious organizations. The League made a commitment to half a million dollars in support—a lot of money in 1962—for a study of religion and anti-Semitism (Glock 2007: 177–78). That was the beginning of a series of large-scale surveys about American religion managed out of Opinion Research Center at Chicago for many years, and later with the University of Arizona. He published scholarly works on the sociology of religion and ethnicity, but was also well known as a novelist and television commentator.

50

Chapter 2

the University of California Survey Research Center. These large projects, as well as works by participants in smaller ones, would result in the presence of Berkeley doctoral alumni among the authors tallied up in Table 2.1, including Rodney Stark, Armand Mauss, and John Lofland. The University of North Carolina had been an important center of sociology for decades prior to 1964. Its scale had, however, never reached that of Columbia, Chicago, or later, Wisconsin and Harvard. Two of its doctoral alumni became highly productive sociologists of religion—W. Clark Roof and Thomas L. Robbins. Roof’s early work represented the quantitative survey genre of work for which the department at Chapel Hill is well known; he was well attuned to Southern society, focusing his work on religion and localism. Robbins pursued a completely different kind of work, conducting ethnographies of “new” countercultural religions. As with the case of Chicago, Columbia University’s sociology program had been an important one since early in the twentieth century. Unlike Chicago, it was slow to create many faculty positions in the field or even to create an independent department of sociology. As we saw in Chapter 1, a number of dissertations in the sociology of religion had nevertheless been written there. By the 1940s, Columbia had a major sociology department with Robert K. Merton and C. Wright Mills, and access to the Bureau of Applied Social Research organized by Paul F. Lazarsfeld. A highly productive alumnus of the program was Phillip E. Hammond, who spent a number of years at the University of Minnesota. Interestingly, Minnesota is present toward the top in Table 2.1 by virtue of a number of alumni publishing in the field, including David O. Moberg and Andrew J. Weigert. Moberg’s work is highly empirical with a minimum of theory while Weigert began his career as a cross-cultural survey researcher and further developed an intellectual commitment to symbolic interactionism and phenomenology after joining the faculty of the University of Notre Dame.4 The departments at the University of Wisconsin, Cornell University, and the University of Michigan were large ones whose presence toward the top of Table 2.1 is not surprising. But Notre Dame was not yet a major department in 1969, the year it shows its highest number of alumni-authored articles. As chair there, William V. D’Antonio actively encouraged work in the sociology of religion, and James D. Davidson was the most prolific of the alumni from that department in the specialty. When D’Antonio left for the University of Connecticut in 1971, the department discouraged any further activity in the field, with my dissertation to be one of the last if not the last. That would be 4 By way of full disclosure, I note that Weigert was my dissertation supervisor.

51

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984

reversed some years later when chairs were created in the specialty by the higher administration.5

How Consolidated Were the Locations for Publishing?

Above I have already described the establishment of the principal American journals in the field—Sociological Analysis (now Sociology of Religion), Review of Religious Research, and Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, the latter two being interdisciplinary. All things being equal, one would expect the percentage of relevant works published in these three journals and their overseas counterparts to increase as the field became increasingly institutionalized or consolidated. However, the percentages reported in Table 2.2 reveal no simple pattern. There is an increase from 1964 to 1969, then a sharp reduction in 1974, with an increase after that. So why was there a decrease in the 1970s? One clue is to be found in the number of articles for each of the years, generally increasing but with higher numbers in the 1970s, especially 1974. In effect, there was an unexpected success, a major expansion in the 1970s. The number of articles almost doubled between 1964 and 1969. This may be explained in part by the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church, which precipitated a number of changes that received scholarly scrutiny. Then came the counterculture, with seemingly normal middle class college students turning to oriental religions, flying saucer cults, Satanism, the Table 2.2 Publication Location of Articles in the Sociology of Religion

Journals in the field* Percentages Number of articles

1964

1969

1974

1979

1984

23 41.8% 55

50 49.5% 101

70 29.2% 240

55 38.5% 143

70 53.4% 131

* Sociological Analysis (now named Sociology of Religion); Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion; Review of Religious Research; Sociologia Religiosa; Social Compass; International Yearbook of the Sociology of Religion; Archives de sciences sociales des religions

5 For a history of that department, see Blasi and Donahoe 2002.

52

Chapter 2

Unification Church, and various alternative spiritualities. The conversions were highly controversial, as were the reactions—collectively termed the “anti-cult movement”—and there was a turn to fundamentalist Christianity in the aftermath (the “Jesus People”). Religion was suddenly a hot topic, and journal editors outside the journals specifically focused on religion were open to studies of the occult, the exotic, and the controversial.6 Book publishers were looking for collections highlighting new religious movements. And there was more! The nation had undergone significant social change brought about by the civil rights movement and an anti-war movement, followed by a conservative reaction embodied in the politics of Richard M. Nixon. Sociology responded with a new emphasis on social movements, from a sympathetic rather than dismissive perspective. Religion was involved in the movements for social change, both the movements promoting change and the reaction against them. This too was a hot topic to which journals and book publishers were open. Those of us who began work in the field when it was something of a backwater found our ranks expanding. Consequently the number of works in the field published in 1974 alone was more than double that of 1964 and 1969 combined. Meanwhile, the page count of the three journals in the field did not expand accordingly. So the percentages in the journals dedicated to the sociology and social scientific study of religion declined from almost half in 1969 to slightly less than 30% in 1974 and would not really recover until 1984.

Classical Sociological Theory in the Articles

A “classic” is a work that is old but is regarded as important from a present perspective (see Gadamer 1982: 257). Thus there are some old works in sociological theory that are generally not read today; one thinks of the works of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. These would not be classics in the sense used here. In sociological theory some works were read in the past as classics but fell out of favor; one thinks of the works of Vilfredo Pareto. Some were neglected in the past but have been revived as texts of great interest; the works of Harriet Martineau are a case in point. The classic authors in sociological theory for the scholars of 1964–1984 were Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Karl 6 Robbins (2000: 515) speaks of this sudden change: “Indeed graduate students majoring in the sociology of religion, who were often ordained, were sometimes derided by other sociology students who viewed them as persons whose quaint obsession with things of the spirit kept them from being ‘relevant’ and from attending to sociopolitical conflicts and revolution, which was ‘where the action is.’ ” “The atmosphere has markedly changed since the late 60s. Religion now seems more significant but also more polarized and divisive.”

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984

53

Marx, George Herbert Mead, and Georg Simmel. All were white males; four of the five were Europeans while the fifth, Mead, studied in Germany and appears to have been greatly influenced by Simmel. Most of the American sociologists of religion citing them were white males who were born in the United States and deemed the four Europeans as exemplars of a scholarly background imported into American sociology. This general pattern was set at the University of Chicago, where Albion Small and his colleagues insured that their students were familiar with European theory but were not to accept it passively but rather generate theory from their own research. In their efforts to develop sociological theory out of the research process, Chicago sociologists were not ignorant of European social theory. They drew upon it liberally, but did not swallow it as a whole. They drew most explicitly upon those social theorists whose work addressed the problems of the city, as well as those who were concerned with the definition of sociology as an independent scholarly discipline, especially Georg Simmel, Emile Durkheim, and Ferdinand Toennies. (Kurtz 1984: 17) Small retired in 1923, but the famous Park and Burgess graduate level text (1924) Introduction to the Science of Sociology, known as the green Bible, continued the same emphasis.7 Subsequently, because of the influence of Talcott Parsons’ The Structure of Social Action (1949 [1937]),8 Tönnies’ works were read less and those of Weber were added to what was becoming a canon. Parsons devoted multiple chapters to the theories of Pareto, Durkheim, and Weber, but Pareto’s writings were soon to be found at the margins of the discipline. Weber’s works became available in English, beginning in 1930 with Parsons’ translation of the Protestant Ethic essay (Weber 1930) and 1946 with the Gerth/ Mills volume of selected writings (Weber 1946), which included three important essays on religion. Weber’s magnum opus, Economy and Society (1978), was first published in English in its entirety in 1968, translated by a team that 7 The first edition was published in 1921, and only a few minor additions were included in the 1924 edition. The selection of theoretical excerpts offers a broad range of alternatives, though excerpts from the writings of Simmel are most frequent. The grounding in European theory continued with Herbert Blumer: “Nearly 50 years ago, I participated in a seminar which he (Blumer) conducted on what was then contemporary sociology. He had just returned from a year in Europe. He spoke extraordinarily interestingly and penetratingly about Halbwachs, Blondel, Simmel and, of course, Durkheim. It was a remarkably good course. It showed a better mastery of these writers than any other sociologist has ever shown, as far as I know.” Edward Shils to Horst Jürgen Helle, Dec. 4, 1982, copy in the possession of Anthony J. Blasi. 8 The 1949 edition is an exact replication of the first edition of 1937.

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included not only Parsons and Mills, but a number of German and east European immigrants—Hans H. Gerth, Ferdinand Kolegar, Max Rheinstein, and Guenther Roth.9 The translation incorporated sections that had previously been published as separate books, most notably Chapter 6, published in Ephraim Fischoff’s translation as The Sociology of Religion (Weber 1963).10 Translations of many essays by Georg Simmel appeared in the American Journal of Sociology under Albion Small’s editorship, as well as in the Park/ Bugess volume (1924). A selection of Simmel’s essays, often in more of a paraphrase than a translation, appeared in 1950, the product of Kurt H. Wolff (Simmel 1950).11 By 1960, therefore, the classics in sociological theory were works by Weber, Simmel, and Durkheim. It was during the 1964–84 period that Marx and Mead were added to the canon of classic authors.12 Lewis Coser’s influential text, Masters of Sociological Thought. Ideas in Historical and Social Context (1971) includes sections on Marx, Durkheim, Simmel, Weber and Mead, as well as Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Thorstein Veblen, Charles Horton Cooley, Robert Ezra Park, Vilfredo Pareto, and Karl Mannheim. Students were rejecting functionalism and replacing it with two quite different emergent traditions—Marxian sociology and symbolic interactionism. Marxian sociology was grounded in the actual writings of Dr. Karl Marx, especially his “early writings,” and should not be confounded with political Marxism.13 The former is far less doctrinaire than the latter and lent itself as a tool for sophisticated sociological analysis. Symbolic interactionism was the label Herbert Blumer gave to the intellectual approach of George Herbert Mead, the pragmatist philosopher at the University of Chicago who survived, up to his death in 1931, the purge of pragmatists there. 9

10

11

12 13

A few more of the team of ten may also be immigrants, but biographical information on them is not available. The other members include Claus Wittich, Edward Shils, Ephraim Fischoff, and A.M. Henderson. In addition, essays on the economic ethics of the world religions appeared in translation in the course of the 1950s: The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism (1951), Ancient Judaism (1952), and The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism (1958). Citations of these and the Protestant Ethic are tallied in Table 2.5 rather than 2.3. An excellent selection of essays by Simmel in translation was edited by Donald N. Levine (Simmel 1971), but the full compendium of his essays in sociology, Soziolgie (Simmel 1908) was not fully translated until recently (Simmel 2009). It is the 2009 [1908] volume where Simmel can be found taking numerous examples of the dynamics involved in his “social forms” from religious phenomena. Connell (1997) accounts for the addition of Marx to the canon, but not Mead. Gouldner (1973: 430ff.) uses slightly different terminology—Marxism as critical theory versus Marxism as science. One might alternatively distinguish Marxist politics and Marxian thought.

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Blumer eventually collected his symbolic interactionist essays for publication in 1969 (Blumer 1969), though most date from much earlier. Contemporary introductory texts, which have not changed in structure much since the 1970s, list three major paradigms in sociology: functionalism as represented by Durkheim, conflict theory as represented by Marx and Weber, and symbolic interactionism or social constructionism as represented by Mead. Simmel is still considered a “classic” author, but his works are sufficiently difficult to read, especially in poor translations, that they are left to graduate sociology.14 So which of the classics were American sociologists of religion citing from 1964 to 1984? First it should be noted that scholars working in a field that has already taken shape under the influence of its classics do not necessarily need to cite the classical authors when indirectly or even anonymously under those authors’ intellectual influence. Nevertheless, what citations of the classic authors there were tended to cite Weber and Durkheim most of all—see Table 2.3. This is not surprising since Durkheim and especially Weber made major contributions to the sociology of religion as well as to general sociology. Despite many allusions to theology, Marx wrote very little about religion; the one essay that mentions religion much, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” (Marx 1978 [1844]), does so only in its introductory paragraphs; it suggested that Marx’s associates from his student days in Berlin should get beyond criticizing religion and set about criticizing the condition of this rather than a next world. Marx alternately assumes the voice of Ludwig Feuerbach and his own voice in that part of the essay; Feuerbach had written a best seller criticizing religion as something of a psychological projection in reverse, and Marx’s readers would have known what was in Feuerbach’s voice and what in Marx’s. This is the essay in which the famous “opium of the people” reference appears, often misconstrued to be an accusation against religion. Actually, at the time of the writing in 1843 the prosperous classes used opium the same way that people use aspirin today, but it was expensive. Religion was the people’s pain killer (McKinnon 2006). What is more relevant to the sociology of religion is Marx’s general sociology of knowledge, wherein ideological productions make the experienced everyday world comprehensible. In any event, Marx was not cited much by the sociologists of religion. Outside of the United States, in contrast, a Christian-Marxist dialogue led to some interest in the implications of Marxian thought for the study of religion; an example of that kind of work is Religión y Lucha de Clases, 14

I and two collaborators—Anton Jacobs and Mathew Kanjirathinkal—have tried to correct the quality of translation with a centenary translation of Simmel’s major sociological treatise, but it is still not an easy read. See Simmel 2009.

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Table 2.3 Articles citing classical sociological theorists 1964

Weber, Max Durkheim, Émile Marx, Karl Mead, George Herbert Simmel, Georg Number of articles

9 16.1% 1 1.8% 1 1.8%

1 1.8% 56

1969

1974

12 17 11.9% 7.1% 7 13 2.0% 5.4% 4 8 4.0% 3.3% 2 2.0% 2 2.0% 101 240

1979

1984

Total

24 14 76 16.8% 10.7% 11.3% 9 15 45 6.3% 11.5% 6.7% 7 5 25 4.9% 3.8% 3.7% 4 7 13 2.8% 5.3% 1.9% 5 8 3.5% 1.2% 143 131 671

by the late Otto Maduro (1979), a Venezuelan scholar who migrated to the United States.15 Simmel and Mead are cited even less. A sincere Christian for most of his life, Simmel wrote about religion; however, his approach strikes one as more representative of his philosophical rather than sociological side (see the essays in Simmel 1997). Simmel illustrated many of the points he made in his 1908 Soziologie (English translation Simmel 2009) with examples from religious phenomena, but these do not comprise a systematic sociology of religion— and in the 1964–84 period the available translations from Soziologie left most of those illustrations out. Simmel’s general sociology essayed a social geometry, highlighting such social formations in which interpersonal interaction occurs as domination/subordination, dyads, triads, competition and conflict. He organized Soziologie around such social forms or Gestalten rather than the contents within the forms, such as business, politics, and religion. Mead did not write about religion and indeed developed his theory of mind because he did not accept the notion of a substantive entity commonly termed soul. Sociologists tend to use Mead’s theories as a philosophical anthropology that stands well in the background to their work, with most of the implications 15

Originally a second thesis (technically a “Travail de Fin d’Études”), dated 1978, at l’Université Catholique de Louvain, it was later published in English (Maduro 1982). In the U.S.A., Otto Maduro (1945–2013) would direct a center for the study of Latino religion at Drew University and serve a term as president of the American Academy of Religion.

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affecting research methodology rather than the sociologies of institutions such as religion. Blumer especially and those under his influence follow Mead largely in the methodological implications of his posthumously published lectures on social psychology (Mead 1934; see Blumer 2004, also a posthumous work).16 These implications led to ethnography and a constructionist approach to social movements, wherein human actions emerge, often indeterminately. Society would be something that happens rather than an entity that “is.” Culture (Mead’s “mind”) too occurs, would be event-like in nature. With all this said, it was still the case that many of the sociologists of religion publishing between 1964 and 1984 had been students of the functionalist Talcott Parsons or of Parsons’ students, studied as graduate students during the Cold War, during which citing Marx could be controversial, and at a time in which symbolic interactionism was deemed a minority viewpoint in sociology (see Mullins 1973, who refers to symbolic interactionists as the “loyal opposition”). Despite these sociologists’ of religion authoring first-rate analyses of the theoretical heritage stemming from and extending the work of Max Weber and Émile Durkheim, their works do not strike one as completely current with what was going on in sociological theory at the time with respect to the other classic traditions

Citations of Theorists Other than the Classical Theorists

It is not necessarily the case that a concept or theoretical proposition that can be traced back to a classical theorist is most aptly cited from that source; the idea in question may have been updated or applied to a particular concern by a later writer. Thus Émile Durkheim (1933 and 1982) authored classical statements about social functions, but many of the authors of the articles in the sociology of religion under consideration could cite the functionalist works of Talcott Parsons, with Parsons’ much more developed functionalist model (e.g. in Parsons 1951). Judging from Table 2.4, this is precisely what they did; they cited Parsons more than any other author, and did so consistently through the 1964–84 period. 16

Mead’s posthumous volume (1934) is actually mistitled insofar as for Mead society precedes mind and self and “behaviorist” as a term has come to refer to an approach that Mead rejected and indeed criticized in the lectures. An earlier version of Mead’s social psychology, densely written, is to be found in the book manuscript that Mary Jo Deegan discovered (Mead 2001); it had reached the galley stage in about 1910, but was not published until Deegan’s edition.

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Table 2.4 Citations of other theorists Includes those with 2 or more citations in 1964 or 1969, 3 or more in later years. Co-authored works cited are treated as separate citations. 1964

Talcott Parsons Robert K. Merton P.L. Berger & T. Luckmann Amitai Etzioni Rosabeth M. Kanter Neil Smelser Erving Goffman Alvin W. Gouldner Edward A. Shils George C. Homans Seymour M. Lipset Karl Mannheim Reinhard Bendix Peter M. Blau Lewis A. Coser Peter L. Berger T. Adorno et al. Kingsley Davis J.D. McCarthy & M.N. Zald C. Wright Mills Hans Toch Ralph Turner & Lewis Killian M.N. Zald & Roberta Ash J.R. Gusfield Daniel Bell Mary Douglas Thomas Kuhn Alfred Schutz Philip Selznick Ralph H. Turner Richard V. Travisano Gordon W. Allport

1969

1974

1979

1984

6 3

11 8 1 4

2 1 1 3

2 3

19 9 11 4 6 4 3 4 2 5 5 4 4

13 6 3 7 5 9 1 8 2 4 1 1 3 7 4 3 1 1 5 4 3 4

9 8 8 3 7 1 8 2 3 1 4 5

1 1

3 1

3 1

2 2

2 2

2

3 3

1

1 1

1

3 3 2 3

4

1 2 2 2 2 3 3 2

3 2 3 3 1 2 2 3 1

3 2 3 2 1 4 3 3 2

Total

58 34 23 18 18 18 16 15 13 11 11 11 10 10 10 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

5 9 3 8 2 7 2 7 3 7 2 7 1 7 4 7 4 7 1 6 (Continued)

59

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984 Table 2.4 (Continued) 1964

Howard P. Becker Ralf Dahrendorf Louis Dumont Everett C. Hughes Steven Lukes Marcel Mauss D.A. Snow, L.A. Zurcher & S. Ekland-Olson Edward A. Tiryakian Immanuel Wallerstein William A. Gamson William J. Goode William Kornhauser Gerhard Lenski Anthony Oberschall A.F.C. Wallace Bernard Barber Ruth Benedict É. Durkheim & M. Mauss E.J. Hobsbawm Roberto Michels Witney Pope Milton Rokeach P.A. Sorokin E. Becker Thomas Burgher Robert W. Friedrichs D. Martindale Guy E. Swanson A.S. Tannenbaum Benjamin D. Zablocki L.A. Zurcher & D.A. Snow D. Katz & R. Kahn R.M. MacIver & C.H. Page J. Milton Yinger

1969

2 1 3 1

1

2

2

1

1979

2 1 3 2 4 4

2 1 1 1

2

1 3 2 1 1 1 2 1 3 1

2

1 1 1

1

1 1

2

2

1974

2 2

2

4 1 1 1 2

3 1

3

3 2 2 1 6 3 1 3 1 1 3 3

3 1 3

3 3

3

2 2 2

1984

3 3 3

Total

6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2

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Chapter 2

In order to interpret Table 2.4 correctly, one must understand that the cited authors were cited as theorists; they were cited for developing a concept or propositional structure rather than for a finding about religion or, for example, a technique of data collection. Thus, Talcott Parsons wrote a few essays in the sociology of religion as well as his sizeable volumes of sociological theory; the next Table, 2.5, shows him cited twenty times as a sociologist studying religion, in addition to the 58 times Table 2.4 shows him being cited as a theorist. Second, there is the question of whether works by more than one author should be included in multiple times, once for each author, or treated as sources separately from the individual contributions of the two authors. For example, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, both students of the phenomenologically oriented Austrian-American scholar Alfred Schutz, published their highly influential The Social Construction of Reality (1966) in the period covered by the database of articles and anthology chapters; Berger and Luckmann were cited 23 times, but Berger is cited for other theoretical works nine additional times. Both authors are also cited, separately, as sociologists of religion and therefore appear separately in Table 2.5 as well.17 Returning to the 58 citations of Talcott Parsons as a theorist, they suggest some familiarity with state-of-the-art sociological theory in 1964, a little over a dozen years after the publication of The Social System, and such a citation might have been still reasonably up-to-date in 1969, but given the criticism of Parsons’ functionalism as early as 1955 by Alvin W. Gouldner (1955 essay included in Gouldner 1973, pp. 173–89, at pp. 181–82) and the increasing popularity of C. Wright Mills’ critique of functionalism in general and Parsons’ functionalism in particular (Mills 1959: 25–49), the continuing reliance on Parsons’ theory suggests some resistance against the direction in which sociology in general was turning. By the 1970s, many in the younger generation thought the idea of a functioning system made more sense when applied to small isolated societies such as the Trobriand Islanders studied by Bronislaw Malinowski than when applied to large industrialized societies whose boundaries could not be identified with any precision. Moreover, what could be deemed threats to the cultural integration of society from the perspective of a homeostatic balance could simply be liberative cultural changes. The practice of identifying functions of whatever is already in place in a society seemed tantamount to 17

Sometimes deciding whether a citation should be recorded as theory or as sociology of religion is relatively easy; a citation of Weber’s Economy and Society (other than chapter 6 on religion) is theory while a citation of his Protestant Ethic is sociology of religion. At other times, however, it is a judgment call, based on the context in which an author makes the citation. It would be an interesting exercise for someone to replicate my tables.

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ideology, justifying whatever the status quo might be.18 Were the massive 1964 protests in Paris necessarily leading to a breakdown of French society? Was the anti-war movement in the United States more of a threat than the war in Vietnam that was in progress at the time? Parsons personally was no political reactionary and other aspects of his theory were more open to recognizing social change, but the most influential aspect of his theory and the practice of citing him could be seen as a backward looking political statement in the context of 1964–84. The second most frequently cited theorist was Robert K. Merton, a student of Parsons and Sorokin at Harvard. While Merton’s frequently cited major work was slightly older than Parsons’ Social System, it seemed to lend itself less to justifying the status quo or making the status quo seem natural. The first edition of Merton’s Social Theory and Social Structure dates from 1949, but what was at hand during most of our period was a later edition (Merton 1968). The third chapter of the 1968 edition, carried over from those of 1949 and 1957, provides a careful critique of incautious uses of functionalism and warns of the potential of a naïve functionalism to become mere ideology. He hoped that a version of the approach, “stripped of those traditional postulates which have fenced it in and often made it little more than a latter-day rationalization of exiting practices” would be “a systematic and empirically relevant mode of analysis” for sociology (Merton 1968: 136). And the famous sixth chapter, “Social Structure and Anomie,” which is an expansion of a 1938 essay, developed a typology of deviance that made rejecting both the “socially prescribed ends” and the “socially prescribed means” for obtaining them, which the 1970s counterculture was about to do, something quite different from simple crime (“innovation”). Nevertheless, Merton’s avowedly neutral use of the terms deviance and dysfunction seemed at the time Veblenesque—having the quality of negative rhetoric artificially employed in neutral discourse. Both the infrequency of citations of Marx and Mead among the classic authors and the frequency of citations of Parsons and Merton suggest that contemporary developments in theory had little impact in the sociology of religion. Sociologists of religion were not citing the works that their contemporaries considered classics, and they were citing the major theorists from a generation before their contemporaries. The theoretical propositions in the field, noted Charles Y. Glock back in 1959, “are drawn primarily from studies of religion in nonliterate societies and, in large part, from studies of a generation or more

18

Despite a generally laudatory presentation of Parsons’ functionalism, Martindale’s (1960: 520) standard text in sociological theory noted the conservative bias in functionalism.

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ago” (1959: 155). The data in Tables 2.3 and 2.4 would lead one to believe that not much had changed over the next quarter of a century. However, not all of the theoretical citations in the literature under review here fail to be forward looking or current with contemporary theoretical developments. The third most frequent citation in Table 2.4 refers to the co-authorship of Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann. In The Social Construction of Reality (1966) the authors developed a sociology of everyday knowledge, inspired by the phenomenological approach of their mentor, Alfred Schutz, who appears in the table as cited seven times. Schutz highlighted the divergent cognitive perspectives that people had, even among people who were closely related to one another. For him, cognitive objects held in common by two or more people were not necessarily the “same” because the perspectives in which they were held did not allow for commensurability. As a teenager, Schutz had to leave family and school associates to command an artillery unit in the Austrian military on the Italian front in World War I. He experienced his own effort to communicate by letter with the people of his childhood world: There was much that he could not say; the horrific experiences of the war made him a different person from the boy who left home; and much that had been written to him seemed to be incomprehensible concerns to an “old before his time” veteran. When he returned to Vienna, not only had he changed, but the city was no longer the imperial center it had been, and his family and friends had changed as much as he had, albeit in different trajectories. His own and the others’ biographical times had proceeded at different speeds; they inhabited different worlds. In re-establishing life together, all had to become current in divergent provinces of meaning. This experience underlay Schutz’s sociology, and many years later he would articulate an account of the kind of social situation in question in a famous essay, “The Homecomer” (Schutz 1945), written for the benefit of Americans during World War II. Schutz sensed that people’s social worlds, even when shared, were fragile. Think of him industriously earning multiple degrees in a short stretch of time after World War I, then frantically organizing the economic infrastructure of the new central European economies, while visiting the elderly Edmund Husserl in the course of business trips in order to learn enough phenomenology to conceptualize the subjective turmoil of such a life, and in the meantime authoring his critique of the pure type method of Max Weber at night (Schutz 1972), discussing his draft with friends and wife in the afternoon, and of course practicing his violin too.19 19

The book was originally published as Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Vienna: Springer, 1932), but because Schutz was of Jewish ancestry and the Nazi officials deemed phenomenology a derivation from an inferior, Jewish, culture, the book could not be marketed in Germany, the major market area for a German language work. It received some

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Schutz was trying to save as much of middle class central European civilization as he could, even as he labored to move the bank he worked for to Paris and later to New York, and even as he found ways to extricate Jews from an Austria that the Nazi empire had just annexed. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann studied under Schutz at the New School in the 1950s. Each would develop a sociological approach to religion predicated on a conceptualization of precarity, the precarity of religion as manifest in secularization in the case of Berger (a position he would later discard) and in a deleting of theistic dimensions in what his editors termed an “invisible religion” in the case of Luckmann (Berger 1967; Luckmann 1967).20 In their co-authored theoretical statement, The Social Construction of Reality (1967), Berger and Luckmann highlight the relativity of everyday knowledge, making thematic the chance origins of cultural products. The titles of their core chapters are instructive: “Society as Objective Reality” and “Society as Subjective Reality.” It was fresh theory, and the prose was sufficiently engaging to provide a vocabulary that proved to be very useful in describing symbol systems, including religion. However, the drama of incommensurate temporal durations in Schutz’s “Homecomer” or, in contrast, that of the commensurability of inner time flows in Schutz’s essay on making music (1951) is not to be found in Social Construction of Reality. That is not surprising; Schutz’s social insight reflects a wisdom of long experience, “long” in the sense of coming from one who had grown old at a relatively early age and then lived an intense life, while Social Construction, a brilliant work, was nevertheless the product of still young scholars. The sociologists of religion who cited Berger and Luckmann’s short treatise did so at a time in which tradition, religion included, was indeed precarious. Personages who had drawn on American cultural resources to bring about social change, to bring America closer to its professed ideals, had been assassinated: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy. The American military, which had gained a considerable credibility in defeating the Fascist and Nazi threat to democratic civilization and presented itself as a bulwark against a similar Soviet threat, was squandering young lives in what seemed to be a war for war’s sake in Southeast Asia. The lives lost in some sense were not only those of the soldier who had been killed but also the lives of those who had killed—they returned to the U.S. feeling “lost.” Tradition, including

20

favorable notice but was soon forgotten until after Schutz gained some recognition in the United States. The expression, invisible religion, came from the editors of the English translation; Luckmann’s original title was Das Problem der Religion in der Modernen Gesellschaft (Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag Rombach, 1963).

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religion, failed to provide guidance in the public forum, though elements in the counterculture clearly drew on religion in their private lives (see Farrell 1997). Berger and Luckmann’s sociology of everyday knowledge helped scholars conceptualize the troubled reception of tradition that characterized the era. Some of the authors who are listed as cited in Table 2.4 developed conceptualizations of social formations that appeared in some of the religious phenomena of the day. Rosabeth M. Kanter (1972), for example, had written about communes, and after 1972 the sociologists of religion cited her works when they studied the religious communes of the new religions as well as those of the Jesus Movement. Authors who developed theories of social movements also appear in the table: Neil Smelser, John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, Hans Toch, Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian, Mayer N. Zald and Roberta Ash, Joseph R. Gusfield, and the team of David A. Snow, Louis A. Zurcher, and Sheldon Ekland-Olson. Religion had been important in the civil rights movement and still was important in the farm workers’ movement in California. Also many of the new religions were thought of not as organizations but “new religious movements.” Finally, many of the sociologists of religion were studying small controversial religious groups, many of them new religions, using the ethnographic methodologies advocated by symbolic interactionists in the Mead/Blumer tradition. For doctoral students in particular research funds became hard to come by when President Nixon reduced funding, especially grants, for graduate study, and hanging out with small religious groups that were eager for attention was a cheap way to gather data for a thesis or dissertation. Symbolic interactionists who appear in the list of cited theorists in Table 2.4 include Erving Goffman and Richard V. Travisano. Goffman’s works focus on the descriptive aspects of micro-level interaction while Travisano (1970) authored a widely cited essay that distinguished between alternation (transitions to identities that are prescribed or at least permitted within a person’s previous universe of discourse) and conversion (transitions to identities that are proscribed within the person’s previous universe of discourse).

Citing Sociologists of Religion

The sociologists whom the authors of the articles and chapters in collections cited as their colleagues in the sociology of religion is one measure of how influential various sociologists of religion were in their field, though I would not claim it to be the definitive measure. Influence should not be understood

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to represent agreement; works are sometimes cited as examples of what an author is trying to refute or what an author may deem to be wrong-headed. Influence can operate through making a persuasive argument or though stimulating a contrary reaction, through being a convincing study or through being a faulty one that generates further, corrective studies. The tallies that are reported in Table 2.5 represent citations of whatever kind. In order to be included in the table, an author had to be cited two times or more in 1964, three or more in 1969, or four or more in 1974, 1979, or 1984; this is because there were more articles to be cited in during the later years than during the earlier ones. Again, co-authorships are counted separately from the single-authored works of the co-authors. Moreover, co-authors given in a different order—for example, Glock and Stark (82 citations) versus Stark and Glock (52 citations), are counted as different authors. One might argue that works with the same authors but listed in a different order represent the same influence, but on the other hand one work with the authors listed one way comes closer to revealing a “citation classic” than does adding the citations irrespective of the order in which the authors are given. A citation classic is important work that proves a particular theoretical or investigatory approach particularly successful in explaining a collection of facts; it sets up a paradigm for normal science (Kuhn 1970: 23). The authors of the articles and chapters in collections cited Gerhard E. Lenski more than anyone else (see Table 2.5). Lenski focused on status stratification and religion early in his career, writing a dissertation on the former at Yale (1950) and a journal article on statistical correlates of religious interest (1953).21 He became famous in the sociology of religion for the 1961 volume, The Religious Factor, which reported 1958 survey data from metropolitan Detroit.22 In an era before nation-wide surveys it was not uncommon for sociologists to focus on a community (see Williams and MacLean 2005). Perhaps the best known such community survey in the sociology of religion was Middletown by Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd (1929), a study of Muncie, Indiana, that masked the name of the actual community.23 In contrast to the Middletown study, Lenski’s book was less a community study and more 21 22

23

The 1953 article reported results of a secondary analysis of 1941 Indianapolis data. The revised Anchor/Doubleday paperback edition (Lenski 1963) is the version used for the observations made here. Lenski subsequently became even more famous as an ecological social evolutionary theorist, identifying material bases for different kinds of social organization succeeding one another over the millennia. The Lynds’ study was financed by the Institute of Social and Religious Research. In their preface, the authors credit the technical staff of the Institute only for useful criticism and suggestions. For more on this, see Chapter 4.

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Table 2.5 Sociologists of religion cited in the articles (Cited 2 times or more in 1964, 3 or more in 1969; 4 or more in later years )

Gerhard Lenski Charles Y. Glock & Rodney Stark Max Weber Peter L. Berger Andrew M. Greeley Robert N. Bellah Rodney Stark & C.Y. Glock J. Milton Yinger Émile Durkheim Will Herberg Charles Y. Glock Joseph H. Fichter Bryan R. Wilson Thomas Luckmann Ernst Troeltsch Thomas F. O’Dea Benton Johnson Jeffrey K. Hadden David O. Moberg H. Richard Niebuhr Clifford Geertz Dean R. Hoge Nicholas J. Demerath III Robert Wuthnow Bernard Lazerwitz A.M. Greeley & P. Rossi John Lofland Rodney Stark W. Clark Roof Rodney Stark & W.S. Bainbridge Dean M. Kelley Talcott Parsons James A. Beckford C.Y. Glock, B. Ringer & E. Babbie

1964

1969

1974

1979

1984

16

16 23 11 6 8 4 6 9 8 9 12 15 2 3 5 12 5 6 9 4 5 1 8

18 19 22 19 25 18 16 16 10 10 8 9 11 9 8 8 5 8 7 9 6 12 7 11 6 4 10 5

12 15 15 20 15 12 15 2 13 6 9 7 11 13 10 6 7 5 7 3 4 11 4 12 6 3 9 10 13

4

26 25 22 26 17 24 14 17 13 14 12 9 13 13 7 6 13 11 7 7 12 2 5 1 6 8 2 5 7 3 1 8

7

3

9 3 5 1 1 4 3 7 2 2 2 5 2 2 1 1 5

1 3 1

1

2 7 2 2

18 11 4 7 5

Total

88 82 79 74 70 59 52 48 47 46 43 42 39 38 35 34 32 31 31 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 22 22 21 21 8 20 4 20 12 19 4 19 (Continued)

67

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984 Table 2.5 (Continued)

N.J. Demerath III & P.E. Hammond Liston Pope Roy Wallis J. Faulkner & G. DeJong T. Robbins & D. Anthony Yoshio Fukuyama Semour M. Lipset Gordon W. Allport Jon P. Alston M.B. King & R.A. Hunt James T. Richardson Michael Argyle D.A. Bromley & A.D. Shupe Russell R. Dynes Allan W. Eister Richard K. Fenn J. Lofland & R. Stark Gibson Winter James D. Davidson L.P. Gerlach & V. Hine Michael I. Harrison Marie Augusta Neal Roland Robertson A.F.C. Wallace Joseph R. Feagin Morton B. King G.F. DeJong, J.E. Faulkner & R.H. Warland J.K. Hadden & C. Swann Paul M. Harrison Thomas Robbins Glen M. Vernon A.J. Weigert & D.L. Thomas James R. Wood R. L. Adams & R.J. Fox

1964

1969

1974

1979

1984

Total

3

5 3

10 7

4

4 2 2 6 1 4 4 2 5

2 4 8 4 5 3 1 4 11 6 5 2 2 3 5 5 7 4 5

1 1 10 5 10 3 2 4

18 18 18 17 17 16 16 15 15 15 15 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 13 13 13 13 13 13 12 11 10

2 5

6 2 6

2

3

2

2 2

3

1 1 2

1

2 4

3 1

2

5 4 4 1 5 1 6 5 4 5 7 4 4 1

2 1 3 4 5

3 6 6 4 2 3 5

5 6 4 5 4 3

5 8 2 12 2 3 5 6 2 6 6 5 1 2 1 4 4 10

10 10 3 10 3 10 2 10 2 10 1 9 (Continued)

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Chapter 2

Table 2.5 (Continued) 1964

W.S. Bainbridge & R. Stark L. Festinger, H.W. Riecken & S. Schachter N.D. Glenn & R. Hyland J.B. Holt R.A. Hunt & M.B. King J.S. Judah F.R. Lynch David Martin Robert K. Merton D.W. Petersen & A.L. Mauss Guy E. Swanson G.W. Allport & J.M. Ross D. Anthony & T. Robbins R.W. Balch & D. Taylor A.M. Greeley, W.C. McCready & K. McCourt Colin Campbell Virginia Hine Ronald L. Johnstone Martin E. Marty Samuel A. Mueller J.T. Richardson, M.W. Stewart, & R. Simmonds A.D. Shupe & D.G. Bromley A.D. Shupe, R. Spielmann & S. Stigall R. Stark, B.D. Foster, C.Y. Glock & H.E. Quinley Ivan Vallier Frances R. Westley C.F. Westoff & E. Jones J. Alan Winter H.M. Bahr R.W. Balch Gary Bouma

1969

1

1

4 1

2

1

1974

1979

1984

Total

2

1 5

8 1

9 9

2 1 5 5 1

2 3 3 2 1 3 1 2 5 5 7

1 3 4 6 5 5 1 3 5 3 3 1

9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 8 8 8 8

4 2 1 5

3 2 2 3 1 3

5 2 4 4 2 5

8 8 8 8 8 8

4 5

4 3

8 8

3 6 4 2

2

1

6

1

2

1

4 2 4 3 2

1 1 7

8 8 8 8 8 7 7 7 (Continued) 6 4 4 4 7

69

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984 Table 2.5 (Continued) 1964

R.M. Enroth, E. Ericson & C.B. Peters Christopher Kirk Hadaway Harold Himmelfarb V. Lanternari C. Eric Lincoln A. Mauss & D. Petersen C.W. Mueller & W.T. Johnson S. Putney & R. Middleton W.C. Roof & C.K. Hadaway W.C. Roof & R. Perkins R.A. Strauss John L. Thomas C.F. Westoff & L. Bumpass S.L. Albrecht, B.A. Chadwick, & D.S. Alcorn H.M. Bahr, L. Bartel & B. Chadwick P.L. Berger & T. Luckmann Samuel W. Blizzard R.R. Clayton & J.W. Gladden John D. Donovan J.V. Downton D.F. Gordon C.K. Hadaway & W.C. Roof D.R. Hoge & J. Carroll Bronislaw Malinowski A.J. Mayer & H. Sharp R.E. Mitchell T. Robbins, D. Anthony & T. Curtis L. Shiner William H. Swatos Eileen Barker Louis Bultena T.C. Campbell & Y. Fukuyama J. Damrell Thomas Ford Hoult

4

4

1

3

1969

1974

1979

1984

Total

4

2

1

7

1 2

5

2 6 1

5 1

3

3

2

1

7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 6

3

4 4 2

3

1

1 3

2

2 4 1 2

3

2

3 1

3

1

4 4 1 3 3 2

1 1 3 4 4 5

5 2

2 4

2

6 2 6 6 2 6 6 6 6 4 6 4 6 4 6 6 6 6 1 6 1 6 4 6 4 5 5 5 4 5 1 5 (Continued)

1 4 1 2 2 1 2 1 5 2 2 1 4 1

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Table 2.5 (Continued) 1964

Richard A. Hunt J. Lofland & L.N. Skonovd R.W. Mack, R.J. Murphy, & S. Yellin W.C. McCready & A.M. Greeley E. Burke Rochford W.W. Schroeder & V. Obenhaus J.F. Seggar & P. Kunz A.D. Shupe & W.A. Stacey L.N. Skonovd D.A. Snow & C.L. Phillips T. Solomon J.J. Vanecko Elmer T. Clark J. Dedman Karel Dobbelaere P.E. Hammond & R.E. Mitchell James D. Hunter D. Little T.E. Long & J.K. Hadden P.H. McNamara & A. St. George Harold W. Pfautz Bernard C. Rosen Louis Schneider R.A. Schoenherr & A.M. Greeley J. Shortridge L.M. Smith Stuart A. Wright Waldo W. Burchard E.U. Essian-Udom E. Franklin Frazier P.C. Glick F. Lindenfeld C. Braden S.M. Lipset & R. Bendix Robert J. McNamara H.W. Schneider

1969

2

3

4

3

1974

1979

1

4

1

2

1

4 5 1 1

1

1

1

4

4

1 2 4

3

2 2 2 2

3 1 3 3

5

5 5 5

4 5 5 5 4 1

4

4

2 2

Total

4

4

2 2

1984

1

4 4 1

4 1 4

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2

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a use of Detroit as a convenience sample. Unlike “Middletown” (Muncie, Indiana), Detroit was a major metropolis, the fifth largest in the United States and “probably eleventh largest in the world” (Lenski 1963: 1). The University of Michigan, where Lenski was an associate professor, housed the Detroit Area Study, overseen at the time by Ronald Freedman, who chaired the Study’s executive committee, and Harry Sharp, who served as director. The Detroit Area Study was an annual interview survey conducted by the University of Michigan Department of Sociology for the purpose of generating useful information about metropolitan Detroit and its people and providing the department’s graduate students with an opportunity to gain experience in conducting survey research; more about the Detroit Area Study will be said in Chapter 4. During the 1957–58 academic year Professors Freedman and Sharp invited Lenski “to submit a proposal for an investigation of some aspect of the religious situation in Detroit” (Lenski 1963: viii). The study that Lenski designed was inspired by his reading of the works of Max Weber. Lenski wanted to know whether the major religious groups in the U.S.A. of the 1950s were carriers of distinctive economic ethics. Did some groups cultivate obedience in their children, as opposed to thinking for oneself? Did political philosophies and preferences differ by religion? Were some organized religions more associational in form (largely contained in formal organizations) and others communal (limiting one’s friends and work associates to members of one’s own religion) (Lenski 1959)?24 The answers to such questions were controversial: White Protestants and Jews have a positive attitude toward work more often than Negro Protestants or Catholics, especially in upper-middleclass jobs. They are likelier to believe that ability is more important than family connections; to be self-employed; to believe in intellectual autonomy; and to have small families. However, in some respects members of the Jewish group resemble Catholics more nearly than white Protestants. This is especially true of party preference and of attitudes toward the kin group. (Lenski 1963: 321–22) There was a great deal left to others to either confirm or disconfirm. Andrew Greeley (1964) reviewed studies that disconfirmed it, noted tables in Lenski’s volume that could be used to argue against his general findings, and presented nation-wide National Opinion Research Center survey data from college graduates that tended to be contrary to Lenski’s propositions.

24

Lenski’s 1959 article was an interim report authored while the data analysis had just begun.

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Motivated in part by Greeley’s critique of “Protestant Ethic” research, Howard Schuman (1971) at the University of Michigan tried to replicate Lenski’s findings on economically-related attitudes with 1966 Detroit Area Study data.25 The results of only one question held up; it involved the respondents ranking the importance of different aspects of jobs: chances for advancement, the work being important and giving a feeling of accomplishment, high income, lack of danger of being fired, shorter hours. Catholics were slightly less likely to rank the first two choices highest. Otherwise, Lenski’s findings did not turn up in the 1966 data, and even Schuman’s reanalysis of the 1958 data, when foreignborn men and men aged over 65 were removed, similarly failed to support Lenski’s conclusions, save for the one question ranking aspects of jobs. Schuman also noted that Lenski’s sample size was relatively small, so that minor differences of a few respondents could produce differences in percentages, and that Lenski used the relatively weak standard of a .10 level of significance for deciding whether a difference was not a likely result of chance. Lenski’s brief reply (1971) generally commended Schuman’s careful replication and noted changes in Catholicism, sparked by the Second Vatican Council, in which Catholics were challenging authority more often and, given divergences of Catholic opinion, thinking for themselves. This comment does not lend credibility to the hypotheses from Lenski’s Religious Factor that did not hold up in Schuman’s replication, and ironically it calls into question the sole hypothesis from the study that did hold up. In a retrospective on Lenski’s The Religious Factor, Robert Wuthnow (2004) points to its long-term impact on the sociology of religion quite apart from the hypotheses it proposed and tried to test. He points to Lenski’s categorization of religious groups for statistical analyses (white Protestant, black Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish), as well as to the comparison of religious groups in non-religious matters (economic behavior in this case), the study of inter-religious group relations statistically in terms of social distance, and to the focus on the role of friendship ties in religion. Lenski was not the first to do these things, but his doing so in a high profile study led many subsequent studies to do likewise. The second most cited authorship in Table 2.5 is Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark (82 citations). If one were to add the authorship of the same two, but in reverse order, 52 citations could be added, resulting in a total that would 25

Lenski had moved on to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Schuman’s 1966 data focused on white Protestant/Catholic differences among American-born men aged 21–65, limiting the sample accordingly. When Schuman applied these limits to the 1958 data, again only the question about ranking the importance of aspects of a job yielded results similar to those Lenski reported.

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be the highest in the table. There is some overlap between the two authorships since an often cited “Glock and Stark” volume, Religion and Society in Tension (1965), is comprised largely of previously published essays, one of which is a “Stark and Glock” authorship. As mentioned above, Charles Y. Glock gained experience in the nuts and bolts of survey research working under Paul F. Lazarsfeld at the Bureau of Applied Social Research of Columbia University and after earning the Ph.D. at Columbia had been hired to establish the Survey Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Rodney Stark, a former journalist, entered the graduate program at Berkeley and earned the Ph.D. there with a 1971 dissertation on police riots. He had worked as a research staff person in Glock’s Survey Research Center. While the sociology of religion had been “a major concern of scholars in the nineteenth century,” “scholarly interest in religion all but vanished during the twentieth century” (Glock and Stark 1965: ix, x). However, voting surveys found that religion was still a very important predictor of political leanings, and there was something of a revival of religion in America during the 1950s. As with Lenski’s Religious Factor, Glock and Stark’s Religion and Society in Tension enjoyed the advantage of being one of the first volumes to fill the void of objective social scientific studies of American religious behavior. Whether one feels religion basically has ‘good’ or ‘bad’ effects on the quality of the human experience, undeniably it has important and significant effects. To neglect the study of such a major influence in human affairs is to be negligent in the quest to build an adequate science of society. For this reason the Survey Research Center of the University of California, Berkeley, has encouraged and initiated a number of studies of religion. (Glock and Stark 1965: x) The fifteen chapters in the book each dealt with a theme that would be taken up in the field in future years: the definition of religion (ch. 1), religious commitment (ch. 2), religious experiences (chs. 3 and 8), growth and decline in American religion (ch. 4), denominationalism (ch. 5), parishes/congregations as organizations and communities (ch. 6), perceptions about the clergy role (ch. 7), societal integration (ch. 9), class, politics, and religious involvement (ch. 10), religion and political radicalism (ch. 11), clergy and lay attitudes on social policy (ch. 12), the origin and evaluation of religious groups (ch. 13), religion and science (ch. 14), and religion and the social sciences in particular (ch. 15). Some of the chapters review the previous literature on a topic and develop middle-range theories while others use interview excerpts, percentages, and cross-tabulations from the data collected under the grant from the

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Anti-Defamation League to the Survey Research Center. Secondary analysis of data from other sources also appear in the volume: Chapter 7 was based on a secondary analysis of limited 1956 survey data reported by Kloetzli (1961). Chapter 10 analyzes nation-wide American and British Gallup Poll data; Chapter 11 does the same with French, Dutch, and American survey data. Chapter 12 is based on old church and clergy survey datasets from Columbia University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research, and Chapter 14 uses National Opinion Research Center survey data from graduate students. Among other findings, the volume notes that how one measures religion may determine what correlates with it one will find, that interdenominational hostility was in decline, that the catch-all category “Protestant” is meaningless in survey research, that religious experience is more group norm behavior than individual, and that kinds and degree of religious involvement vary by class, with the lower classes being less involved. Moreover, religion proves to be an important correlate of political views. The second “Glock and Stark” volume of note was Christian Beliefs and AntiSemitism (1966), the report of the study funded by the Anti-Defamation League.26 Most of the volume is based on survey data from northern California church members, with a chapter toward the end reporting a national replication administered through the National Opinion Research Center. In view of the near fetish of nation-wide samples in the decades to follow, it is interesting to review the reasons Glock and Stark centered their research in one region— the San Francisco Bay Area—and then arranged for a national replication with what turned out to be some of the more important questionnaire items. They were concerned with depth as well as breadth; by focusing on church attenders in a parish or congregation in a specific social context they can include important local contextual factors. For example, in the present study, it would be possible to contrast the behavior of the fundamentalist in the liberal religious congregation with that of the fundamentalist in a fundamentalist setting . . . . The advantage of national samples, of course, is that they allow specification of how any particular trait is differentially distributed among various regions. In a sense, it can be said that the findings represent the entire nation. In a way, however, this “national representativeness” may be something of a fiction. The national data may be the sum of rather different distributions from each of the various cultural groups and regions, 26

Eight books were based on the Anti-Defamation League grant; the last (Quinley and Glock 1979) summarized the various projects for the benefit of the general reader.

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none of which is similar to the national distribution. In such a case it would be possible to say both that “America is like this” and “nowhere in America are people really like this.” (Glock and Stark 1966: 217) Decades later, sociologists would be conducting follow-up in-depth interviews of subsamples of respondents to find out what is “really” going on; as valuable as that may be it still does not quite capture the local contextual influences Glock and Stark were concerned with. Unfortunately, they did not address contextual factors in their volume. Another reason for the use of a San Francisco Bay Area sample was that the study focused on church members, which required the co-operation of churches, and some churches are organized into regional districts or dioceses. In the case of the Glock and Stark study, it was an important consideration that the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco, Joseph McGucken, agreed to allow and encourage the participation of Catholic parishes. The findings in Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism were shocking. About 80% of the San Francisco Bay Area church members held some explicitly negative beliefs about Jews, and almost half reported unfriendly feelings toward Jews. . . . (F)ewer than half these Christians believe that Jews ought to have the right to be admitted to any vacation resort, that fewer than half would sympathize with a Jewish store owner who had just been called “a crook like all the Jews,” that the overwhelming majority would countenance such a remark if the owner had actually cheated, and that 8 percent would at least condone such anti-Semitic behavior through remaining silent in the face of it. Not only is anti-Semitism very characteristic of Christian church members, but all of these aspects of anti-Semitism were found to be strongly correlated with our model of the religious sources of anti-Semitism. (Glock and Stark 1966: 160–161) Since we began this study by postulating a theoretical model of the religious roots of contemporary anti-Semitism, obviously we anticipated that the empirical findings of the survey would support our explanation. However, the descriptive findings were completely unanticipated. Perhaps naïvely, we expected that this religious process had become more or less vestigial. We were entirely unprepared to find these old religious traditions so potent and so widespread in modern society. As it happens, one of us considers himself a Christian; the other does not. But as the findings were revealed, both of us shared equally a sense of shock and dismay that

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a faith which proclaims the brotherhood of man can be so perverted into a raison d’être for bigotry. (Glock and Stark 1966: 207) These were dramatic results indeed. As Lenski’s Detroit study was later proven to have limited validity, later reexamination of the Glock and Stark study of anti-Semitism would result in calling some of its findings into question. The extent of anti-Semitism among Christians, the most disturbing finding from the study, went unchallenged. Whether Christian beliefs had much to do with that was challenged, most notably by Russell Middleton (1973a), who reanalyzed the same nation-wide N.O.R.C. data that had been used by Glock and Stark in the later part of their book. While Glock and Stark used cross-tabulations and percentages, Middleton used multivariate regression analysis in a path model (“path analysis”).27 Unfortunately, the choice of cross tabulations as the basis for analysis made it impossible for them (Glock and Stark) to test fully their theoretical model, for if multivariate tables are constructed with more than a few variables at once, either the number of cases quickly becomes too small for the exponentially increasing cells of the table, or the mind begins to boggle at the resulting complexity. (Middleton 1973a: 35) Middleton observed that Stark et al. in a part of a later book (Stark, Foster, Glock, and Quinley 1971) sought to replicate their study with the northern California data using regression and a path model, but that their claim that the result supported their model was untenable because of significant differences in what variables had been included in the model. Middleton noted that there were no zero-order correlations between the scale of religious belief items (an orthodoxy28 scale) and a measure of anti-Semitism that used no religious terminology in its questionnaire items 27

28

Russell Middleton (Ph.D. University of Texas, 1956) was a highly productive sociologist who had been on the faculty at Florida State University and at the time of his article was at the University of Wisconsin. Regression analysis was not new; I can recall Charles Henry Parrish, who completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1944, telling me it was presented to him in classes there in the 1930s, but in a pre-computer age it was deemed something theoretical rather than practicable. What is “orthodox” from one denominational perspective may not be so from another’s. What the items measure seems to be “orthodoxy” from a relatively conservative Evangelical perspective.

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(“secular anti-Semitism”). His path model, based on Glock and Stark but adding further control variables, failed to show any effect from religious orthodoxy to secular anti-Semitism. He went on to develop his own model, where he found that the most important predictors of secular anti-Semitism were psychological authoritarianism and anomia. Additional religious belief items, not included in the orthodoxy scale, were weakly related to secular anti-Semitism; they explained only about 2% of the variance of the latter. The reply to Middleton’s article by Glock and Stark (1973) is most interesting and raises an important issue. They meant their model of be “additive” rather than one in which orthodox beliefs on the part of Christians simultaneously predict secular anti-Semitism along with other predictors: The thrust of the theory is that the more a subject conforms to the hypothesized path from orthodoxy to particularism, the more likely he is to exhibit religious hostility toward the modern Jew and in turn, (to exhibit) secular anti-Semitism. (Glock and Stark 1973: 55) Thus “orthodoxy” alone would not predict secular anti-Semitism, but “orthodoxy” plus particularism, etc. They add in italics: There are no propositions in the model about the effects of any individual religious variable considered alone on secular anti-Semitism. (Glock and Stark 1973: 55) The implication is that for some questions, the “rote use” of multiple regression and path analysis would be inappropriate, let alone superior to the older technology of cross tabulation and percentages. Middleton’s reply (1973b) proposes that Glock and Stark’s additive model could be tested with interaction terms, and that when adding them he found no interaction effects. So back in 1973 sociology and the other social sciences confronted the issue whether the advanced quantitative methods that had been rendered practicable by sophisticated computers were really better than what could be done with relatively “primitive” techniques, and the issue was raised by a hot button study in the sociology of religion. Glock and Stark were saying, “No,” but I think their intuition was stronger than their articulation. Multivariate regression presupposes linear relationships (y = mx + b, was the way it was expressed when I was in high school algebra). In the experience of Middleton and others, violating these assumptions did not really matter and amounted to technical issues at best. In the experience of a survey researcher in the sociology of religion, many relationships are curvilinear. Glock and Stark mention this, but

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they should have insisted on it more so that it could not be dismissed as a technicality. An anti-intellectual or unsophisticated belief system will yield a curve with “strength,” “interest,” and “sincerity” because these lead one to more intellectual labor and greater sophistication. Moreover, one would expect threshold effects, where levels of something like “orthodoxy” begin to have consequences in social behavior, such as avoiding nonbelievers, for example. Coefficients that represent linear relationships will not catch such phenomena, even in interaction terms. Religion is characterized by relationships between beliefs and action and will therefore produce many such nonlinear relationships. Moreover, multivariate regression presupposed interval-level measures (the difference between 1 and 2 equals the difference between 2 and 3, unlike an auto race where the difference between first and second does not necessarily equal the difference between second and third). Most questionnaire items do not yield interval level data. An exception is the semantic differential type of item and approximations of it such as asking the respondent to indicate on a one to ten scale how they would rate something. Because the semantic differential requires some explaining that a respondent must understand, there is a tendency to avoid it.29 The northern California questionnaire data collected in connection with the study of anti-Semitism served as the basis for the empirical study of the dimensions of religiosity (Stark and Glock 1968) that had been identified and elaborated on by Glock (1962). One of the interesting aspects of the Stark and Glock volume was the precarious funding for the research behind it. The AntiDefamation League grant had covered the development of the survey and the data collection. However, we still needed considerable money to pay for computer time and other data processing services, for clerical assistance, and to support the authors during the analysis and writing. In contrast to the costs of doing such an investigation from scratch, these were relatively small 29

In my opinion, that is unfortunate. I once served on a steering committee for a university’s reaccreditation self-study. A commercial evaluation instrument consisting of Likert-type items had been purchased and sent to a sample of alumni, but the results showed nothing. No degree programs in which the alumni graduated were deemed strong or weak, according to the results. I rewrote the instrument, transforming the Likert-type items into semantic differential form and had the University draw another sample from its list of alumni and administer the revised instrument to it. The results were dramatic; the alumni of the business program thought that it was weak. I have used semantic differential-like items to measure rather subtle religious dispositions, I think with some success—see Blasi with Zimmerman 2004.

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amounts. The data, including both national and regional samples, cost several hundred thousand dollars to collect. We began by seeking $30,000 with which to exploit this windfall of potential knowledge. (Stark and Glock 1968: ix) Foundations, government agencies, and denominational headquarters were encouraging but offered little money. “Indeed, had it not been for the good offices of Yoshio Fukuyama, then director of research of the United Church of Christ, we would have received none” (Stark and Glock 1968: ix). The $1,500 from the U.C.C. “made the difference between being able to continue or not.” In the end, the National Science Foundation came up with the necessary funds in April 1967. The third most frequently cited sociologist of religion in Table 2.5 is Max Weber, who provided early accounts of such topics as charisma, rationalization, demagicalization (or disenchantment, entzauberung), routinization (making something everyday), prophecy versus priesthood, asceticism, innerworldliness versus other-worldliness, and of course the Protestant ethic thesis, not to mention studies of caste in India, non-supernaturalist Confucianism, folk religion in China, etc. We have dealt with citations of Weber as a theorist above, and as both a theorist and a sociologist of religion in the chapter based on dissertations between 1895 and 1959. We need not say more about his sociology of religion here. The fourth most frequently cited sociologist of religion in Table 2.5 is Peter L. Berger, who was discussed above in the section on theorists cited by sociologists of religion. While he and Thomas Luckmann collaborated as theorists, each authored multiple separate works in the sociology of religion. Berger’s principal work, The Sacred Canopy (1967), was not a complete sociology of religion but an extension of the theoretical position outlined in The Social Construction of Reality (Berger and Luckmann 1966) to religious phenomena. He views religion as an endeavor of world construction and world maintenance, world taken in the sense of the life world of phenomenologists. Secularization is observed to occasion particular kinds of world constructive and world maintaining activity. A number of sociologists have shown interest in an appendix on sociological definitions of religion, where Berger speaks of opting for a substantive definition and of his sometime collaborator Luckmann opting for a functional one. Thomas Luckmann developed quite a following in Europe, but he nevertheless appeared fourteenth in frequency among the sociologists of religion cited in Table 2.5. The English language publisher of his 1963 book Das Problem der Religion in der modernen Gesellschaft gave the book the provocative title,

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The Invisible Religion (1967). Luckmann criticizes functional theory for ignoring the human individual as anything but an internalizer of social system forces and for failing, due to its essential ahistorical bias, to capture a profound change in modern life. Consequently, he maintained, contemporary sociology of religion had abandoned the insight shared by Durkheim and Weber that the key to the understanding of society was to be found in the “essentially religious aspects of the location of the individual in society” (1967: 27). Luckmann maintains that such a study should not focus on churches and church-based beliefs, which would presuppose a substantive definition of religion. Instead, he advocates focusing on social processes that function “as the basis for the detachment that is presupposed in the construction of interpretive schemes ‘transcending’ the flux of immediate experience” (1967: 46). Following George Herbert Mead, he notes that the self is an aspect of such social processes. One can see here the beginnings of the study of what would be termed spirituality in the sociology of later decades. Weigert (1974) argued that such an approach fails to ground the sociology of religion in the meanings the activities in question have for the actors in society—a criticism that paralleled Schutz’s concern with sociological theory. The fifth most frequently cited sociologist of religion in Table 2.5 is Andrew M. Greeley, who was associated with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. One line of Greeley’s research that drew attention was his early work on Catholic higher education; contrary to what most academics believed, graduates of Catholic colleges scored no lower on indicators of “intellectualism” than graduates of other institutions (Greeley 1962). They were as likely to go to graduate school, choose an academic career, specialize in the natural sciences, plan a life of research, and be inclined to economic rationality as Protestants (Greeley 1963a, 1963b), and they did not differ from nonCatholics once in graduate school (Greeley 1967). What differences among college graduates there were arose not from religious doctrines or theologies but from the different immigrant communities’ experiences, compared to the experiences of Protestant groups of long standing in the United States, experiences for which religion simply supplied communications networks (Greeley 1963c). All this clearly challenged what Lenski had published, and that led Greeley to call for a moratorium on “Protestant ethic” claims (Greeley 1964). Greeley also began to question the secularization model, according to which religion would disappear among the more modern, educated, and scientifically-oriented members of society. He studied students in Ph.D. programs in top graduate schools and found them to be fairly religious and to experience no essential conflict between religion and science (Greeley 1965). His followup study of the graduates of Catholic colleges, who did as well intellectually

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and economically as other college graduates, showed that they were more religious than other Catholics (Greeley 1969). Contrary to Peter Berger, Greeley contended “that there is no real reason to believe that the supernatural is any more absent or remote from the horizons of everyday life of most people today than it was six thousand years ago” (Greeley 1972: 5). In the 1970s, Greeley was developing a general sociology of American Catholics, largely from the perspective of ethnic studies, albeit ethnic groups limited to those of the nineteenth century trans-Atlantic migrations (Greeley 1977, 1979). He devoted considerable study to Catholic education, finding that as a cumulative experience it furthered adult Catholic religiosity (Greeley and Rossi 1966) and that Catholic high schools were particularly effective in overcoming the deficits multiply-disadvantaged minority students who enroll in them experience (Greeley 1982). He and his associates showed that their data suggested declines in the religiosity of American Catholics cannot be attributed to Catholics’ upward mobility or to changes arising from the Second Vatican Council (Greeley, McCready and McCourt 1976). Rather, they surmised, the Vatican teachings on birth control undermined the confidence Catholics once had in the institutional Church. Greeley also collaborated in a major study of Catholic priests (Greeley and Schoenherr 1971; Schoenherr and Greeley 1974). The Catholic bishops of the United States funded the study of priests, but they found the results “unpleasant” and considered the project a mistake (Greeley 1985: 113). Greeley himself described it “as disastrous an effort as any in which I have ever engaged” not only because of resistance on the part of his bishops (after all, he wrote as a priest in good standing) over publishing the results but because the National Federation of Priests Councils did not trust him since he was funded by bishops (1989: 394).30 The late Robert N. Bellah is the sixth most frequently cited sociologist of religion in Table 2.5. His work reflects the humanistic environment of 1950s Harvard rather than the survey research technology exemplified by the Detroit Area Study of the University of Michigan, the Bureau of Applied Social Research of Columbia University, the Survey Research Center of the University of California at Berkeley, or the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Moreover, he studied the shared ethos of whole societies, in contrast to what surveys study in the course of focusing attention on individuals’ reported circumstances, attitudes, and practices. Bellah’s first important work, based on his 1955 Ph.D. study in the Harvard Departments of 30 The NFPC went so far as to fund a competing study of American priests, conducted by John P. Koval, at the time on the Notre Dame faculty. Some of my fellow graduate students at Notre Dame used the NFPC database for their theses and dissertations.

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Far Eastern Languages and Sociology, was Tokugawa Religion. The Cultural Roots of Modern Japan (1985 [1957]).31 The study applies a Weberian perspective to the Tokugawa period in Japan, 1600–1868, exploring the implications of religion for the emergence of capitalism. It sought to reveal how the pre-modern cultural roots help account for Japan’s evidently successful modernization. It was not a matter of minimizing the state, as in the West; religion “played a major role in political rationalization by emphasizing certain overriding religio-political commitments which could supersede all lesser obligations . . . ” (1985: 195). Typically in the 1950s, modernization was seen as an inherently good development, quite in contrast to the ambivalence that characterized Weber’s evaluation of capitalist society. By the time of his Introduction to the 1985 edition of the book, Bellah had doubts about such an optimistic view of the capitalist world and his thesis that Japanese particularism could be a functional substitute for the universalistic ethic of Western modernization. He also noted that Japanese economic success was undermining traditional ways of life that could substitute for universalism and that the accumulation of wealth and power does not automatically lead to the good society. One would not expect a monograph about a foreign society, albeit an important one, to occasion the attention that Bellah received. Indeed, that for which he received the most attention was a later work, “Civil Religion in America” (1967). At the time, the rhetoric of God, flag, and country was being used to stir up support for the questionable continuation of the war in Vietnam. Bellah did not endorse such rhetoric; indeed at points in the essay he plainly criticized it. But also he would not endorse the abandonment of civic purpose and meaning. So he called attention to the reality and value of an enlightened civil religion. While some have argued that Christianity is the national faith, and others that church and synagogue celebrate only the generalized religion of “the American Way of Life,” few have realized that there actually exists alongside of and rather clearly differentiated from the churches an elaborate and well-institutionalized civil religion in America. This article argues not only that there is such a thing, but also that this religion—or perhaps better, this religious dimension—has its own seriousness and 31

References are to the 1985 edition, which bears a partially different title from the 1957 edition and includes a new introduction. Talcott Parsons was the sociology director of the original dissertation; his four-part scheme of functional requisites for social systems, with a typology of pattern variables developed from universalism/particularism and achievement/ascription alternatives, appears in a note on p. 10.

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984

83

integrity and requires the same care in understanding that any other religion does. (1967: 1) The essay provoked much criticism, defense, and empirical study. As a followup, Bellah delivered a series of lectures, published in The Broken Covenant. American Civil Religion in Time of Trial (1975). The American civil religion had not simply reached a low point, he said, but had been betrayed. The leaders of the republic, notably those of the Nixon administration, no longer understood its principles because corruption and betrayal had affected the entire society (1975: 142–43). Consequently, it is necessary to reaffirm tradition, while always subjecting it to a careful critique lest seeds of betrayal be allowed to sprout again. Such a prophetic critique would be turned into a research program that resulted in the famous book by Bellah et al. published the year following the period covered here—Habits of the Heart (1985). The tradition that is present in the American ethos but that can undermine the American civil religion would be individualism. Another frequently cited author, the eighth appearing in Table 2.5, was J. Milton Yinger, who earned the Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in 1942. His early book, Religion in the Struggle for Power (1946) explored the political ethos of religious bodies of various kinds, according to a church-to-sect spectrum. His spectrum was based on the typological tradition in the field stemming from Max Weber (1978: 1204–11), Ernst Troeltsch (1931), and Leopold von Wiese (1932). Yinger also authored well-known texts in the field (1957, 1970). The earlier text takes an explicitly functionalist approach. When planning an updated revision, he found that there were so many new developments in the sociology of religion that the additions would result in quite a different book, only about a third of which carried over from the earlier one (1970: viii). We have mentioned Émile Durkheim briefly as the classical theorist whose functionalism, as opposed to that of Auguste Comte or Herbert Spencer, was taken over by American sociologists. Durkheim also proposed that individuals experienced society as an objective, outside coercion, for example when they feel an obligation or, in a complex society, consult an expert about what they are required to do on special occasions. Individuals, however, act apart from the experience of such pressure randomly, cancelling out each other’s actions in any statistical summary. Consequently a society-wide fact that is a summation of individual actions can only be explained by another society-wide fact, which is experienced as a social coercion. For Durkheim in the nineteenth century, sociology would be the discipline that studied such society-wide phenomena. While Durkheim wrote articles about religion before 1900, his book on Australian aboriginal religion published in French in 1912 as Les Formes

84

Chapter 2

élémentaires de la vie religieuse. Le système totémique en Australie (Elemental Forms of Religious Life. The Totemic System in Australia) is what was cited often. American scholars had a faulty translation at hand (Durkheim 1915) to work with. Durkheim was keen on describing religion as a folk sociology, a way of cognitively approaching society wherein people symbolize the societal coercion that they experience. The book was frequently cited for this totemic conceptualization of religion, for a famous definition of religion,32 and for the phenomenon of the sacred and the secular to be separated from one another. Durkheim ranks ninth in frequency in Table 2.5. Will Herberg, tenth in order of citation frequency, was not a sociologist by profession. A communist during his youth, he reacted against it and became a conservative Jewish scholar, eventually teaching at Drew University and serving as a contributing editor to the politically conservative magazine, National Review. His much cited Protestant—Catholic—Jew (1960 [1955]) maintained that the third generation of immigrant groups reinvigorated their religions of heritage. The United States thereby became not a single “melting pot” but had three subsocieties defined by the major religions. There is one more sociologist of religion cited more than forty times in Table 2.5: Joseph H. Fichter. A Jesuit and early graduate of the doctoral program in sociology at Harvard University, he taught at Loyola University in New Orleans and held visiting appointments at Harvard, Notre Dame, and overseas. He was an early figure in parish sociology, which consisted of sociological descriptions of individual parishes, and became noted for surveys of subpopulations in the Catholic Church in the United States and elsewhere. His major project in parish sociology focused on a parish in New Orleans, but after the first of three projected volumes was published from the study (1952), the archbishop of New Orleans and Fichter’s Jesuit superiors prohibited any further publication of data from the study—without any explanation.33 He ended up replicating the relevant aspects of the study in Germany and South Bend, Indiana (Fichter 1958a, 1958b). Broader Catholic studies up to 1984 were devoted to clergy and religion as an occupation in general (1961, 1965, 1974), 32

33

The translation is particularly defective in the definition; it should read something like A religion is a solidity system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, i.e. things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices that unite into a community of custom called Church all those who adhere to them (cf. Durkheim 1915: 47). Durkheim’s functionalism held that religions contributed to social solidarity, the latter being a major concern of his sociology. As a member of a religious order, Fichter was under a vow of obedience to obey his Jesuit superiors.

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984

85

social change (Fichter 1962), the charismatic renewal (1975), spiritual dimensions of health care (1981), and the rehabilitation of clergy alcoholics (1982). There are certainly many more important authors who were cited frequently and appear further on in the list in Table 2.5; indeed the cutoff point of 40 citations for purposes of discussion here is arbitrary. However, the intention here is not to create an encyclopedia. Some would figure more prominently in citations after 1984. Those discussed above should serve the purpose of discovering what topics and issues came to the fore during the period dealt with in this chapter.

Theoretical Paradigms and Topics

Sometimes authors announce their theoretical concepts, their themes, or their topics in a straightforward manner, and sometimes the reader can only infer them. In a few cases an author may not even use a relevant term, such as sociology of knowledge, which is nevertheless used to categorize the article in Table 2.6. The most frequent conceptualization in the table is social movement. After 1960 a number of sociologists began to study social movements from a sympathetic perspective rather than dismiss them as irrational responses to ill-understood social forces. Some twenty-five articles in Table 2.6 were a reflection of this trend. There had been something of a religious revival in the United States in the 1950s, perhaps the product of demographics as the post-World War II baby boom occasioned an increased desire of religious socialization for children. Various indicators of religious involvement began to decline after 1958. One can speculate that support on the part of the “main line” churches for the civil rights movement made churches that maintained a prophetic tradition controversial in the eyes of racially conventional (i.e., prejudiced) people and that public religious involvement declined somewhat because of that. In any event, varied conceptualizations of religious decline were termed secularization, and that theme appears as the second most frequent paradigm in Table 2.6. Functionalism was very much alive as it was thematic in nineteen articles, as was the typological tradition (church, sect, cult, mysticism) from Weber, Troeltsch, and H. Richard Niebuhr, with fourteen articles featuring it. Nine articles featured the Protestant Ethic in the Weberian tradition. Some frequent themes are inherent either in religion (organization, socialization, family) or in sociology (role theory, social control/deviance). The new measurement and survey technology highlighted religiosity and stratification. Conversion was no longer simply a change of religious denomination, for example for reasons of

86

Chapter 2

Table 2.6 Number of articles centered on various theoretical paradigms and topics (A given article could use more than one.)

Social movement Resource mobilization Revitalization movement Secularization Functionalism Functional equivalence Mesofunctionalism Microfunctionalism Typology (church, sect . . .) Organization Organizational strength Religiosity Dimensions of religiosity Role theory Role conflict Role exit Role expectations Social control and deviance Socialization Conversion Conversion/recruitment Protestant Ethic Critique Science parallel Conflict New religions Sociology of knowledge (without using the term) Stratification Caste Civil religion Gender Prejudice

1964

1969

1974

1979

1984

Total

4

3

4

8

25

6 9

5 3

1 4 1

6 1 8 3 1 1

24 19

2 3

5 1

1 1

14 11

3 1 5

2 2 3 1

3 1 1

11

1 1 3

1 1

1

1 1

3 2

2 1

1

1

2

2 3

1

1

2 1 3 2 1

11

1 4 1 5 4

1

3

5 6 1 3 1 1

4 6 2

1 3 4 2 2 2

4

2 5 4 2

3 3 1

1 2 1

10 10 9 9

8 8 8 8 7 7 7

(Continued)

87

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984 Table 2.6 (Continued) 1964

Well-being Psychological well-being Spiritual well-being Civilizations Membership Social change Symbolic Interactionism Demography Fertility Family Family size Marriage Politics Practice Community Fundamentalism/literalism Local/cosmopolitan Modernization/Development Personality Authoritarian personality Social construction of reality Social integration Anomie Assimilation Belief Charisma Culture Cultural change Subculture Definition of religion Deprivation Ecology Exchange theory Evolution (social)

4

1969

1974

6 4 2 1

1

1 1

1

2 2 1

1

2 2 2 1

1

1

1

2

2 2 1

1 1 2 1 1

2

1

2

1979

1984

Total

5

2 1 1

7

5

2 3 2 2

4 2 2 1

2 1 1 1 1

2

2 2 4 4 5 1 2 1

1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1

1 1

1 2

6 6 6 6 5 5

5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3

3 3 3 3 3

(Continued)

88

Chapter 2

Table 2.6 (Continued) 1964

Health Mortality Social support Meaning Media Phenomenology Rationalization Reference group/other Science Systems theory Dialectic Differentiation Discourse Attitude Commitment Communality Critical theory Experience Healing Ideology Intrinsic/extrinsic Justice Interpretive sociology Legitimation Migration Ritual Social organization/ disorganization Tolerance Values Activism Alienation Ambivalence toward world Apostasy Brainwashing (critique of concept)

1969

1974

1979

1 3 2 1 2 1 1

2 1

1

1 2 1 1

1 1

1

1 1

1 1

Total

3 1 2 2 3

3

1

1

1 1 2

1984

1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1

2 1 1

1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1

1 1

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1

(Continued)

89

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984 Table 2.6 (Continued) 1964

Career Cognitive dissonance Collective memory Commune Communitas Compensation Contraception Coping Cross pressures Disengagement Ecumenism Elective affinity Encapsulation Environmentalism Ethnic God, image of Generations Hierocracy Identity Inner/other worldly Institutionalization Leadership Life course Life crisis Life orientation Market research Mastery over nature Marxian, neo Merger Millenarianism Moral community Mythological Network Non-religion Occult Oligarchy

1969

1

1974

1 1 1

1 1

1979

1

1

1

1

1 1

1 1

1

1 1

1

1 1 1 1 1

1984

Total

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 (Continued)

90

Chapter 2

Table 2.6 (Continued) 1964

Open-mindedness Plausibility Power/domination Protest Revival Revolution Second naiveté Self-concept Social distance Social morality Social Participation Social problems Social psychology Social structure Sociolinguistics Sociometry Spirituality Spiritual maturity State Structuralism Surrogate for religion Symbol Symbolic realism Syncretism Theodicy Theology Traditionalism Urbanization Vertical mobility Violence Work force participation Number of articles

1969

1974

1

1

1

1 1

1

1

56

1 1 1 1 1 1

1

2

1

1 1 1

1

240

1

1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 131

671

1 1 1

143

Total

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1

1

101

1984

1

1

1

1979

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984

91

marriage, or a psychological episode of increased religious feeling on the part of an individual, but included the process of being recruited by a minority religion or a controversial one and joining it. This latter focus accompanied the phenomenon of new religions. Civil religion emerged as a new theme once Robert Bellah’s essay about it had been published, and with the women’s movement gender became a common research theme. Studies of prejudice began to taper off but still totaled seven articles in Table 2.6. Through the endeavors of David O. Moberg (1979), spiritual well-being began to be studied.

Methods of Data Collection

Not all articles and chapters in volumes of collected essays report data, but since sociology is a science most do. Table 2.7 reports the kinds of data collection procedures that had been followed in the course of collecting data reported in articles. The most frequent ones that were used were historical methods (69 articles), participant observation (55), sampling (108), secondary analysis (72), and surveys of various kinds (227). Some articles reported research projects that used more than one kind; for example, a project could involve a secondary analysis of survey data gathered from a random sample. Or a researcher may have sampled a database of participant observation reports for purposes of a secondary analysis. Because the quantity of articles and chapters varies widely, with only 56 in 1964, 240 in 1974, and an average of 134.2 for the five years reported in the table, it is useful to consider the frequencies in the table in the light of the totals numbers of articles at the bottom, as can be expressed in percentages. The percentages for each of the years involving historical research remained fairly constant, with a high of 14.3% in 1964 and low of 8.4% in 1979. The percentages that were participant observation studies varied only from 5.3% in 1984 to 10.5% in 1979. Sampling, however, varied greatly from 9.1% in 1979 and 9.2% in 1974 to 25% in 1964 and 31% in 1984. As sophistication in survey research increased, one would have expected to see a steady increase in the use of sampling, but that did not occur. Secondary analysis made a quantum leap from 5.3% in 1964, 5.0% in 1969, and 6.3% in 1974 to 18.9% in 1979 and 16.8% in 1984; with time there were more databases collected and stored for people to reanalyze. In general, the use of surveys had volatile frequencies over the five selected years: 23.2% in 1964, 50.5% in 1969, 25.8% in 1974, 33.6% in 1979, and 40.5% in 1984. Interestingly, there appears to be no relationship between the percentages for survey research and sampling. If scientific knowledge is cumulative—in this case, sophistication in survey research—evidence of its cumulative nature requires more than a twenty-five year period to become evident.

92 Table 2.7

Chapter 2 Number of articles using selected methods of data collection (A given article could use more than one.) 1964

Anecdotal Autobiography Case histories Case study Census Church, organizational records Content analysis Video recordings Experimental (pre- & post-tests) Group questions with voting ranks Historical Archived textual materials Cultural history Historical statistics Legal history Index Informal accounts Life histories Literary & media materials Panel design Participant observation Phonetic analysis Reference work data Review of the literature Sampling Longitudinal sampling Scale Secondary analysis Ethnographies Macro-level data Survey data

1

1 2

1969

1 1 1

1974

1

6

9

4

1

3 1 5

9 1 6 1

1 9

1

1 8

1979

23 2 1 2 3 1 1 14 1 22

12

18

22

5 3

3 5

7 15

3

5

1 14

1 1 7 5 1

17

1 3

15 15 4

14

1984

13

27 1 26

1 1 7

10 41 1 8 22

Total

1 1 1 3 3 24 5 1 1 69

11 1 1 42 4 55 1 4 10 108 23 72

22

(Continued)

93

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984 Table 2.7 (Continued) 1964

1969

1974

1979

1984

Total

Survey (sensu lato) Interview Telephone interview Questionnaire Interview & questionnaire Unspecified Tape recordings Twenty Statements Test

13 12

51 12

62 22

1

37 1 2

53 21 4 32

227

32 2 5

48 14 1 28 4 1 1

Number of articles

56

101

240

143

131



1

1 1 671

Methods of Data Analysis

In many kinds of research, techniques for the analysis of data are employed in addition to the techniques of data collection. This was not the case with participant observation before the era of qualitative analysis software; the researchers simply immersed themselves in the data and allowed their minds to do what minds do well. With large sample surveys, in contrast, formal statistical methods of analysis were and still are necessary. The use of cross-tabulation occurred in 32.1% of the articles in 1964, 32.7% in 1969, and 32.8% in 1984, dropping between those last two years to 15.4% in 1974 and 25.9% in 1979 (see Table 2.8). The use of percentages, reflecting the same technology, similarly was more frequent in 1964 (37.5%), 1969 (25.7%), and 1984 (25.2%), but lower in 1974 (15.8%) and 1979 (20.3%). The use of computers made calculating Pearson product correlations much easier, with a quantum increase occurring between 1974 and 1979: 5.4% in 1964, 3.0% in 1969, and 5.8% in 1974, compared to 13.3% in 1979 and 15.3% in 1984. Multivariate regression increased slowly, increasingly markedly between 1979 and 1984: not present in 1964, 1.0% in 1969, 3.8% in 1974, 7.7% in 1979, and 15.3% in 1984. As noted above in the section on the citation of authors as sociologists of religion, there was a major philosophical difference (for want of a better term) between those who favored the use of cross tabulation in the analysis of survey data and those who favored multivariate regression. Technically, the form that questions, or “items,” usually take in large scale surveys do not properly lend

94

Chapter 2

Table 2.8 Articles using specified methods of analysis (A given article could use more than one.) 1964

Canonical correlation Case study Cluster analysis Compare with other surveys Comparison Content analysis Correlation, Pearson Product Correlation, partial Cramer’s measure of association (V) Cross-cultural comparison Cross-tabulations Deviations from percentages Discriminant analysis Ecological distribution Eta Excerpts Factor analysis Frequency count Gamma Partial gamma Index of dissimilarity Log linear analysis Logistic regression Maps Mathematical modeling Means Medians Multiple classification analysis Odds ratio Pearson’s contingency coefficient Percentage change Percentages Phi

1969

1974

2 18

2

2 4

1 33

1 1 2 3 1

2

7

26

1

1 1 4 14 1

2 19 1

37

37

3 5 1 4 2 1

11 1 5 1

21

1984

1

2

3

1979

38 1

1

1 20 2

43 1 2 1

7

9

5

7

2 1 1 1 11

1 2

10

1 1

5

3 29

1 33

Total

1 2 1 1 2 8 60 4 2 1 168 1 2 1 4 1 24 3 19 2 3 3 1 1 41 1 11 1 1 4 147 1

(Continued)

95

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984 Table 2.8 (Continued) 1964

Probability Rates Ratio Regression Path analysis Reported as variance explained Rho, Spearman’s Significance tests (parametric) With sampling Without sampling Both with & without Unknown Significance tests (non-parametric) Smallest space analysis Somers’ d Standardization Sums Tau Time distribution Yule’s Q Number of articles

1969

1974

1 1

9 2 7

18 11 7

3 1

1

9 2 4 21 9 11 1

1 1 3 1

56

101

240

1979

1984

Total

1 3 1 11 2 3

1 2 1 20 6 1

2 6 2 41

19 12 6

35 28 5

1

2

1 2 1

143

4 102

1

3 1 1 1 1 6 1 2

131

671

themselves to interval-level measurement, and that cross-tabulation with means and percentages can be calculated without violating mathematical assumptions while product moment correlations and regression coefficients cannot be. The reason is that means (“averages” in non-statisticians’ language) figure importantly in the calculation of correlation and regression coefficients; the coefficients are based on deviations from means. Means do not make sense if the data are ordinal—1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc., or “strongly agree,” “agree,” “not sure,” “disagree,” “strongly disagree.” For a mean to make sense, the difference between 1st and 2nd, for example, must be the same as that between 3rd and 4th, or the difference between “strongly agree” and “agree” must be the same as between “not sure” and “disagree.” People do not argue much about the point

96

Chapter 2

anymore, as graduate students have been taught to engage in a more or less mechanical use of regression.34 I mention this here because there is a related philosophical difference that turns up in both techniques of analysis—the use of significance tests. Significance tests use the probable pattern created by random outcomes, the “bell curve,” as a guide for deciding whether a difference between two means or a whether a given correlation or regression coefficient represents a “real” difference or a chance outcome. In a large survey database, it is almost impossible for two comparable measures, such as the heights of Democratic women versus Republican women, to be exactly equal, even though they may be equal for all practical purposes. Significance tests answer the question, How much of a difference is a difference? Similarly, if one were to enter two streams of random numbers into a correlation program, it is virtually impossible to arrive at exactly a zero correlation, even if it is zero for all practical purposes. Significance tests answer the question, How much of a correlation is a correlation? But to have any meaning, significance tests should only be performed and reported where there is a random (selected using a table of random numbers) or randomized (e.g., taking a survey at every seventh house on a random selection of streets in a city) sample. On Table 2.8, the frequencies for the use of significance tests (parametric ones, to be precise) are subdivided between those used with sampling (entering randomness into the picture) or without sampling. Strictly speaking, it is an error to use significance tests without sampling. Calculating from the numbers in the table, 16.1% of the articles in 1964 used significance tests, and of those only 22.2% did so properly (i.e., with sampling). Some 17.8% used them in 1969, 61.1% properly. Only 8.8% used them in 1974, and of those only 42.9% did so properly. 13.3% used them in 1979, 63.2% of those properly. Perhaps it was a good sign that while in 1984 some 26.7% of the papers employed significance tests, 82.9% of those did so properly.

What Religions Were Being Studied?

Table 2.9 has two kinds of entry—“category” and all the others. The categories include such descriptive terms as Calvinist, charismatic, and Jesus People/ Movement that do not correspond to long-established traditions or denominations. They also include articles that employ more than one label, but one of which does not correspond to a denomination—in the widespread practice of 34

Because of this, I must respectfully disagree with the late Edward Shils, who used to complain that today’s sociologists are earning doctorates in arithmetic. I disagree because it is not even arithmetic.

97

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984 Table 2.9 Articles highlighting various religious categories, traditions, and denominations (A given article could highlight more than one.) 1964

Category Calvinist Catholic/Liberal Prot./Fundam. Charismatic Evangelical Fundamentalist Fundam/Conserv/Moder/Cath Jesus People/Movement Liberal/Conserv/Fundament Liberation theology Millenarianism New Christian Right New religions Manson Family Paranormal Necromancy Proscriptive Prot/Other Prot/Cath Protestant Racially white Protestants Protestant/Catholic Critique of the categories Protestant/Catholic/Fundament Protestant/Catholic/Jewish Sect Televangelist Afro-Brazilian Umbanda Astrology Baha’i Buddhist Nichiren Shoshu of America Sinhalese Zen

1969

1974

1979

1

1 3

1 1 1

1

1

1

1

4

2

5

7

3

4

7 1

4

1

1984

1 3 2 1 1 1

1 9 1 1 1 1 4 1 2 1 1 2

1 1 2

4

1 1

3 1 1

Total

1 1 1 5 6 1 3 1 1 1 1 13 1 1 18 16 1 1 1 2 2

2 1

1 2 10

1 (Continued)

98

Chapter 2

Table 2.9 (Continued)

Buddhist & Confucian combined Christian African, Independent Apostles of John Maranke Christ Apostolic, Nigeria Assemblies of God Baptist Russian Southern Baptist Racially white Billy Graham Crusade Brethren Catholic Chaldean Charismatic Children of God Church of England Churches of Christ Disciples of Christ Early Christian Episcopal Jehovah’s Witness Lutheran Lutheran Ch. In A. Missouri Synod Mennonite Methodist Racially white United Methodist Metropolitan Community Ch. Molokan Moral Majority Orthodox Greek Pan-Orthodox Russian

1964

1969

23

1 59

1974

87 1

1979

68 2 1 1

1

1

3

1

1

1

2

1

13

1 19

25 1 5

20

2

1

1

1

3 1 3

1 1 3

1 1 3

1 1 1 1 1

1 1

1 1

3 1 2

2 1 1

1984

Total

77

1 314

1 4 1 1 1 1 1 19 2 1

1 3 1 4 1 3 5 1

1 3

(Continued)

99

Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984 Table 2.9 (Continued) 1964

Pentecostal, including neo Apostolic Black Pentecostal United Pentecostal People’s Temple Pietism Presbyterian United Presbyterian United P. USA Reformed Church in America Spiritual Baptist Streams of Power United Church of Christ Congregationalist Christian Science Confucian Folk Mindanao Norwegian Hindu Divine Light Mission Hare Krishna Kundalini/Yoga Meher Baba Radhasoami Ramakrishna movement Transcendental Meditation Islam Black Muslim Ismailis Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt) Santri Shi’ite Jewish/Hebrew Ancient

1 1

1969

1974

1979

1984

3

5 1 1 1

1

1

3

1 1

1 2 1 1 1

1 1 1 1

3

2 1

1

1

2

5

1

2 1 1

1 1 1

1

7

1

2

1 1

2

2 1 2

3 1 1

3

14

1 1

1 1 2

1

8

Total

1 1 9 3

5

10

1 1 4 1

29

(Continued)

100

Chapter 2

Table 2.9 (Continued) 1964

Conservative Hasidic Orthodox Reform Mayan Mayo, Mexico Mormon Pagan/occult Witch Quaker Shinto Satanist Unification Church Humanist American Rationalist Fed. Atheist/none Atheist Communist Marxism Society for Ethical Culture

1969

1974

1979

1984

1 1

1

1

1 1 1 1 4 1

1 1

1

1

7

1

1

2

1

1

1

2 1 1

3 4 1

1

2 1

1

1

9

Total

1 1 20 6 3 1 1 8 4

1

1

comparing Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, Protestant as a category includes a very disparate set of denominations. One revealing set of information corresponds to the new religions category; Asian traditions that hitherto had been quite rare in the United States as well as recently founded religions began to appear in the United States, especially on college campuses, in the 1970s. Articles reporting research on them appear in the 1979 and 1984 columns. Beyer (2000) finds a similar pattern in the joint meeting programs of the Religious Research Association and Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, where over time religious and spiritual traditions that are neither Jewish nor Christian, or if Christian non-North American, appeared more and more frequently. Because the new religions were controversial and because sociologists were studying them from a non-dismissive perspective, people who were hostile

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toward the new religions began to criticize the scholars who studied them. The noted sociologist and publisher Irving Louis Horowitz (1977) questioned the objectivity of sociologists who accepted travel grants from the Unification Church (popularly known as the Moonies) to attend conferences in resort locations sponsored by the Church. Conference papers were included in volumes published by houses believed to be either funded by or favoring the Unification Church. It so happened that in 1982 the Association for the Sociology of Religion, the Religious Research Association, and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion held a joint meeting in Providence, Rhode Island,35 and Horowitz was invited to present his case on a panel on “Religious Sponsors: Ethical and Methodological Problems for Scholars.” Roger O’Toole, the editor of Sociological Analysis (now named Sociology of Religion) perceived “that the topic of scholarly sponsorship by religious bodies was one of serious concern to many participants in the Providence gathering, whether or not they had attended the session . . .” (1983: 177). He invited Horowitz to write an article on the issue for the journal, others to respond to it, and for Horowitz to reply to the others’ comments. The resultant discussion, comprising the better part of Sociological Analysis 44: 3 (Fall 1983) makes for interesting reading.36 If we consider the portion of Table 2.9 that lists individual religious traditions and denominations, beginning with Afro-Brazilian and ending with Humanist, we have a total of 433 articles, with perhaps some double counting when more than one is dealt with in an article. Using 433 as a base number, the 314 studies of Christian groups and traditions represent almost 73% (72.52) of the studies. The 29 studies of Jewish groups represent 6.7%, the 20 of Mormons represents 4.62%, the 14 studies of Hindu religions represent 3.23%, the 10 of Buddhists and 10 of Islam represent 2.31% each. Clearly the lopsided presence of studies of Christianity and relatively high number of studies of Jews and Mormons reflect the interests and access to data of the sociologists. Within the Christian category the tendency was to group all the Protestant groups together 35 The ASR usually meets in the same city and at the same time as the American Sociological Association while the RRA and SSSR meet together a few months later in the year. The ASR, RRA, and SSSR all met together in 1982 as a one-time experiment. 36 While the journal was and remains American-based, Editor O’Toole was based in Toronto, Canada, and four of the panelists were British (Bryan R. Wilson, James A. Beckford, Eileen Barker, and Roy Wallis. Only Irving Louis Horowitz and Thomas Robbins were Americans. The panel provided a hoped-for internationalization of the journal. I was also in Toronto at the time and served as the book review editor of Sociological Analysis and informally as an informant on American sociologists of religion for O’Toole. He told me that he wanted to put the controversy out into the open for discussion rather than have it simmer behind the scenes.

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to create a sufficient sample size in American databases, with the Roman Catholic Church having a sufficiently large population to be included as a separate category. Some of the studies of Catholics focused on specifically Catholic institutions, such as parochial schools and colleges sponsored by Catholic orders, or a Catholic subgroup such as the Charismatic Renewal.37

Specialties Other Than Sociology of Religion

Specialists in other areas in sociology found at times that their inquiries overlapped with the sociology of religion. Similarly, sociologists of religion found that on occasion their research brought them into some other area within the disciplines. That such overlapping would occur with theory (19 articles—see Table 2.10) and research methodology (10 articles) is no surprise since theory and methodology are both to be found in any research project, ones in the sociology of religion included. Religion can affect reproductive behavior on account of beliefs pertaining to birth control; for that reason there was some overlap with demography (14 articles). Religion is thought to exert some normative control; hence an overlap with deviance and social control (11 articles). It was particularly relevant in the study of marriage and the family (23 articles), political sociology (38 articles), and as an identity group relevant to race and ethnicity (28 articles). Clergy studies were often special cases of the study of occupations and professions (13 articles), and of course churches, orders, and other such entities are organizations (15 articles). Both the social form assumed by many of the new religions and of religious activism in efforts at social change resulted in an overlap with the study of social movements (20 articles). A tradition of social psychology dealing with the authoritarian personality saw a rigid type of religion as embodying a particular mentality (19 articles). The contested study of religion and intellectuality, as well as studies of religiously-sponsored schools, resulted in an overlap with the sociology of education (16 articles). The emergence of Marxian theory as an interest in sociology and the Berger/Luckmann approach to the sociology of knowledge resulted in the sociology of knowledge being applied in the sociology of religion (14 articles).

37

These frequencies do not represent a different pattern than that observed by Neitz (2000: 510), who looked at five-year intervals for the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion: 1966, 1971, 1976, 1981, 1986, 1991, and 1996.

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Articles in the Sociology of Religion, 1964–1984 Table 2.10 Specialties other than sociology of religion represented in articles (More than one can appear in any given article.) 1964

Within Sociology Communes Community Death & dying Demography Development & modernization Deviance & social control Criminology Juvenile delinquency Social control Disaster research Drug & alcohol Economy & society Evaluation research Gender studies Gerontology Health Epidemiology Mental health Historical sociology History of sociology Marriage & family Medical sociology Methodology Migration Military sociology Occupations & professions Organization Political sociology Quality of life Race & ethnic Sexuality Social change Social ecology

1

1 1

1969

1974

1979

1984

Total

1 2

2

1 1

4 4 3

1 1 3

5 4 1 14 6 11

1 1

1

1 1 1 6 1 3 1 1

2

1 3

1 3

4 10

2

1 1 2 2

1 1 3

2 9 1 4

3

6 3 1

4 4 11

7 1 4

5

3 1

1 1

1

3

3 4 3 1

3 2 2 1 3 1 1 3 8 8 1 4

1

5 1

1 4 3 1 8 7 6

6 5 6 23 3 5 10 1 1 13 15 14 38 1 2 28 1 2 2 11 1 (Continued)

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Table 2.10 (Continued)

Social movements Social Psychology Socialization Sociolinguistics Sociology of education Sociology of knowledge Sociology of law Sociology of leisure Sociology of literature Sociology of revolution Sociology of science Stratification Suicide Theory Urban sociology Youth & society Other Disciplines Anthropology Biblical studies Communications/Media studies Environmental studies Geography History Labor studies Latin American studies Law Missiology Peace studies

1964

1969

1974

1979

1984

Total

3

4 3

2 1 1

8 5

6 7 3

20 19 4 3 16 14 1 1 2 1 1 9 1 19 5 1

3

2 6 2

3 1 1 1

1 1 2

4

1

1

6 2

1

1

1 1

1 2 2

2 9

1 1 1 1 2

1

8

4 1

1 2

1 3 6

2 5 7

1 2 1

1 2 3 1 3 1 1 2

1 3 1

1

1 1

Some specialties were in altogether different disciplines. Sociological approaches to ancient Hebrew society and to the early Christian movement, after a hiatus of some decades, were beginning something of a revival, with a

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resultant overlap with biblical studies. In the early 1980s televangelists were gaining a nation-wide market, causing media studies to overlap with the sociology of religion. Conclusion Between 1959 and 1984 the sociology of religion in the United States moved from the backwaters of the discipline of sociology into the mainstream. Ph.D. graduates of many of the top universities in the nation and more importantly teaching at top universities were active in the field. There were three journals based in the country, one of them devoted solely to the sociology of religion while the other two were interdisciplinary. The number of articles increased, with a high point in 1974. There were points of contact with classical sociological thought, with theoretical and methodological innovations, and with other specialties both within sociology and without. There were also growing pains that were addressed with civil discussions concerning methods of analysis and issues of sponsorship.

chapter 3

Community Studies and the Sociology of Religion “The traditional community study is a protracted in-depth analysis of a life space that is produced after the social scientist has lived in or been immersed there” (Williams and Maclean 2006: 370). While this is a description rather than a definition, it communicates well what is meant by community study. The genre of research has been controversial insofar as those interested in exposing the power of such macro-level forces as globalization and multinational capitalism note that many community studies fail to do that precisely because they are oriented to localities. On the other hand others favor community studies because they treat the people under study as proactive humans rather than mere recipients of outside influences. The two imperatives—exposing macrolevel impersonal or even depersonalizing forces and revealing the humanistic side of social life—are not intrinsically incompatible; rather the effort to be “scientific” on the natural science model led and still leads to an avoidance of fixing blame or responsibility or seeming to be partisan on the one hand and a reluctance to subject the worldviews of persons under study to a critique. So while community studies have their foibles as a whole, they need not succumb to such and in a few cases have not done so. When sociologists were establishing their field as a scientific discipline in the academy in the 1930s, they were embarrassed by the reformist intentions behind the early community studies. Warren E. Gettys observed unapprovingly that community study “arose out of a great reform movement for the reorganization of neighborhood and community life” that “gave the community study much of its early impetus and in a great measure determined its scope and methodology” (1934: 67). It started, he maintained, in 1908 with the Pittsburgh Survey, after which there were numerous other studies “to learn the facts” preliminary to the inauguration of practical programs of community organizations. These surveys were incomplete or slanted because they dwelt on “glaring evils and startling injustices” and overlooked the general structures and processes within communities. Most social surveys “have dubious value for sociological generalization” (1934: 69). Some of these “pre-sociological” studies came out of the social settlement movement, among which he cites Hull-House Maps and Papers (about which we have something to say below). Not all from the past was darkness and ignorance, however; Gettys credited Warren Wilson, whose dissertation Quaker Hill (2009[1907]) I described in Chapter 1, with beginning the genuinely sociological study of the community

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(Gettys cites Wilson’s Evolution of the Country Community (1912), followed soon after by C.J. Galpin’s The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community (1914) and Robert E. Park’s essay “The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the City Environment” (1915). What impressed Gettys was the concept of “natural areas” in the ecological approach to communities, though he noted that it was necessary to go beyond the mere spatial organization of human communities. He cites Middletown by Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynd (1929) as an example of the use of the “cultural approach” to conducting research into the industrial life of a city. We will have more to say about the Middletown study below. Jesse F. Steiner says much the same in an essay that appeared in the same volume as that by Gettys. The early humanitarian-driven studies could not be trusted: “These localized studies of social problems did not always present facts collected in a systematic manner . . .” (1934: 303). However, they were at least “based upon a first hand knowledge of the situation and stand in striking contrast to the more general and abstract discussions that had hitherto been the vogue” (1934: 303). Still, the social surveys of the first two decades of the twentieth century were mere journalistic and social work endeavors seeking to use scientific methods in the interests of social reform. Because they focused on one or two problems rather than the whole array of community phenomena, they were insufficiently comprehensive. “The social survey has seldom, if ever, attained the ideal of a comprehensive community study in any accurate use of this term. It has primarily been a study of social problems as they appear in the various fields of community life” (1934: 305). What was distinctive about the community surveys, he noted, was that they employed local people to collect the data. As does Gettys, Steiner cites some pioneering early works— Galpin’s Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community (1914) and Park’s essay (1915). He gives a good summary of Middletown and notes the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s studies of regions, as opposed to merely local communities. We will have more to say about both in a later chapter. What is interesting about this view of the community study tradition of research is not only its almost allergic response to reformist impulses but its almost total neglect of the real pioneering work in community study, W.E.B. DuBois’s Philadelphia Negro. There is also a neglect of the large number of church studies of communities (more on this below), perhaps because these latter were too tainted by reformism. This worked two ways, however; the twentieth century literature in the sociology of religion neglected the community studies, with at most a few citations here and there. There were actually a large number of community studies that studied churches; it is the relative neglect of the sociology of religion literature in these that is so remarkable.

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In the tables in Chapter 1 concerning pre-1960 dissertations in the sociology of religion, the authors in the community study tradition of research simply do not appear. In the sample of articles drawn for Chapter 2, only Liston Pope, the author of Millhands and Preachers (1942), appears among sociologists of religion who were cited with some regularity (Table 2.5). The issue arises whether the community studies that focus on religion are part of the same intellectual tradition as that of other community studies. In a review of the community study tradition of research timed for the centenary of the American Sociological Association, Williams and Maclean (2005: 370–404) provide an appendix that lists the individual studies that comprise that tradition. A tally for the decades in the span of time on which the present study focuses (1895–1984) appears in Table 3.1. The decade with the most studies, seventeen, is that of the 1970s. Community studies that appear in the online bibliographic database in the sociology of religion that I maintain (posted on the websites of the Association for the Sociology of Religion and the Association of Religion Data Archives) are listed in another column. While some studies are included in both sets, the two sets were developed independently of one another. The decade with the most community studies of religion is that of the 1950s. These community studies of religion include many dissertations and books that focused on a community and devoted one or two chapters to churches, among many chapters that did not focus on religion or churches. A separate tally of the studies that did focus on religion as a principal theme appears separately in Table 3.1; the decade there with the most studies is that of the 1960s. This suggests some independence of community studies of religion from community studies in general. Judging from Table 3.1, about two thirds of the community studies of religion (41 of 65) studied communities and found religion to be an important component in them. One could argue from this fact that indeed community studies of religion were a part of general community studies. So why did they peak twenty years before general community studies peaked? The fact that rural town or village studies peaked in the 1950s may be the reason. If religion is more important in rural America than elsewhere, the discrepant timing of community studies in general and community studies of religion could be a function of the discrepant timing of rural community studies and other community studies. It would appear, however, that this explanation is only a partial one since the decades in which small city community studies of religion peaked (a tie between the 1940s and the 1960s) and the large city community studies of religion peaked (the 1960s) are still different from the dramatic peak of community studies listed by Williams and Maclean in the 1970s.

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Community Studies and the Sociology of Religion Table 3.1

Community Studies by Decade, 1895–1984 (Statistical modes underlined) Sociology of Religion Community Studies

Decade

List of Community Studies*

Total

Focus on a Religion

Rural Town or Village

Small City

Large City

Before 1900 1900–09 1910–19 1920–29 1930–39 1940–49 1950–59 1960–69 1970–79 1980–84 Total

 2  4  4  4  9  7  7  9 17  2 65

 4  1  1  4  5  9 15 12  5  5 64

 1  1  1  1  2  0  6  9  1  1 22

 1  1  1  2  2  5  7  3  1  0 23

 0  0  0  1  1  4  3  4  2  3 19

 3  0  0  1  3  0  5  6  2  2 22

* Based on the appendix to Williams and Maclean (2005: 370–404). When multiple first publication dates for the same body of research exists, Williams and Maclean listed the date the field work began.

The community studies of religion cover a variety of traditions and denominations. Many deal with arrays of churches and synagogues in communities while some focus on one tradition. For examples of the latter, four studies focus on rural Anabaptist communities—one in the 1930s, two in the 1950s, and one in the 1960s. Six focus on African American communities and their churches—two by DuBois before 1900, one by C.H. Parrish in the 1920s,1 one in the 1950s, and two in the 1980s that involve separate analysis of majority and of African American churches in a city. These two categories—Anabaptist and African American—are too small in terms of numbers of studies to have much effect on the distribution of community studies in the sociology of religion across the decades. However, there are twelve Jewish community studies, with 1 This study (1921) is a little-known Columbia University M.A. thesis that came to my attention in the course of writing a brief biography of the author, Charles Henry Parrish (Blasi 2000, 2002).

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Table 3.2 Community Studies Treating Religion with Various Impressionistic Quantities of Sociology of Religion References, by Decade, 1895 to 1984

Decade

Before 1900 1900–09 1910–19 1920–29 1930–39 1940–49* 1950–59** 1960–69 1970–79*** 1980–84

Studies with No S of R References

4 1 3 2 7 4 4

Studies with Limited S of R Reference

1 1 3 3 9 6 2

Studies with Many S of R References

2 2 5 5

* Counting the Yankee City series as one study from the 1940s. ** Counting as 1, 2 articles from Thomas O’Dea’s study of Mormon communities in New Mexico, and a dissertation and article based on it by Howard Polsky as one. *** Counting a book and article reporting the same study by David Kertzer as one.

eight of them concentrated in the 1950s and 1960s, contributing to the peak of studies in the sociology of religion in the 1950s and the peak of studies focusing on a given religion in the 1960s.2 I noted above in passing that the community studies literature made few references to the sociology of religion literature. Documenting this can be difficult because it is not always obvious whether a given reference is to the sociology of religion. As noted in Chapter 1, many works in other disciplines resemble to various degrees sociological works about religion. Then citations may be to another community study that makes only a token survey of religious organizations in a brief chapter. Moreover, a half dozen references in a brief article could reflect a much greater grounding in the sociology of religion literature than a similar quantity in a massive dissertation. To resolve 2 There was one study of a Jewish community before 1900, one in the 1920s, a spin-off of the Yankee City series of community study publications in the 1940s, three in the 1950s, five in the 1960s, and one in the 1970s.

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the dilemma, notes were simply recorded for each study, whether there were no citations from the sociology of religion literature, or either of two impressionistic categories: “limited” or “many” such citations. The results appear in Table 3.2. One can understand why there would be few citations to the literature before 1930; the literature simply had not yet begun to be published in any great quantity. However, the number of studies from 1930 to 1969 with no citations suggests either a lack of cognizance of the literature on the part of the scholars conducting community studies that in fact studied religion, or perhaps even avoidance of the sociology of religion literature. The absence of citations to the sociology of religion literature did not continue after 1969.

Earliest Studies

The two earliest community studies that turn up in the online bibliographic database in the sociology of religion3 appeared in 1895 in the Hull-House Maps and Papers (Residents of Hull-House 1895): Charles Zeublin’s “The Chicago Ghetto,” a rather opinionated overview of the two Jewish residential areas of Chicago, and Josefa Humpal Zeman’s “The Bohemian People in Chicago.” Charles Zeublin graduated from Northwestern University in 1887 and undertook graduate study in ministry at Yale Divinity School. He was at Hull-House, the settlement house founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, briefly and became the first director of the Northwestern University Settlement. He taught sociology in the Extension Division of the University of Chicago from 1892 to 1908. Zeublin provides histories of Jewish industrial institutions, social organizations, schools, political involvements, and religious organizations, liberally offering judgments framed by an ideal of assimilation. “Both by the persistence of their traits when segregated, and the readiness with which they assimilate when encouraged, the Jews furnish the most instructive element in our population” (Zeublin 1895: 96). He praises the synagogues for keeping the men out of saloons, but otherwise they were “hindering a fuller development of the whole man” (1895: 108). As for the cheder schools: These Talmud schools, which have not by any means been exterminated, are held in little stuffy rooms, where, with insufficient light, young boys ruin their eyesight over Hebrew characters, distort their minds with 3 As mentioned above, accessible through either the webpage of the Association for the Sociology of Religion or the “Research Hub” of the webpage of ARDA, the Association of Religion Data Archives.

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rabbinical casuistry, impair their constitutions in unventilated rooms, and defer the hopes of American citizenship by the substitution of Jüdisch for English. (1895: 109) He also disapproved of rabbis: “At all events, the Ghetto rabbi is in no sense a minister. His function could as well be performed by a phonograph” (1895: 113). Despite his views, one can get some indication of the community life of the Chicago Jews in the late nineteenth century from this work. There were theatres, literary societies, newspapers as well as synagogues and schools. The distinctive dress styles were not in evidence. Josefa Humpal Zeman (1870–1906) was a Czech immigrant, temperance advocate, journalist, and Hull-House resident. She published a Czech-language newspaper, which competitors resented because of her Christian views and advocacy for women’s rights. She left Chicago in 1901 for Prague. Her study (Zeman 1895) includes accounts of eight Catholic ethnic Czech parishes and their schools; the latter conducted classes half the day in English and half the day in Czech. In addition Czech Benedictines ran a Czech-language high school or “college.” Catholic newspapers in Czech were directed at youth and children. There were also two Protestant Czech churches, originally organized by Americans (Congregational and Methodist), with newspapers. An anti-clerical portion of the population associated the Catholic Church with Austria; they established free-thinker schools and three newspapers. W.E.B. Dubois visited Hull-House (Addams 1990[1910]: 149) and collected door-to-door social data, not unlike what appears in parts of Hull-House Maps and Papers. He collected data in Philadelphia first and then in Farmville, Virginia, but the two studies were published in reverse order. “The Negroes of Farmville, Virginia” (1978[1898]) devotes a few pages to the churches and religion. The most highly developed and characteristic expression of Negro group life in this town, as throughout the Union, is the Negro church. The church is, among American negroes, the primitive social group of the slaves on American soil, replacing the tribal life roughly disorganized by the slave ship, and in many respects antedating the establishment of the Negro monogamic home. The church is much more than a religious organization; it is the chief organ of social and intellectual intercourse. (1978[1898]): 190 He describes the First Baptist Church of Farmville, the principal church there, with some account of the social function it serves. He gives passing mention

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to a Methodist church and a second Baptist church. The Philadelphia Negro (1967[1899]) is a much larger and more thorough study, where he devotes an entire chapter to the “organized Life of negroes” (i.e, the churches), providing historical information on the individual congregations. Again, the church continues the tribal organization from Africa (p. 197). Each of the fifty-five churches and missions had a distinct class composition. “Without wholly conscious effort the negro church has become a centre of social intercourse to a degree unknown in white churches even in the country” (1967[1899]: 203). DuBois gives a detailed description of the typical Sunday, noting that the chief meeting is at night, in contrast to the pattern reported in many other community studies. He criticizes the churches for being timid on moral teaching, but notes that it must be so since its constitution is “democracy tempered by custom.” The clergy are shrewd managers, generally of good morals, respectable, pleasant, but not learned, spiritual, or reform-minded. They serve also as employment agents and conduct charitable and relief work. The largest denomination was the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The simple quantity of data reported is impressive: membership, affiliated societies, parsonages, seating capacity, income, property, and debt, congregation by congregation.

Earliest University-Based Studies

Zeublin and Zeman were affiliated with Hull-House at the time of their community studies, and DuBois had only the most remote affiliation with the University of Pennsylvania in 1897 when he collected data for the Philadelphia Negro and was under contract with the federal government for the Farmville study. Thereafter community studies were conducted out of universities. Warren Wilson4 wrote Quaker Hill (2009[1907]) as a dissertation for his doctorate from Columbia University. Wilson lived in Quaker Hill off and on for fourteen years, but by the 1890s it was no longer an exclusively Quaker settlement 4 Warren H. Wilson: 1867–1937. A.B. Oberlin 1890, A.M. Oberlin 1894. He worked for the YMCA in New York City in 1894, editing the Intercollegian while studying for the ministry at Union Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1894 and was ordained for the Presbyterian Church. He was a pastor in Quaker Hill, New York, and later in Brooklyn, before studying full time at Columbia (Ph.D. 1907). He was to become the superintendent in the church rural work department of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, 1908–37, from which post he recruited young clergy to conduct surveys of rural communities throughout the U.S. Edmund deS. Brunner (1937) credits Wilson with developing the techniques used in the rural studies of the Institute of Social and Religious Research, which will be discussed in Chapter 4.

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but religiously diverse. His study used mostly historical data, organized around three periods: the period of the Quaker Community (1730–1830), a period of transition (1830–1870), and a period of mixed community (1880–1905). In the first period, the community was counter-cultural, agitating against slavery early on and eventually bringing other Quaker communities around to its view, and living out the ethic of its inner and immaterial religion. In the period of transition the railroad brought outside people in; ambitious children left for elsewhere in the US. That period also witnessed a church schism. In the period of the mixed community, the distinctiveness of the locality was coming to an end as the older Quakers died off. Samuel Nicholas Reep’s University of Chicago Divinity School dissertation (Reep 1910) stands in stark contrast to Wilson’s. The author used a questionnaire to find out from church officials and clergy in Chicago information to include in an inventory of social services and organizations related to Chicago churches and synagogues. There is no recognition of historical community processes or specifically community phenomena. In 1921, C.H. Parrish5 used interviews rather than a questionnaire in his study of an un-named African American New Jersey community for his M.A. thesis at Columbia University. The thesis provides data on the membership of the three influential churches, one Methodist and two Baptist, that controlled half of the community social organizations. The newer Baptist church was founded by migrants from the South; its members could not understand the “cold” services of the other Baptist church (Parrish 1921: 13). Whatever the rationale had been for founding the various church-related clubs, they ended up with fundraising as their primary purpose. Parrish provides a general statement that differs from that of DuBois: Religion is the life of the people. We find it as a strongly socializing factor, in the church clubs, and in the fraternal and benevolent societies. The antisocial influence is felt in the bitter feeling engendered by denominational jealousy. Overshadowing denominational fraction, is the feeling,

5 Charles Henry Parrish, Jr. (1899–1989) earned the B.A. at Howard University in 1921 with a major in mathematics; he earned the M.A. at Columbia University in 1921, sociology; and the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1944. C.H., as he called himself, began as a math tutor in Louisville and eventually joined the faculty of Louisville Municipal College, a segregated component of the University of Louisville. He told me he taught sociology and psychology at the Municipal College and served as basketball coach there as well. In 1951 he integrated the faculty of the University of Louisville. On C.H. Parrish, see Blasi 2000 and 2002.

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nearly approaching hostility, between the old inhabitants and the immigrants. (Parrish 1921: 27) Parrish, who would later consider himself a symbolic interactionist, seemed to be much more cognizant of social conflict within the community he studied than DuBois had been (DuBois would later consider himself a radical Marxist). Jesse Frederick Steiner, who was quoted above as a critic of early settlement house-based studies, was a community sociologist who had recently left the University of North Carolina in 1927 and joined the faculty of Tulane University, when he published a volume of community studies based on research assignments his students conducted for his classes.6 One of these studies was “Daytona: The Changing Status of Religious Conflict” (Steiner 1928). “Daytona” in the North Carolina Piedmont had competing churches (Moravian and Methodist) from its earliest days, though at first the two subcommunities were in different locations in the rural community; the social division undermined community solidarity in the nineteenth century. The churches went so far as to locate new congregations of their denominations in one another’s territory. After World War I a conservative/progressive divide in politics cut across church lines, and it too undermined community solidarity, albeit over a new set of issues. The change was not a mere matter of secularization; the fact that the churches invaded each other’s natural territory led in the long run to crossdenominational friendships, intermarriages, and cooperation.

Jewish Community Studies

In Table 3.1 there is a column identifying the number of community studies in each decade that focus on a particular religion rather than on a town or city with all the religious organizations to be found in it. A good number of studies focusing on one religion, whose members comprise a community within a community, studied Jews within American cities. The chapter in Hull-House Maps and Papers by Charles Zeublin, already described above, was such a study, focusing as it did on the two Jewish communities in Chicago. Because of his opinionated presentation, it is difficult to take Zeublin’s account seriously. Fortunately, Louis Wirth conducted a study of Jews in Chicago three decades

6 Jesse Frederick Steiner (1880–1962) earned the M.A. at Harvard in 1913 and the PhD. in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1915. He taught at the University of North Carolina 1921–27, Tulane University 1927–31, and the University of Washington 1931–1945.

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later (Wirth 1928).7 Much of the work traces the history of the ghetto as an urban form in Europe. Well into the book a chapter traces the origins of the Jewish community in Chicago, including the organization of the first synagogue in 1851. The early Jewish settlers held higher status than newcomers and favored the Reform movement. The divisions in the community meant multiple synagogues as well as separate residential areas. The 1870s saw the arrival of a new wave of Jews from Russia, who dressed distinctively and spoke Yiddish. The community established occupational training programs so that not all of the new arrivals would go into peddling. The synagogue became the central institution in the community, with the rabbi giving advice and adjudicating disputes. However, the religious authority reached a limit with the young, who found the rituals uninteresting. The ghetto is a complete world, but it is a small and a narrow world. It has its intellectuals, but their intellectuality is of a circumscribed sort. What it lacks in breadth of horizon, the ghetto life makes up in depth of emotion, in strength of familial and communal ties, and in attachment to tradition, form, and sentiment. (Wirth 1928: 222) As he saw it, the ghetto was a product of immigration and would vanish with time. W. Lloyd Warner, also of the University of Chicago, and his associates studied Newburyport, Massachusetts, to which they gave the pseudonym “Yankee City,” beginning in the 1930s. Part of that study focused on the Jewish community of Newburyport (Warner and Srole 1945).8 Warner and Srole describe a crisis in the Jewish community of Newburyport in 1932, when the older generation of immigrants who had comprised the regular congregation of the synagogue began to die off. The synagogue building was an old house in a lower class neighborhood. The younger generation took responsibility and raised money in the midst of the Depression to purchase a vacated church in a middle class neighborhood. The threat of communal extinction galvanized the 7 Louis Wirth (1897–1952) immigrated from Germany in 1911 to live with his older sister at their uncle’s home in Omaha, Nebraska. Their parents did not migrate until 1936. He earned the B.A. at the University of Chicago in 1919, was a social worker for three years, and then completed his Master’s in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1925 and the Ph.D. in 1926. He taught at Tulane University, 1928–30, was a Social Science Research Council fellow in Europe 1930–31, and joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1931. He served as president of the American Sociological Society in 1947. 8 Based in part on Srole 1940.

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community into action. The newly acquired building represented a transition in generations and class standing. The new building became as much a community center as a place of worship. However, the older generation actually did not like the idea. Some religious liberalization came with the change in location, and attendance improved. Members observed that Christians would respect them if they observed their own religion but be suspicious of them if they did not. Three studies in half a century is not much, but studies of American Jewish communities became more common at mid-century. Solomon Sutker9 wrote a dissertation on the Jews of Atlanta for his dissertation (Sutker 1950), based on participant observation and open-ended interviews in the course of 1948. He gives the usual history of the beginnings of a German Jewish community and subsequent addition of an Eastern European one. Similar to Wirth’s study, there is a narrative of the organizing of the city’s synagogues; one was Reform and five were Orthodox. The synagogues experienced low attendance, with their most intense activity occurring in the fall, while the charitable and social organizations were vibrant, with their most intense activity occurring in the spring. The Zionist clubs were mere paper organizations to which members paid dues. One peculiarity of the study was the use of a form of sociometry; Sutker asked five non-Jewish civic leaders to indicate which people they knew from a list of Atlanta Jewish leaders; this was to give some indication of potential lines of Jewish influence in the city. George Kranzler completed his dissertation on the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, in 1954.10 In contrast to what Sutker found in Atlanta, religion was at the center of Jewish life in Williamsburg: “The primary value pattern of the community under investigation is a religious system with its own ideal-types of social conduct, social institutions, economic forms, and Weltanschauung” (Kranzler 1961: 12). The area had been losing its prosperous residents, even Jewish ones, and was becoming a slum by the mid 1930s, but in less than a decade the Jewish community of Williamsburg reversed the 9

10

Solomon Sutker earned the M.A. in sociology in 1947, and the Ph.D. in sociology in 1950, both at the University of North Carolina. He was on the faculty of Oklahoma State University in the 1960s. George Kranzler, born in 1916, was a school principal for over twenty-five years. He earned the M.A. in 1943, and Ph.D. in 1954, both in sociology at Columbia University. He also published a number of works of fiction and folklore under the pen names Gershon Kranzler and Jacob Isaacs. His dissertation. which was published with an added chapter some years after its completion (Kranzler 1961), represents fifteen years of on and off research.

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process. There was a reverse in-migration of Orthodox Jews who sought out the religious environment and institutions for the socialization of the young. The phenomenon repopulated Williamsburg and drove real estate values up. The 1940s saw a Chassidic dominance, with many immigrants coming from central Europe, especially Hungary. The patriarchal family system had declined and then revived. Rabbis retained their authority over all aspects of life, not merely religious ritual. If immigrants were Orthodox and had an extensive religious education, Jews long resident in the neighborhood were favorably disposed toward them. Howard W. Polsky’s findings in his dissertation on Jewish Orthodoxy in Milwaukee (Polsky 1956) resemble those by Sutker in Atlanta more than they do Kranzler’s in Williamsburg.11 There is the familiar pattern of German Reform Jews arriving first in the 1840s and undergoing upward mobility. Then Russian Jews arrived in the 1880s and were Orthodox. The two communities lived in different neighborhoods, even as the Russian Jews also experienced upward mobility. The Orthodox institutions were organized between 1921 and 1945. Meanwhile the Conservative movement presented a major challenge to the Orthodox denomination, which had organized in 1927. Americanized descendants of the Russian Jewish immigrants were leaving Orthodoxy and joining the Conservative synagogues. Polsky conducted telephone interviews with Orthodox synagogue members and found that though they abandoned specific rituals they retained basic abstract religious beliefs. He found a general belief that most of the Orthodox synagogues will become Conservative, and scores on an Orthodoxy scale suggested that the younger, educated members were deviating from Orthodoxy. The same year that Howard Polsky published his dissertation in expanded form, Judith Kramer and Seymour Leventman published Children of the Gilded Ghetto (Kramer and Leventman 1961).12 They conducted structured interviews with one hundred male members of Jewish organizations from each of three generations in “Northern City.” The immigrant Jewish generation was 11

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Howard W. Polsky (1928–2003) earned the B.A. in 1949 at the University of Chicago, the M.S.W. in 1954 and Ph.D. in sociology in 1956 at the University of Wisconsin. He spent his professorial career at the School of Social Work at Columbia University. He grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home in Milwaukee and was a teacher in Jewish schools while writing the dissertation. He published a summary of the research (Polsky 1958). Judith R. Kramer earned the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Minnesota in 1958 and taught at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Seymour Leventman (1930–2009) also earned the Ph.D in sociology at the University of Minnesota in 1958; he taught at Macalester College, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and from 1968 to 2002 at Boston College.

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unlike other ethnics insofar as they had no thought of returning to a homeland. The second generation Americanized and thus at least partly secularized aspects of its life. It distanced itself from the first generation, but it was not integrated fully into the wider society. Thus as it experienced upward mobility it became a “gilded ghetto.” There was a resultant class pattern: the lower class was Orthodox, the middle class Conservative, and the upper class Reform. Meanwhile, the third generation needed to reject less from its parental generation; it was more oriented to security and prestige than income. Religion served the third generation to perpetuate Jewish identity, but that generation suburbanized out of the geographical community. Consequently the third generation had more involvement with non-Jews. It had lower rates of membership in Orthodox synagogues. Meanwhile the noted urban sociologist Leonard Riessman13 had been studying the New Orleans, Louisiana, Jewish community (Riessman 1962). His strategy was to interview a 10% sample of members of New Orleans Jewish organizations in the year 1958. The New Orleans Jewish community had been in the city for two centuries, but unlike that of New York it had no territorial concentration and was dominated by the Reform denomination with almost no impact of east European influence. Unlike other communities, Jewish identity was therefore exclusively religious rather than ethnic. The community was divided between older families and more recent arrivals, both quite middle class. While New Orleans Jews were excluded from the southern aristocracy, historically there had been an absence of anti-Semitic expressions, though recently the reluctance of Jews to support the racial segregationist cause had led to some hostility. Theodore Lowi14 (1964) reported on another Jewish community in the South, in a city he called “Iron City.” Again, the community was divided between older families and newer arrivals, who did not generally socialize with one another apart from the synagogue. In 1958 the media reported that a bombing had damaged the synagogue in Birmingham, Alabama. The synagogue of Iron City was divided over whether to publicly donate money to a reward fund for the arrest of the person or persons responsible. It never came to a vote because of impassioned arguments—“yes” out of solidarity and “no” out of fear of resuming community hostilities that were recalled from the 13

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Leonard Riessman (1921–1975) earned his Bachelor’s degree at Wayne State University, the M.A. at the University of Wisconsin in 1947, and the Ph.D. at Northwestern University in 1952. He taught at Tulane University 1951–70 and Cornell University 1970–75. Theodore Lowi was born in 1931; he earned the B.A. at Michigan State University in 1954, the M.A. in 1959 and Ph.D. in 1961 in political science at Yale University.

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1920s. It turned out that the “yes” side was comprised of more recent arrivals, the “no” of older families. Sidney Goldstein and Calvin Goldscheider published their Jewish Americans. Three Generations in a Jewish Community in 1968.15 The leaders of Jewish organizations in Providence, Rhode Island commissioned a demographic study for planning purposes. Consequently, most of the chapters simply report the data, for 1963, on demographic topics. One chapter describes ideological and ritualistic dimensions of religiosity, and another organizational and cultural dimensions. Solomon Poll’s study (1969[1962]) takes us back to Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, focusing on the Hasidic community.16 The Williamsburg Hasidic community migrated from Hungary after World War II. They isolate themselves from the wider society and from less observant Jews, and distinguish themselves from other Hasidim who have different rebbes. They are not ascetic, however; in fact they use economic success to help maintain their seclusion and distinctive lifestyle. Poll found them a difficult community to study. Despite having an Orthodox background during his childhood in Hungary, he was deemed a stranger. People wanted to keep themselves at a social distance from him. My initial contact with a member of the Hasidic community was made through the aid of what I called a “reference person.” He was a religious non-Hasidic Jew who was tolerant about the study I was making. After I had established good rapport with him, I asked him to introduce me to a Hasidic Jew he knew. Again, when I had established good rapport with this new informant, I asked him to introduce me to still other Hasidic Jews. (Poll 1969[1962]: 271) He used unstructured interviews, conducted in Hungarian or Hungarian Yiddish. Progress with the interviews and with participant observation was slow; it took thirteen years. He found that religious belief and practice domi15

16

Sidney Goldstein earned the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1953; his career was at Brown University, 1955–93. Calvin Goldscheider earned a M.A. at Yeshiva University in 1961, and an A.M. in 1963 and Ph.D. in 1964 in sociology at Brown University. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley and later returned to Brown as a faculty member. Solomon Poll (died 2004) earned the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1961. His career was spent at the University of New Hampshire. He will be discussed again in Chapter 5 in connection with the founding of the Association for the Sociological Study of Jewry, later called the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry.

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nated other aspects of life in the community, making them in fact aspects of the religion. Finally, Egon Mayer17 (1979) studied the Jewish community in the middle class suburban Brooklyn community of Boro Park, after a number of Jewish institutions had moved there from Williamsburg and Crown Heights. From 1972 to 1974, Mayer had a number of his Brooklyn College students conduct interviews in Boro Park and surveys of yeshiva principals, rabbis, families, and young adults. In most previous studies, from Wirth’s in Chicago in 1929 to studies dated as late as 1969, Orthodoxy was expected to disappear. However it was rebounding in the 1970s; and even in middle class Boro Park people were using Orthodox religion to further their social status. Mayer observed that the very abstract and alien nature of modern society left room for religious community. The Orthodox population was sufficiently large and concentrated to constitute a critical mass, so that it was easy to be Orthodox there. Daily life was modern but kosher; a five-day work week made Sabbath observance possible, and mikvas were available. Dress was observant but not shabby. People obtained status not only with religious credentials but with secular ones as well, in contrast to the isolationism of Williamsburg. Consequently many rabbis did not function as rabbis. Women were expected to be educated and employed, and the family structure was more democratic than it had been traditionally. Religious education had become more rational and less based on memorization. There was geographical mobility to other Orthodox suburbs or to Israel. Middletown Robert and Helen Lynd conducted two community studies of Muncie, Indiana (“Middletown”), and Caplow et al. made a replication decades later (Lynd and Lynd 1929, 1937; Caplow et al. 1983). There will be much more to be said about how the original Middletown study came about in Chapter 4; it is a story of conflicting purposes involving John D. Rockefeller, Jr., applied quantitatively oriented sociologists of religion, and qualitative fieldwork oriented officials of the philanthropic establishment of the day. 17

Egon Mayer (1944–2004) grew up in an Orthodox home in the Boro Park community (Mayer 1979: x). He earned the B.A. at Brooklyn College, 1967, the M.A. at the New School for Social Research, 1970, and the Ph.D. in sociology at Rutgers University in 1975. His career was at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. His book was based on his 1975 Rutgers University dissertation.

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Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd18 had a mandate to conduct qualitative fieldwork in a small industrial city to study the social dynamics of the city holistically. The study began on site in Muncie in 1924. From the outset, they sought to highlight what changes had taken place in the city; to do so they collected information for the years 1890 and 1924, asking people in interviews about life in 1890 as well as collecting documents for both years. The principal topics were work in Muncie, home, school, leisure, religion, and community activities. In the course of the research, important differences in the experiences of the working and business classes came to light. Concerning religion, they found significant numbers of high school students disagreeing with their parents about church and Sunday school attendance and other Sunday observances. The working class equated church with religion and expressed confidence in the truth and sufficiency of Christianity, the Bible, Jesus, and the afterlife, while elements in the business class had doubts but conformed to religion outwardly. There were 42 white churches in Middletown in 1924, 28 denominations, with an overwhelmingly Protestant population. The churches generally divided over fund raising rather than doctrine. The competition became divisive, eliminating the inter-church socializing that had occurred in 1890. Financial resources went into the individual church and its denomination, not social services or civic projects. The clergy, largely educated, faced the problem of adults in their congregations having a fifth grade education on average, with teenagers graduating from high school. The amount of speaking the clergy had to do left them little time for reading. Though helped out financially by the business class, the clergy felt frustrated because they were frozen out of any serious discussions of practical affairs. Church attendance was in a decline from 1890. Sermon topics were vague. While Muncie

18

Robert Staughton Lynd (1892–1970) earned the A.B. at Princeton University 1914 and B.D. at Union Theological Seminary in 1923. He came to know people in the publishing industry while working in advertising for Charles Scribners & Sons and became a public figure when he wrote an exposé on working conditions in the oil fields of Wyoming. He attended the New School for Social Research and Columbia University intermittently, earning the Ph.D. in sociology from the latter in 1931 with his contribution to Middletown serving as a dissertation. Helen Merrell (1896–1982) earned the A.B. at Wellesley College in 1919 and subsequently worked as a high school teacher. She married Robert S. Lynd in 1921. She earned the M.A. in history at Columbia University before living in Muncie, Indiana, two years with Robert for the Middletown project. She spent her academic career at Sarah Lawrence College, 1929–1964, meanwhile earning the Ph.D. at Columbia University in sociology in 1944. She was an activist in the American Federation of Teachers and American Civil Liberties Union.

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was changing in many respects, its religious beliefs were not, assuring the believers that life in general was unchanging. It wasn’t a pretty picture. The 1937 follow-up was conducted to ascertain the effects of the Great Depression on “Middletown.” The chapter on religion strikes one as rather perfunctory. Pre-Depression planning had resulted in considerable church construction during the early Depression years; two churches were caught amid construction that could not be completed. There were 65 churches in 22 denominations; most of the new denominations were lower class sects. Youth tended to believe without attending church. There were two liberal clergy who preached about planned economics and internationalism. Importantly, “On almost every issue where controversy waxes hot in Middletown’s current world, the local churches take over the causes and symbols of the local business control group” (Lynd and Lynd 1937: 311–12). The churches offered many in the working class reassurance when everything else created perplexity; they did not define values or inspire but provided emotional stability. One does not find such a critique in the 1980s replication by Caplow et al. One of Theodore Caplow’s central concerns was ascertaining social trends over time in the United States by tracing statistical changes in social indicators.19 Helen Merrell Lynd gave access to the original Middletown files so that comparisons could be made, but using more formal surveys (both questionnaires and interviews) than the Lynds they found more continuity than change in religion. There was more inter-religious tolerance, and demographic changes involved a tripling of the population, with proportionately more Catholics and African Americans than before (22% and 12%, respectively). There was agreement about general morality, but disagreement over abortion, 19

Theodore Caplow earned the B.A. at the University of Chicago in 1939 and the Ph.D. in sociology and economics in 1946 at the University of Minnesota. He was at the University of Minnesota 1947–60, Columbia University 1961–70, and the University of Virginia after 1970. He was known for studies of social trends, homelessness, and a variety of other topics, but he had no extensive record in the sociology of religion before Middletown III. The other authors included Howard M. Bahr (B.A. Brigham Young University 1962, M.A. 1964 and Ph.D. 1965 in sociology, University of Texas; at Washington State University 1968– 73, and at Brigham Young University thereafter), Bruce A. Chadwick (Ph.D. in sociology Washington University, St. Louis, 1967; at Brigham Young University), Joseph B. Tamney (B.S. 1954, M.A. 1957 Fordham University, Ph.D. in sociology 1962 at Cornell University, at Ball State University in Muncie for most of his career; he would serve as president of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in 2004), and Margaret Holmes Williamson (D. Phil., anthropology, 1976, Oxford University; at Mary Washington College). A member of the advisory committee for the N.S.F. grant that funded the study was Jeffrey K. Hadden of the University of Virginia.

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parochial education, sexual equality, and obligation to perform military service. The Methodists and Presbyterians were split internally over social concerns versus other-worldly religion in the 1960s and declined in membership since then. Attendance in Middletown increased since 1935, with nearly half attending services weekly. Religion was experienced as enjoyable rather than as a burdensome duty. Most homilies were moral in nature or general exhortations to faith. There was a greater presence of Southern Protestantism, whose adepts were distinguishable in social characteristics—class, education, family size—from mainline Protestants and Catholics. Clergy were compensated more adequately than in the past, but many clergy found Muncie to be too conservative. By way of general conclusion, the authors say that in Muncie secularization had been reversed.

Studies of Sects

A sect, as the term is used here, is a group that maintains a culture that is consciously opposed to that of the wider society. Sects often emerge from a history of persecution, under which they take on their oppositional stance. Thus a sect need not be a new religion or a particularly small one, but one that has developed ways of warding off influence from the wider world or even avoiding contact with it. One can certainly draw parallels between the Orthodox Jews depicted in some of the studies reviewed above and the sects featured in the next several community studies, but the authors of the Jewish community studies did not make the comparison. Through much of its history, the Quaker community that Warren Wilson studied in Quaker Hill (2009[1907]) was a sect, but by the twentieth century the only aspect of Quaker subculture that was oppositional was its pacifism. The first community study of a genuine contemporary oppositional sect was Pauline Vislick Young’s The Pilgrims of Russian-Town (1932).20 The style and 20

Pauline Vislick Young (1896–1977) came to the United States from Russian Poland in 1915. She earned the Ph.B. at the University of Chicago in 1919 and the M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology, 1925 and 1930 respectively, at the University of Southern California, where her husband Erle Fiske Young was on the sociology faculty. She had been a social worker in Chicago a few years, 1917–18, employed by the Red Cross. She conducted research on Jewish communities in Chicago and Los Angeles for almost two decades, and in 1919 had been a researcher for the federal Department of Labor, the Illinois State Health Insurance Commission, and the United Charities in Chicago. In 1925 she was employed by the State of California as a social economist. The Pilgrims of Russian-Town was based on her dissertation; subsequent publications focused on interviewing techniques for social workers, probation and juvenile delinquency work, and research methods.

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procedure of the study are reminiscent of W.I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki’s Polish Peasant in Europe and America, which she in fact cites. It is interesting that the concept, sect, is used, and used in the same sense as in the sociology of religion, but no reference is made to the Weber-Troeltsch-Niebuhr tradition. Rather she derives the concept from political sectarianism, as studied by Scipio Sighele, an excerpt from whom appears in the famous Park and Burgess text (1924). Young calls the Russian sectarians in Los Angeles “Molokans,” but they may have been Pryguny, and a faction called Duk-i-zhiznik was surreptitiously taking over the Pryguny in Los Angeles at the time and hijacking the label Molokan. Young relied on interviews, and some of what she had been told may have been inaccurate. Her portrayal of juvenile delinquency and aversion of the “Molokan” youth for education was probably accurate, given her use of social service and juvenile court records, but it caused an uproar, resulting in the community refusing to co-operate with any further research. Using interviews, records, documents, and participant observation, she portrays a Christian sect that fled persecution in Russia and settled in Los Angeles, mostly in the years 1905–07. By the time Young, who spoke Russian, studied them, the hold of tradition over their youth had weakened, leading to high rates of juvenile delinquency and young adult criminality. There were several studies of rural Anabaptists. Lee Emerson Deets completed a dissertation on the Hutterites of Old Bon Homme, South Dakota, at Columbia University (Deets 1939).21 Beginning in 1929, he collected his data through participant observation, historical materials, life histories, and interviews. The result was a descriptive study of a “utopian community” that organized all aspects of everyday life around a belief system. The dissertation contains no references to the sociology of religion literature. Fourteen years later D. Paul Miller22 completed a community study of Jansen, Nebraska, which was once a largely Mennonite town, for his Ph.D. 21

22

Lee Emerson Deets was born in Emerson, Illinois, in 1898; he earned the A.B. at Northwestern University in 1921, the M.A. at Columbia University in 1924, and the Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia in 1939. He was a part-time social worker in New York City from 1921 to 1926. He joined the sociology faculty of the University of South Dakota in 1926, taking a two-year leave for study at Columbia. He helped develop South Dakota’s social services. Born in 1917 in rural Kansas, D. Paul Miller grew up in a Mennonite family. He attended Hesston College, worked in a conscientious objector program during World War II, and became a high school teacher in Hillsboro, Kansas. He began graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1947, completing the Ph.D. in sociology in 1953. After teaching at the University of Nebraska, Wayne State University, and Mankato State University, he spent most of his career on the faculty of Illinois Wesleyan University, 1960–82. He authored a book on Illinois Amish.

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dissertation at the University of Nebraska (Miller 1953). His approach was historical rather than cross-sectional, though he did take a census of the town and conducted interviews in 1952. He argued that secularization was an aspect of the adjustment of the community to its environment. In the early history of Jansen, there were six Mennonite churches and one German Methodist, but at the time of the study there were one Mennonite and one Lutheran church. The dissertation gives a detailed history and description of each church, its beliefs, and its practices. The most elaborate description is given for the Kleine Gemeinde (Mennonite) congregation, which left Jansen for Meade, Kansas, early in the twentieth century. The Mennonite congregation that still existed in Jansen was, unlike the Kleine Gemeinde, characterized by evangelization and support of foreign missions. Trinity Lutheran Church opened in 1929 and joined the Missouri Synod, becoming the dominant church in Jansen; German was used there on alternate Sundays until 1937. There was no co-operation between the Mennonite and Lutheran churches. The general history is one of a loss of Mennonite influence. Despite the importance of secularization in the account, only the last chapter takes up the subject, almost as an afterthought. Miller admits having no empirical information on the subject. The same proportion of people belonged to churches as earlier in the history of Jansen, but religion seemed less confining in 1952 than earlier. But of course, many Mennonite families had migrated out, seeking more isolation. A few years later, Elmer Lewis Smith completed a dissertation on the famous Amish community of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (Smith 1955).23 The Old Order Amish proved to be a difficult group to study because they were not conveniently concentrated in a town and relished privacy. Smith spent five years—1949 to 1954—participating in the community. After learning what to look for, he proceeded with a “mapping census” of the area in 1954, noting electrical connections, horses, etc. He also used official records and interviews. At the time, the Amish were not complying fully with the state education law. Sources of change in the community were contact with non-Amish, televisions owned by non-Amish neighbors but watched by Amish, and education. Gillian Lindt Gollin (1967) conducted a rather different kind of community study.24 Studying the pietistic group, the Moravians, she sought to explain the 23

24

Elmer Lewis Smith (1920–1981) earned the B.S. at Florida Southern College, the M.A. at Western Reserve University in 1948, and the Ph.D. at Syracuse University in 1955. He taught at James Madison University from 1958 to 1981. He was known for research in the folk culture of the Shenandoah Valley. Gillian Lindt Gollin was born in London in 1932. She earned the B.A. at London University in 1954 and the Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia University in 1965. She taught at Long

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different processes of social change in two communities that began in almost identical patterns: Herrnhut, Saxony, Germany, and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. She relied on historical data, largely from 1722 to 1850, on the emergence of communal government, the use of the lot, a “choir” system of surrogate families, the regulation of property, the division of labor, economic diversification, and the financial growth of the communities. The economic situation actually worked against marriage since married men had to find outside jobs. The commune was characterized by a work ethic but not a principle of property equality. When the prosperous members in Bethlehem resented controls that had been placed on them, the community abruptly abandoned its communal economic system in 1762, while in Herrnhut that system lasted up to World War I.

Mill Towns in the Piedmont

If the publication of the Lynds’ Middletown in 1929 was the first milestone for community studies in the sociology of religion, the publication of Liston Pope’s Millhands and Preachers (1942) was the second.25 Similar to Muncie, Indiana, in the Middletown study, Gastonia, North Carolina, was a small industrial city. Unlike Muncie, Gastonia was not typical of the nation; it was a southern city, in the Piedmont section of North Carolina, and it had witnessed a major but unsuccessful mill strike in 1929, led by Communists, and which occasioned some industrial violence. Pope conducted a historical study and engaged in participant observation in1938 and 1939. In the nineteenth century local clergy had recruited industrial leaders to come to Gastonia in order to improve the living conditions of the people, who had been barely getting by in a stagnant agrarian economy prior to the mills opening at the turn of the century. The mills came to the area for water power, low taxes, and cheap labor. They provided the general infrastructure as a part of their investment, including major contributions to the building of churches. The mills also made private

25

Island University 1961–62, American University and Howard University 1965–67, and Rutgers University 1967–71, until she joined the Columbia University faculty as a professor of religion (1971–98), serving in the University administration. Liston Pope (1909–1974) was born in Thomasville, North Carolina, the son of a banker and local politician. He earned the B.A. at Duke University, 1929, and B.D. there, 1932, and subsequently served in the Congregationalist ministry. He earned the Ph.D. at Yale University in 1940 with a dissertation later published as Millhands and Preachers. He began teaching at Yale until 1973, serving as Dean of the Yale Divinity School from 1949 to 1962.

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payments to the clergy and provided them parsonages. The mills owned the land and could prevent the construction nearby of any unwanted churches. The “uptown” churches where the management went to church helped organize the newer congregations for the workers. “So far as evidence survives, virtually no preachers in the county have made clear and definitive statements concerning child labor, the mill village system, wages and hours, or other social questions which have been agitated from time to time in wider circles” (Pope 1942: 161). Pope did acknowledge that two young Methodist clergy had preached on social issues. The sect clergy, who received no mill support, were even less interested in social issues, apart from an occasional pacifist. While the Methodist and Baptist state conference had made some statements, mention was not made of them locally. Moreover, the clergy lacked any education in economics, politics, or sociology. The anthropologist John Kenneth Morland conducted a study of a Southern Piedmont community, “Kent,” in the 1940s with a Rosenwald Foundation grant under the sponsorship of the Institute for Research in Social Science of the University of North Carolina (Morland 1958).26 More will be said about the Institute for Research in Social Science in Chapter 4. Morland compares his study to Liston Pope’s Millhands and Preachers (Morland 1958: 8) and Plainville, U.S.A. by “James West” (Carl Withers) (West 1945), which will be described below. Morland engaged in participant observation in church activities in “Kent” and used a wire recorder to record some church services. He describes the mill workers as former farmers, most of whom had fallen to the bottom of the social scale and had only loose connections with their churches when the left their farms. They were no longer isolated ruralites and thus did not need the church for access to the community (1958: 105). They did not even establish a church until twenty years after the formation of the millworker residential area. Beforehand, downtown clergy alternated in offering services at a chapel provided by the company. The newly established church, Baptist, succeeded in building a structure in 1944 on land donated by the mill. The town churches were thought to expect too much dressing up for the millworkers. The new Baptist church had the “better element” of the millworkers while sect-like Holiness churches—Church of God, Wesleyan Methodist), at some remove from the 26

John Kenneth Morland, born in 1916, earned the B.A. at Birmingham-Southern College, a B.D. at Yale Divinity School, and the Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of North Carolina in 1950. His book, Millways of Kent (1958) was based on his dissertation, directed by John Philip Gillin (1907–1973), anthropologist and son of John L. Gillin, who completed a sociology dissertation at Harvard in 1934 on the Dunkers. Morland was a member of the faculty of Randolph Macon Women’s College, 1953–87.

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workers’ village, had some of the less prosperous workers (1958: 110). Sunday school attendance by children was more regular than that of adults at the main services; the Sunday school lessons were often unprepared lectures based on supplied material. Morland provides a detailed account of the Baptist services, noting that the sermons stressed humility. His equally detailed description of the Holiness churches’ services and Sunday school notes the revivalist nature of the proceedings, with testifying and an emphasis on the rapture at the end of time and judgment day. Biblical literalism was common among the workers; ministers were judged on the basis of “knowing their Bible.” It was acceptable in the community to read and know the Bible on one’s own and lead a moral life, without going to church. The religious morality was puritanical, prohibiting many aspects of popular culture. However, the prohibition of playing games or hunting on Sundays was breaking down. Morland concluded that the local religion met needs: adjustment to death, compensation for low socioeconomic status, feelings of individual worth, and an opportunity for emotional self-expression. Decades after the time of Pope and Morland, John R. Earle, Dean D. Knudsen, and Donald W. Shriver (1976) replicated Pope’s study in Gastonia.27 Prior to the study, Shriver, who served as a pastor in Gastonia, found that the workers who went to church needed comfort, company, distance from the workplace, and participation in control of the church (1976: 18). The data for the study were gathered between 1965 and 1974. Adding to statistics for the congregation memberships and contributions, the authors provide statistics for 1939, ’49, ’59, and ’69. They developed a typology of the local churches: Uptown (prominent), transitional, middleclass (suburban, newer), sect, and African American. They associate different occupational distributions with the different types. By the time of their study, corporate contributions to the transitional churches (mostly Baptist and Methodist) had ceased. They interviewed the clergy and provide life stories of ten of them. There were what they termed prophet clergy, who emphasized structural change; evangelist clergy, who emphasized individual change; priest clergy, who emphasized structural non-change; and pastor clergy, who emphasized individual non-change. Survey data showed that the general population preferred the pastor type. The clergy themselves 27

John Rochester Earle (born 1935) earned the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of North Carolina in 1963; he was at Wake Forest University. Dean D. Knudsen, born 1932, also earned the Ph.D. in sociology at North Carolina, in 1968; he was at Purdue University. Donald W. Shriver, Jr., was a minister in Gastonia from 1956 to 1958; he earned the Ph.D. in religion at Harvard in 1963; he was on the faculty at North Carolina State University and later served as president of Union Theological Seminary, 1975–91.

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rated the prophetic role least desirable and tended to prefer the pastoral and evangelical roles. Very few clergy were at all involved in politics. The population survey showed that out of a list of concerns whites felt influenced most by the church leadership concerning alcohol use and least concerning labor relations; African Americans felt most influenced by their church leadership in matters of race relations most and labor relations least. The principal change since 1949 was the introduction of non-textile business leaders and African Americans into the community power structure. In Cherryville, a town near Gastonia, seven local clergy sent employees of a mill during a NLRB supervised election a joint letter urging anti-union votes; this was on their own initiative, not management’s (1976: 201)! The churches in Cherryville received no funding from the mill.

Different Cultures

Not all the community studies conducted by American sociologists and anthropologists that touched on religion in a significant way focused on American communities. Horace Miner (1939) engaged in field work in 1936–37 in Kamouraska, Quebec, using participant observation, interviews, and parish records.28 The purpose of the study was to describe the rural French-Canadian folk culture in its least-altered form and to consider the factors responsible for what cultural change there was in the direction of urbanization and Anglicization (1939: ix). He describes a community in which all of the inhabitants were Catholic and accepted the church beliefs and patterns of action without much question. “Lack of contact with persons of other convictions and the relative lack of functional problems in the mode of living mean that the particular native belief is rarely questioned” (1939: 91). While the official Church distinguished between required dogmatic beliefs and non-dogmatic ones, the inhabitants did not. Hence there is what many would call a folk Catholicism, though Miner did not use that expression. Intellectual matters, even about religion, were of little interest and left to priests and teachers. 28

Horace Miner (1921–1993) was a prominent and productive anthropologist whose major appointment was in the sociology department of the University of Michigan. He earned the A.B. at the University of Kentucky in 1933, and the A.M. in 1935 and Ph.D. in 1939 in anthropology at the University of Chicago. He did post-graduate research in Colombia, worked in counter-intelligence in the U.S. Army during World War II, and was on the faculty of Wayne State University, 1937–46, prior to his appointment at Michigan. He is famous for his parody, “Body Ritual among the Nacerima.”

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Miner gives a detailed account of the Mass, noting that sermons were often based on current news as reported in l’Action Catholique. Religion was much involved in dealing with sickness and death. In the Preface to his book, Miner acknowledges helpful contacts with Everett Cherrington Hughes, who taught at McGill University in Montreal. Everett and Helen MacGill Hughes conducted field work in “Cantonville” in Quebec for Everett Hughes’ book French Canada in Transition (1943).29 The data were collected through participant observation and interviews. “Cantonville” was geographically and culturally half way between the traditional rural environment as described by Miner and Montreal. It had four Catholic parishes—two working class, one middle class consisting of newly-arrived families, and one of all classes from families that had long standing in the community. The priest at the last of these was the most influential cleric in the city. Ownership of a pew in one of the churches was a sign of stability in the community. Sermons on social issues were rare but not unknown; when they did occur the issues cited were those of the working class, which was encouraged to participate in one of the two Catholic unions. Apart from sacramental work, the individual priests specialized in age group and gender group subpopulations. Most of the auxiliary social and charitable organizations were middle class in composition, but the Jeuness ouvrière catholique was working class; the other groups deemed it something apart. Hughes observed that the city parish “is not a community and has a variety of classes, both economic and social. The integrity of the parish, as an institution dealing equally and effectively with all of the people within a circumscribed territory, is put to great strain” (1943: 105). He devotes a chapter to an account of the Catholic schools and one to the Protestant churches and schools. In the small Anglican Church the old families resented the newcomers and, though attending, did not support the church financially. Its social events included English-speaking Catholics and Protestant “newcomers.” A United Church was fairly new. The Protestant clergy did not know or meet the Catholic priests, and vice-versa. The English-speaking Catholics had a mass in a church basement, but no parish life, and they had to pay extra tuition to send their children to the English (Protestant) school.

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Everett Cherrington Hughes (1897–1983) earned the B.A. at Ohio Wesleyan University and the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1928. He was at McGill University and later at the University of Chicago and Brandeis University and Boston College. He served as president of the American Sociological Association in 1963. Helen MacGill Hughes (b. 1909) earned the B.A. at the University of Toronto, 1925, and the Master’s in 1926 and Ph.D. in 1937 in sociology at the University of Chicago.

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If the two studies of Quebec communities were disconnected from the rest of the community study tradition under review, that of a Puerto Rican Pentecostal community by Anthony LaRuffa (1966) and Italian Catholic Communists in Bologna by Kertzer (1975, 1980) are equally so. LaRuffa’s study30 was an anthropology dissertation centering on San Cipriano, a neighborhood some distance from the town of Santiago, Puerto Rico. Catholicism had suffered from neglect, with no resident priest prior to the time of the research and with a priest making some progress among the educated middle class. The working class had been baptized in Catholicism but practiced a folk Catholicism away from the Church. Some folk Catholics converted to a Baptist church, an Adventist, and two prophetic churches. There were eight Pentecostal churches in the area, having been introduced in the 1930s, as well as Spiritualism and witchcraft. The study focuses on a Pentecostal church that was affiliated with the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), which consisted largely of one extended family. As with many such churches, a layman with leadership potential but little likelihood of entering into a leadership position in his prior church founded his own, established an affiliation, and brought his relatives into it. LaRuffa interpreted the church as a reaction against the anomie brought about by economic change. He saw Pentecostalism functioning as a bridge between traditional and modern life. David Kertzer engaged in participant observation in Albora, a zone of transition in Bologna, in 1971–72.31 The Italian Communist Party was the major political force in the neighborhood. There were two cultural worlds, that of the Party and that of the Catholic Church. Most of the inhabitants of the working class section he studied relied on the Church for rites of passage but on the Party for “rites of community.” The competition between the rival worlds took the form of rival political parties and rival feasts. There had once been a shortlived leftist Catholic grupetta for social services in the neighborhood, and at the time of the study there was a leftist storefront Catholic church for the poor, regarded with “unofficial hostility” by the local Community Party leaders. What attracted people to either the Party or the Church was not ideology but a sense of social solidarity.

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Anthony Louis LaRuffa (born 1933) earned the B.A. at City College, C.U.N.Y., and the M.A. and Ph.D. (the latter 1966) in anthropology at Columbia University. David I. Kertzer (born 1948) earned the B.A. at Brown University in 1969 and the Ph.D. in anthropology at Brandeis University, 1974. He was at Bowdoin College 1973–92 and at Brown University from 1992 in the anthropology and Italian studies programs.

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Rural American Communities

There were numerous studies of rural and small town communities in the United States published between 1941 and 1977. I will only attempt to highlight what is unique in each one of them. Frank D. Alexander studied an open-country community in southwestern Tennessee for his dissertation at Vanderbilt University (Alexander 1938).32 He published an article on religion in “Ruralville” based on the dissertation (1941). There were no less than four churches (Southern Methodist, Northern Methodist, Baptist, Church of Christ), each with insufficient resources to support a full time pastor. Consequently the clergy pastored multiple churches over a wide area, each being present in the local community once every four Sundays to give a homily. Many local people attended the church on any given Sunday where a homily was being given. Harold Kaufman similarly studied a rural community in his dissertation work (1942) and published a study of religion based on it (1953[1944]).33 The community was comprised of an unidentified immigrant minority, with its church, and a “Yankee” majority. Each of four churches could be associated with a status level. Plainville, U.S.A., written by the anthropologist Carl Withers under the pseudonym James West, is a major, much-cited work in the community study tradition (West 1945). Withers conducted interviews in the course of 1939–40 in a southern Midwest town of 65 households, 275 people. As usual, different churches were associated with different status rankings. “A few people try to cross class lines through religion but none succeeds” (1945: 160). The vagaries in the finances of two families resulted in a rise in status of one church and a decline in standing of another, the latter switching to emotional worship services under the influence of its newer clientele. As in Alexander’s “Ruralville,” clergy are shared by other towns’ churches and preach in town once a month 32

33

Frank D. Alexander (born 1903) earned a M.A. in religious education at George Peabody College for Teachers and the Ph.D. in sociology at Vanderbilt University. He was at Clemson College in the early 1940s and at the U.S. Bureau of Agricultural Economics in the mid-40s, where he worked on the Rural Life Trends studies, 1942–44, and Cultural Reconnaissance Survey, 1944–45. In Chapter 4 the limited activity of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the sociology of religion will be discussed. Harold Frederick Kaufman (1911–1990) earned the A.B. in 1938 and the A.M. in sociology in 1939 at the University of Missouri; he earned the Ph.D. in sociology in 1943 at Cornell University. He was at the University of Missouri 1042–45 and Mississippi State University 1948–76. The essay contains no references to the sociology of religion literature, though years later in the early 1970s he told me that he collected everything written about religion that he could get his hands on.

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or so. “Sermons preached in the Christian Church are usually prepared in advance and are coherent, but many revival sermons are utterly incoherent” (1945: 158). Card playing, drinking, car-riding, cigarette-smoking by women, failing to attend church, and possessing “cold hearts that will not let God in” were condemned as sins (1945: 155). The county agent and the upper classes said the churches oppose science in the schools and even in farming (1945: 163). A similarly prominent community study, in a small town, was Elmtown’s Youth by August B. Hollingshead (1949).34 He conducted interviews with adolescents in the course of 1941–42 in a Middle Western community. Conservative members of churches, especially Lutherans, Free Methodists, and members of the small Evangelical churches, were in a cultural conflict with the high school, especially with the science classes. There was the usual association between social classes and particular churches, which worked in such a way that upper class domination of some of the church youth groups drove many non-upper class youths away. Clergy failed to realize that no church had adapted its services to the younger age group, that some adolescents had turned the youth groups into fairly exclusive private clubs, and that ministerial disapproval of youth recreational behavior set up a barrier between clergy and youth. One of Hollingshead’s strategies was to give clergy lists of youths and ask them how many they recognized and of those for which ones religion played an important part in their lives. One of the assistants in the project was Robert J. Havighurst, who led a similar study of youth in a community study in “River City” in the Midwest in the post-World War II period (Havighurst, Bowman, Liddle, Matthews, and Pierce 1962).35 Havighurst et al. describe Hollingshead’s Elmtown’s Youth as a product of a “muck-raking period” of social class analysis. Their own study did not find anything about religion in “River City” that differed from what Hollingshead found, apart from a lack of rich participant observation or rich interview data in their own work. James Stephen Brown studied Beech Creek, a small isolated mountain community of poor people in eastern Kentucky, for a number of years, beginning in 1942. His report (Brown 1951) makes the point that class division contributed 34

35

August B. Hollingshead was born in Wyoming in 1907. He earned the B.A. in 1931 and M.A. 1933 at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska in 1935. He was at the University of Alabama 1935–36, Indiana University 1936– 47 (interrupted by military service), and Yale University after 1947. Robert J. Havighurst (1900–1991) earned the B.A. at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1921 and the M.A. in 1922 and PhD. in 1924 in chemistry at Ohio State University. He changed career in 1928 and became an assistant professor of education at the University of Wisconsin, and later in 1940 professor of education at the University of Chicago.

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to the inability of the community to organize and build a church. A Holiness Church met in a schoolhouse; Brown notes that a high proportion of its members had transgressed important social norms and that the Holiness Church met a need to relieve feelings of guilt. Thomas F. O’Dea was well-known for his studies of the Mormons in the 1950s. One of his studies (O’Dea and Vogt 1953, O’Dea 1954) focused on “Rimrock,” a community in northwest New Mexico, in 1950.36 Unlike the Mormon communities studied in Lowry Nelson’s dissertation (1929), these Mormons did not live out on their farms but in the town. Rimrock was on the periphery of the Mormon cultural territory; to move out would be to move into a non-Mormon context, a fact that discouraged living out of the town. Because of its communitarian ethic, when veterans from the town returned from World War II a church agency bought land for them to operate as a coop. The community also supported public works projects. In contrast, in nearby “Homestead,” a nonMormon town, families declined to incorporate as a coop, which was a requirement for providing land for returning veterans to work; and they rejected public works projects. Rimrock had one religion that enabled the community to rise to challenges; Homestead had ten Christian denominations that comprised local factions that did not co-operate with one another. Robert H. Jordan,37 who taught at George Fox College, a Quaker college in Oregon, wrote a dissertation on “Oakville,” presumably the town in which the college is located since he indicates that “Oakville” was first settled by Quakers (Jordan 1955). He conducted his fieldwork from 1949 to 1952, finding the usual kind of class stratification of churches. He makes the interesting observation that the clergy were younger and more educated than their congregations and were more likely to have changed denomination themselves. Charles Lundeen Swan conducted a similar study of the community of Three Rivers, Michigan (Swan 1955).38 His data confirmed the interesting hypothesis 36

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Thomas F. O’Dea (1915–1974) was born to a Massachusetts Irish Catholic family; he was active in the Young Communist League in the 1930s. After service in the U.S. Army Air Corps, he attended Harvard University and was a student of Talcott Parsons. He earned the A.B. 1949, M.A. 1951, and Ph.D. 1953 at Harvard. He taught at M.I.T. 1951–56, Fordham University 1956–59, the University of Utah 1959–64, Columbia University 1967–74, and the University of California, Santa Barbara 1967–74. Robert Harlan Jordan earned the M.A. in 1948 and the Ph.D. in sociology in 1954 at the University of Southern California. He taught at George Fox College. Charles Lundeen Swan (1909–2004) earned the Ph.B. in 1929 at the University of Chicago and a B.D. at Garrett Biblical Institute in 1940. He earned the Ph.D. in religion at Northwestern University in 1955, where he had been a research assistant in the Bureau of Social and Religious Research at Garrett theological Seminary. He taught at Kalamazoo

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that there were greater differences in class standing among lay leaders of different churches than between leaders and others within churches. At about the same time, Arthur J. Vidich and Joseph Bensman39 were studying a rural town in New York State; their book, Small Town in Mass Society, would prove to be much cited but highly controversial (Vidich and Bensman 1968[1958]). The importance of the study is to be found in its portrayal of the local government and politics of “Springdale.” Despite the mention of religion in the subtitle, there is nothing particularly remarkable in the account of Springdale’s religion and churches, and there are no references to the sociology of religion literature. The clergy in the liberal churches tend to be more liberal than their congregations, and in the conservative churches more conservative than their congregations. What is of interest to us is that the study created a scandal. A Cornell University dean resided in “Springdale” and saw fit to raise concerns about research ethics and the prerogatives of university sponsors. Cornell channeled federal funding under which the study had been conducted. Arthur Vidich left Cornell and involved Bensman in the study; the two published the book over some last minute objections from some of the Cornell people. Moreover, residents in “Springdale” were able to identify some of the interviewees who had been quoted saying controversial things. The subsequent controversy reached print in an academic journal edited at Cornell; Vidich and Bensman review the debate in the 1968 edition of their book. The case is an object study of the difficulty in maintaining anonymity in studies of small communities and the even greater difficulty of pleasing sponsoring organizations, as we will see again in the case of the original Middletown study. Ronald G. Klietch published a study of the insular ethnic German Catholic community of Stearns County, Minnesota (Klietsch 1963).40 He used historical records, parish publications, field surveys, and unstructured interviews, finding that indicators of German ethnicity were in decline despite the well-

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College, 1949–51, and at Albion College after 1951. In the Acknowledgements in his dissertation, he refers to Rockwell C. Smith and Murray H. Leiffer, both of whom will appear in the Chapter 4 below. Arthur J. Vidich (1922–2006) earned the B.A. at the University of Michigan, 1943, the M.A. at the University of Minnesota, 1948, and the Ph.D. in sociology at Harvard University in 1953. He was at Cornell University in a research capacity from 1951 to 1954, at the University of Puerto Rico 1954–57, at the University of Connecticut 1957–60, and at the New School for Social Research 1960–96. Joseph Bensman earned the Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia University in 1959 and taught at City College, C.U.N.Y. Ronald George Klietsch (born 1934) earned the M.A. in 1958 and the Ph.D. in sociology in 1965 at the University of Minnesota. He taught at Iowa State University.

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known tendency of churches to preserve ethnicity. Interestingly, when the late nineteenth century Catholic bishops mandated the establishment of parochial schools, the community—accustomed to public schools in Germany— rejected the idea. Parishioners controlled the public school board anyway and hired Catholic teachers, including a male teacher to serve as a de facto community leader in the traditional German pattern. Consequently they declined to allow the school board to sell the school buildings to the parish. Only when the male lay teacher retired was it possible to get the board to agree to the sale and to get the parish trustees to agree to purchase the school and bring nuns in as teachers. The religious institution in this case had to overcome ethnic tradition. It was a matter of the Catholic “big tradition” in conflict with the local “little tradition.” Finally, Hei C. Kim tested the “Protestant Ethic” thesis in a Midwest town of 23,000, paralleling Lenski’s 1958 Detroit Area Study project (Kim 1977). Scores on a scale of Calvinist beliefs and values did not differ appreciably by denomination, but on an individual level they did predict manual versus non-manual occupations. The study lends support to the Protestant Ethic thesis, but not as interpreted in terms of denominational affiliation.

Religion and Community Division

We have already seen community division in the studies of Jewish populations in the South. Jews were excluded from the traditional elites and also experienced a division within a synagogue (where there was only one in a community) and between synagogues (where there was more than one). The divides went beyond economic class differences and included ethnic differences and differences in time in the local community. Two community studies based on data collected in the 1940s focused on Protestant/Catholic community divisions. C. Wendell King41 (1946) conducted his research in 1942 in Bradford Center, Connecticut, where various immigrant groups comprised two-thirds of the population. His thesis was that social cleavage in a community is greater when differences are in ascribed rather than achieved statuses. Religious identity as Catholic or Protestant, and nationality proved to be important in social cleavages in Bradford Center, as indicated by residential ecology, club and clique membership, and marriage patterns. 41

Clarence Wendell King (born 1916) earned the Ph.D. in sociology at Yale University in 1944.

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Kenneth Underwood’s book (1957) on Holyoke, Massachusetts, was a major project.42 He chose Holyoke because of an incident that occurred there in 1940. Margaret Sanger arranged to give a speech in a Congregationalist Church hall in Holyoke advocating a change in state law to allow birth control information to be given by physicians. Fearing an economic boycott in the largely Catholic city, businessmen who served on the Congregationalist Church board dissuaded the rest of the Board from allowing it; Catholics were less questioning of Church authority in the 1940s. When she arranged to use an auditorium having no church connection, its availability too was suddenly withdrawn. Finally, an official of a labor union, who happened to be a Catholic, allowed her to give her talk in the union hall. The incident led to hard feelings and considerable controversy. Underwood reviewed the religious history of the city, described the different theologies and worship practices, the class composition of the denominations in the city, other controversies between the two Christian traditions, ethnic differences, different ethical views, and different attitudes toward organized labor. He concluded that the Catholic Church sought acceptance of the Church’s authority over what it deemed religious and moral matters while the Protestant churches sought to maintain an acceptance of diversity. He noted that Catholic and Protestant clergy spoke to one another as strangers, and that Catholicism in Holyoke was particularly rigid and conservative because it was so strong, given the religious demography of the city. In 1957 the racial desegregation of Little Rock, Arkansas, Central High School not only figured in the national narrative of race relations but divided the community of Little Rock itself. Ernest Q. Campbell and Thomas F. Pettigrew (1959) observed the scene and interviewed Little Rock clergy.43 They note at the beginning of the crisis that clergy organized two separate prayer services; the fundamentalist sects held a pro-segregation service and the Protestant mainline denominations, Jews, and Catholics held a pro-peace service. Only eight clergy 42

43

Kenneth Wilson Underwood earned the Ph.D. at Yale Divinity in 1954. He taught at Yale Divinity from 1949 to 1954 and then joined the faculty of Wesleyan University as a professor of social ethics. Ernest Q. Campbell (born 1926) earned the B.A. at Furman University in 1945, the M.A.at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946, and the Ph.D. in sociology at Vanderbilt University in 1956. He taught at Mississippi Southern College (now University of Southern Mississippi) 1947–48, at the College of Wooster 1951–54, at Florida State University 1956– 57, at the University of North Carolina 1958–63, and at Vanderbilt University after 1963. Thomas F. Pettigrew earned the B.A. at the University of Virginia in 1952, the M.A. in 1955 and Ph.D. in 1956 in social psychology at Harvard University. He was at Harvard from 1951 to 1980, and at the University of California, Santa Cruz 1980–1994. Among those they acknowledge reading and commenting on a draft of their report were Marie Augusta Neal and Howard Schuman.

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publicly spoke out for integration; they were younger, educated outside of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, and had smaller churches. Many of the eight left for other ministries during the months of the crisis. “All our available data indicated that the large majority of the Christian laymen in Little Rock desired that their churches not take a stand on the city’s integration issue” (Campbell and Pettigrew 1959: 129). The pro-segregation ministers were characterized by “their general isolation from the community’s higher prestige groups and their hostility toward those religious bodies and values in the community that are distinct from their own” (1959: 43). In a study of Lincoln, Nebraska, Harold G. Kupke (1971) found that none of his selected independent variables in a structured interview study (intrinsic/ extrinsic religion, orthodoxy, attendance) predicted racial prejudice or anti-Semitism.44 Returning to race and ethnic relations as a focus, Arthur L. Anderson (1978)45 selected eight of the twenty-four churches of Fairfield, Connecticut and conducted a participant observation and unstructured interview study, using as well a structured interview survey of random samples of members of the eight churches. The selected churches differed in ethnicity, class, and religious teachings, but were united in maintaining social distance from African Americans and Puerto Ricans (both groups not even living in the city). He found the commonplace fact that Jews and Catholics identified politically as Democrats, though Catholics were beginning to vote Republican, and Protestants identified as Republicans. There was religious endogamy by tradition (Protestant, Catholic, Jew), but Jews and Protestants did not observe denominational endogamy. He concluded that churches contributed to societal integration in terms of ethnicity and class, but not race and religion. Anthony J. Blasi (1980) studied Tuscaloosa, Alabama, collecting historical and interview data in 1976 on a community also divided over desegregation.46 44

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Harold G. Kupke (1920–1989) earned the A.A. at St. Paul College in 1940, the B.D. at Concordia Seminary in 1945, the M.A. at Wayne State University in 1955, and the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Nebraska in 1971. He had been a minister from 1945–48, a high school teacher 1948–63, and taught at Concordia Teacher’s College (now Concordia University, Nebraska) from 1972–84. Arthur LeRoy Anderson (born 1932) earned the Ph.D. in sociology at the New School for Social Research in 1975; he taught at Fairfield University. Anthony J. Blasi (born 1946) earned the B.A. at St. Edward’s University in 1968, the M.A. in 1971 and Ph.D. in sociology in 1974 at the University of Notre Dame, the M.A. in biblical studies at the University of St. Michael’s College (Toronto) in 1984, and a Th.D. in 1987 at Regis College/University of Toronto. While working on the Tuscaloosa study he was at the University of Alabama (1975–76) and the University of Louisville (1976–78); most of his career was spent at Tennessee State University.

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Conceptually, he based the study on a model of reciprocally engendered urban social movements proposed by Manuel Castels (1972). The historical data on Tuscaloosa included a 1933 lynching, the attempt to integrate the University of Alabama in 1956, the “governor’s stand in the school house door” in 1963 when the University was successfully integrated, and a Ku Klux Klan-inspired raid on an activist Black church in 1964. The account includes a chapter on the integration of Tuscaloosa churches. In general, secular institutions were racially integrated under the force of law in a contested process of the 1950s and 1960s; the churches generally integrated later in the 1970s as a result of a change in life ways that had been set in motion. A few African American clergy provided leadership in the local civil rights movement, but even they were answerable to a less visible board of leaders that did not share their non-violent ideology. A sociometry of clergy revealed a three-part community (upper middle class white, working class and lower middle class white, and African American), each corresponding to one or more local social movements (a movement to prevent violence in 1963, movements against integration, and the local civil rights activity). As a second stage of the same study, Nancy Ammerman47 (1981) added to the interview sample size of the Tuscaloosa clergy and performed a statistical study of the interview data. She found that civil rights activism was the strongest predictor of decreased localism, mediating the effects of education and urban backgrounds. For the minority who were active in the movement, a supportive reference group of clergy colleagues and mainline denominations were important, countering their isolation from the rest of the religious community of Tuscaloosa and lack of agreement with their congregations.

Urban Studies

Some of the studies we have already reviewed examined cities but were categorized under other special topics. There are many community studies that are specifically works of urban sociology. Caroline Ware’s examination of Greenwich Village in New York City (Ware 1935) is a case in point.48 The 47

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Nancy Tatom Ammerman (born 1950) earned the B.A. at Southwest Baptist College in 1972, the M.A. at the University of Louisville in 1977, the M.Phil. in 1979 and Ph.D. in sociology in 1983 at Yale University. She has taught at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, Hartford Seminary, and Boston University. Caroline F. Ware (1899–1990) earned the A.B. at Vassar in 1920 and the A.M. in 1924 and Ph.D. in 1925 in history at Radcliff. She was at Vassar College 1925–30 and 1932–34, at Sara Lawrence College 1935–37, at American University 1936–45, and at Howard University

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study resulted from the affiliation of the Greenwich House settlement with Columbia University. Based mostly on interviews, city records, and U.S. Census data, it devotes one chapter to religion, noting largely demographic shifts that resulted in a transition from a largely Protestant to a largely Catholic population. Ware makes comparisons between three Irish Catholic churches, where worldliness was resisted with a consequent weakening of church-related youth organizations, and two Italian Catholic churches, more accommodating to youth. The ethnic Italian population was from the north of Italy, so that church life was not characterized by the traditional feasts to be found at the time in, for example, East Harlem. Using ecological data, Stanley Chapman (1945, 1948) confirmed the association between denominations and socioeconomic classes for New Haven, Connecticut.49 He also found historical statistics that demonstrated the vitality of the Catholic Church in New Haven (Chapman 1944). W. Lloyd Warner50 and is associates began research on “Yankee City” (Newburyport, Massachusetts) in 1930. They developed a technique for making socioeconomic status ratings that was adopted by others conducting community studies. The data were collected by graduate students—largely categorizing facts and organizations in terms of class structure. In the one volume, abridged edition of their report (Warner, Low, Lunt, and Srole 1963: 189–91), one can find a history of the founding of thirteen Newburyport churches, their ethnic identities, and their class composition. With a different set of associates, Warner also studied “Jonesville,” a Midwestern city (Warner et al. 1949).51 The associates who authored the chapters on religion were Wilfred C. Bailey on the churches and Donald Wray on the Norse ethnic minority and

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1945–60. She worked for the U.S. government in the New Deal and for the United Nations after 1960. Stanley H. Chapman earned the Ph.D. in sociology at Yale University in 1942. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania in 1944 and Bucknell University 1946–47. W. Lloyd Warner (1898–1970) earned the B.A. at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1925. A Rockefeller Foundation grant enabled him to study under the famous anthropological functionalist A.R. Radcliffe-Brown at Australian National University; Radcliffe-Brown arranged to extend Warner’s research two more years. Warner taught and did graduate study at Harvard, 1927–35. He was a professor at the University of Chicago in anthropology and sociology 1935–59. He was at Michigan State University after 1959. Warner’s collaborators for the “Jonesville” study were Wilfrid C. Bailey, Arch Cooper, Walter Eaton, A.B. Hollingshead, Carson McGuire, Marchia Meeker, Bernice Neugarten, Joseph Rosenstein, Evon Z. Vogt, Jr., and Donald Wray.

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its religion.52 They report patterns that we have already seen elsewhere in the Midwest—the ranking of denominations by class, the opposition of the Lutheran church to dances and the teaching of evolution in the local high school, the precarious status of the few leftist clergy, and the political leanings of the Protestants toward the Republican Party and the Catholics toward the Democratic Party. The Catholic Church was losing some of the Irish as they acculturated, while for most Protestants theology played only a minor role in the selection of a church. The Norwegian minority was both an ethic group and a religious sect; their distinctive moral values developed in Jonesville, not generations ago in Norway. Their taboos against dancing, cards, smoking, and movies contributed to their social isolation. Their religiosity was almost in opposition to the official Lutheran Church; in fact their conducting services in Norwegian was unique to Jonesville. Their upward mobility usually involved leaving the sect. One of the most important community studies in the 1950s was Floyd Hunter’s inquiry into the influential decision makers in Atlanta (Hunter 1953).53 It is important for the sociology of religion insofar as it established that religious leaders were not part of the community power structure but rather served to communicate to their congregations decisions made by others. The exception was the African American community, where one went through the clergy, among others, to get that community to support a project. In less influential studies, the church/sect typology was used to characterize the African American churches of Durham, North Carolina (Carter 1955), and orthodox doctrine and educational attainment but not attendance or income predicted favorable attitudes toward racial desegregation among the white Catholic minority of Tallahassee, Florida (Liu 1961).54 Lewis Feuer discovered 52

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Wilfrid Charles Bailey earned the Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago in 1955; he would teach social anthropology at the University of Texas. Donald Emery Wray earned the M.A. in 1943 and Ph.D. in 1949 in sociology at the University of Chicago; he would teach sociology at the University of Illinois. Floyd Hunter (born 1912) earned the B.A. in 1939 and the M.A. in 1941 at the University of Chicago in social service administration. A social worker, he was fired from a post in Atlanta because of his politics. He earned the Ph.D. in 1951 at the University of North Carolina; his dissertation on Atlanta was published in 1953 as Community Power Structure. Luther Clyde Carter, Jr., earned the Ph.D. in religion at Yale University. William T. Liu (born 1930) earned the B.A. in 1951 at the College of St. Thomas, Minnesota, the M.A. in sociology at the University of Notre Dame in 1952, and the Ph.D. in sociology at Florida State University in 1958. He worked at Catholic Charities in New York City, 1952–53, and taught at Nazareth College, Louisville, 1954–56, at Portland University 1958–62, at Notre Dame 1962–75, and at the University of Illinois, Chicago, 1975 and after.

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an 1867 Burlington, Vermont, survey of religion and with the assistance of Mervyn Perrine and Perrine’s students replicated it in 1964 (Feuer and Perrine 1966); they found that Protestant membership increased but attendance decreased, while Catholic attendance increased.55 A classic urban ethnography is The Social Order of the Slum by Gerald Suttles, based on participant observation and informal interviews in the near west side of Chicago, 1963–68.56 The local area was divided into four mutually opposed ethnic sectors—that of the African Americans, that of the Italians, that of the Puerto Ricans, and that of the Mexicans. He found religion to be a public guarantee of one’s amenability to group concerns (not necessarily moral ones). Differences of faith were unimportant, but differences of churches were important, whether one attended them or not. Churches provided “a common establishment where a continuing group of people waive their individuality in favor of their common welfare” (Suttles 1968: 42). In the course of describing the various churches in the area, he describes Our Lady of Vesuvio Catholic Church as the church of the largest, Italian, grouping, noting that it was “considered the most powerful institution in the area” that was “often the scene of informal arrangements between Italians and other ethnic groups.” The local priests were “probably the most trusted of all intermediaries, and they faithfully honor the ‘private settlements’ that are so common in the area” (1968: 42). Quite different methodologically is Gary Maranall’s Responses to Religion (1974).57 He devotes much of his book to developing questionnaire scales, which he used along with W. Lloyd Warner’s stratification indices, on samples from a Southern community and a Midwestern community. He found the lower classes scored higher on ritualism, superstition, and mysticism scales in the

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This seems to be an unlikely pair of authors for a community study; Feuer was a sociological philosopher and Perrine a psychologist. Lewis Samuel Feuer (1912–2002) earned the B.A. at City College of New York in 1932 and the Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard University in 1935; he taught at Vassar College up to 1951, at the University of California 1963–66, at the University of Toronto 1966–76, and at the University of Virginia 1976–88. Mervyn W. Perrine earned the Ph.D. in psychology at Princeton University in 1958 and taught at the University of Vermont. Gerald D. Suttles earned the PhD. in sociology at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign in 1966. At the time of his early fieldwork, he was a field associate with the Institute of Social Research of the University of Michigan, under Ford Foundation funding. He received later support from the Center for Social Organization Studies at the University of Chicago. He taught at the University of Chicago. Gary Michael Maranell (1932–1990) earned the M.A. in 1957 and Ph.D. in sociology in 1959 at the University of Iowa. He taught at the University of Kansas.

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Southern community and on the church orientation scale in the Midwestern community. Charles L. Harper58 (1982) reports a rare study where the phenomenon of new religious movements is examined from a community study perspective. Using unstructured interviews, observation of anti-cult group meetings, and local literature, he describes the status of the Unification Church, Scientology, and a group called The Assembly in the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area. The Unification Church devoted time and energy to fending off a negative image, and the local anti-cult organization countered such efforts. Curious friendships developed between members of the two organizations. Scientology engaged in active recruitment but otherwise maintained a low profile in the community. It threatened legal action against researchers and reporters. The Assembly, an introversionist59 Christian group made up of mostly college students, rejected church as a form of organization; the anti-cult movement considered it a “cult” because of the all-consuming nature of its religiosity. Members socialized only with other members. A 1984 volume by David A. Roozen, William McKinney and Jackson W. Carroll60 (1984) reports a major study of Hartford, Connecticut, in which they used a typology of mission orientation: activist, civic, sanctuary, and evangelistic. The activist orientation was this worldly, confronting evils in the world. The civic orientation was this worldly, but less confrontational. The sanctuary orientation was other worldly, while the evangelistic was other worldly, calling 58

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Charles L. Harper earned the B.S. in 1962 at Central Missouri State University, the M.A. in sociology in 1967 at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, and the Ph.D. in sociology in 1974 at the University of Nebraska. He was a high school teacher in Kansas City 1962–67 and taught at Creighton University after 1968. The expression introversionist comes from the British sociologist Bryan Wilson (1970: 118): “Although all sects separate from the orthodox and, at least in some respects, from the wider society, introversionist sects make this pattern of action their overriding concern, the issue on which salvation is to be realized.” David A. Roozen earned the B.A. at Laurence University, an M.A. in religion and society in 1970 at Florida State University, and the Ph.D. in sociology of religion at Emory University in 1979; he has been at Hartford Seminary after 1974. William McKinney (born 1946) earned the M.A. in 1970 and M.Div in 1971 at Hartford Seminary, and the Ph.D. in religious studies at Pennsylvania State University in 1979; he worked in research and evaluation for the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries from 1974 to 1984 and was dean at Hartford Seminary, 1985–96, and president of the Pacific School of Religion afterwards. Jackson W. Carroll (born 1932) earned the Ph.D. at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1970; he taught at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, 1968–74, at Hartford Seminary 1974–92, and at the Duke University Divinity School from 1992.

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people to leave the world behind. After giving a religious history of Hartford, the authors report interview data from Hartford leaders and telephone survey data establishing the religious demographics of the city and soliciting views concerning what emphasis congregations should have relative to public life. They note that Catholics and Mainline Protestants tended toward the civic orientation of mission. Cases are described of congregations fitting each orientation: three civic, two activist, three sanctuary, and three evangelist. .

Overview While many community studies that include observations about religion lack nuance, they contain much information and many perspectives that can be of value in the sociology of religion. Especially where there are multiple traditions or denominations in a community, such a study can examine the interactions or lack of interactions among them in a way that other kinds of inquiry cannot. Social movement phenomena also occur to a great extent at the community level of analysis; matters at the local level in practice often contrast movement leaders’ preferred self-portrayals at the regional or national level. Only a few of the community studies that dealt extensively with religion, such as Robert and Helen Lynd’s Middletown, Liston Pope’s Millhands and Preachers, its replication by Earle, Knudsen, and Shriver, and Roozen, McKinney, and Carroll’s Varieties of Religious Presence, have attracted much attention. Some of the community studies could have gained nuance through being informed by the literature in the sociology of religion. Community researchers were more ready to consult the literature of ethnic studies than the sociology of religion.

chapter 4

Research Organizations A specialty such as the sociology of religion is inextricably tied up with the institutes that carry out research projects on a continuing basis. Such institutes generally cross disciplinary lines and pursue projects commissioned by some outside entities. In some cases, the research institute is part of a larger organization such as a university that receives internal commissions from other agencies within the larger organization. For example, two different research organizations with the U.S. Department of Agriculture received assigned work from ranking officials in the Department. Similarly, the Survey Research Center of the University of California, Berkeley, received requests for assistance from faculty members and graduate students from elsewhere in the University as well as accepting contracts from outside groups, most notably the AntiDefamation League. In other cases, the plans were for research organizations to pursue major projects as free-standing entities so that, in a sense, all projects were commissioned from outside; one thinks of the Bureau of Applied Social Research that was only loosely affiliated with Columbia University. Or, an organization may have been established for one major project, as was the case with the Interchurch World Movement.

United States Bureau of the Census

Today we think of the U.S. Bureau of the Census as a fairly permanent entity that carries out numerous demographic and economic studies for the U.S. federal government, most notably the decennial population count mandated by the United States Constitution for purposes of apportioning congressional seats among the states. Before the twentieth century, however, each decennial census was a separate project; there was no permanent bureau to carry out a series of studies. In 1850 Congress mandated social statistics to be collected in the Census in addition to the population count. That mandate included statistics on religious bodies. However, having no experience with such a project, the Bureau gathered information from local congregations and denominational offices that left it unclear whether edifices or denominations were being counted as “churches.” It was not until 1870 that the officials solved the problem by collecting both kinds of information in separate tabulations. Needless to say, the projects were enormous undertakings in an era in which there were

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no mechanical sorters, let alone computers. In 1880, the work was never completed, though the 1890 Census did issue a report on religious bodies, and in 1906 additional questions were sent to congregations and denominations so that the result was a major study. Follow-up questionnaires and visits by agents helped assure that the information for 1906 was fairly complete (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1910a: 9). An examination of the tables in the report reveals data organized by states, territories, and principal cities, and members-to-ministers ratios. The individuals responsible for the report were William C. Hunt, the chief statistician for population in the Bureau, and Edwin M. Bliss, D.D., who was responsible for Part II on individual denominations. An example of Dr. Bliss’s work is the introductory history on Jewish congregations (no breakdown by Jewish denominations), beginning with migrants from Brazil and the West Indies to New Amsterdam (New York) in the 17th century (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1910b: 320). The Rev. Edmund Munsell Bliss had lived in Turkey, authored works on missions and the genocide of Armenians, and was an editor of an encyclopedia on missions. His position at the Bureau of the Census was Expert Special Agent. From 1906 to 1936, the Bureau collected religious data for the years ending in “6” rather than the years of the population count. The introductory statement for the 1916 study states that publication had been delayed due to interruptions arising from urgent war work (World War I). The supervisors again were William C. Hunt and Edwin M. Bliss, D.D. (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1919: 7). There are references to the earlier reports and presentations of data from them, and reports of trends since 1890. The focus is on membership totals, church edifices, the value of church properties and debts, the value of parsonages, expenditures, Sunday schools, languages used in services, missionary activities, and ministers and their compensation. The Bureau had consulted with the Federal Council of Churches and with a representative of the Roman Catholic Church (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1919: 11). The tables present breakdowns by county and city. In the 1926 report, one finds a change in personnel. Leon E. Truesdell, chief statistician for population, and Timothy F. Murphy, expert special agent, supervised the work. C. Luther Fry authored the textual material accompanying the tables, and a special agent selected by the American Jewish Committee, Rabbi Harry S. Linfield, was responsible for the Jewish portion of the study (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1930a: 3, 6; 1930b: ix). I mentioned Fry before, in the chapter on early dissertations. While a student at Muhlenberg College he has assisted James H. Bossard in the latter’s study of the churches of Allentown, Pennsylvania, which was Bossard’s dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania. Fry went on to earn a doctorate in 1924 at Columbia University

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and would soon, in 1933, chair the sociology department at the University of Rochester. At the time of his consultation with the Bureau of the Census, he was a researcher in the Rockefeller-funded Institute of Social and Religious Research (more on that below). Harry S. Linfield earned the Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1919 and, affiliated with the Jewish Statistical Bureau, authored many publications on Jewish statistics in America. The final published study of religious bodies conducted by the Bureau of the Census reported data from 1936. By this time, Thomas F. Murphy held the title of Chief Statistician for Religious Statistics. Harry S. Linfield was still the consultant on Jewish congregations (Bureau of the Census 1941). The report had grown to three volumes, with volumes two and three devoted to the individual denominations. Addressing a contemporary concern with the state of rural American society, the editors made separate tabulations for rural and urban congregations. The Bureau’s reports, of course, simply present descriptive statistics, which represent only the first step in sociological research. They tally up numbers of congregations and properties, with reported membership totals. They did not involve self-reports of religious identification, so that a “member” who simply accompanied a more religious spouse to services, for example, would be included. Nevertheless, the work of the Bureau of the Census was a significant accomplishment; one who looks through the reports will note that they were addressing real data complications (e.g., the different ages at which different denominations considered someone a member) in intelligent ways. In his analysis of federal data for Seattle, Stark (1992) reports that any concerns about the accuracy of the federal data can be set aside. After World War II social scientists began to ask the Bureau to include a question about religious preference in the decennial census. Such a question would result in tables where religious preference would have been cross tabulated with such items as educational attainment, income, race, ethnicity, income, marital status, etc. On an experimental basis, the Bureau included a religious preference question in the Mach 1957 Current Population Survey, to ascertain public response to it and evaluate the quality of the answers. However, before the results were published the Bureau announced in December 1957 that the religious preference question would not be included in the 1960 Census, for fear of compromising the separation of church and state. On November 16, 1966, it made a similar announcement concerning the 1970 Census. The Freedom of Information Act was passed in 1967, and Sidney Goldstein used it to obtain tables relevant to the socioeconomic differentials among religious groups in the United States. He recounts the history of the 1957 data in his article (Goldstein 1969).

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The 1957 data come from about 35,000 households; the original survey records were destroyed. Consequently later scholars have only the tables that had been produced, which were preserved. Goldstein reports some of them: Basic percentages of the population for Protestants (nonwhite and white), Roman Catholics, Jews, other religions, no religion, and religion not reported; distributions in age category; distributions in educational attainment categories; labor force participation; occupational categories, with one additional table standardizing by educational level and one focusing on college graduates; and distribution of religious groups in income categories. Mueller and Lane (1972) noted that there were tables beyond those Goldstein had used and reported the remaining ones: religious composition of married couples; marital status; household compositions; family size; etc., along with the Bureau’s technical commentary. While the Bureau would not use the religious preference question again, the 1957 experiment did provide some baseline data with which data from representative surveys conducted by other organizations in later years could be compared.1

W.E.B. DuBois and the Atlanta Studies

Most people know of W.E.B. DuBois as one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, that organization’s longtime editor and publicist, and a scholar/leader of the Pan African movement. Before all that he had been an applied researcher and academic sociologist. Three sections of the chapter in his early study of the African American community in Philadelphia on “The Organized Life of Negroes” deal with the Black church (DuBois 1967[1899]: 197–221). Similarly his study of African Americans in Farmville, Virginia, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor, gives some attention to the Black church (1978[1898]: 190–91). Chapter 3 above, on community studies, dealt with these. Here the concern is with an entire volume, one in the Atlanta Studies series, focusing on African American religion generally. DuBois arrived at Atlanta University in 1897 to establish a senior undergraduate program (junior and senior years) and a graduate program in economics and sociology. Central to the programs was original research on the theme, “the Negro Problem.” The original research carried out by students was centered in 1 Anyone interested in using the Bureau’s 1957 data should consult both the Goldstein article (1969) and the Mueller and Lane article (1972); as any statistician would note, any table can be organized in more than one way.

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an Atlanta Sociological Laboratory, with reports presented in an annual conference and published in the related Atlanta University Conference volumes (Wortham 2005: 79). The conferences, each one issuing in a volume of original research, were held from 1896 to 1917, each year focusing on a different topic. Survey schedules would be sent out to contacts in different African American colleges, and reports based on the returns would be presented at the conferences. DuBois was responsible for the volumes for 1898–1909 (Wortham 2005: 80–83), including the 1903 volume on the Black church (DuBois 2003[1903]). The 1903 volume used data from the 1890 Bureau of the Census report on religious bodies, various reports from the African American denominations, case studies from Richmond, Atlanta, and Chicago, as well as surveys of church and educational leaders, Atlanta public school children, and Atlanta congregations. A variety of research methods is represented—history, ethnography, surveys (including open-ended ones), and public data. Taking a practical turn, the volume includes proposals for making the Black church a more effective agent for moral and social reform. The Negro Church was the first book-length sociological study of religion published in the United States. Neither the white nor the African American scholarly establishments deemed African American religion important; so the book was neglected for decades. Prior to the centenary republication, the author of the introduction could not even find a copy in any college or university library in his state of California (Zuckerman et al. 2003). By way of assessment, Zuckerman et al. say, Of course the methodology in The Negro Church is not perfect: the surveys are rudimentary, the sampling strategies are ambiguous, the case studies are incomplete. Terms like “ignorant” and “intelligent” are employed throughout the book in ways that we would today consider inappropriate. And yet despite these flaws, the overall attempt to study religion in a hands-on, data–based, empirically motivated manner (at a time when such scholarship was rare) is deeply respectable and unquestionably groundbreaking. (Zuckerman et al. 2003: xi) The conference program on which the volume is based included important personages: Washington Gladden, the social gospel promoter; Annie Marion MacLean, the sociologist who studied working women (first woman to graduate from the University of Chicago in sociology and the second woman to earn the Ph.D. in the field); Kelly Miller of Howard University; and Mary Church Terrell of Wilberforce University, the first president of the National Association of Colored Women and a well-known suffragette (Zuckerman et al. 2003: xiii).

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The Interchurch World Movement

It is difficult to think of the Interchurch World Movement as a research organization because it was short-lived. Nevertheless, the projects begun under its auspices were taken over by the later temporary Committee on Social and Religious Surveys and then by a more long-lasting Institute of Social and Religious Research. Consequently the IWM is a necessary part of the story. To appreciate what the IWM was about, it helps to see it as an outcome of Protestant intellectual ferment that reflected both nostalgia for and worry over rural America. A key figure in this intellectual ferment was Warren H. Wilson, who had become responsible for the rural church work of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, headquartered in New York City.2 Wilson believed “that a population can be improved by social service, that the community is the unit in which such service should be rendered in the country, and that by the vision and inspiration of the church in the country, this service is conditioned” (Wilson 1912: xvii). In his 1912 book, Evolution of a Country Community, Wilson presents a developmental model of the rural community, organized around successive types of country person: pioneer, land farmer, exploiter, husbandman. Reflecting the contemporary movement for natural conservation and agricultural extension services, Wilson would have the husbandman farm in a way that provides for a continuing community. That pattern of activity required a communal vision; however, as noted, he thought the country church (or more precisely churches) conditioned requisite social services in the country community. How can churches provide a communal vision rather than a divided, individualistic one? “The spirit of federation is in the air. The longing for religious unity is a response to the stimuli of common experience in the same locality” (1912: 209). The problem was a consciousness of kind that centered on differences (consciousness of kind being a central idea in the sociology of Franklin H. Giddings). Citing Herbert Spencer and Georg Simmel, 2 Warren Hugh Wilson (1867–1937) earned the A.B. at Oberlin in 1890 and an A.M. conferred in 1894. He began working for the Y.M.C.A. in New York the same year. He was soon responsible for editing the Intercollegian, all the while studying for ministry at Union Theological Seminary, from which he also graduated in 1894. He was ordained for the Presbyterian Church and left New York to minister in Quaker Hill, New York, near the Connecticut border, which had historically been a Quaker colony but by the late nineteenth century was a mixed community. He went to Brooklyn for another pastoral assignment in 1899, studying sociology under Franklyn Giddings at Columbia University 1903–05, earning the Ph.D. in 1907 with a dissertation on Quaker Hill. The following year he became superintendent in the church rural work department of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, where he recruited and trained young clergy to conduct surveys of rural communities throughout the U.S.

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Wilson argued that religion is grounded in the group, and that religion needs to realign itself with the natural community that is formed by local economic activity (1912: 212). “The duty . . . of the religious worker, and the task of the prophet and the seer, is to enlarge the consciousness of kind. Worship is to be placed on a larger plane” (1912: 213). A 1921 program statement by Paul L. Vogt, Church Cooperation in Community Life, shows how research fits into the rural church movement, as it was known.3 He noted that conditions in the countryside were often bad and that people were leaving for the cities in order to live a better life. The study of the relationship of the church to the community did not require consideration of individuals’ relation to God nor to a future life except insofar as beliefs in such influenced personal welfare. “Thus this discussion falls in the field of sociology rather than in the field of theology or psychology” (Vogt 1921: 18). He argued for cooperation among the denominations, outlining a procedure (1921: 124ff.): 1) A survey of the district and preparation of a map showing the location of all churches, residences of all pastors, circuit systems, and whether churches are located in villages or open country. 2) Preparing separate lists of cases of apparent competitive relations between or among denominations. 3) Conferences with non-local representatives of each denomination to consider the problems of competition. 4) After tentative planning, the representatives visit the local field together, confer with the churches concerned, and arrive at some agreement on adjustments to be made. He cites instances in which this has worked (Vogt 1921: 132–33). The beneficial outcomes include 1) increases in the salaries of rural ministers, of which, presumably, there would be fewer, 2) Saving home mission money by eliminating duplications of missionary grants, 3) Increases in membership and attendance at churches, presumably, again, there would be fewer surviving, 4) A more vital relationship of the church to the community welfare through unified action, 5) A better distribution of pastoral residences, 6) Making rural work more attractive to young clergy. The Interchurch World Movement began as an effort to raise 336 million dollars on the part of major Protestant denominations for uniting all the missionary and benevolent efforts of the major Protestant denominations and parachurch groups (though it ignored the Federal Council of Churches). Launched in December 1918, it was thought that Americans would support such a peacetime crusade as they had supported the recent World War 3 Information is sketchy on Paul Leroy Vogt (b. 1878). His 1921 book indicates that he was from northern Ohio and travelled the country promoting his program and conducting research. On the title pages of his various books he lists his affiliation as the sociology departments of Miami University of Ohio in 1913 and Ohio State University in 1916, which he left by 1917.

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(Schenkel 1995: 130). It involved as well extensive field surveys conducted on global social and religious needs, under the chairmanship of John R. Mott, a world-famous college evangelist and head of the North American Y.M.C.A. Mott was persuaded on the basis of experience that sectarianism and duplication prevented Protestant Christianity from organizing effective local churches under trained clergy in adequate facilities, especially in foreign and rural missionary situations (Schenkel 1995: 124). John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and his mentor at his father’s office, Frederick T. Gates, had been in agreement with Mott for years (Schenkel 1995: 125). Rockefeller associated himself with the Interchurch World Movement in January 1920; he participated in fund-raising tours, promoting the ideal of efficient cooperation and professionalizing Sunday schools. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no mandate from the grass roots, from actual congregations, for the IWM. Some denominations loaned money for the start-up administration of the fund-raising campaign; Rockefeller guaranteed the funds. While the separate churches raised money, the IWM failed in its effort to do so, apart from Rockefeller’s guarantees. It turned out that people would contribute to denominations, but not to the Interchurch World Movement, which sought an amalgamation of the churches (Harvey 1983). “Rockefeller called on the full range of his business, educational, and political contacts for the campaign tour. In no other file of Rockefeller correspondence does one find so many letters of rejection” (Schenkel 1995: 136). Mott had a track record of raising money for the care of prisoners of war during World War I, and he would have a later successful career as an ecumenist; but the Interchurch World Movement was nevertheless a disastrous failure. Rockefeller’s assistant Raymond Fosdick took charge of the I.W.M. and funneled Rockefeller money through churches in order to keep Rockefeller’s name from being associated with the IWM’s bankruptcy. Though the intended outreach programs never materialized, many field surveys had been conducted and the resulting body of 1920 data comprised the major asset of the Movement. These data were turned over to a temporary Committee on Social and Religious Surveys (Harvey 1983), which had been organized in January 1921 (Brunner 1923a: facing title page). Meanwhile, Fosdick proceeded to dissolve the IWM (Harvey 1983).4 Edmund deS. Brunner (1889–1973) was the director of research for the Interchurch World Movement. He had earned the B.A., B.D., and in 1914 the Ph.D. at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He served as a pastor, later as a representative of the Moravian Church to the Rural Church 4 At the same time, reports written under I.W.M. auspices that criticized management in the 1919 Steel Strike created a reaction in a “Red scare” environment (Schenkel 1995: 144–45).

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Commission of the Federal Council of Churches. After working in the IWM and its successor organizations, he assumed a professorial post at Teachers College, Columbia University, beginning in 1931. In a paper delivered in December 1922 in the rural sociology section of the American Sociological Society and published the following year (Brunner 1923b), he provides an account of the kind of research that had been conducted under the auspices of the Movement. The information was gathered mostly by volunteer workers in the churches trained and directed by full-time executives. It covered churches in forty centers of population 5,000 in size and under, and their contiguous territory, following a purpose sample designed to include various regions of the United States and types of Protestant Christianity (Brunner 1923c).5 The focus had gone beyond demographic description, to measurements of community spirit. The researchers were also interested in whether there were recreational facilities in the rural areas and whether the churches offered such facilities. It also found that town churches were growing at the expense of country churches. Years later, Bruner would credit Warren H. Wilson, superintendent of the church rural work department of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, with having developed the research techniques employed in the Movement’s (and later the Institute’s) rural studies (Brunner 1937). Wilson had published a methods book for urban church studies (1912b). Brunner describes a measure of church interest developed by his associate, C. Luther Fry, who is discussed above. It would not do to simply tally up the number of people who attended a service, since one church may have weekly services and another monthly, for example. So the Fry procedure multiplied the number of people attending on average with the number of services held in a month. That yielded data that enabled researchers to compare churches and communities. An extension of the method involved calculations for the number of hours people were involved in the church, and categorizing these by the kinds of activity involved—worship, religious education, and social or community service. For purposes of making comparisons across communities, it was necessary to identify the total Protestant constituency in each community by subtracting from the total populations the numbers of Jews, Catholics, and other non-Protestant religious groups. It had apparently not occurred to the researchers to include such groups in the study rather than 5 Brunner goes out of his way in this report to point out that the successful churches had well-paid and trained resident pastors and that these churches were involved with welfare and religious agencies. “These churches prove that evangelistic zeal and community service go hand in hand, under adequate leadership and that whether among negroes, Indians or whites, in town or country . . .” (1923c: 81).

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simply statistically make allowances for their existence. Similar approaches were used in analyzing rates of financial contributions to the rural churches. Was the rural church as viewed through the Interchurch World Movement data better off than beforehand? There were no previous data to be used for comparative purposes except for two counties studied by Charles Gill and Gifford Pinchot (1913).6 Gill reported 1888 and 1908 data for Windsor County, Vermont, and Brunner reports trends using the Movement’s 1921 data. The town church grew with the population, but the country church shrank. Similar findings pertained to Tompkins County, New York, for which Gill and Pinchot also provided earlier data (Brunner 1923b). It is with the Interchurch World Movement that Harlan Paul Douglas first appears as a sociological researcher. Born in 1871 in Osage, Iowa, his father Truman Orville Douglass was a “veteran home missionary statesman and administrator” (Douglass 1914: dedication). A paternal great grandfather left Tennessee out of opposition to slavery, and a maternal great grandfather had been an abolitionist in Rhode Island (Hadden 1980: 67). Douglass earned the A.B. at Iowa College (now Grinnell College) in 1891, a center of the Social Gospel Movement, and a theological degree at Andover in 1894. Then he earned the A.M. back at Iowa College in 1896, evidently based on study the previous year at Harvard.7 Meanwhile he was ordained to the Congregational ministry in 1894 and served as a pastor in Iowa and Missouri between 1894 and 1906, marrying in 1894. After serving as instructor in psychology (1900–04) and beginning as a professor of philosophy (1905–06) he was awarded the D.D. in 1905, all at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri. He left to study at Columbia University and would later take courses at the University of Chicago and the New York School of Philanthropy. All this is suggestive of an enormously vigorous and reform-minded clergyman. From 1906 to 1910 he was based in New York City as the superintendent of education for the American Missionary Association, responsible for seventy-five schools for African Americans and mountaineers in the South. He became the correspondence secretary for the same association from 1910 to 1918, and during the First World War he 6 The Gill and Pinchot study (1913) and their later one of Ohio counties (1919) were sponsored by the Federal Council of Churches; they will be discussed briefly below. Charles Otis Gill had been a pastor in rural Vermont and knew first-hand the situation to be studied. Gifford Pinchot was from a family that had made a fortune in lumber and had regrets about what their industry had done to the land; he served as chief of the U.S. Forest Service 1905–10 and later entered politics, serving as governor of Pennsylvania 1923–27 and 1931–35. 7 Unless noted otherwise, biographical information on Harlan Paul Douglas is from Marquis Who’s Who, 2012, and Hadden 1980.

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accompanied the American Expeditionary Force in France as the Y.M.C.A. secretary and was a member of the Army Educational Corps from 1918 to 1919. With the newly established Interchurch World Movement, he held the post of manager of the agricultural labor branch, later becoming the research director of the Institute of Social and Religious Research from 1921 to 1933. If we look back to his works before joining the IWM, his book The New Home Missions reveals that he saw using the “scientific method” to avoid the duplication of church services in a pointless competition between denominations as a matter of an expanded morality. He argued that a new kind of leader was called for, one who knew sociology and statistics for purposes of engaging in social engineering (Douglass 1914: 57). Writing in 1959, Brunner gives us a perspective on Douglass: that the latter earned a Master’s Degree at a time when doing that was rare for a clergyman, and that Douglass later pursued courses in sociology at Chicago and Columbia. His approach, says Brunner, reflected the influences of Albion W. Small and Franklin Giddings insofar as he looked to American culture rather than European theories as the raw material for sociology, and he sought facts, albeit “facts interpreted in terms of their meaning for American life” (Brunner 1959: 4). While Douglass sympathized with the social gospel, and would thus be in accord with the “councilors” of the Institute of Social and Religious Research (listed below), he saw his task as that of meeting a need to build on “an ever stronger foundation of fact for the use of the church . . .” (Brunner 1959: 4).

Committee on Social and Religious Surveys

The early studies reporting the Interchurch World Movement data were published under the auspices of the temporary Committee on Social and Religious Surveys. The Committee was composed of trusted overseers: John R. Mott, chair; Ernest D. Burton, secretary; Raymond B. Fosdick, treasurer; James L. Barton, and W.H.P Faunce. Galen M. Fischer was the executive secretary (Brunner 1923a: facing title page).8 None of these people had a background 8 Mott, as noted above, headed the Y.M.C.A. as well as the Interchurch World Movement. Ernest DeWitt Burton (1856–1925) was a noted biblical scholar on the faculty of the University of Chicago; he would become that university’s third president in 1923. As treasurer, Fosdick, the assistant to Rockefeller, could channel money through back channels. The Rev. James Levi Barton (1855–1936) had been a missionary and author on Islam; at the time he was the foreign secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. He had gathered accounts in 1917 of atrocities in the genocide of Armenians in Turkey. The Rev. William

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in social research or appear to have intervened in the processing of the IWM data. Edmund deS. Brunner and C. Luther Fry appear to have been the most frequently mentioned staff persons under the Committee’s oversight. Harlan Paul Douglass, who had been on staff with the IWM, came to work for the Committee as the director of research. Edmund deS. Brunner served as director of rural investigations at the Institute while Harlan Paul Douglas was the research director, 1921–1933. Douglass would later edit Christendom for a decade and then take up a post on the Committee for Cooperative Field Research of the Federal Council of Churches, 1944–1950, where he mentored denominational researchers and coordinated their activities when asked to do so.

Institute of Social and Religious Research

The work of completing the Interchurch World Movement studies was handed over to the newly established Institute of Social and Religious Research in 1923, designed to be more or less permanent rather than an emergency measure in the wake of the IWM bankruptcy. Rockefeller’s administrator Fosdick was impressed with the twenty-three surveys completed by the Committee and consequently approved the addition of numerous new undertakings (Schenkel 1995: 152). The Institute pursued its projects until 1933, when Rockefeller decided to terminate it. Early on it had its best-known staff in place: H. Paul Douglass, Edmund deS. Brunner, and C. Luther Fry. Denominational researchers frequently collaborated with the Institute Staff, the Presbyterian Everett L. Perry doing so on more than eighty studies. A number of “councilors” served as an advisory board and public face for the institute. They included human rights activists, social workers, academics, journalists, politicians, and churchmen. The list is very suggestive of how John D. Rockefeller, Jr., wanted the Institute to be thought of.9 A rather different list of people comprised the “directorate” Herbert Perry Faunce (1859–1930) was Rockefeller’s pastor in the latter’s youth (Schenkel 1995: 16); by the time of the Committee he had served as president of Brown University and was prominent in the work of the Religious Education Association. Galen M. Fisher, later known for his critique of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, was an associate of Mott in the Y.M.C.A. 9 Mary Hunter Austin, novelist, poet, critic, feminist, and defender of the rights of Native Americans and Latino Americans; Allen Tibbals Burns, noted social worker associated with the University of Chicago and the Y.M.C.A., president of the National Conference of Social Workers in 1921; John Huston Finley, Professor of Politics at Princeton and then president of City College of New York, then New York State Commissioner of Education, and from 1921

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of the Institute—mostly people who had served on the Committee on Social and Religious Surveys. And how was all this to fit into Mr. Rockefeller’s plans? One could brush such a matter aside, noting that the money funded the research and that was enough, and that the researchers, Douglass, Brunner, and Fry, were principled people as were the councilors listed above. However, Rockefeller’s intent and one major research result came into a clash. The case was that of the famous Middletown. A Study in American Culture, by Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd. The original study of Muncie, Indiana, was an Institute of Social and Religious Research project (Lynd and Lynd 1929). Most Institute projects were published under the auspices of the Institute, with a description of the Institute and a list of its board of directors presented opposite the title page. That is not the case with Middletown; a blank page faces the title page, and one must read the penultimate paragraph of the Lynds’ Preface to find the statement: “To the Institute of Social and Religious Research, which financed the investigation, and to its technical staff, which has been generous in criticism and suggestion, the investigation owes its support” (Lynd and Lynd 1929: xi). The Lynds evidently appreciated the financial support, but the criticism and suggestions offered generously went without comment. According to the narrative provided by historian Charles E. Harvey, Raymond B. Fosdick, Rockefeller’s key advisor, opposed publishing Middletown. The study did not portray a scene of domestic tranquility in the heartland, as Rockefeller interests would have it, and it was not reticent about going beyond quantitative data and elaborating interpretations, to which the Institute staff members objected vigorously. It is a wonder that Robert Lynd was hired to conduct the study in the first place; everything in his personal history suggested he would write as a partisan of the working class. Rockefeller, meanwhile, had

associate editor of the New York Times; Edwin Francis Gay, Harvard economic historian and Dean of the Harvard Business School, president of the New York Evening Post 1920–23; Jeremiah Whipple Jenks, Professor of Economics at Cornell and then New York University, concerned about monopoly trusts; William Morris Leiserson, labor economist associated with John R. Commons, student of working conditions, labor arbitrator; Walter Lippman, journalist and commentator with a Harvard education; Newton Wesley Rowell, Canadian attorney and politician and prominent Methodist involved in the formation of the merger church the United Church of Canada; John Augustine Ryan, Catholic advocate for social justice who was significant in the development of American Catholic social thought, whose draft for a 1919 U.S. bishops’ statement served as a rough draft also for parts of the New Deal; and Robert Elliott Speer, director of foreign missions for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

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sponsored a wide range of programs aimed at maintaining class harmony under corporate capitalism. Among the agencies he financed for this purpose, the one closest to his own heart, at least at its inception, was the Institute of Social and Religious Research. In 1923 the Institute hired Robert S Lynd to conduct an innovative study of a small industrial city. . . . (Harvey 1983: 334) So who was Robert Lynd? Robert Staughton Lynd (1892–1970) earned the A.B. at Princeton in 1914. He went to work as an editor at Publishers Weekly in New York, beginning in 1914, and served in the U.S. Army 1918–19. He worked in advertising at Charles Scribners Sons and attended courses at the New School for Social Research, while pursuing the B.D. at Union Theological Seminary, 1920–23. His wife, Helen Merrell Lynd, was pursuing a Master’s degree in history at Columbia University, later earning the Ph.D. in sociology there and teaching at Sarah Lawrence College (Deegan 1991). Robert had been in the fieldwork phase of his ministerial training for Union Theological Seminary, preaching in Elk Basin, Wyoming, when he wrote an exposé on working conditions at an oil company that had recently been acquired by the Rockefellers.10 The exposé made Lynd a high profile figure in the discussion about the proper treatment of workers. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., took the issue of working conditions seriously and, under the advice of his associate Raymond Fosdick (heading the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation—later Spelman Fund) and labor relations consultant the Canadian William Lyon Mackenzie King, instituted some reforms in the oil fields in Wyoming.11 Fosdick hired Lynd to conduct the small industrial city project he had in mind for the Institute. Raymond Fosdick was in the process of gradually replacing the old Committee members with his own selections when the Institute had been set up. He saw social science as an educational tool for social harmony and problem solving. The director of the Spelman Fund, Beardsley Ruml, who had been lured from the Carnegie philanthropies to organize the Fund’s programs, favored immediate personal observation in research, in contrast to 10 11

Except where cited otherwise, the account of events follows Harvey 1983). Rockefeller met Fosdick in connection with a search for municipal administrators for the Bureau of Municipal Research, which Rockefeller supported, showing his liberal tendencies. Mackenzie King, already an important figure in the Liberal Party of Canada, had been brought in as a consultant after the Ludlow Massacre of 1915 in Colorado, which embarrassed the Rockefeller family; he and Rockefeller found they saw eye-to-eye on many matters, and on the basis of a similar religiosity (Schenkel 1995: 44–51).

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literary work.12 Meanwhile, “Only insiders knew of Rockefeller’s intention of using the churches in class-harmonizing social service” (Harvey 1983: 346). The public agenda for the Institute included a study of theological education in America, one on the “Red Man in the U.S.,” the St. Louis Church Survey, an Indiana survey of religious education, and the studies that Douglass, Brunner, and Fry pursued on town and country churches in the U.S. The Institute accomplished all this, but a new project was under way—a holistic study of a small industrial city, holistic in the sense of going beyond churches and church agencies. Fosdick and Ruml wanted to know about the social dynamics taking place in a typical small industrial city. The selection of Robert Lynd came from his connections and his interest in conducting a new kind of community study rather than a mere efficiency study for churches (Harvey 1983: 347). While not pleasing, his exposé on working conditions had been based on direct observations in Wyoming. Once under way, Lynd’s Middletown project ran into opposition from the Institute staff on methodological grounds; it was not the kind of quantitative portrayal for which the Institute was already well known. It also ran into opposition from the Rockefeller interests since it stressed class division in “Middletown” (Muncie, Indiana) rather than community harmony. Lynd engineered support from John Dewey, William F. Ogburn, and the economist Wesley Mitchell13 in an unsuccessful effort to persuade Fosdick and the Institute to publish the work. Ultimately, Alfred Harcourt rather than the Institute published Middletown, which made the Lynds famous as social scientists. Robert Lynd extracted the sections he wrote himself and submitted the result as his dissertation for the Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University. He was appointed a professor of sociology at Columbia in 1931. As a genre of research, Middletown is a community study and therefore described in Chapter 3 above. Here it is important as the most prominent research project conducted by the Institute, albeit without Institute enthusiasm. It is also a work that pursues the sociology of religion not as an isolated endeavor but in the context of a general sociology. Its publication in 1929 may have marked the beginning of the end for the Institute. Whether it may be seen as a cause for its end can only be a matter of speculation. Of course, Middletown was atypical of the research conducted in the sociology of religion under the auspices of the Institute for Social and Religious

12 13

Those familiar with the history of American sociology will note this theme in the 1920s and 1930s “Chicago school” sociology, much of it also benefiting from the Spelman Fund. Fosdick needed Mitchell’s support for another one of his projects, the Social Science Research Council.

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Research. More characteristic were those authored by H. Paul Douglass and Edmund DeS. Brunner: A Church and Community Survey of Pend Oreille County, Washington. (Brunner, 1921) A Church and Community Survey of Salem County, New Jersey. (Brunner, 1922) The Town and Country Church in the United States as Illustrated by Data from One Hundred Seventy-Nine Counties and by Intensive Studies of Twenty-Five. (H.N. Morse and Brunner, 1923) The St. Louis Church Survey. A Religious Investigation with a Social Background. (Douglass, 1924) Surveying Your Community: A Handbook of Method for the Rural Church. (Brunner, 1925) How Shall Country Youth Be Served? (Douglass, 1926) The Springfield Church Survey: A Study of Organized Religion with Its Social Background. (Douglass, on Springfield, Massachusetts, 1926) The Church in the Changing City: Case Studies Illustrating Adaptation. (Douglass, 1927) Church Comity: A Study of Cooperative Church Extension in American Cities. (Douglass, 1929) Industrial Village Churches. (Brunner, 1930) Protestant Cooperation in American Cities. (Douglass, 1930) Church Unity Movements in the United States. (Douglass, 1934) The Larger Parish. A Movement or an Enthusiasm? (Brunner, 1934) The Protestant Church as a Social Institution. (Douglass and Brunner, 1935) I will describe the general nature of one of these studies, How Shall Country Youth be Served, by Douglass (1926). The matter of inquiry in the study was the work in rural areas by the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A., the Boy Scouts of America, Girl Scouts of America, and the Camp Fire girls. This “consequential” aspect of religion is what was of interest to the Institute in general. It was not a problem that the three scouting organizations did not focus on religion explicitly. The object was to ascertain “how far what has actually happened is a genuine, sound and permanent process of social integration and how far it is something trivial and forced—rather an attempted grafting of alien characteristics upon an unwilling and obdurate rural type . . .” (Douglass 1926: vii). The researchers sought facts and testimony from 53 counties selected to represent rural America. Much of the volume consists of raw tables of frequency counts and, sometimes, percentages. The data show that little rural work was being done

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by the agencies in terms of percentages of rural youth. What work there was in existence was in 46% of the cases not under close supervision. Funding rarely went beyond the pay and expenses of an initial organizer. There were indicators of how much “adult time” was given over to the work. There were favorable and unfavorable opinions of the work; large minorities of clergy and educators had unfavorable opinions of the agencies. There were cases of competition and ill will among the agencies when they overlapped. The activities called for in national programs rarely occurred at the local level in the rural districts. There were many commonalities across the different agencies’ programs. Part of the volume is based on discussions consultants had about what the tables showed. These included some concrete recommendations. “The outcome of the discussion may fairly be said to have identified the problem of naturalization as presenting a genuine, essential and serious issue. Its outstanding characteristics are the frequent tendency of the agencies to be so inflexible as to aggravate the sense of their alien origin . . .” (Douglass 1926: 204). One cannot doubt that the agencies needed to be told what the report told them. Albert Schenkel (1995: 164) summarizes the work of the Institute as follows: “thirty-six studies concerning the church in North America; eighteen studies concerning the church in foreign outreach; twenty-three studies concerning education; four studies concerning race relations; and eighteen studies concerning sociological issues.” It is the thirty-six studies of Protestant churches in North America that populate the collective memory of American sociologists of religion.

Bureau of Applied Social Research

While the World Interchurch Movement, Committee on Social and Religious Surveys, and Institute for Social and Religious Research were successive names for a continuous effort, some research organizations simply inspired imitators, to which they were otherwise unrelated, or involved a person who had initiative and left one organization to found another. In several cases, it would be accurate to speak of both of these processes occurring together. That is what occurred with the Bureau of Applied Social Research, affiliated with Columbia University in New York City, and the Survey Research Center at the University of California in Berkeley, California. While the Bureau was not known for research in the sociology of religion, though some was in fact conducted from there, the Survey Research Center certainly was, with the controversial study of Christian beliefs and anti-Semitism by Glock and Stark (see Ch. 2, above) giving it a high profile in the specialty. The person who left the Bureau and opened the Survey

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Research Center in Berkeley was Charles Y. Glock. The person who created the Bureau and was its dynamism for years was Paul F. Lazarsfeld. Paul Felix Lazarsfeld (1901–1976) earned the Ph.D. in applied mathematics in Vienna in 1925.14 He was working part-time at a research institute and teaching part-time at the secondary level in Vienna when he heard about market research from one of his students, who had done some interviewing for an American marketing venture. Lazarsfeld came to the U.S. on a Rockefeller fellowship and worked in marketing studies. Meanwhile in 1937 Hadley Cantril of Princeton University and Frank B. Stanton of the Columbia Broadcasting Service obtained a Rockefeller grant to study the impact of radio; they hired Lazarsfeld to direct the study. While the grant was administered through Princeton, Lazarsfeld directed the work from the University of Newark, where he had a research center; the actual work was done in New York City, where Stanton was located. Soon enough the University of Newark wanted its space, and Lazarsfeld had to move his office to New York City. Obtaining a renewal of the grant he established an Office of Radio Research,15 later named the Bureau of Applied Social Research. Unfortunately, Lazarsfeld was exceeding his budget, and Cantril parted ways with him, establishing his own Princeton Office of Public Opinion Research in 1940. Eventually, Lazarsfeld’s Bureau affiliated with Columbia University, benefiting from the support of Professor Robert S. Lynd, who was discussed above. Another familiar name in the sociology of religion would also turn up; Columbia University Professor of Rural Sociology Edmund deS. Brunner would be an associate director of the Bureau (introduced as such by Whitman 1959b: 3) and chair of a governing board that Columbia set up for it.16 Columbia provided some subsidies to the Bureau because of its role 14 15

16

Unless cited otherwise, I am following the narrative of Converse (1987). This is the same entity where Theodor W. Adorno worked from 1938 to 1939, focusing on the ways that the broadcast medium changed the experience of music. Lazarsfeld was not impressed or interested in Adorno’s type of research and deleted it from the project. Adorno then found a position in the Institute for Social Research and became a critic of Lazarsfeld’s type of empiricism. It was only after world War II, when Adorno returned to Germany, that he participated in the famous authoritarian personality studies. While scores on the “F scale,” the measure of authoritarianism developed in the authoritarian personality project, correlated with conventional religiosity, it did not play a major role in American sociology of religion. Rather, it was more influential in the psychology of religion. Glock (2007: 125) indicates that Brunner’s appointment to the Board and later service as chair served the purpose of fending off criticism of the Bureau. Once he became chair, he was given an office at the Bureau where he pursued his own research. Glock reports consulting with him both about board meetings and research in the sociology of religion.

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in training social science students in survey research, but most of the funding came through contracts and grants. There was an effort to establish a nationwide polling program; when Harry Field, founder of the National Opinion Research Center in Denver, died in 1946, Lazarsfeld tried to get the Center to move to New York and merge with the Bureau, but failed. So it was not nationwide polling but a local, fine-grained genre of research that became the virtue of the Bureau until it was closed in 1977 and its functions assigned to a new, better funded center at Columbia University. Most of the early work of the Bureau was commercial in nature, serving such clients as Bloomingdale’s, Lucky Strike cigarettes, and Kolynos toothpaste (Horowitz 1985). One notable report from the Bureau in the sociology of religion was Emil Lehman’s National Survey on Synagogue Leadership. “The House that Lazarsfeld built became a prototype for similar centers at many other major universities. . . . The critical factor, one too easily ignored or forgotten, was Lazarsfeld’s unusual ability to mobilize wide numbers of young scholars and to share authority with them, at least at the project level” (Horowitz 1985: 364). At least at the project level . . . what does that mean? It is instructive to examine the modus operandi at the Bureau. The experience of Charles Y. Glock is particularly pertinent in this regard. After earning a Master’s in business from Boston University, Glock returned to his parents’ home in New York City to look for work in the summer of 1941. He ran into one of his college instructors from New York University, who recommended he apply for a coding job at the Office of Radio Research, of which Paul Felix Lazarsfeld was the director. Glock called, made an appointment, and sat out the morning at the Office of Radio Research as Lazarsfeld burst out of his office, acknowledged Glock’s presence, rushed away, and returned into his office—repeatedly. At about 11:30, again leaving his office, “he came up to me, escorted me to another office, introduced me to one Hazel Gaudet, asked her to interview me, turned and expressed his apologies, and promptly left the building” (Glock 2007: 39). Obviously, Lazarsfeld was one to rush from task to task, leaving others to make such minor decisions as hiring a coder. As it turned out, Glock impressed Dr. Gaudet with his ability and work ethic, and she promoted the idea of his applying for a Rockefeller grant when the coding work reached a terminus. Glock successfully met, albeit briefly, with Lazarsfeld in the course of applying for the fellowship and then had to be interviewed by someone from the Rockefeller Foundation. He learned some time later that the latter interview did not go too well; the official thought an academic rather than someone with a business education was needed. But Lazarsfeld, largely working from Hazel Gaudet’s recommendation, argued that they needed someone with business skills at the Bureau—which is to say Lazarsfeld went out of his

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way to support both Gaudet and Glock. In the end, Glock received the fellowship, enabling him in effect to be a Lazarsfeld intern for some months before being drafted into the army. What Glock did at the Bureau was construct tables from IBM punch cards, using a Hollerith machine.17 While in the beginning he simply created tables Lazarsfeld ordered, eventually he suggested tables and was given a fairly free hand (2007: 42). After returning from the military in 1945, Glock worked at the renamed Bureau of Applied Social Research in the dual role of a much needed office manager and as an apprentice researcher. By then the Bureau’s reputation had been enhanced by the publications of the Columbia sociologists associated with it, and its reputation would be even more greatly enhanced in the subsequent years. Unfortunately, the academics were rarely adequate managers, and Glock had to solve budget problems and salvage endangered projects. Meanwhile, Glock began coursework for a Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia, starting from scratch in aspects of the field outside of research methods. By the time Lazarsfeld stepped down in 1948 and Kingsley Davis was lured to Columbia with the title of Bureau Director, Glock was still working on his doctorate; he was given the title of “Executive Director” and managed the Bureau while Davis limited his own activities to his own projects (Glock 2007: 79–81). It was while on leave in Berkeley, California, that Glock became fascinated with the sociology of religion, both on the basis of observing a new religion in the apartment building where he boarded and the intellectual environment of the sociology (and social institutions) department at the University of California. He became the director of the Bureau in 1951, lacking only the title and a pay increase until he completed his Ph.D. the following year. While director of the Bureau, Glock taught a course at Columbia on the sociology of religion. Among his students were Phillip Hammond, Imogen Seger, and Benjamin Ringer (Glock 2007: 116). He also joined the nascent Religious Research Association and established friendships with Yoshio Fukuyama, Research Director of the Congregational Church; Everett Perry, research director for the United Presbyterian Church, and Walter Kloetzli, an urban specialist with the Lutherans. Later he came to know Lauris Whitman, 17

Herman Hollerith completed a Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1890 with a thesis describing a mechanical way to tabulate statistics quickly. Patented in 1889, it involved what were later called IBM cards and electrical circuits “closed” by holes in the cards to activate counters. Hollerith supplied equipment for the 1890 Census, eventually forming a company in Washington that would become part of IBM. Glock reports that at first the Hollerith machine he used could sort but not count; he had to count cards by hand until the Office obtained a counter (Glock 2007: 42).

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newly appointed research director of the National Council of Churches. He also participated in the early meetings at Harvard of what later became the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (2007: 116–17). One outcome of this networking was an Urban Church Effectiveness Study, for which Whitman was able to find some funds. Five denominations participated: the Congregational Church, the United Presbyterian Church, the Lutheran Church of America, the American Baptist Convention, and the Disciples of Christ. The denominations were to conduct participant observation studies and interviews with clergy, while Glock and the Bureau assembled a questionnaire survey—all designed to uncover differences between successful and unsuccessful urban churches. Walter Kloetzli authored a published report based on the Lutheran data (Kloetzli 1961), but the other denominations were unable to do likewise. Glock’s student Imogen Seger wrote a dissertation and later book with a further analysis of the Lutheran data (Seger 1963), and another student, Phillip Hammond, based his dissertation on the Congregationalist data. Years later, Glocks’s Berkeley student, Jay Demerath, based a dissertation, published subsequently as a book, on data from all five of the participating denominations (Demerath 1965). Glock had also been in conversation with M. Moran Weston of the Protestant Episcopal Church, who desired data on Church members’ views on the social policies of the Church. Columbia sociology students affiliated with the Bureau worked on the sample design; one of them, Benjamin Ringer, worked with Glock on the questionnaire itself. Ringer took responsibility for the execution of the study and used it for his dissertation. Ringer and Glock published papers based on that research (Glock and Ringer 1956; Ringer and Glock 1954), and years later Glock, Ringer, and Earl R. Babbie produced a book from the study (Glock, Ringer, and Babbie 1966). While on leave 1957–58 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, California, Glock was invited to apply for a new position at the University of California, Berkeley, to establish and head a social research unit. He was encouraged to accept the position, once it had been offered, by a number of other former Columbia sociologists at Berkeley (2007: 160). He accepted after a meeting back in New York about finding a successor as director of the Bureau (2007: 162).

Survey Research Center, University of California, Berkeley

As noted in a previous chapter, decision-makers at the University of California were eager to have a center modeled somewhat on Columbia’s Bureau of

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Applied Social Research, but once it was established Glock had trouble finding in-house projects for it. In fact over the years, faculty projects comprised only a small part of what the Center ended up doing (Glock 2007: 175). One early project was Jay Demerath’s dissertation, under modest funding from Walter Kloetzli of the Lutheran Church in America, based on a secondary analysis of the Church Effectiveness Study data. The study of Christian beliefs and anti-Semitism, commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith, was a major project that Glock secured. He obtained a grant from the Presbyterian Church for Donald Metz, a Berkeley student, to conduct a study of “what makes for success and failure in the establishment of new churches”. A National Science Foundation grant to support a study of the “nature, sources, and consequences of religious commitment” enabled Glock to continue Rodney Stark at the Center (Glock 2007: 179). Stark would be the major collaborator with Glock on the anti-Semitism study and spinoffs from it.18 One spinoff was Wayward Shepherds, a survey of California Protestant clergy (Stark, Foster, Glock, and Quinley 1971), based on Harold Quinley’s Stanford University dissertation; and another was American Piety, a study of the consequences of religious commitment, based on items Glock and Stark had piggy-backed onto the anti-Semitism questionnaire (Stark and Glock 1968). The Glock/Stark collaboration early on resulted in the much-cited Religion and Society in Tension (1965), comprised mostly of previously-published essays.19 Glock’s term as director of the Survey Research Center ended in 1967. By then the Center was well established and had continuing projects in a variety of fields, most of them commissioned from outside the University of California. The technology had advanced from relatively primitive sorting and counting machines to computers. Center staff wrote the early programs for use in survey research, since there were no commercially available programs such as SPSS and SAS. They also developed a computer assisted telephone interview 18

19

Writing of Stark, “I am especially grateful to him for his work on Christian Beliefs and AntiSemitism. Once the design and research instruments for the project were constructed, he oversaw the large task of data collection and of putting the data into machine readable form. He wrote the first draft of much of the manuscript and was a congenial and effective collaborator in all of the post publication activities which the book stimulated” (Glock 2007: 193). Glock indicates that he had been approached by a representative of Rand-McNally to put together a collection of essays and that he asked Stark to add his essays to his (Glock’s) own as well as some they had already collaborated on (Glock 2007: 208). There were to be two more volumes following up American Piety based on the thesis that deprivation engenders religiosity, but they were never completed when Glock discovered errors in the analysis (Glock 2007: 211).

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system (CATI).20 Nation-wide survey data collection, however, was routinely outsourced to the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago. Now much of the kind of work the Berkeley Center did is done more easily because of commercially available data analysis programs and CATI programs and the desktop computer—or more precisely, widespread knowledge and experience in performing analyses with the desk-top computer. The most important innovation of the Bureau of Applied Social Research/ University of California, Berkeley, Survey Research Center trajectory in the sociology of religion is probably the shift from an inventory gathering mode of work to a social psychological one. At the Institute for Social and Religious Research, the concern was with identifying social problems and ascertaining how prepared the churches were to address the problems. Of course, in resource-poor areas such as rural counties, there were always problems but the churches too small and too much in competition with one another to address them. The Bureau, however, focused on how individuals and communities received cultural materials; the Bureau began with studies of the effects of early commercial radio and of magazine subscriptions. Charles Glock applied the Bureau’s research framework to religion. What made for a successful church? What made urban people receptive to churches? What were the effects of church involvement on prejudice? In focusing on what contributed to prejudice as a social problem, he raised the question whether aspects of religion could be part of the problem rather than automatically assuming church would be the solution. There was less factual inventorying in the Bureau/Center mode of research than in that of the Institute, but obviously greater objectivity. And with Charles Glock and his associates, the research was being conducted by people who had no ax to grind, not partisans but respectful neighbors of the churches. They were “merely” curious about the workings of religion in society.

U.S. Department of Agriculture

From 1919 to 1953 there was a Division of Farm Population and Rural Life within the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Agricultural Economics. The Division enjoyed the support of Secretaries of Agriculture David F. Houston at the end of the Wilson administration and Henry A. Wallace, during the 1933–40 period of the Franklin Roosevelt administration. Within the Division, 20

The web posting, http://srcweb.berkeley.edu/backup_2010_10_05/50anniv.html, retrieved 6 November 2012, provides this summary information. It consists of the proceedings of an anniversary program, following the closing of the Center.

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there was a Farm Life Studies unit headed by Charles J. Galpin. The issues under study—small versus large farms, inequality, race—got the Division into political trouble. Many of its reports were not allowed to be published, but some were published outside the government. It appears that the Division had begun to conduct the kinds of study the church-based reformers wanted done, but it ran into trouble with conservative southern members of Congress (Larson and Zimmerman 2003). The study of religious organizations was never a priority once the Division had been established since there were already studies published by Mainline Protestant agencies and by the Institute of Social and Religious Research. However, there were notable exceptions. The Division collaborated with the University of Wisconsin in collecting descriptive data on churches in a Wisconsin county, highlighting the correlation of churches with ethnicities (Kolb and Bornman 1924). And Division official Charles J. Galpin published a book using Division research to point out that churches were avoiding the landless in rural America; he called for community churches to serve people rather than denominations (Galpin 1925). In 1930 the research on social trends commissioned by President Hoover (Brunner and Kolb 1933) included information on churches, and six years later the follow-up was conducted, and a part of the follow-up dealt with rural churches (Brunner and Lorge 1937). The Division gathered the data for both the original study and the follow-up. Edmund deS. Brunner, first author of both volumes, is a familiar name in early sociology of religion. Meanwhile, another study, in collaboration with Cornell University, examined the number of churches and population sizes in central New York State (Sanderson 1934). A small study of churches in a Virginia county followed (Ensinger and Page 1940). A classic 1944 paper, this one on class denominationalism in a California agricultural community (Goldschmidt 1944), was originally presented in a conference arranged by the Farm Foundation for the Department of Town and Country Work, Home Missions Council, and the Federal Council of Churches; it was a case of the Division responding to an external request from a religious agency, and that was not an unusual occurrence (Larson and Zimmerman 2003: 119). Finally, another classic paper, this one on Holiness and Pentecostal sects in the Southeast, was a product of the Division (Holt 1940).21 Well-read sociologists of religion encounter citations of these works and may well read them without knowing that they reflect a sustained study of rural America by a federal agency that no longer exists. The program of research occasioned the development of skills and e­ xpertise 21

Larson and Zimmerman (2003) cite all these studies as examples of Division products, but they do not list them in their References section.

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among the government researchers. When Congress abolished the farm life studies unit and prohibited further survey research in the Department of Agriculture, the researchers went to the new (1946) Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan, with one of their members, Angus Campbell, as Director. Campbell, Rensis Likert, and Leslie Kish moved from Washington to Ann Arbor (Rossi, Wright, and Anderson 1983: 7).

University of Michigan Survey Research Center/Detroit Area Study

Angus Campbell (1960) provided an account of the data available for researchers at the University of Michigan Survey Research Center. Most sociologists will recognize the name of Rensis Likert from the kind of questionnaire item that takes his name (Likert-type item), but his significance in the history of survey research comes from the case he made while at the Department of Agriculture for probability over quota sampling (Featherman 2004). His transfer to Michigan simply brought that accomplishment into the academic setting. Particularly important to the sociology of religion was the creation of the Detroit Area Study under a Ford Foundation grant to the University of Michigan. The Detroit Area Study was conceived of as a way to train graduate students in the behavioral sciences, making linkages with the Survey Research Center whenever necessary. The original idea for it came from Angus Campbell, but its directors were Ronald Freedman and Howard Schumann (Freedman 1953, Schumann 1977). As we saw in Chapter 2, the controversial and much cited book by Gerhard Lenski, The Religious Factor (1963), was conducted under the auspices of the Detroit Area Study. In addition, Paul Besanceney’s studies of interfaith marriages in Detroit (1962, 1965) were based on Detroit Area Study data.

Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science

Now named for its founder, the Odum Institute began at the University of North Carolina in 1924; it is thus the oldest university-based social research institute. As with many American-based research efforts, it was established with Rockefeller funding, which supported it for its first eight years. The principal focus of Odum was regional planning, the South as a region in particular. Regional planning goes back to the French sociologist Frédéric LePlay (1806–1882) and the Scottish sociologist Patrick Geddes (1854–1932); noted American advocates included Benton MacKaye (1879–1975) and Lewis

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Mumford (1895–1990). Their approach was taken up by the New Deal, with its National Resources Planning Board and the latter’s eleven regional planning commissions. The most significant project was the Tennessee Valley Authority, which sought an equilibrium between city and country. Rexford Guy Tugwell of the New Deal’s Resettlement Administration proposed a series of satellite cities or greenbelt towns. The only part of his plan that remains today is the TVA, and then only as an electric utility (Goldfield 1997: 17–36). Howard W. Odum applied the regional perspective to the American South. He amassed all kinds of information about the South in Southern Regions of the United States (Odum 1936); as the title implies, he thought in terms of a number of regions in the South. The regional planning movement had run its course, however, and Odum’s monumental volume marks its termination (Goldfield 1997: 28). What is of interest in the present context is what data about religion appear in the volume, since little else, apart from one community study mentioned in chapter 3 (Morland 1958), that came from Odum’s Institute had much to do with the sociology of religion. There are totals of church memberships by race and state for the southeast and southwest, for Southern Baptists, mostly white Methodist churches, the African Methodist Episcopal church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and Christian Methodist Episcopal Church for African Americans, and, with no racial breakdown, Catholics, Jews, and Mormons (Odum 1936: 142). Further descriptive statistics (p. 526) precede the statement, The church has done little with reference to the tenant and the laborer in the way of programs; the tenant and the laborer have played a small part in the life of the church whose fortunes will fluctuate with the prevailing culture of the region. With all its mighty influence the power of the church has been in its ideologies and conditioning attitudes and not in its program. (Odum 1936: 527) In general, Odum and his Institute managed to study the South while generally ignoring religion.

The National Opinion Research Center

The National Opinion Research Center has been operating at the University of Chicago for decades; however, NORC had its origins earlier, in Denver. Harry H. Field (1897–1946) founded it there in 1941, with a loose affiliation with the University of Denver. Field had experience in the Gallup organization and for

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a time in his own Peoples’ Research Corporation. He knew Caleb F. Gales at Princeton, where he worked, and Gales became chancellor of the University of Denver. With funding from the (Marshall) Field Foundation (no relation to Harry), Harry Field opened NORC where his friend was chancellor. Many of the early projects were conducted under contract with the U.S. government during World War II and its aftermath. Field died in a plane crash in 1946 and was succeeded by Clyde W. Hart. A number of institutions tried to persuade Hart to relocate the NORC. Hadley Cantril wanted NORC at Princeton, Rensis Likert wanted it at Michigan, Paul Lazarsfeld wanted it at the Bureau in New York, etc. The University of Denver, of course, wanted to keep NORC. Louis Wirth at the sociology department of the University of Chicago made the best offer, and Ralph W. Tyler of the (Marshall) Field Foundation was consulting about the matter with President Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago. So NORC went to Chicago in 1947, though soon after it became obvious that Chicago’s funding was less than what had been anticipated (Converse 1987). The presence of NORC at the University of Chicago did not go uncontested. The unanimity simply was not there to secure generous funding. Many Columbia University sociology graduates were on the Chicago faculty in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, but their turnover was high. NORC Director Peter H. Rossi (Ph.D. Columbia University, 1951) had led NORC “in a manner openly modeled on the Bureau, including much Robin Hooding and great intellectual vitality” (T. Clark 1996: 302). In 1967 grants leveled off, and the computerization of the financial system delayed the production of fiscal reports. By the time sufficient financial information was finally available, NORC was in the red. “Rossi and perhaps a dozen NORC-affiliated faculty arrived and sat together at a faculty meeting, asking the Department to support a NORC request to the University for financial aid. (Philip) Hauser and (Morris) Janowitz were vociferously negative. Turmoil followed. Seven faculty left within a year or two, led by Peter Rossi. NORC thereafter was managed in at least officially a more “businesslike” manner” (T. Clark 1996: 302). It has already been noted that Glock outsourced the nation-wide replication of his northern California “Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism” data to NORC. The NORC webpage, which lists the topics of research projects for which it received grants,22 names four that are relevant to the sociology of religion: “The Social Effects of Catholic Education” (1963), “College Career Plans” (1964), “Profiles of Catholic Higher Education” (1968), and “The Social Effects of Catholic Education, Replication (1974). Andrew M. Greeley’s use of 22

http://norc.org, accessed 11 November 2012. A significant event mentioned in the website was the acquisition of a punched card counter-sorter in 1950.

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the “College Career Plans” data figured in the reaction to Gerhard Lenski”s The Religious Factor study, as noted in Chapter 2. Greeley would become one of the most senior researchers at NORC before leaving for the University of Arizona. In more recent times, NORC is important in sociology of religion and sociology more generally because of the General Social Survey, an almost annual omnibus interview survey of American households that began in 1972. It came about after James A. Davis left NORC in 1967 for Dartmouth College and experienced firsthand how difficult it was to access data outside a major research center such as the University of Chicago. Principal investigators used “their” data exhaustively until nothing else could be done with it before releasing the data for others to analyze. Much research depended on local samplings. Davis persuaded the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Science Foundation to support a 1972 pilot for the first General Social Survey, and in subsequent years the National Science Foundation funded the data collection. NORC collects the data and makes them available to data archives.23 Topical modules of questions are added to the core module in different years. Religion was a topical module in 1988. There are also paid supplemental questions; Andrew M. Greeley paid for religion items from 1983 to 1990 (Davis and Smith 1992: 1–2, 9, 11, 72).

Bureau of Social and Religious Research, Garrett Biblical Institute

In 1920 two researchers joined the Garrett Biblical Institute (now GarrettEvangelical Theological Seminary) faculty: Clare J. Hewitt as Director of Rural Field Work and Frank Orman Beck24 as Director of City Field Work. Beck was formerly the Survey Director of the Chicago Welfare Department. Albert Z. Mann25 replaced Hewitt in 1927 and Murray Leiffer replaced Beck in 1929. Leiffer (B.D. Garrett 1925) had been a research fellow at the University of Chicago for 23 24

25

Most sociologists of religion today access the data through the online ARDA (Association of Religion Data Archives) website. Frank Orman Beck earned the A.B. at Indiana University in 1894 and A.M. there in 1895, in comparative literature. He served as a pastor in Chicago and was an associate of HullHouse. When he left Chicago he began a campus ministry at Indiana University, where a chapel is named for him. An anonymous history of research in the sociology of religion at Garrett (Anonymous 1972: 7) attributed by the Northwestern University Library catalog to Murray Leiffer says Beck had done doctoral work at the University of Chicago; there is no dissertation by him in the University of Chicago Library catalog. A.M., University of Chicago 1911, in social work, judging from his thesis title. “For many a seminarian during the 1920’s an important segment of his course involved a rather

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two years (M.A. 1928) and would complete a Ph.D. in sociology at Northwestern University in 1932. His wife Dorothy (M.A. Garrett-Northwestern 1926), who taught on an adjunct basis, collaborated on Murray’s projects throughout his/ their career. He took over responsibility for rural fieldwork for some years after Mann left in 1932. Murray Leiffer had a full teaching schedule; institutional support for his studies consisted of a large room to use as a laboratory. The U.S. Bureau of the Census first published data in census tracts within cities in 1930. Educational agencies in the Chicago area, including Garrett, “raised money so that the Bureau could go back and assemble the 1920 Census data in comparable census tract units so that a ten-year comparison was possible” (Anonymous 1972: 8); Leiffer was involved in this. Leiffer’s studies focused on the population age and sex compositions of churches as indicators of church growth and decline. He frequently had students study individual congregations as part of his courses; this was especially the case in summer classes for urban ministers, for which the Department of City Work of the Methodist Church provided scholarships to pastors who would spend five weeks studying their own congregations. It was one of Leiffer’s convictions that candidates for the ministry should learn to look objectively at a social situation, to discover the backgrounds and attitudes of people who live in the community, their occupational roles and institutional commitments, how they relate to one another, the community leadership and power structures, and—in the midst of all this—the role and functioning of the church. (Anonymous 1972: 9) Students “were required to become acquainted with all of the agencies in their community, to interview the principal of the high school, police officers, visiting nurse, social workers, postmen, storekeepers, pastors of churches, young people on the street” (Anonymous 172: 9). Immersion in poverty areas of Chicago was often part of his courses. In 1932 the Federal Council of Churches asked several denominations to concentrate on the study of churches in cities of particular sizes. Methodists were given responsibility for cities 50,000 to 150,000 in population. The Garrett summer seminar took on the project (anonymous 1972: 10). Leiffer discovered that churches that were neither in towns nor metropolises, but in cities 25,000 to 200,000 in population, were distinctive. He sought out summer students from such cities and was able to author City and Church in Transition with the detailed study of a rural or urban area, its population and institutions, and the life and functioning of the church within it” (Anonymous 1972: 8).

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findings (Leiffer 1938a). During the 1930s, he conducted eighteen other studies of churches and their communities, authored eight articles on methodology, and conducted eight studies of the ministry. The last of these kinds of study resulted in his books In That Case—A Study of Ministerial Leadership in Problem Situations (1938b) and the Layman Looks at the Minister (1947). In 1940 Rockwell C. Smith (B.A. DePauw University 1928; S.T.B. Boston University 1938; Ph.D. University of Wisconsin 1942, sociology) joined the Garrett faculty and took over responsibility for the town and country work. According to Leiffer and Leiffer (1987: 153), when in 1941 the Methodist Church, which had just emerged from a merger and needed to inventory resources (Anonymous 1972: 15) commissioned a large study on the decrease in the number of people entering the ministry, Leiffer and Smith adopted the name “Bureau of Social and Religious Research” for their work group. However, the Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary Library lists entries bearing the name of the Bureau as early as 1930. The significance of the date 1941 may lie not in the name but the establishment of a formal entity that could enter into agreements and receive and expend funds (see Anonymous 1972: 15). The study of the shortage of Methodist clergy was followed up with subsequent studies in 1948 and 1952. After 1972, when Murray and Dorothy Leiffer retired and moved to California, the Bureau became the Murray and Dorothy Leiffer Bureau of Social and Religious Research. Most of the Bureau’s projects were local Protestant, usually Methodist, congregation studies or studies of the Protestant churches of a city or part of a large city (especially Chicago). Murray Leiffer also conducted studies of the ministerial role, the position of the Methodist bishop, and the position of the Methodist district superintendent. Murray Leiffer’s The Effective City Church (1949) is indicative of the approach we can associate with the Bureau. Aimed at the non-specialist, it provides a general overview of the urban sociology of American cities—the growth of cities, communities within cities, population profiles of the communities, churches within communities, population profiles of the churches. The later chapters recommend that inter-faith ministerial councils (or more exactly, councils of Protestant leaders in a community) collaborate on studies and planning so as to avoid competition and duplication. Differences between different Protestant denominations are said to be minimal and should not stand in the way of delivering ministerial services. An appendix provides sample interview schedules with instructions for tabulating responses for the construction of graphs and tables. All this is reminiscent of the kind of work that had been done by H. Paul Douglass in the Institute of Social and Religious Research. Research assistants in the Bureau of Social and Religious Research who appear elsewhere in the history of American sociology of religion include Frederick A. Shippey, the first

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editor of the Review of Religious Research, and Charles L. Swan, who authored a community study dissertation. Shippey, Swan, and Douglas E. Jackson were research assistants in the Bureau who wrote dissertations in the sociology of religion. Of the 63 research assistants between 1942 and 1972, four authored M.A. theses that were cited in the sociology of religion literature and thus found their way into the online bibliographic database,26 four authored Ph.D. dissertations that appear in the database, and five authored articles, chapters in edited volumes, or books.27

Other Agencies

The eight research organizations described above were not affiliated directly with any denomination, although the Interchurch World Movement and its successors and the Murray and Dorothy Leiffer Bureau of Social and Religious Research focused on the Mainline Protestant denominations. These, of course, do not comprise an exhaustive list since in addition there were research offices in the denominational offices, the Federal Council of Churches, and the National Council of Churches. These offices conducted research but tended to report their findings to their denominational (or inter-denominational) boards rather than offer them for sale in the academic book market, or they published them in denominational bulletins rather than in scientific journals.28 I say “tended to report” since occasionally reports appeared as books; the early study of the country church by Charles O. Gill (who was with the Federal Council of Churches) and Gifford Pinchot has already been mentioned (Gill and Pinchot 1913). Still conducting research for the FCC, they expanded their paradigm of work to the entire state of Ohio a half dozen years later, obtaining data from 6,060 rural and small town churches there (Gill and Pinchot 1919). 26 27

28

Available on the Association for the Sociology of Religion webpage and the “Research Hub” of the Association of Religion Data Archives webpage. W. Dwight Weed authored a M.A. thesis, Douglas E. Jackson an M.A. thesis and Ph.D. dissertation, Frederick A. Shippey a dissertation and 3 articles, Dwight G. Dean an M.A. thesis and 2 articles, Robert L. Wilson a dissertation and an article, Alan K. Waltz an article, Leland D. Harder a dissertation, Douglas W. Johnson a chapter in a volume, a book, and a database, S. Burkett Milner a dissertation, Barbara Jean Hoffman an M.A. thesis, and Sang En Han an M.A. thesis. There was also the National Council of Churches Bureau of Research and Survey’s Information Service, which ceased publication in June 1969 when the NCC faced financial difficulties.

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Denominational research offices experienced cutbacks because of funding shortfalls in the 1970s (J. Carroll 2000). The notable studies of the ministry by the Ministry Studies Board of the National Council of Churches, under Edgar Mills, was funded by the Lilly endowment; the Board supported research and conferences on clergy issues, much of it published in a series titled Ministry Studies. The Board went out of existence as soon as foundations funds were exhausted (J. Carroll 2000: 548). Nevertheless, as late as the mid-1980s, Yoshio Fukuyama (1986: 75), who headed the research office of the United Church of Christ, could cite as major projects the research by the Presbyterian research unit with a panel of 3,900 Presbyterians who participated in a mail survey over a three year period, beginning in 1973, and a similar program, The Lutheran Listening Post, of the Lutheran Church in America. He also cited as a major research unit the Office of Pastoral Research of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, whose director, Ruth Doyle, was well known in the community of academic sociologists of religion. Independent research agencies that appeared in Fukuyama’s account included the Center for Social and Religious Research (later Institute for Religion Research) at Hartford Theological Seminary; the Glenmary Research Center; the Census Access for Planning in the Church, established to help a consortium of denominations, congregations, and judicatories to use U.S. Census data; the Search Institute, formerly named the Youth Research Center; the Princeton Religion Research Center, part of the Gallup organization; the Commission on Religion in Appalachia; the Charles E. Fuller Institute for Evangelism and Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California; and the Community Renewal Society of Chicago, related to the United Church of Christ (Fukuyama 1986: 76–78). To this list Carroll added the Life Cycle Institute at Catholic University of America, the J.M. Ormond Center of Duke Divinity School, the Alban Institute, Percept, Barna Research, the Louisville Institute, and the Catholic National Pastoral Life Center (J. Carroll 2000: 552–55). Let’s follow up on some of these. The Institute of Church Growth, founded in 1961, was at first located at Northwest Christian College in Eugene, Oregon. It moved to Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, in 1965, where it was known as the School of World Missions and Institute of Church Growth. This was followed in 1980 by the Charles E. Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth, formed by the Fuller Theological Seminary and the Fuller Evangelistic Association; the latter, originally founded as Charles Fuller’s Radio Ministry in 1933, faced financial difficulties in 1994 and folded the following year. As the various names suggest, the emphasis was on developing techniques for increasing the number of Evangelical Christians.

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The Glenmary Research Center, established in 1966, conducts research in support of the home mission parishes of the Catholic Glenmary priests and brothers. It also assembles the data for the Religious Congregations and Membership Study volumes and database, which followed up the 1952 study conducted by the National Council of Churches (Whitman and Trimble 1956) in 1971 (Johnson, Picard, and Quinn 1974) and in U.S. Census years afterward. Formerly headquartered in Atlanta and Nashville, it is most recently located in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Louisville Institute was established in 1990 at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary under a Lilly Endowment grant. Among its activities is a grants program for research. The Catholic National Pastoral Life Center was established in 1983 as a New York organization, but it soon became national under its director Philip J. Murnion, supported in part by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. It closed in 2009. The origins of the Search Institute go back to 1958, when Merton P. Strommen established the Lutheran Youth Research Center. In 1967 it became independent as the Church Youth Research Center. Two years later it expanded the scope of its work, renamed simply Youth Research Center. The name Search Institute dates from 1977. The late Peter L. Benson became research director in the following year, and president of the Institute in 1985. Today the Life Cycle Institute, founded in 1974, is still affiliated with Catholic University of America, but it is essentially a think tank, now named the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic studies. The Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University operates as an academic unit with courses. The J.M. Ormond Center for Research, Planning, and Development is supported by the J.M. Ormond Fund, which was established by the Western North Carolina Conference and the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, and the rural Church Section of the Duke Endowment. One more research organization should be mentioned for present purposes. From the 1950s and into the era of the Second Vatican Council, there had been discussions about founding a research center to serve the needs of the Catholic Church in the United States. The matter became a personal interest of Richard Cardinal Cushing, Bishop Fulton Sheen, and later Bishop Ernest Unterkoefler. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) emerged from a planning meeting convened in 1963. It was incorporated the following year and staffed in 1965, with Louis J. Luzbetak, S.V.D., an anthropologist, as the first director (Froehle 2007). The early interest was in research in support of

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overseas missionary work. According to Francis X. Gannon (1967), the intent soon became that of bridging the gap between the intellectual interests of researchers and the practical interests of church leaders, as well as encompassing all facets of the American Catholic Church. Its founding research council included mostly familiar names in American sociology of religion: Joseph H. Fichter, S.J. (Loyola University, New Orleans); Andrew M. Greeley (National Opinion Research Center); Samuel Z. Klausner (executive secretary, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion), Marie Augusta Neal, S.N.D. (Emmanuel College, Boston); C. Joseph Nuesse (sociology department chair, Catholic University of America), and Lauris B. Whitman (National Council of Churches). One cannot avoid being struck by the fact that all this has been very unstable because of inconsistent funding. The denominations that have been interested in applied social research or in supporting interdenominational organizations have often not been the thriving ones. Foundations appear willing to support projects but not long-term infrastructure. Organizations affiliated with major universities have been the ones that have survived, but even then often precariously. Other organizations that became sufficiently diversified and large— Search, CARA—changed their programs to coincide with what could be funded by contracts. From 1970 to 1977, the Review of Religious Research published abstracts of church planning and research reports.29 Changes over time are instructive. There were four reports by the National Council of Churches abstracted in 1970, one in 1971, one in 1972, and one in 1974. Projects centered in theology schools (not counting individuals’ dissertations) had one abstract in 1971, one in 1972, and two in 1975. There were no denominational research office reports in 1970, three in 1971, three in 1972, four in 1973, five in 1974, none in 1975, and three in 1976. The “other” category, including individuals’ dissertations and individual undertakings of other kinds, numbered four in 1970, four in 1971, two in 1973, three in 1974, five in 1974, none in 1975, and seven in 1976. The presence of the National Council of Churches diminished over time. That of the theology schools was not strong during those seven years. Denominational reports crested in 1974 and 1975. Growth after 1974 was to be found only in the “other category,” representing in general individual initiatives, often dissertation research. The trend appeared to be toward universities as the most stable institutional resource. If the frequency count of those abstracts is any indication, applied sociology of religion was leaning on a weak reed! 29

After 1977 it included such abstracts as there were in with abstracts of articles from other journals.

chapter 5

Professional Associations As is obvious, it has not been possible to organize an account of American sociology of religion as a simple chronology. So in the first chapter the universities at which dissertations in the field were written, who wrote them, whom they cited as theorists and as sociologists of religion, how they collected and analyzed data, and what they studied comprised one kind of narrative, up to the year 1959. With the establishment of journals in the field, especially Sociological Analysis (now Sociology of Religion), the Review of Religious Research, and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, comparable information from journal articles provided a similar narrative for the twenty-five years after 1959. However, what was going on in the field was broader than what could be seen from dissertations and articles. There were, for example, the community studies reviewed in Chapter 3. A major development was the organization of multiple albeit precarious research institutes. Certain names turned up in multiple settings. Warren Wilson’s dissertation made an appearance in Chapter 1, and Wilson was a Presbyterian denominational researcher in the era of the Institute for Social and Religious Research and the U.S. Department of Agriculture surveys on rural churches. C. Luther Fry helped as an undergraduate with James H. Bossard’s dissertation and served on the staff of the Institute for Social and Religious Research. Edmund DeS. Brunner and Robert S. Lynd at Columbia University appeared in connection with both the Institute of Social and Religious Research and the Bureau of Applied Social Research. This raises the question of the social network or networks behind what was occurring in American sociology of religion. Among professionals, networks or circles usually occur in professional societies and university departments. Seldom do departments have multiple persons in one narrow specialty; rather they tend to have a balance of specialists in a discipline; thus a sociology department may have at most one or two people who work in the sociology of religion, and if two they would most likely engage in quite different kinds of inquiry into religious phenomena. Consequently it is beyond the university department, in the professional society, that people who engage in similar kinds of inquiry into religion hear one another’s presentations and meet one another, compare notes and learn about funding and publication opportunities. It is in the professional associations that widespread needs, such as the need for journals, come to be identified. It was in fact in the professional associations that the three journals named above were

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established. The professional associations, together with university departments, provide a social infrastructure for such a phenomenon as an American sociology of religion and give it a stability that was never to be found from foundations, denominational research offices, or governmental research units. The relevant professional associations emerged in the mid-twentieth century, though two of them grew out of earlier entities. They are the Association for the Sociology of Religion (formerly American Catholic Sociological Society), the Religious Research Association, and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

American Catholic Sociological Society

Because the records of the American Catholic Sociological Society were lost in a truck fire in 1968, our account must depend on what was published in the American Catholic Sociological Review (predecessor of Sociological Analysis and Sociology of Religion), the research Loretta Morris did (Morris 1989) by interviewing participants in the significant events in the life of the organization, and a decennial anniversary history of the organization written as a thesis for the Master of Social Administration degree by Richard M. Rosenfelder (1948).1 In the 1930s, Catholic sociologists perceived themselves to be out of place in the American Sociological Society. Other sociologists suspected that they were incapable of scientific work because they had a religion. The A.S.S. was characterized by a natural science model and by unacknowledged value positions. Moreover, the A.S.S. neglected teaching as a field of interest, while most Catholic sociologists worked in teaching-centered four-year colleges. Four Catholic sociologists discussed their misgivings over this situation at the 1937 meeting of the A.S.S. and decided to convene a meeting for March 26, 1938, to discuss forming their own organization. The four were Francis Friedel, S.M., of the University of Dayton, Ralph Gallagher, S.J., of Loyola University of Chicago, Louis Weitzman, S.J. of John Carroll University of Cleveland, Ohio,

1 Rosenfelder (1948:iv) noted back in 1948 that the records of the American Catholic Sociological Society were disorganized and notable for lacunae; he relied heavily on interviews. Ever with an eye on the history of the sociology of religion, William H. Swatos, as editor of Sociological Analysis in 1989, fortunately organized a fiftieth anniversary issue (Sociological Analysis 50: 4) that included reprints of historical documents, historical studies, and notes and reminiscences. The account in this paragraph depends greatly on the study by Morris (1989) that was published in that special issue.

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and Marguerite Reuss of Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Rosenfelder 1948: 3). Francis Friedel, S.M., (1897–1959) earned the M.A. at the Catholic University of America in 1935, writing a thesis on “The Home Adjustments of a Selected Group of College Men.” He authored a sociology text (published in 1936, revised 1951) for use in his classes at the University of Dayton, Ohio, and mimeographed other texts for courses in social problems and the sociology of the family. He earned the Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh in 1950 with a dissertation on his own religious community, the Society of Mary (Marianists). Apart from his text, the entirety of his sociological publications would appear in the American Catholic Sociological Review. As early as 1940 he authored “Undergraduate Preparation of the Social Worker” (Friedel 1940); the very subject would have been of little interest in an American Sociological Society context, though the majority of professors of sociology taught and still teach courses for social work students. What Friedel described as the work of sociologists would not be problematic from the vantage point of the wider discipline: The sociologist is to the social worker what the medical research worker is to the medical practitioner and the nurse. By analyzing the factors underlying social life, studying the social processes, social institutions and the elements of social change, the sociologist can arrive at the foundation of certain principles which will be of service to social workers. Analysis of causative factors, trends, effects of social institutions will indicate approaches to be made in seeking for a more harmonious functioning of society. (Friedel 1940: 26) However, he went on to point out the salience of an additional Catholic philosophical curriculum for students, who are at an age “where they can and do demand a ‘reason for the faith . . . that is in them’ ” (p. 27). This would be especially salient for the social worker working with religious people, he said. It is this additional preparation and indeed any mention of such that would have found the typical American Sociological Society meeting (or for that matter, find today the typical American Sociological Association meeting) a particularly uncongenial context. In his 1941 American Catholic Sociological Society presidential address (Friedel 1942), he indicates the necessity of distinguishing the work of the social philosopher, the social scientist, and the social reformer, and suggests that his Catholic colleagues had been doing too much social philosophy but that “secular sociologists” had done not enough of it. What he goes on to recommend for the ACSS is not a different sociology from what could be

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found in the American Sociological Society but more of what could be found there and more clarification of a Catholic point of view as well as engagement with such movements as the Catholic Worker Movement and efforts to secure social justice for African Americans. In a peculiarly Catholic way of looking at matters for that era, he noted that few African Americans were Catholics and thus the majority were “unchurched”! Ralph Aloysius Gallagher, S.J., (1896–1965) earned the M.A. in psychology from Gonzaga University in Washington State and completed his theological studies at St. Louis University. He entered the Ph.D. program in sociology there, completing it with a dissertation in 1932 on the “Subjective factors” of delinquent conduct and the rehabilitation of delinquent boys. He joined the faculty of John Carroll University in 1933 and then became the first department chair of sociology at Loyola University of Chicago. He founded the Loyola University Institute of Industrial Relations in 1941. His primary teaching areas were criminology and penology; his publications, apart from his brief 1938 ACSS presidential address, consist of book reviews in criminology and penology in the American Catholic Sociological Review. He led efforts to reform and professionalize the Chicago Police Department, holding intensive in-service seminars and training programs for police officers, correctional, probation, and parole workers. Gallagher believed social principles could not be divorced from social practice. (Morris 1998: 203) The applied emphasis of Gallagher’s professional praxis could be expected to make the American Sociological Society an uncongenial setting for him. Louis Gabriel Weitzman, S.J. (1890–1958), of John Carroll University earned the M.A. at St. Louis University in 1914 and earned the Ph.D. from Catholic University of America in 1931 with a dissertation on the history of Catholic Charities in the District of Columbia. He later taught theology and sociology at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Marguerite Reuss earned the M.A. at Marquette University in 1936, with a thesis on German families; she stayed at Marquette as a faculty member. Her only publication was an article on teaching the college course on the family, in the American Catholic Sociological Review (Reuss 1940). The article provides a history of the course in American sociology and includes course descriptions obtained from other ACSS members. In the description of her own course, she mentions including two papal encyclicals on marriage. She assembled research interests of ACSS members for several issues of the Review in the

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1940s, listing among her own research interests the ecology of mental disease and feeblemindedness in Milwaukee. She served as the editor of the (Midwest) Sociologist in the 1950s. Information on Weitzman is sketchy, but it is clear that the other three— Friedel, Gallagher, and Reuss—saw that there was a Catholic sociology in the sense of adding moral and reformist as well as philosophical concerns to the sociology practiced by “secular” sociologists. They clearly perceived this added dimension as an enriching one, not one that made their work in any way inferior to others’ sociology. The meeting that had been called for establishing a new professional association was organized by Ralph Gallagher with Sister Liguori Brophy of Mundelein College serving as the executive officer.2 Thirty-one delegates from thirty institutions attended; a list of those present with their institutional affiliations and graduate degrees (if known) appears in Appendix II. Nine delegates had earned or would earn within a few years a Ph.D. in sociology, three of these at Catholic University of America (Brophy, Murray, Schwartz), two at St. Louis University (Gallagher, Wietzman), one at Fordham University (Cahalan), one at Georgetown University (Mundie), one at Yale University (Mamchur), and one at the University of Pittsburgh (Friedel). Six delegates had M.A. degrees in sociology—two from Catholic University, two from Marquette University, one from St. Louis University, and one from the University of Wisconsin. There were two holders of doctoral degrees in theology, one in canon law, one in history, one in economics, and one in political science as well as two holders of Master’s degrees in education, one in anthropology, and two in social work. Not all of these people were professors of sociology; some were educational administrators, and that accounts for some of the non-sociology degrees. The delegates elected Gallagher president, Sister Liguori executive secretary, Lawrence Brown of Creighton University as vice-president, Paul J. Mundie of Marquette University as treasurer, and Raymond Murray of Notre Dame University as council member.3 A telegram from H.A. Phelps of the American 2 Here, I resume following the account by Morris (1989). 3 Raymond Murray, C.S.C., and Paul J. Mundie would be the 1939 and 1940 presidents, respectively. Murray would author an introductory sociology text that was used widely in American Catholic colleges and, in translation, in the Portuguese-speaking world (Murray 1935, 1947), and after first-hand involvement in physical anthropology he authored a volume advocating the acceptance of the theory of human evolution (Murray 1943). He earned the Ph.D. in sociology from Catholic University of America in 1926. On Raymond Murray, see Blasi and Donahoe (2002: 57–69). Mundie participated in the 1938 founding meeting of the A.C.S.S., presenting a paper on the undergraduate curriculum in the field of sociology (Rosenfelder 148: 11). Mundie earned the M.A. in history at Canisius College in 1928 and the Ph.D. in

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Sociological Society was read, extending best wishes of the A.S.S. officers and members to the Conference (Rosenfelder 1948: 16). In the coming years, Ralph Gallagher, who became the Executive Secretary, would prove to be the dominant personage.4 Early on Gallagher wanted to affiliate the ACSS as a regional organization with the American Sociological Society, and the A.S.S. seemed willing, but the A.C.S.S. couldn’t bring itself to follow through, affiliating instead with the National Catholic Welfare Conference’s Department of Social Action, with Bishop Edwin O’Hara elected annually from 1939 until he died in 1956 as the honorary president.5 As an indication of how much Gallagher thought of the ACSS as a Church entity, when Marguerite Reuss typed up the first newsletter, he wouldn’t have it printed because the affiliation with the N.C.W.C., which would have made permission for it implicit, had not yet been acted upon (Rosenfelder 1948: 96). Executive Secretary Ralph Gallagher ran the organization informally. He faced opposition in 1956 when he removed the nomination of John Donovan of Boston College for president from the list of nominees and substituted s­ ociology from Georgetown University in 1930. Laurence Brown earned the A.B. at Creighton University in 1923 and the M.A. in social service administration from the University of Notre Dame in 1929. 4 “Ralph Gallagher, Jesuit, was a mover and shaker for whom sociology was either applied or pointless. This conviction is mirrored in his professional life at Chicago’s Loyola University. Chairman of the Sociology department for almost thirty years (1936–63), he was Regent of the School of Social Work from 1942 to 1948, and in 1941 founded the Institute for Social and Industrial Relations, whose Director he remained until his death in 1965. He moved with equal ease among city bosses and city bums, pioneering effective training for law enforcement agencies and speaking out vigorously for the socially disadvantaged. As one of his former students, I can testify to the extraordinary impact his experience and undisguised value-orientation made on parole, probation, and juvenile officers in the classroom.” (Morris 1989: 331) 5 The selection of Bishop O’Hara is indicative of the general viewpoint of the ACSS members. Edwin Vincent O’Hara (1881–1956) had been a leading force in the enactment of a minimum wage law in Oregon in 1913 and was the defendant in the U.S. Supreme Court case upholding the law (Stettler v O’Hara). He founded and directed the National Catholic Rural Life Conference in 1923. He was appointed bishop of Great Falls, Montana, in 1930 and represented the U.S. in Rome at the promulgation by Pope Pius XI of the social encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. He was appointed bishop (and later archbishop) of Kansas City, Missouri, in 1939, where he was known for establishing rural parishes and schools, and for his progressive views on lay responsibility in the Church, liturgy, and social justice. Rosenfelder (1948) devotes a chapter to the question of various proposed affiliations; in general the issue of affiliating with the A.S.S. tended to be far down in Council agendas and went without discussion until the idea was forgotten.

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Allan Spitzer of St. Louis University. Spitzer was elected, but the next year Sr. Aquinice Kelly, Gallagher’s own administrative assistant, organized a faction of those dissatisfied with the behind-the-scenes way of operating to nominate Donovan from the floor—something that had never occurred before at the business meetings, and elected him the 1958 President.6 Ralph Gallagher eventually resigned as Executive Secretary in 1961. The ACSS conventions included sessions on teaching sociology, both at the higher and secondary levels. High school teachers in the Catholic schools in the meeting cities were invited to attend. The meetings coincided with those of the American Sociological Society in time and city in the 1940s, but in 1950 the A.S.S. meeting was changed from December to September, and it was not until 1959 that the ACSS followed suit. Regional affiliates of the ACSS were organized during World War II because of travel restrictions. In 1951 the organization held its annual meeting in St. Louis.7 An African American came for the meeting but was not allowed in by the hotel. The ACSS leadership decided the hotel had broken its contract with the organization and abruptly moved the meeting to the campus of St. Louis University. Membership in the organization crested in 1956 at 515, but as mistrust of Catholic sociologists diminished, membership in the ACSS dropped to 99. Fiscal affairs were chaotic, in fact completely informal under Ralph Gallagher. Since the biggest expense was printing the journal, when Paul Reiss became editor in 1961 he reluctantly agreed to take over the financial function as well. The American Catholic Sociological Review began in 1940 with Ralph Gallagher as editor and an editorial board of twelve, including Gallagher, appointed by President Paul Mundie. There were not many Catholic sociologists with terminal degrees in 1940, but Mundie managed to find seven for the board, including Gallagher, as well as one with a Ph.D. in history, to which he added two scholars with master’s degrees in sociology (the credentials of two more are unknown); see Appendix II. While three board members had Ph.D. degrees from Jesuit universities and one (Paul Hanly Furfey) from Catholic University of America, there were also doctorates from Yale, Cologne, and Harvard. Much of the practical work involved in bringing the journal into print was performed by Edward A. Marciniak (Rosenfelder 1948: 102), an instructor at Loyola University of Chicago with a background in the Catholic Worker movement. The main problems Father Gallagher encountered as editor was 6 The Executive Committee had slated a relative unknown, Edward Andrew Huth. On Huth, see Blasi and Donahoe 2002: 72–73. Sr. M. Aquinice Kelly, o.p., had earned the M.A. in sociology at Catholic University of America in 1951 and was affiliated with Rosary College (now Dominican University) in River Forest, Illinois. 7 The St. Louis episode was related to me several times over the decades by Thomas Imse.

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finding suitable articles. He sought articles from the editorial board members, suggesting it was their duty to write some (Rosenfelder 1948: 111). The Review did not bring in enough funds to cover its costs; the Society of the Divine Word, which printed it in Techny, Illinois, extended their generosity for the project (Rosenfelder 1948: 123). Ralph Gallagher’s term as editor ended in 1955, when Paul Mundy was appointed. Mundy accepted a manuscript by Gordon Zahn, who had conducted research on the German Catholic press under the NAZI regime.8 It was to appear in the fall of 1959, but Gallagher, still “managing editor,” yanked the article from the galleys, and Mundy’s successor, Sylvester Sieber, S.V.D., informed Zahn that it would not be published. We graduate students at Catholic University’s Sociology department, all whipped into ACSS by Paul Furfey and Thomas Harte, C.Ss.R., travelled en bloc to New York City for the 1960 convention. We were not quite sure what was going on in the sociological stratosphere; but we did know that our two mentors anticipated a bitter floor-fight at Fordham over the Zahn Affair, and were mad as hell. If it came to a vote, we knew who should prevail: we were for Zahn. But the eventuality did not arise; the matter had already been settled before the Business Meeting began. At Zahn’s behest the Executive Council had already moved to accept the validity of Mundy’s commitment, on a majority vote directing Sieber to publish the article. He refused and resigned his position as editor. (Morris 1989: 345) In the end Zahn’s article appeared in Cross Currents rather than the American Catholic Sociological Review.9 Whatever support there had ever been for 8 Zahn had found that official Catholic opposition to Hitler was real, but limited to doctrinal issues such as eugenics and to the rights of the Church over its own institutions. Most of his research was reported in a book (Zahn 1962), and the 1959 paper on the wartime Catholic press was based on “leftover” data. He wrote in a preface for the 1989 reprint of his book that the 1959 paper “had unleashed a storm of protest in Germany. Before that controversy ran its course it would involve some very high ranking prelates at the Vatican as interested parties” (1989: vii). The result was that protests were directed to the publisher of his book, Frank Sheed, causing a delay in publication while Sheed made a personal reading of the galleys, which he ultimately approved. Zahn was a lifelong committed pacifist; he was critical of the German bishops’ endorsement of Catholic men joining the German military. 9 Gordon C. Zahn, a convert to Catholicism, was a conscientious objector during World War II. He attended St. John’s College in Minnesota after the war, on scholarship, but as a wartime pacifist his presence occasioned an uproar. He completed his degree at St. Thomas in Minneapolis. Newly-elected U.S. senator, Eugene McCarthy, who knew Zahn from St John’s, found him work in Washington, where Zahn earned the Ph.D. in sociology at

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­running the ACSS as a Church entity, especially an undemocratic one, had clearly eroded. The new editor, Paul Reiss, found little interest in a Catholic sociology. Previously there had been two groups in the ACSS; one led by Ralph Gallagher, Raymond Murray, and Paul Hanly Furfey, favored a Catholic sociology, and the other, led by Franz Mueller, Clement Mihanovich, Paul Mundie, Nicholas S. Timasheff, and Francis Friedel, agreed sociology needed more philosophy but opposed having it be too tied up with Church doctrine. Trends began to favor the latter group. As Peter Kivisto documents, Catholic sociology had a brief career (1989: 351–61). Instead, Reiss found considerable interest in a sociology of Catholicism and of religion in general. He proposed changing the journal’s name to Sociological Analysis, and the Executive Committee approved the proposal. In announcing the change in the journal (Reiss 1964), he described it as an evolution rather than a revolution since the content of the ACSS meetings and the journal reflected such a movement for some time. The focus of the journal would be the sociology of religion, and the journal would be open to all scholars. In his 1964 presidential address, Paul Facey, S.J., described the process: The redefinition of the society’s situation which culminated in these important decisions was several years in the making. The process reached its decisive stages in 1963 and 1964. Early in 1963 a poll of the membership revealed that four-fifths of those who responded (half of the constituent members) disapproved of the journal’s original title. In the same poll, three-fifths of the respondents proposed that a change in the title be accompanied by some change in editorial policy of the journal. From the many new titles suggested by the members, the Business Meeting of the 1963 convention in Los Angeles officially chose the present title by a slim margin. In the early weeks of 1964 another poll of the membership produced a five to one approval of the statement of new editorial policy which had been proposed by the Publications Committee. Finally, by mail vote, the Executive Council made the policy official in time for its publication in the first issue of Sociological Analysis. (Facey 1964) Catholic University of America in 1952. He taught at Loyola University of Chicago and, for most of his career, at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He influenced the Vatican II teaching on conscientious objection and promoted the sainthood cause of Franz Jägerstätter, who was beheaded for refusing to engage in combat for the NAZI regime in World War II. On Gordon Zahn, see http://Catholicpeacefellowship.org/downloads/gordon_zahm.pdf, an article by Michael Gallagher.

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In 1967, by which time it became clear that there would be sufficient manuscripts in the sociology of religion, the journal’s title was elaborated: Sociological Analysis: A Journal in the Sociology of Religion (McNamara 1969: 126). A change in the purpose of the organization and its meetings accompanied the change in the name and purpose of the journal. In his 1964 presidential address, Robert McNamara pointed out that the name of the organization, American Catholic Sociological Society, was an anachronism and that the society’s functioning was inconsistent with the stated purpose of the ACSS as described in the organization’s constitution. A recent poll had found that 75% of members responding favored changing the name of the organization to “The Society for the Sociology of Religion,” but there were not yet two-thirds favoring such a change at the 1969 business meeting, which was constitutionally required (McNamara 1969: 126). There was a certain demographic feature of the ACSS that merits comment. As Ruth Wallace pointed out (1989), there had been two female executive officers of the organization: Sister Aquinice Kelly, O.P., 1962–66, and Loretta Morris 1966–68. There had also been a female editor of the journal, Dorothy Dohen. Early female presidents were Eva J. Ross, Sr. M. Jeanine Gruesser, Sr. Mary Edward Healy, and Sr. Frances Jerome Woods. The presence of religious sisters in Catholic higher education resulted in the proportion of women in such positions higher than in the American Sociological Society/Association.

Association for the Sociology of Religion

The renaming of the former American Catholic Sociological Society as the “Association for the Sociology of Religion” was reflected in Ralph Lane’s presidential address of 1971 (Lane 1971). Under the title “Toward a New Beginning,” he made one retrospective reference to the former ACSS; he wished “to honor the spirit of camaraderie and vitality that characterized that Society for the more than thirty years of its existence” (1971: 133). The change had involved a political process, and it would be accurate to speak of factions, but there did not seem to be any intense factionalism as the identity of the organization, and at the same time that of its members, was undergoing a change. The meeting Lane addressed, the first of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, was actually a joint meeting held in Denver with the Religious Research Association. The existence of more than one professional association focusing on the sociology of religion naturally led to even further questions of identity and purpose. So whatever would occur in the years during and after the change of name could be expected to have long term consequences in ­setting the

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directions that the three potentially competing organizations would take—the Association for the Sociology of Religion, the Religious Research Association, and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. First, was the change a change in name only? The ACSS had abandoned Catholic sociology years beforehand and focused increasingly on the sociology of Catholicism and religion in general; so no particular change in those respects occurred in 1970. An examination of the most important offices of any professional society can be revealing, and such an inspection for the ACSS and ASR suggests that the change was a real one. There were thirty-one ACSS presidents, from Ralph Gallagher in 1938 to Paul Reiss in 1970,10 and fourteen ASR presidents from Ralph Lane in 1971 to Patrick McNamara in 1984, which makes a convenient cut-off date to correspond to the data used in previous chapters. No less than 93.4% of the ACSS presidents were members of the faculties of Catholic institutions of higher education; the exceptions were Gordon Zahn, who had just left Marquette University when he assumed office and had joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Father Andrew M. Greeley of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.11 Half of the fourteen ASR presidents were affiliated with Catholic colleges or universities. Over half (54.8%) of the ACSS presidents were either Catholic priests or non-clerical members of Catholic religious orders, while that was the case for only 3 (21.4%) of the ASR presidents. Nineteen (61.3%) of the ACSS presidents earned their terminal degrees at Catholic universities, while that was the case with only one (7.1%) of the ASR presidents.12 David O. Moberg, the 1975 ASR president, was the first non-Catholic elected to that office (see Moberg 1989). All four of the ACSS executive secretaries were affiliated with Catholic educational institutions and were members of Catholic religious orders; the three who had terminal degrees earned them at Catholic universities; of the four ASR executive secretaries (up to 1984), two were affiliated with Catholic institutions and only one had a terminal degree from a Catholic institution. Similarly, of the five ACSS editors of the American 10

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The list of presidents is conveniently printed on the back of the ASR meeting programs, though with an error—John L. Thomas, S.J., was president twice, once of the ACSS and once of the ASR, but he is listed only once. Greeley was a priest of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. A high proportion (36.4%) of the ACSS presidents earned sociology doctorates at Catholic University of America, which is not surprising since CUA was originally established as a graduate school for prospective professors for Catholic colleges. The Jesuits never accepted that plan for themselves, and while at first Notre Dame trained its clergy professors there it abandoned that plan over time.

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Catholic Sociological Review and Sociological Analysis, all five were members of the faculties of Catholic universities, three were clergy or members of religious orders, and four earned their doctorates from Catholic universities. Paul Reiss, the last editor in the ACSS, earned his doctorate at Harvard. Of the four editors of Sociological Analysis in the ASR prior to 1984, two were affiliated with Catholic universities, none was a Catholic priest or religious, and none earned the terminal degree at a Catholic university. Editors are probably the most important office holders for setting patterns for a professional society; in the ASR sequence of editors, Robert Hassenger of Notre Dame earned the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago, Carroll Bourg of Fisk University earned his Ph.D. at Brandeis, William Garrett of St. Michael’s College in Vermont earned his Ph.D. degree at Drew University in New Jersey, and Roger O’Toole of the University of Toronto earned his Ph.D. at Toronto. Garrett was an ordained Baptist clergyman. A particularly interesting example of a fundamental change is the ASR presidential address of Marie Augusta Neal, S.N.D., in New Orleans, August 27, 1972.13 While Marie Augusta’s presentation was low key, in a soft voice, as was her manner, its content was stirring and still strikes one that way when reading it today (Neal 1973). A few people who have read the various ASR presidential addresses have categorized it as “normative,” along with the Catholic sociology addresses of an earlier era. A close scrutiny of the text reveals that that is a misreading. Neal’s perspective throughout is objective, highlighting as a historical fact requiring sociological explanation a convergence between papal social doctrine and leftist political tradition: Within the past few years, and with accelerating speed, the prophetic function in the Judaeo-Christian tradition has come to merge its voice with that of the combined themes of the Old and the New Left. Where the Old Left called for a redistribution of wealth and the New Left for a redistribution of power, the Pope’s messages followed the same sequence from 1961 through 1971. (Neal 1973: 124) 13

This was, in fact, the first ASR presidential address that I heard, as a graduate student attending the meeting. Sister Marie Augusta Neal of Emmanuel College, Boston, had earned the PhD. in sociology at Harvard University. She published a study of the social views of Boston Catholic clergy, and at the time of her address had recently completed a major study of post-Vatican II changes in American religious congregations of women. Because of that latter study, many local New Orleans sisters, clothed in traditional habits, came to the ASR meeting to hear her; I recall some of them appearing shocked at the radical nature of her address.

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She proceeds to analyze statements from Pope Paul VI, bishops’ conferences in Latin America, and other sources in terms of the concept of prophecy and the place of prophecy within established social systems. Even in the brief resumé presented here one can begin to see that the new position of the Latin American Church is radical, the Canadian church liberal, and the American Church conservative. This gradation characterizes the degrees of power, wealth, and control that the three geographical units have in the world economy. Anchoring the recent life of prophecy in the cry of Marx is a proposal to be investigated. Like other prophets he made a serious denunciation of structured evil and placed considerable blame on religious institutions for providing an opium for the people. He located the causes of the existing structures in the social relations around the means of production and the control of consciousness to maintain effectively and develop that structure in the cultural carriers: family, education, recreation, and religion. In elite control over violence and control of the unknown (mass media control) he saw the means of oppression. These themes repeatedly surface in sociological analysis today. I intend nothing more ideological than a plea that we examine why it is that the sociology of Marx is a crime against the state in South Africa, while that of Talcott Parsons is in the required curriculum of the state university social science program. I claim both scholars to be essential to sociological analysis. . . . (Neal 1973: 129) At the time, South Africa was recognized by all as an oppressive nation where a racial minority exerted excessive control over the majority. Neal outlined how prophecy threatened state powers that were being used to maintain systems of coercive inequality and that therefore prophets were treated as subversives. She noted how a well-known American war criminal who murdered a village of innocents in Vietnam had been tried and given a mild sentence while an entirely symbolic offense of Philip Berrigan, protesting the prosecution of the War in Vietnam, resulted in a six-year prison term. She explained this in terms of the operation of prophecy in the larger, established social system and the reaction to prophecy by elites. Her analysis was patient, thorough, and theoretically grounded, leaving the hearers to make their own ethical responses, without promoting any particular Church doctrine as normative. Neal treated the material of social Catholicism without making it in any way a substitute or even addition to sociology. A leftist non-believer would be unable to object to anything in her address, while a defender of privilege—believer or not— would be more than a little uncomfortable with it.

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Over time it became evident that there were more than a sufficient supply of good manuscripts for the journal (now named Sociology of Religion). Editors could not contemplate organizing a thematic issue without facing the prospect of leaving some meritorious manuscripts out. So the ASR sponsored a series of thematic volumes (the Religion and the Social Order Series), first edited by David Bromley in an arrangement with JAI Press, beginning in 1991, and later edited by William H. Swatos, Jr., in an arrangement with Brill Academic Press, beginning in 2005.

Religious Research Association

As noted in Chapter 4, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., decided in 1933 to close down the Institute for Social and Religious Research. The Institute’s final publications appeared over the next several years. Meanwhile, religious researchers—mostly seminary-affiliated staff based in the Chicago metropolitan area—began to meet at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in 1930 or ’31. The organizers of the sessions were Samuel C. Kincheloe and Arthur E. Holt, both of the Chicago Theological Seminary (Hadden 1974: 126, note 1, citing information supplied by Murray Leiffer). In 1944 the Home Missions Council and the Federal Council of Churches established the Committee for Cooperative Field Research, the “Augmented Technical Staff” of which included H. Paul Douglass, the former director of research of the Institute for Social and Religious Research, and Ross W. Sanderson. Douglass’ function was to assist denominations in their research, but he had no funds for independent research at the time. The “augmented” aspect of the staff referred to participants from denominations that were not affiliated with the F.C.C. At the Lake Geneva meetings, Douglass and others conducted workshops to share research techniques (Hadden 1974; E. Perry 2008). It was for the purpose of working with the F.C.C. Committee headed by Douglass that Everett Perry says he “was called to the Presbyterian staff, based in New York City before I had finished my dissertation to receive a Ph.D. degree from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago” (E. Perry 2008). The challenge of the day was to meet the rapid urban expansion occurring at the close of World War II, along with the changes associated with that expansion. Douglass retired in December 1950 at age 80 and survived in retirement until April 1953 (Hadden 1980: 80). In 1951, the Federal Council of Churches was replaced by the National Council of Churches, and the FCC Committee for Cooperative Field Research was dissolved. The participants in the Lake Geneva meetings continued to meet and share findings and methods from their denominational research ­endeavors, calling themselves the Religious Research Fellowship. Membership was not

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limited to member denominations of the National Council of Churches; there were 56 members, seemingly all affiliated with theology schools. About 25 of them met annually in June at Lake Geneva. Their concerns extended to developing methodological sophistication, establishing links with universities, and including Catholics and Jews. Overtures to the Fellowship from the Committee for the Scientific Study of Religion (to be discussed below) were not reciprocated by the Fellowship (Hadden 1974); the reason why is not clear, but the CSSR was not principally interested in church research, which is what the Fellowship was about. It became clear that there were many studies on file at the National Council of Churches and at the various denominational offices, but that they did not receive wide circulation. “It was partly from this kind of situation that the idea of initiating a Review of Religious Research was born” (E. Perry 2008). Meanwhile, the Fellowship renamed itself the Religious Research Association and sponsored an annual lecture in honor of H. Paul Douglass. The first issue of the Review of Religious Research has the appearance of an off-set reproduction of a justified typescript, but the appearance improved with Volume 2, Number 1. The introduction announcing the new journal by Lauris B. Whitman, RRA President, gives four reasons why RRA founded the journal: 1) The RRA had reached a point of maturation where it needed a means of professional communication. 2) A commitment had been made to publish the Harlan Paul Douglass Lectures, beginning with Edmund deS. Brunner’s first, on the work of Douglass, and Joseph H. Fichter’s second, 1959 lecture. 3) The sociology of religion had been experiencing growth. 4) The hypothesis of a religious revival in America needed study and a place for the studies to be published and evaluated (Whitman 1959a). Whitman also noted that the RRA, formerly the Religious Research Fellowship, grew out of the Committee for Cooperative Field Research, which in turn traced its lineage back to the Institute for Social and Religious Research. Margaret Tammen (later Perry) was the first managing editor of the Review of Religious Research. Arrangements had been made for the journal to be produced in the Central Services unit of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., and coordinated through Everett Perry’s Office of Field Survey, where Margaret Tammen was his associate. She had been a student of Edmund deS. Brunner while working on a M.A. in sociology of religion at Columbia University. Decades later, she described receiving texts for each issue, reviewing them and making minor revisions, and sending them on to Central Services. Naturally, she had to consult with the editor, Frederick Shippey of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, even meeting once at her parents’ home in New Jersey, where she

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often spent weekends (M. Perry 2008).14 Thus was the modest beginning of the Review. Once the journal was established, the membership of the RRA increased, since scholars wanted such a journal but not necessarily to participate in more meetings. As we shall see, this resulted in an awkward situation where three American professional associations, overlapping considerably in purpose and each publishing a journal, operated in parallel. Chronology could not have been less kind to the RRA, at least as it was initially established. Denominational offices entered an era of financial cutbacks; many denominational research offices were closed or reduced to mere vestiges of their former selves. Consequently, the RRA membership changed even as it grew, from church field research directors to the university-based academics who were interested in the journal. The 1971 joint meeting with the Association for the Sociology of Religion occurred amidst proposals for a merger, but as the former American Catholic Sociological Association the ASR was wary of re-establishing what was perceived to be some kind of church affiliation. The basis for such a worry was that the RRA’s leadership was still dominated by churchmen. The next year the RRA met jointly with the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. In a lengthy RRA Board meeting, overtures to the SSSR for anything but joint meetings were found unacceptable, but the Board wished to continue with joint meetings (Hadden 1974). In later decades, proposals for a merger were rejected by RRA members, most of whom also belonged to the SSSR, out of a desire to avoid a concentration of leadership and a sense that there were sufficient good manuscripts in the sociology of religion for the two interdisciplinary journals (RRR and JSSR) not to be in any real competition.15 The RRA still meets jointly with the SSSR as of 2013. In his 1974 history, Jeffrey K. Hadden expressed the view that the RRA should continue to exist because of its journal and because of the heritage of H. Paul Douglas, which the Association celebrates: “If Max Weber and Emile Durkheim are our European founding fathers, our American heritage of empirical research must be traced to Douglass. Methodologically, Douglass stood head and shoulders above academic sociology” (1974: 135).16 14

15 16

Frederick Alexander Shippey (1909–1994) served on the faculty at Drew University from 1950 to 1975; he earned the Ph.D. in religion at Northwestern University, having worked as a research assistant in the Bureau of Social and Religious Research at Garrett Theological Seminary. . I myself spoke against a merger on those grounds. Jeffrey K. Hadden (1937–2003) earned the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Wisconsin in 1963. The following year he began studying the involvement of Protestant clergy in

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David O. Moberg conducted a survey of the RRA membership in 1973. Among his findings were that it was 94% male, 65% holders of Ph.D. degrees, about 80% Protestant, 18% Catholic, 2.4% Jewish, and 6.4% no religion. Some 62% were ordained; 56% worked in a college or university. Seventy per cent also belonged to the SSSR, 56% to the American Sociological Association, and 22% to the Association for the Sociology of Religion (Moberg 1974).17 The editors of the Review of Religious Research have all been sociologists, with the exception of the interim editor Walter Kloetzli, who served two years between the first two editors, Frederick Shippey and W. Widdick Schroeder. The appointment of David O. Moberg in 1969 marked the move of the journal editorial office from theology school settings to a department of sociology, and it has remained in sociology departments ever since (Swatos 2000: 476). “Moberg was perhaps the ideal figure for this transition: known as a committed evangelical Protestant, distinguished for a significant sociology of religion text that preeminently emphasized institutionalized religion, teaching in a sociology department at a Catholic institution . . .” (Swatos 2000: 476). The journal has been multi-­disciplinary, with a preponderance of sociological articles, very few of an applied nature. Under Moberg’s editorship, abstracts of denominational planning and applied research reports were published in a special section.18 One way to make the shared perspective of the RRA come to light is to examine the presenters and topics of the H. Paul Douglas Lectures, sponsored by the Association and presented each year by someone invited for the purpose. Limiting ourselves to the years 1958–1984, to correspond to the dates used in Chapter 2, we find that eleven of the lectures were presented by sociologists, two by psychologists, and seven by others. One of the others was the first Douglass lecturer, Edmund deS. Brunner, whose Ph.D. from Moravian College was not specified by area but who spent his career conducting sociological studies and teaching rural sociology. So while some other disciplines

17

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the Civil Rights Movement under a Danforth Foundation grant, which resulted in his much cited book The Gathering Storm in the Churches (1969). He was a prolific author on the sociology of religion. After teaching at Case Western Reserve University and Tulane University, he joined the faculty at the University of Virginia in 1972. He served as president of the ASR in 1979 and president of the SSSR in in 1984. David O. Moberg was mentioned briefly in Chapter 2. He earned the Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota and spent the better part of his career at Marquette University. As mentioned above, he was the first non-Catholic elected president of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, filling the position in 1975; and he served as president of the RRA in 1982. He wrote prolifically in the field of gerontology as well as the sociology of religion, and did much to focus attention on the concept of spiritual well-being. Beginning in 2002 the practice was resumed under editor Patricia Wittberg.

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(and three without terminal degrees) are present, the interest was largely in inviting sociologists to speak. Three of the sociologists earned their degrees from Columbia University, three from the University of Wisconsin, three from the University of Chicago, two from Harvard University, and one each from Syracuse, University of North Carolina, Heidelberg, Michigan, Pennsylvania State, Louvain, and the University of London. Only a few of the topics appear to be particularly “applied” in nature; the applied researchers who governed the Association seem to have been interested in broader issues in the sociology of religion: 1958. Edmund deS. Brunner, Harlan Paul Douglas: Pioneer Researcher in the Sociology of Religion. 1959. Joseph H. Fichter, The Religious Professional. 1960. Charles Y. Glock, Religion and the Integration of Society. 1961. Will Herberg, Religion in a Secularized Society. 1962. J. Milton Yinger, Religion and Social Change. 1963. Samuel Z. Klausner, The Religio-Psychiatric Movement. 1964. Samuel C. Kincheloe, The Theoretical Perspectives for the Sociological Study of Religion in the City. 1965. Talcott Parsons, Religion in a Modern Pluralistic Society. 1966. Lauris B. Whitman, Religion and Social Science: Two Worlds or One? 1967. François H. Houtart, Critical Decisions and Institutional Tensions in a Religious Institution: The Case of Vatican II. 1968. James E. Dittes, Secular Religion: Dilemma of Churches and Researchers. 1969. Milton Rokeach, Value Systems in Religion. 1970. Marie Augusta Neal, The Relationship Between Religious Belief and Structural Change in Religious Orders. 1971. Charles V. Willie, Public Policy and Religious Research: Concepts and Principles. 1972. Earl D.C. Brewer, Social Indicators and Religious Indicators. 1973. Robert W. Friedrichs, Social Research and Theology: End of the Détente? 1974. Lyle E. Schaller, Human Ethology: The Most Neglected Factor in Church Planning. 1975. Andrew M. Greeley, Council or Encyclical? 1976. Martin E. Marty, The Land and the City in American Religious Conflict. 1977. Guy E. Swanson, Trance and Possession: Studies of Charismatic Influence.

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1978. Mary Douglas, Passive Voice Theories in Religious Sociology. 1979. Jeffrey K. Hadden, H. Paul Douglass: His Perspective and his Work. 1980. George W. Webber, The Struggle for Integrity. 1981. Mayer N. Zald, Theological Crucibles: Social Movements in and of Religion. 1982. Phillip E. Hammond, In Search of a Protestant Twentieth Century: American Religion and Power since 1900. 1983. Dean M. Kelley, Religion and Justice: The Volcano and the Terrace. 1984. David A. Martin, Religion and Public Values: A Catholic-Protestant Contrast. Perhaps 1964, ’67, ’72, and ’74 are the most “applied” topics in the sense of pertaining to the kind of research that would be directly involved in church planning.

Society for the Scientific Study of Religion

While the Association for the Sociology of Religion had an extended earlier life as the American Catholic Sociological Society and the Religious Research Association had a prehistory of even longer duration, going back to the World Interchurch Movement and the Institute for Social and Religious Research, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion emerged as something new with little prehistory. Correspondence from 1949 shows that discussions were occurring about founding an organization for the social scientific study of religion; actual minutes of the Committee for the Social Scientific Study of Religion indicate the first formal meeting was held September 17, 1950 (Moberg 2000). The initiative came from a small group who informally acted as an executive staff for many years: J. Paul Williams, Walter H. Clark, and Prentice Pemberton. Renowned scholars—Gordon Allport, Horace Kallen, James Luther Adams, Paul Tillich, Pitirim A. Sorokin, Talcott Parsons—were persuaded to join and to be elected to offices, but the founding group continued to operate the organization (Newman 1974). John Paul Williams (1900–1973), a native of New York City, earned the B.A. at Baker University in Kansas, a B.D. at Garrett Biblical Institute, and a PhD. at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University. He was an associate professor and director of religious activity at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst from 1929–1939, and Professor of Religion at Mount Holyoke College from 1939 to 1964 (W. Clark 1974). His 1938 dissertation at Union/Columbia was on

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the Social Adjustment in Methodism. The Adjustment of the Methodist Episcopal Church to the Changing Needs of its Constituency, As Illustrated by a Survey of the Opinions of Methodists Living in and near Springfield, Massachusetts. He authored a book in 1945, arguing that religion and religious education (i.e., education about religion) are important to American civilization (Williams 1945). His best known work was a descriptive text about American religious groups (Williams 1952, 1962). Walter Houston Clark recalled Williams’ initiative in founding a professional society this way: When I gave a lecture at Mount Holyoke College on psychology and religion during the winter of 1947–48, I was approached by a member of the Faculty at a tea following the event with the suggestion that there ought to be a society to advance the study of religion by scientific methods. I liked him and his idea. There followed our collaboration that led to the founding of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, now expanded far beyond our most sanguine hopes from the eight scholars attending the first meeting that we called. Generously anticipating my wish that he head the new society, he suggested my name as President or Chairman of the “Committee for the Social Scientific Study of Religion,” as we called ourselves then, and took for himself the more burdensome function of Secretary, which he performed with his characteristic thoroughness. Later he became the Managing Editor of the Journal for several years at its inception. (W. Clark 1974) Clark adds that Williams had been ordained in the Congregational Church and was a pastor in Hatfield, Massachusetts, from 1949 to 1954. Walter Houston Clark (1902–1994) graduated from Williams College in 1925, earned the A.M. in 1926, Ed.M. in 1935, and Ph.D. in psychology in 1944 at Harvard University. He was one of four founders of Lenox School in Lenox, Massachusetts, an alternative to more expensive Episcopalian schools, teaching there and serving in administration from 1926 to 1945. He was an instructor in psychology at Bowdoin College 1945–47, associate professor of psychology and education at Middlebury College 1947–51, associate professor and professor of psychology, and then dean, at the School of Religious Education of Hartford Seminary Foundation 1951–62, and professor of psychology of religion at Andover Newton Theological School 1962–67. His dissertation at Harvard was on the Oxford Group in the U.S. He authored a text on the psychology of religion (1958), and after experiments with mysticism and psychedelic drugs

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wrote works on that subject (W. Clark 1973; W. Clark, Malony, Daane, and Tippett 1969). His encounter with J. Paul Williams about which he is quoted above would have taken place while he was at Middlebury. In general, Clark placed mystical experience at the center of religion. Prentiss L. Pemberton (1909–1987) graduated from Ottawa University, Kansas, in 1932, earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from then AndoverNewton Theological School in 1935, and earned the M.A. in 1938 and Ph.D. in religious ethics in 1950 from Harvard University. After service in parish ministry and with the Y.M.C.A., he was associate professor at Andover-Newton 1945–1958, Assistant Director at the Danforth Foundation 1954–58, and Arthur Gosnell Professor of Social Ethics and the Sociology of Religion at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, 1958–1974 (Glock 1998a). He was the author of Dialogue in Romantic Love: Promise and Communication (Pemberton 1961), Christians Face the Total Menace of Communism (Pemberton 1962), and with Daniel Rush Finn Toward a Christian Economic Ethic: Stewardship and Social Power (Pemberton and Finn 1985). By 1955 the Committee had become the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Horace Kallen, Ralph Burrhoe, Allan Eister, and Lauris Whitman had joined the executive group. If J. Paul Williams, Walter Houston Clark, and Prentiss Pemberton represented quite divergent interests, the situation was not changed with these additions. Horace Meyer Kallen (1882–1974) was a philosopher and Zionist, and one of the original core faculty of the New School for Social Research.19 Ralph Burrhoe (1911–1997) wanted to assert scientifically the validity of religion, and in pursuit of that wanted the natural sciences included in the SSSR.20 Allan W. Eister (1915–1979) was a sociologist at Wellesley College, Massachusetts. He was particularly interested in new religious movements

19

20

Kallen came to the U.S. as a child in 1887. He earned the B.A. at Harvard in 1903 and Ph.D. in philosophy there in 1908. He was a philosophy instructor at various places, including the University of Wisconsin 1911–1918. In 1918 he joined the faculty of the newly-­ established New School for Social Research in New York City. Burrhoe attended Harvard College 1928–1932, Andover-Newton Theological School 1934– 1936, earned a Sc.D. at Meadville-Lombard Theological School in 1975, and a L.H.D. at Rollins College, 1979. He was a Professor of Theology and Science at Meadville-Lombard. Failing to orient the SSSR toward the natural sciences, he created in 1954 the Institute for Religion in the Age of Science (IRIS). In 1984 he was presented with the SSSR’s first Distinguished Career Award (Glock 1998b; Gilbert 1997: 261); I recall having an exchange with him in which we talked quite past one another—I suggesting he was confounding the religious study of science with the scientific study of religion and he insisting I was in a youthful rejection of religion but would overcome that in due course.

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long before that topic became fashionable.21 We have already mentioned Lauris Whitman (1909–1983) in connection with the Religious Research Association; having earned the B.D. at Andover-Newton and the Ph.D. in sociology at Pennsylvania State University, he spent the years 1955–1969 as the Research Department Director of the National Council of Churches. He was particularly concerned with building bridges between religion and science. The need for a journal as an outlet for papers presented at the SSSR meetings became apparent. Beginning in 1959, a Publications Committee (Williams, Burrhoe, Kallen, and Glock) sought funding for it. When the RRA and the SSSR were first organized, they evidently did not know about one another (Moberg 2000: 408). But by 1959, they were very aware of one another and of the potential duplication that could come about with each organization publishing a journal. Lauris Whitman held office in both organizations, and Charles Glock was active in both. As noted above, the RRA directors pulled back from any talk with merger with the SSSR, but William M. Newman reports that the SSSR academics were equally reluctant. The cost of operating a journal would have provided a good reason for a merger. In spite of the facts that for both organizations funding a journal was a problem and that many people were active and held membership in both organizations, it seems that the SSSR group let the opportunity of merger slip by. One cannot escape the impression that the academicians were overly cautious about affiliating with the churchmen. (Newman 1974: 142) In 1960 SSSR President Horace Kallen asked the J.M. Kaplan Fund for $17,000 to support a journal, but he received only $5,000 for a first year grant (Gilbert 1997: 263). A small grant from the Kaplan Foundation, solicited personally and informally by Horace Kallen, provided a few thousand dollars of start-up money—and also considerable dramatic soul-searching when the press reported about this time that the Kaplan Foundation was used as a CIA front. Manuscripts did not initially flood in. . . . (Dittes 2000: 428)22 21

22

Eister earned the B.A. at DePauw University 1936, the M.A. at American University in 1937, and the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Wisconsin in 1945. He served on the faculties of Hood College (1944–46) and Southern Methodist University (1946–1952), before going to Wellesley College in 1953 (Newman 1998). According to the February 24, 1967 Congressional Quarterly, which identified the J.M. Kaplan Fund as an indirect recipient of CIA funds, the Fund was established in 1944

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With the grant, and despite misgivings over competing with the Review of Religious Research, the SSSR Executive Council authorized publication of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, with Prentiss Pemberton as the first editor. Despite the Kaplan grant, SSSR membership dues had to be increased to support the journal. Meanwhile, “tensions developed” between the RRA and the SSSR, “sometimes with disgust or even anger, at what each was doing or failing to do with regard to potential cooperation” (Moberg 2000: 408). As with the RRA, the creation of the journal occasioned a significant growth in SSSR membership; a 1973 survey of members showed that 29.1% were sociologists, 24.3% scholars in religious studies, and 12.4% were psychologists (Newman 1974). Because of the financial constraints, the Journal was published in Belgium “cheaply and inconveniently, and with sometimes stunning typos” (Dittes 2000: 428). The workload of the Secretary Treasurer, later Executive Officer, Samuel Z. Klausner of the University of Pennsylvania, increased. Klausner undertook a costly membership drive, but the results were disappointing. There did not seem to be a large enough constituency to share the “ambitious visions of the SSSR held by the then Executive secretary.” So an emergency meeting of the Council met in Peter Berger’s apartment in New York City, “presided over by an extremely diplomatic Charlie Glock” on the matter (Dittes 2000: 428). In late October 1969 SSSR President Charles Glock called William V. D’Antonio, sociology department head at Notre Dame, about taking over the role of Executive Officer.23 The SSSR was in the red about $22,000. Though he was considering leaving Notre Dame and was considering positions elsewhere—he would end up at the University of Connecticut—D’Antonio agreed after having persuaded Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh to supply a $5,000 grant, office space, a secretary, and computer-produced mailing labels. D’Antonio would forego his Executive Secretary stipend, about $3,500, and Lorraine D’Antonio took over the business operations, an activity that she would continue for some years. As William and Lorraine D’Antonio worked their way through the membership lists,

23

by J.M. Kaplan, president of Welch Grape Juice Company, for the purpose of strengthening democracy at home and abroad. It was revealed by Congressman Wright Patman on August 31, 1964, that the Fund received CIA funds that were laundered through other, dummy, foundations; Patman had been investigating the use of foundations to dodge taxes. The earliest known link between the Fund and the CIA dates from 1956, when Mr. Kaplan wrote Allen Dulles offering his services. The Kaplan Fund is a legitimate philanthropic foundation as well as a discreet conduit for CIA funding. On William V. D’Antonio, see Blasi and Donahoe (2002: 157–62, 167–75).

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we discovered that almost half of the people listed as members had not paid dues for one or more years. The same was true for many libraries. And because of the effort to promote the SSSR and its journal, commitments to exchange journals had been made with more than a hundred other associations. (D’Antonio 2000: 431) Having the printing done in Belgium was not saving much money, and complaints from libraries and the U.S. Post Office concerning late-arriving journals were increasing. They opted for a time for the much more economical Scholars Press, located in Montana, merging operations with other societies, but a careful analysis of costs revealed that they were better off going on their own. They changed to A & A. Press of Akron, Ohio, about which they learned through Samuel Mueller; A & A had been printing the journal of the North Central Sociological Association. The change proved both more economical and more satisfactory because of a desired dissociation from the non-scientific societies associated with Scholars Press. When D’Antonio moved to the University of Connecticut, he negotiated Connecticut’s continuing the benefits Notre Dame had been giving; that arrangement lasted even a few years after D’Antonio left Connecticut to become the Executive Officer of the American Sociological Association. In 1973, the SSSR had $22,000 in reserves, which they began to invest. Early in the history of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, about 60% of the articles were essays, often focusing on the relationship between science and religion. Qualitative research represented less than 10% of the articles, and quantitative reports about 30%. Over time, the essays stabilized at about 20%, qualitative research at about 10%, and quantitative research at about 70% (Mauss and Hammons 2000: 450, 457). The percentage of editors who were psychologists was higher than that of the organization’s membership (40% versus 12.4%), the percentage of editors who were in religious studies was lower than in the membership (10% versus 24.3%), and the percentage of editors who were sociologists was higher than in the membership (50% versus 29.1%).24 The first ten editors were as follows:

24

This is counting Samuel Z. Klausner as a sociologist, since he joined the department of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967; he earned two doctorates at Columbia University, one an Ed.D. in psychology and the other a Ph.D. in sociology.

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1961–65 Prentiss Pemberton, Ph.D. religion, Harvard; at Colgate Rochester Divinity 1965–66 Samuel Klausner (interim), Ph.D. sociology, Columbia; at the Bureau of Social Science Research, a policy research non-profit in Washington, D.C. 1967–71 James Dittes, Ph.D. psychology, Yale; at Yale University 1972–74 Benton Johnson, Ph.D. sociology, Harvard; at University of Oregon 1975–78 Richard Gorsuch, Ph.D. psychology, U. of Illinois; at U. of Texas, Arlington 1979–82 Phillip Hammond, Ph.D. sociology, Columbia; at U. of California, Santa Barbara 1983–88 Donald Capps, Ph.D. psychology, U. of Chicago; at Princeton Theological 1989–92 Armand Mauss, Ph.D. sociology, U. of Calif., Berkeley; at Washington State U. 1993–95 David Bromley, Ph.D. sociology, Duke University; at University of Virginia 1996–99 Ralph Hood, Ph.D. psychology, U. of Nevada, Reno; at U. of Tennessee, Chattanooga Clearly, the first editor, Prentiss Pemberton, had a profile quite different from the others; as noted, the character of the articles in the journal changed from the earliest years with their essays about the relationship between religion and science, and subsequent years with far more quantitative reports. The sociologist editors after the interim editor Samuel Klausner held positions in public universities while the psychologist editors held positions in a variety of institutions, ranging from Yale University and Divinity School (Dittes) to state schools (Gorsuch, who would later take an appointment at a theology school; and Hood), to a theology school (Capps). Mauss and Hammons (2000: 449) point out that the three professional associations (ASR, RRA, SSSR) and their journals were particularly important in the mid and late twentieth century. It was an era in which there was considerable intellectual and cultural discussion over the place of religion in academia. Religious studies was growing as a largely humanities-oriented field, and the scientific disciplines—principally psychology and sociology—tended to ignore religion in the major journals. The new journals met a need to document and communicate the scholarship that was emerging in the non-­sectarian social scientific study of religion.

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International Society for the Sociology of Religion

While our present focus is on American sociology of religion, many Americans have participated in professional associations that are not based in the United States. The ASR, RRA, and SSSR are technically international organizations insofar as they place no nationality limits on membership and insofar as many foreign nationals present papers in all three organizations and publish in their journals, but they operate in English only and hold their meetings in the United States (except for the ASR, which has met in Toronto and Montreal when the American Sociological Association has met in those cities). The International Society for the Sociology of Religion/Société Internationale de Sociologie des Religions (ISSR/SISR) operates in French and English and meets bi-annually, often alternating between Europe and other continents. Beginning in 1990, with the help of a grant from the Belgian Lottery, ISSR/SISR entered into an arrangement with the journal Social Compass, whereby an editorial committee of the Society selects papers that had been presented at the ISSR/SISR meeting for publication in Social Compass (Bastenier, Campiche, Dobbelaere, Voyé, and Wilson 1990: 5–6). Social Compass was established in The Netherlands in 1953 as Sociaal Kompas; it became the review of the International Federation of Institutes for Social and Socio-Religious Research as Social Compass in 1960. It publishes thematic issues consisting of articles in the social scientific study of religion in French and English, thereby linguistically matching the ISSR/SISR. The ISSR/SISR was founded as the Conférence Internationale de Sociologie Religieuse by Jacques Leclercq (1891–1971) in 1948, with its first meeting at Louvain.25 Leclercq was an independently minded Belgian priest who had begun to establish sociology at Louvain ten years earlier. The CISR was explicitly non-confessional, but at the third meeting, in Breda, The Netherlands, in 1951 a majority, consisting of clergy interested in applied research, voted to make the organization confessionally Catholic and to have it work in the service of the Church. The 1967 meeting was in Montreal, “avec le patronage de l’American Catholic Sociological Association” (Poulat 1990: 27–28). But during those years the most active scientific members saw the confessional affiliation as a problem and gradually worked to change the orientation of the organization. Finally at the 1971 meeting in Opatija, Yugoslavia, a vote re-established the original non-confessional and scientific orientation of the Conférence. Later the name was changed to the Société Intrnationale de Sociologie des Religions. Americans made presentations at the CISR as early as 1951: Joseph H. Fichter, C. Joseph Nuesse, E.K. Francis, and John L. Thomas (Dobelaere 1989: 377). 25

Here I am following Poulat 1999, who offers a more extensive history of the CISR.

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Research Committee 22 of the International Sociological Association

Again, the present focus is on American sociology of religion; so the account of the ISA research committee on the sociology of religion will be brief. Americans do participate in it and have held offices in it. An informal group presided over by Gabriel Le Bras met at the ISA convention in Amsterdam, on the topic of the sociology of religion in 1956 and proceeded to found the section (called “research committee” in ISA parlance) (Poulat 1990: 24); the Committee dates its founding as 1959. It almost went out of existence through neglect but revived under the honorary chair Ivan Varga at the Brisbane, Australia, meeting in 2002.26

Association for the Scientific Study of Jewry

While the Association for the Sociology of Religion grew out of a religiously identified circle of sociologists interested in general sociology and the Religious Research Association and Society for the Scientific Study of Religion grew out of no particular denominational identity but rather an interest in religion, the Association for the Scientific Study of Jewry grew out of a circle of scholars having a religio-ethnic identity and an interest in ethnic studies as much or more than in religion. An informal network of sociologists interested in the sociology of Jewry held a meeting at the 1970 American Sociological Association meeting in Washington under the auspices of the Association for Jewish Demography and Statistics. The meeting was called by Bernard M. Lazerwitz and Norman L. Friedman, using the office support of Fred Massarik (U.C.L.A. Business School) at the Los Angeles Jewish Federation-Council, where Massarik was part-time Research Director. Massarik was the U.S. Representative of an international group, the Association for Jewish Demography and Statistics. The purpose of the meeting was for Lazerwitz to present a report on national Jewish Population 26

As one who attended the meeting and presented a paper there, I recall there being many participants from Europe, North America, Australia, Japan, and Latin America. The late Ivan Varga had merely to ask those present to elect officers to get the Research Committee going again. Varga (1931–2012) was a genial Hungarian of Jewish ancestry who experienced the Nazi occupation of Budapest as a child and the Russian occupation as a youth. After 1956 the authorities were happy to see him leave to teach at the University of Dar es Salaam; he defected to Germany and then Canada with his family rather than return to Hungary. In Canada he taught at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

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Study and to allow for general discussion and networking. Arnold Dashefsky came to the meeting favoring the formation of a professional association for the sociology of Jewry, and in the discussion Solomon Poll from the University of New Hampshire and Marvin Verbit of Brooklyn College argued in favor of the idea. A steering committee of 13 volunteers was decided upon to establish the new organization; it elected Solomon Poll as chair (after Werner Cahnman declined), Marvin Verbit as vice-chairman, Norman Friedman as secretary, and Arnold Dashefsky as treasurer (Friedman 1986).27 The Association was founded in 1971 as the Association for the Sociological Study of Jewry, adopting its current name afterwards. Its publication, Contemporary Jewry, evolved from a newsletter, bearing its current name since 1976 (Dashefsky 1998). Five of the twelve presidents earned their doctorates in sociology at Columbia University (Mervin Verbit, Marshall Sklare, Samuel Klausner, Celia Heller, and Steven M. Cohen). Others earned their doctorates in sociology at the New School (Chaim Waxman), the University of Chicago (Harold S. Himmelfarb), Rutgers University (Egon Mayer), the University of Florida (Rela Mintz Geffen), the University of Minnesota (Arnold Dashefsky), and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Harriet Hartman). There was one president with a psychology doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania (Allen Glicksman). We have encountered two of these scholars before— Samuel Klausner in connection with the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and Egon Mayer with reference to community studies.28 27

28

Bernard Melvin Lazerwitz earned the M.A. in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1952 and the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Michigan in 1958; he had written widely in the sociology of Jewry and was on the faculty of the University of Missouri at the time. Norman Lee Friedman earned the Ph.D. in sociology in 1965 at the University of Missouri; he was on the faculty of California State University, Los Angeles. As noted in Chapter 3, Solomon Poll earned the Ph.D. in sociology in 1961 at the University of Pennsylvania and spent his career at the University of New Hampshire. Arnold Dashefsky earned the B.A. and M.A. at Temple University and the Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Minnesota; he was on the faculty of the University of Connecticut. Mervin Verbit was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and served on the faculty of Brooklyn College, C.U.N.Y. Werner J. Cahnman (1902–1980) earned the Ph.D. in economics in 1927 at Munich; he had taught at a number of American universities, most recently in Douglass College of Rutgers. Friedman (1986) mentions a few other persons out of the 35 who attended the 1970 meeting but does not provide a complete list. I am grateful to Arnold Dashefsky for bringing Friedman’s account to my attention. Marshall Sklare graduated from Northwestern University and earned a Master’s at the University of Chicago; he served for director of the American Jewish Committee before joining the faculty of Brandeis University. Samuel Klausner, as noted above, was associated with the University of Pennsylvania and had a second Columbia University d­ octorate

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Summary Overview

The respective histories of these professional associations have been tortuous because of shifts in funding and in the purposes they served. Focusing on the three based in the United States, the beginnings were modest and informal. For example, Ralph Gallagher ran the ACSS in the manner of a precinct captain. The early SSSR executive collective made decisions quite apart from the scholars whom they had arranged to elect to various offices. (From my experience, I dare say that many “big name” scholars make a point of neglecting official organizational responsibilities, no matter what office they may technically fill.) For a time the RRA was actually an informal fellowship rather than an association. Growth led to greater formalization, and it was the creation of the scholarly journals that either led to growth, as in the cases of the RRA and the SSSR, or required sufficient growth to ensure a stable financial base, as in the cases of the ACSS/ASR and the SSSR. At the same time, academics, who from the outset governed the ACSS/ASR and the SSSR, do not always make good administrators, and both the ACSS/ASR and the SSSR experienced emergencies as a result—the Donovan and Zahn affairs in the ACSS and the financial crisis of 1969 in the SSSR. In the course of the second half of the twentieth century, specialists of all kinds began to be found in academic institutions, with the converse also becoming true—academics were increasingly expected to be productive creators of specialized knowledge. The “publish or perish” ethic was on the rise. Since then there has been a tendency of university administration to become a specialty in itself, bent on rewarding officious subordinates and punishing advocates of intellectuality, irrespective of whether both categories of appointees had respectable records of scholarly publication or not; but in the late 1960s and through the 1970s there was genuine pressure for academics to be productive in terms of publishing studies (in contrast, for example, to securing grants as ends in themselves). Moreover, American academia was ­growing in psychiatry. Celia Heller graduated from Brooklyn College and taught at Hunter College, C.U.N.Y.. Steven M. Cohen also earned his B.A. from Columbia and is affiliated with Hebrew Union College. Chaim Waxman earned the B.A. at Yeshiva University and served on the faculty at Rutgers University. Harold S. Himmelfarb is a senior research analyst with the U.S. Department of Education. Egon Mayer, as noted above, taught at Brooklyn College, where he also earned the B.A. Rela Mintz Geffen worked at Gratz College in Philadelphia and has served as president of Baltimore Hebrew University. Harriet Hartman earned the B.A. at the University of California Los Angeles and the M.A. at the University of Michigan; she is with Rowan University. Allen Glicksman is Director of Research at the Philadelphia Corporation for the Aging.

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rapidly as both government and industry emphasized technology and the skills of inquiry. All this meant there was an increase in the number of academics, academics who needed to publish, academics oriented to professional journals and the networks in professional societies in which one could learn about research and publication opportunities. There is a saying in sociology to the effect that demography determines history. Demography was on the side of researchers who needed professional societies and professional journals. This had the effect of changing the nature of all three organizations. The ACSS deconfessionalized itself and became the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and its journal underwent a similar deconfessionalization, as well as becoming increasingly specialized. The RRA lost its base in applied denominational researchers, as their offices were downsized or even closed, and gained a new constituency; it and its journal became academically oriented. And the SSSR and its journal quickly ended the discussions about the relationship between religion and science and became a forum of disciplinary research reports about religious phenomena. The International Society for the Sociology of Religion began as a non-confessional professional society but confessionalized as something of a Catholic parallel in Europe to the Religious Research Association in the U.S., insofar as it began to focus on applied studies; the RRA, however, was from its founding attempting to loosen its informal association with mainline American Protestant denominations. Academics were in ultimate control, however, and restored it to its initial non-confessional mission. The research committee concerned with religion in the International Sociological Association had problems of continuity, perhaps related to the very success of the three American associations drawing off participants. The Association for the Scientific Study of Jewry enjoys the advantage of an ethnic as well as professional identity, but that advantage is also a limit insofar as the organization is unlikely to grow with non-Jewish members.

chapter 6

Observations American sociology of religion began with an interest in religion on the part of individuals, many of them clergy, writing dissertations at research universities. No one or two university departments of sociology were centers for the sociology of religion per se; rather dissertations on the subject were written at the same universities where scholars also wrote sociological dissertations on other topics. The percentages of sociology dissertations written about religion neither increased nor decreased markedly over time, though their number increased notably as the field expanded. The type of research conducted in the field changed around 1970 as the availability of computers on university campuses (and later, on researchers’ desktops) made large-scale survey research possible. Sociologists spent less time counting churches and tracing the histories of religious leaders’ stands on social issues and more time surveying people’s religiosity and their attitudes about social and political issues. It is tempting to interpret the shift away from church planning studies in the trajectory of the Religious Research Association and the deconfessionalization of the Association for the Sociology of Religion as indicators of secularization, a loss of religious authority. Before fixing on such a generalization, it is useful to consider an interesting development in the 1960s. After Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann had collaborated on their well-known treatise in the sociology of knowledge, The Social Construction of Reality, Berger pursued an academic career in the U.S. while Luckmann pursued his in Europe. Berger wrote a volume on religion that depicted religions as having an increasingly precarious existence in a secular relativizing world, but afterward he abandoned that secularization presupposition. The everyday experiences of living in America (and most places outside Europe) simply contradicted the secularization hypothesis. Luckmann too wrote a volume on religion, wherein the very existence of religion in a secular world was problematic; religion was not even visible as religion, if by the latter one meant a system of supra-natural beliefs. The difference between these two intellectual trajectories is telling; if secularization was in progress in America, it was so invisibly, and religion could hardly be thought of as vibrant in Europe. What is particularly relevant to the development of the sociology of religion in America is the absence of secularization here. The trajectory of the American Catholic Sociological Society/Association for the Sociology of Religion was one of deconfessionalization, but that could not be secularization if the American context was not in fact secularizing.

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The trajectory of the liberal Protestant church planners whose network produced the Religious Research Association has more the appearance of a deplannification process than a history of secularization. And the birth and development of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion hardly reflects any disinterest in religion, though there was a gradual abandonment of discussions about the place of religion in the world of science and a sudden embrace of the social scientific study of people’s religious activity. Josephsohn and Williams have recently made a claim about the three professional societies that presupposes a secularization paradigm: All these associations have secularized and become home to academic research and university-based scholars . . ., but they remained home to faculty and scholarship that seeks to demonstrate the importance of religion in contemporary society. And not surprisingly, these scholars often emphasized the positive effects of religion in the social world. (Josephsohn and Williams 2013: 124) I see no evidentiary support for such a claim. The church planners of what would become the RRA, even the proponents of “Catholic sociology” in the ACSS in the 1940s, and the religious studies scholars who organized the SSSR made neither worship nor theology the purpose of their organizations; hence they could not have later abandoned such a purpose.1 Furthermore, they are not about demonstrating the importance of religion in contemporary society; such importance is an empirical matter that may or may not be real. Either way, the scientists who are members of the professional associations will report what they find. Moreover, most academics, including those engaged in the sociology of religion, are on the social and political left of most issues; they would not take the commonly found correlations of religiosity with pro-war sentiment, racial and ethnic prejudice, and homophobia to be “positive effects of religion.” American sociology began organizationally as a caucus within the context of American economists. They founded their professional association, the American Sociological Society, in 1906, a mere fifteen years after Albion Small 1 Once one morning at a meeting of the Southern Sociological Society I stepped into a hotel elevator to go down for breakfast, only to find myself riding with a prominent criminologist who recognized me and herded me into a prayer breakfast. He told me about a Christian prayer fellowship of sociologists. I have never had that happen to me at a meeting of the ASR or joint meeting of the RRA and SSSR. On Sunday mornings, however, the ASR used to host a Catholic mass presided over by the Jesuit, Joseph Fitzpatrick; one had to intend to attend.

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and his university president, William Rainey Harper, established the graduate program in sociology at the University of Chicago. The intent was to promote sociology as a science, and they struggled to distinguish the field from social reform and social work. That differentiation, not a new separation from religion, would be the controlling dynamic in the discipline. Social work and social reform needed reliable, non-partisan knowledge that took the form of facts and explanations. The relationship between sociology on the one hand and social reform and social work on the other was to be analogous to the relationship between biology and nursing. Consequently, sociology from the outset was to be a secular scientific endeavor. Liberal Protestant denomination officials early on developed an interest in using sociological research for purposes of planning the social services associated with their churches. Over time such people as Warren H. Wilson, Edmund deS. Brunner, H. Paul Douglass, and later Murray H. Leiffer, for a while funded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., developed quantitative methods of data collection and analysis in order to provide largely descriptive information about churches and social services. There never was broad support for their endeavors in the churches. With the post-World War II economic expansion and suburbanization in the United States, the need was for church planning rather than social service planning, and that need was short-lived; the downtown congregations had migrated out of the city centers. Consequently, by the time the Religious Research Association was established, the interest was religion rather than church planning and social service planning, and the researchers with reports to publish came from university sociology departments, not denominational headquarters and theology schools. The interest in religion in university-based sociology does not look much like secularization, but neither does it look like a cadre of devious apologists, crypto or otherwise, sneaking a religious agenda into the secular academy. The founders of the American Catholic Sociological Society shared a theology, based on the social encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI, but that is not what they meant by a “Catholic sociology.” Catholic sociology was social reform as seen from the perspective of the working class European ethnics and the advocates of the civil rights of African Americans. What troubled such people as Francis Friedel, Ralph Gallagher, and Raymond Murray about the American Sociological Society was the disdain directed toward Catholics and other minorities, toward a sociology engaged with social issues, and toward undergraduate education. Ironically, at about the time they organized the ACSS, matters began to change. The American Sociological Society was on good terms with the ACSS, Catholics were entering sociology graduate programs at non-Catholic universities, racism was becoming a concern in mainstream sociology, and the American Sociological Society would soon elect an

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African American president. Only the neglect of undergraduate teaching of sociology would persist as a problem. Consequently, some of the discussions in the American Catholic Sociological Review addressed the question of whether there was even such a thing as a Catholic sociology. It should be noted that the ACSS and its journal did not focus on the sociology of religion. It was only after the raison d’être of a separate confessional sociological association disappeared, i.e., after the election of a Catholic, John F. Kennedy, as president of the United States and the disappearance (if not elimination) of discrimination against Catholics in academia, that the organization was transformed into an association for the sociology of religion. The deconfessionalization of the ACSS and its transformation into the Association for the Sociology of Religion was not an instance of secularization; indeed it marked a new interest in religion as a matter of inquiry. At the same time, the reaction against Ralph Gallagher’s attempt to suppress Gordon Zahn’s sensitive findings about the Catholic press in Germany under the Nazi regime demonstrates the strong professional identity as “disinterested” social scientists that prevailed in the membership. The movement that led to the change in editors of the organization’s journal did not come from any new outsiders from non-Catholic universities, if there were any such, but from insiders, Board members; and Loretta Morris reported that the faculty and graduate students from Catholic University of America were agitated over the matter and ready to defend Zahn. Meanwhile the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion redirected its discussion from the place of religion in the world of science and to the workings of religion in society. There never was a church-related origin for the organization. Its direction and that of its journal was soon set by social scientists, mostly in non-church related universities, who found religion to be an important object of research. The creation of such an organization hardly suggests a process of secularization! One of the factors that kept it from merging with the Religious Research Association is that it never did see itself as a church-related association; religious behavior deserved respectful scientific examination, not more church connections. In the research for this study I have explored some territory that was new to me, particularly the early dissertations in chapter 1 and origins and early histories of the research institutes in chapter 4. The articles in journals and entries in volumes of collected essays after 1959 comprised more familiar territory for the most part since I began subscribing to Sociological Analysis in 1968 and was in graduate school when the research projects of Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark and those of Andrew Greeley were still fresh and the exchange over Gerhard Lenski’s The Religious Factor and Glock and Stark’s Christian

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Beliefs and Anti-Semitism were in progress. Sociologists of religion interpreted their empirical research with middle range theories; they seemed to ignore developments in sociological theory, where functionalism was giving way to Marxian analyses, symbolic interactionist portrayals, and phenomenological interpretations. Meanwhile, they thought computer-aided multivariate analyses of survey data had become more arithmetically sophisticated. I came to know many of the people whose works figured into the tables in Chapter 2 and even found one of my own early projects among the community studies registered in Chapter 3. In the present study I have tried to restrict memories to footnotes, but the memories are there. The founding generation of the professional associations and their journals has passed away or is very much up in years. The same is true of the authors of the earlier histories: Jeff Hadden has passed away, and Loretta Morris and Dave Moberg have retired, as for that matter have I. So why is it I and not someone else who writes the history? On the one hand, I am chronologically between the founders and the young and have a duty of sorts as one active both in the history of sociology and the sociology of religion. But also—and this is the reason for raising the issue—I have the database of early American sociologists and maintain the bibliographic database in the sociology of religion. My unique access to the former and “inside” knowledge of the latter enabled me to organize the tables featured in Chapters 1 and 2. I recommend that kind of research both as a corrective to any impressionistic accounts that may pass for history and as a better representation of the body of works in the field than a “great personage” approach would produce. Hence I am arguing for the inclusion of studies that are not citation classics and of unpublished dissertations. If we want to comprehend what has happened, we need to take in the broader picture. The several narratives—that of articles and chapters in collections in Chapter 2, of community studies in Chapter 3, of research institutes in Chapter 4, and of professional associations in Chapter 5—were arbitrarily cut off at 1984, a quarter century after the founding of the specialized journals. I think it is a defensible arbitrariness; one should not write at length or in detail about oneself and one’s contemporaries while claiming objectivity. However, significant developments have come about since then. So I should mention the organization of the Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association. It was found that many graduate students writing dissertations in the field did not know about the Association for the Sociology of Religion or its journal Sociology of Religion, but they knew about the American Sociological Association, its journals, and its meetings. The thought was that the involvement of ASR members in an ASA section would occasion the development of

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networks to the advantage of the specialty and of the next generation of graduate students alike. So while the present history has accounted for the reasons why there are three professional associations and journals, now there are four organizations (but still three journals). It is intriguing that in the early days of the American Catholic Sociological Society there was a proposal to affiliate it with the main sociological association as a way of influencing the larger body. Has that in effect now taken place through the establishment of an ASA section by members of the ASR? Because of the contemporary importance of religion in both international conflict and domestic American politics, there is a need, a research-centered scientific one at that, to address religious phenomena with some degree of sophistication rather than in the token manner in which it was dealt with in some of the community studies of the past. I believe that contemporary sociologists of religion are having that kind of impact on the wider social scientific community, though it is not necessarily the philosophical impact the ACSS founders had in mind. A second development is the impact the Internet is having on the way scholarly journals are published. Before the Internet age, an author sent four or so copies of a submission by surface mail to a journal editor, who in turn kept one copy for the files and mailed the other three to reviewers. The reviewers sent their recommendations, often on a paper form that had been included in the mailing of the copy of the manuscript to the reviewer, back to the editor. The editor then summarized the reports and sent a decision to the author(s): accept, revise, or reject. Revisions went through the same process by surface mail. Once a manuscript was accepted, it was bundled with other accepted manuscripts and sent, again by surface mail, to the printer. The printer mailed galleys to the editor for review and correction of errors, and sometimes the editor would in turn mail galleys to authors for corrections—depending on the time remaining before a publication deadline. Once the editor had all corrections in hand, the bundle of corrected galleys went back by surface mail to the printer for the production and mailing of the journal. The work of the editor was labor intensive, requiring secretarial support, and it consumed much time and paper. It often required a financial commitment on the part of the editor’s own university. When I served as editor of the Review of Religious Research (2008–2011), the very existence of the Internet greatly simplified the process. Since the Review is an interdisciplinary journal, the most difficult task for the editor is finding knowledgeable, balanced, and reliable reviewers for each manuscript. Without all the mailing and re-mailing of manuscripts, I was able to spent more time on selecting and contacting reviewers, by Internet, and less in secretarial work.

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I was advised to keep a file of hard copies of manuscripts in case of an electronic disaster of some kind; so I required one hard copy and an electronic file, the latter by e-mail or CD, that I could forward to reviewers electronically. Advisory opinions came from the reviewers on an electronic form that I supplied. I was able to send my decision to the author(s), with quotations from reviewers, electronically—again eliminating much secretarial work. It became evident to me that other journal editors were simply forwarding raw reviewer comments to authors, while I edited out patently ill-informed, wrong-headed, and nasty comments from reviewers, as had to be done in the days of working with hard copies; some authors (young ones, who did not know about past practices) expressed surprise that they did not receive raw comments. A few even demanded raw comments! Little did I know; I wanted to communicate something focused and useful for revisions. In any event, scholarly journal publishing was in a transition phase. I still had to send a bundle of manuscripts—electronically—to the printer, who then after some time sent me in return hard copy galleys for correction. I usually proofread the galleys myself, though sometimes I “outsourced” the task. The eventual printing job was based on the corrections sent back by surface mail to the printer. Thus there were still a number of trips to the post office, where I became a familiar patron. As every active scholar knows today, the process has changed again. Publishing houses are now responsible for journals. Sociology of Religion is published by Oxford University Press, the Review of Religious Research by Springer,2 the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion by Wiley/Blackwell, and Social Compass by Sage. Authors deliver their manuscripts electronically to the publishers’ websites, where the editor and reviewers can access them. The editor communicates with the reviewers and authors by electronic mail. The distribution side of the operation is also handled by the publisher, whose system keeps track of association memberships and subscriptions (an inducement to the professional associations to use their services). All this greatly reduces costs on the part of the professional associations. Since the publishers make articles available electronically for a fee to libraries through such databases as JSTOR and even online for individual electronic purchase, they derive an added income that they share with the professional associations. Consequently the new technology has greatly reduced operating costs for the associations and generated income for them beyond membership fees. Consequently, journals that began so precariously are now stable and profitable. Methodological issues have evolved over the decades. Apart from philosophers in religious studies departments, methodological questions are not 2 There are several Springer companies; it is the one with the chess knight or horse head logo.

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about whether religious adherents can be objective about religion, and not about values and justice. There is unquestionably some loss in the neglect of issues of values and justice insofar as such issues are real dimensions of social reality. As the founders of the American Catholic Sociological Society noted, one could hardly study criminology or juvenile delinquency without considering the values at stake, and the merit of such a study as Middletown resides greatly in the value-relevance of the quotations taken from community members and the value implications of the organization of data by class. Moreover, much of the research conducted in the sociology of religion is no longer for purposes of planning. Community studies are still a somewhat neglected aspect of the sociology of religion, which is too bad since people change congregations with or without changing denominations on the basis of alternatives present to them where they live. Religion occasions the formation of subcommunities and networks of social support, and those are necessarily localized. The Internet includes some religious content, but it does not seem to be supplanting religious congregations and parish groups. Sociologists are now engaging in participant observation studies of small religious groups, often yielding rich ethnographic data. I am particularly impressed with the rich quality of some of the ethnographic material on Orthodox Jewish life in New York City and Israel that has been generated, as well as some of the material on Afro-Brazilian religion, in what are in effect community studies, though the ethnographers do not tie their work in with the community study tradition. There are also a number of interview studies that may or may not be linked to a community; unfortunately many researchers do not realize that much that goes on in the social world, including religion, occurs in non-verbalized activity because it is not yet conceptualized by the participants. There is a tendency for scholars who do interview studies to claim that they are producing “thick description”; they are not if all that they report is based on verbalization. Unsettled questions of a more technical nature remain. Likert-type items still appear in surveys, and they are frequently treated quantitatively as if they were scales; at best they are indexes using ordinal-level measures. When as an editor I received evaluations on social psychological papers, I noticed that psychologists, who specialize in measuring subtle dispositions with genuine scales, were especially critical of the use of a few Likert-type items from a large survey database for the purpose. The psychologists have a point. There is also the use of odds ratio logs in quasi-regression models where the criterion for a “finding” is a significance level; that is disturbingly close to confusing the likelihood of a probability level for a quantitative prediction, an error not unlike the early misuse of chi-squared statistics.

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Then there is the unsettled controversy over the use of regression analysis in the place of cross-tabulation for the study of added effects. This was what was at issue between Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark on the one hand and Russell Middleton on the other, in the debate over Christian Beliefs and AntiSemitism. In defending the use of cross-tabulation, Glock and Stark argued that they were not trying to find whether selected Christian beliefs contributed to the explanation of more variation in a measure of anti-Semitism when entered into a predictive regression model but whether the beliefs had an added effect. The reply was that an interaction term could be added to the model. There is some ambiguity in the expression, addition. In one meaning, a set of measures is treated as a prediction model, and the belief score could be “added” as another independent variable. In a second meaning, an interaction term (in this case the product of the belief scores times some other variable) could be “added” as an “addition” to the main prediction model that includes the belief measure in the set of main predictors. Glock and Stark seem to have had neither of these in mind. Using cross-tabulation, what they wanted to know was after anti-Semitism, the dependent variable, was in place, did the belief scores seem to enhance or reinforce it in some way. That would be neither an independent effect nor an interaction effect. Interaction terms are for contingencies: given an independent variable, does belief enter in? For Glock and Stark, it was not the other independent variables that conditioned an independent variable of interest (the belief scores), but the dependent variable that did so, whether anti-Semitism affected belief so that the latter in turn enhanced or reinforced it. This raises the issue whether using controls in cross-tabulation and in regression equations are tantamount to the same thing; it would appear that they are not. In the study of religion, it is important to measure what a religious disposition might create by way of a new enhancement in an attitude set. All of this is to say that the sociology of religion is not at an end of its development. The secular science of sociology has, and apparently will continue to have in the future, a fascination with religion, and it will undergo changes in the pursuit engendered by that fascination.

Appendix I

American Dissertations in the Sociology of Religion, 1895–1959



Dissertations Included in the Study

Pelton, DeWitt. 1895. The Church and Social Reform. New York University. This early work is more homiletic than scientific. The author does not appear in the database of early American sociologists. Gillette, John Morgan. 1901. Cultural Agencies of a Typical Manufacturing Group: South Chicago. University of Chicago. While there are descriptive data on churches, religious agencies, church-related schools, and religious service clubs, the focus is not chiefly that of the sociology of religion. Davenport, Frederick Morgan. 1905. Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals. A Study in Mental and Social Evolution. Columbia University. Appleton, Floyd. 1906. A Study of the Philanthropic Institutions of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the City of New York. Columbia University. The author does not appear in the database of early American sociologists. Gillin, John Lewis. 1906. The Dunkers. A Sociological Interpretation. Columbia University. Wilson, Warren Hugh. 1907. Quaker Hill. A Sociological Study. Columbia University. A community study relevant to the field of economy and society, this is something of a variation of Weber’s protestantische Ethik essays, which are not cited. Faust, Allen Klein. 1909. Christianity as a Social Factor in Modern Japan. University of Pennsylvania. Descriptive account of the presence and impact of Christianity in Japan, by a former missionary. Young, Clarence Andrew. 1912. Down-town Church. A Study of a Social Institution. University of Pennsylvania. Social problems, social control, urban sociology. The author does not appear in the database of early American sociologists. Carroll, Charles E. 1914 (published 1916). The Community Survey in Relation to Church. University of Denver. Demography, social problems. The author expresses indebtedness to George Elliott Howard of the University of Nebraska. Bossard, James Herbert. 1918. The Churches of Allentown. A Study in Statistics. University of Pennsylvania. Demography, community. Edwards, Lyford Paterson. 1919. The Transformation of Early Christianity from an Eschatological to a Socialized Movement. University of Chicago (church history). Newell, Jane Isabel. 1919. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in America. University of Wisconsin. Social movement perspective, without using the term. Jensen, Howard Eikenberry. 1920. The Rise of Religious Journalism in the United States. University of Chicago. Media studies.

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Geddes, Joseph Archer. 1922. The United Order among the Mormons, Missouri Phase: An Unfinished Experiment in Economic Organization. Economy and society. Barnhart, Kenneth Edwin. 1924. The Evolution of the Social Consciousness in Methodism. University of Chicago. Fry, C. Luther. 1924. Diagnosing the Rural Church. A Study in Method. Columbia University. The foreword by Franklin H. Giddings evaluates the study as an “outstanding example” of the transition from “impressionistic” and “loose” survey research to “creditably scientific” work. Price, Maurice T. 1924. Christian Missions an Oriental Civilization. A Study in Culture Conflict. University of Chicago. Daniel, William Andrew. 1925. Negro Theological Seminary Survey. University of Chicago. Minorities, sociology of education. The author does not appear in the database of early American sociologists. Janzen, Cornelius Cicero. 1926. A Social Study of the Mennonite Settlement in the Counties of Marion, McPherson, Harvey, Reno, and Butler, Kansas. University of Chicago. Ethnic relations. Wirth, Louis. 1926. The Ghetto. University of Chicago. Urban sociology. Jones, Lester Martin. 1927. Quakers in Action. Recent Humanitarian and Reform Activities of the American Quakers. University of Wisconsin. Sympathetic account of the American Friends Service Committee. Gower (Chapman), Charlotte Day. 1928. The Supernatural Patron in Sicilian Life. University of Chicago (anthropology). Studies folk Catholicism. Stevens, Raymond B. 1928. The Social and Religious Influences of the Small Denominational College of the Middle West. University of Michigan. Sociology of Education. White, Reuel Clyde. 1928. Denomintionalism in Certain Rural Communities in Texas. Columbia University. Rural sociology. Kincheloe, Samuel Clarence. 1929. The Prophet—A Study in the Sociology of Leadership. University of Chicago. Nelson, Lowry. 1929. The Mormon Village: A Study in Social Origins. University of Wisconsin. Atwood, Jesse Howell. 1930. The Attitudes of Negro Ministers of the Major Denominations in Chicago toward Racial Division in American Protestantism. University of Chicago (Divinity School). Race relations. Becker, Howard Paul. 1930. Ionia and Athens: Studies in Secularization. University of Chicago. Hanson, Asael Tanner. 1930. The Role of the Auxiliary Organizations in the Mormon System of Social Control. University of Wisconsin. Deviance/social control. Sutherland, Robert Lee. 1930. An Analysis of Negro Churches in Chicago. University of Chicago (Christian ethics). Urban ethnography.

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Young, Pauline Vislick. 1930 (published 1932). The Pilgrims of Russia-Town. University of Southern California. The syle and procedure are reminiscent of Thomas and Znaniecki’s Polish Peasant in Europe and America, which is cited. Abrams, Ray H. 1931. Preachers Present Arms. University of Pennsylvania. Propaganda analysis, peace studies. Wells, Carl Douglas. 1931. The Changing City Church. University of Southern California. Study of the Disciples of Christ. Dove, Frederick Denton. 1932. Cultural Change in the Church of the Brethren. University of Pennsylvania. Henley, David E. 1935. The Society of Friends and Creative Peace-making—A Study in Social Values. University of Southern California. Social change. Woodard, James Wroten. 1935. Reification and Supernaturalism as actors in Social Rigidity and Social Change. University of Pennsylvania. A purely speculative exercise. Merton, Robert King. 1936. Science, Technology & Society in Seventeenth Century England. Harvard University. Sociology of science, sociology of knowledge. DeNood, Neal Breaule. 1937. The Diffusion of a System of Belief. Harvard University. Christian Science. Lloyd, Wesley P. 1937. The Rise and Development of Lay Leadership in the Latter-day Saint Movement. University of Chicago (Divinity School). Available for this study only as a printed excerpt that did not give citations. McQuade, Vincent A. 1938. The American Catholic Attitude on Child Labor Since 1891. Catholic University of America. Social problems. Rankin, Fay Swogger. 1938. The Religious Attitudes of College Students: A Comparative Study. Peabody College for Teachers (now part of Vanderbilt University). Education. Roskelley, Richard Belling. 1938. Attitudes and Overt Behavior. Their Relationship to Each Other and to Selected Factors. University of Wisconsin. Alcohol studies, methodology. Williams, John Paul. 1938. Social Adjustment in Methodism. Columbia University. Wolters, Gilbert Francis. 1938. A Socio-Economic Analysis of Four Rural Parishes in Nemaha County, Kansas. Catholic University of America. Rural sociology. Deets, Lee Emerson. 1939. The Hutterites: A Study in Social Cohesion. Columbia University. Dodson, Dan William. 1940. Protestant Church Trends of New York City. New York University. Urban, social change. Miller, Haskell M. 1940. Institutional Behavior of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, an American Protestant Religious Denomination. New York University. Social control. Pope, Liston. 1940 (published 1942). Millhands and Preachers (book title). Yale University. Social change, economic sociology.

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Fretz, Joseph Winfield. 1941. Mennonite Mutual Aid. A Contribution toward the Establishment of a Christian Community. University of Chicago (Divinity School). Historical sociology. Williams, Melvin John. 1941 (published 1950). Catholic Social Thought. Its Approach to Contemporary Problems (published title). Duke University. History of sociology. Butts, Carl Frederick. 1942. The Shakers: A Case Study in Social Variation. Yale University. Communes. Fischoff, Ephraim. 1942. Max Weber and the Sociology of Religion with Special Reference to Judaism. New School for Social Research (now New School University). Theory. Schnepp, Gerald J. 1942. Leakage from a Catholic Parish. Catholic University of America. Demography. Smith, Rockwell C. 1942. The Church in Our Town. A Study of the Relationship between the Church and the Rural Community (published title). University of Wisconsin. Rural sociology. It was not clear how closely the 1948 book reflects the dissertation. Yinger, J. Milton. 1942 (published 1946 with revisions). Religion in the Struggle for Power: A Study in the Sociology of Religion (published title). University of Wisconsin. Nuesse, Celestine Joseph. 1944. The Social Thought of American Catholics 1634–1839. Catholic University of America. History of social thought, sociology of knowledge. Eister, Allan W. 1945. Drawing-room Conversion. A Sociological Account of the Oxford Group Movement. University of Wisconsin. Social movements. Weller, Forrest Levaun. 1945. The Changing Religious Sect. A Study of Social Types. University of Chicago. Church of the Brethren (Dunkers). Gaudreau, Marie Agnes of Rome. 1946. The Social Thought of French Canada as Reflected in the Semaine Sociale. Catholic University of America. History of social thought. Loescher, Frank S. 1946 (published 1948). The Protestant Church and the Negro. A Pattern of Segregation (published title). University of Pennsylvania. Race relations. Goode, William J. 1946 (published 1951). Religion among the Primitives. Pennsylvania State University. Harte, Thomas J. 1947. Catholic Organizations Promoting Negro-White Race Relations in the United States. Catholic University of America. Race relations. Hunt, Chester L. 1947. A Study of the Relationship of the German Protestant Church and National Socialism. University of Nebraska. Culver, Dwight W. 1948 (published 1953). Negro Segregation in the Methodist Church. Yale University. Race relations. Eshleman, Robert Forney. 1948. A Study of Changes in the value Patterns of the Church of the Brethren. Cornell University. Social psychology. Hertz, Karl Herbert. 1948. Bible Commonwealth and Holy Experiment: A Study of the Relation between Theology and Politics in the Puritan and Quaker Colonies. University of Chicago (Committee on Social Thought). History of Social Thought.

appendix i

223

Parenton, Vernon J. 1948. The Rural French-speaking People of Quebec and South Louisiana: A Comparative Study of Social Structure and Organization with Emphasis on the Role of the Catholic Church. Harvard University. Rural sociology. Thomas, John Lawrence. 1949. Some of the Factors Involved in the Breakdown of Catholic Marriage. University of Chicago. Family. Ebersole, Luke Eugene. 1950 (published 1951). Church Lobbying in the Nation’s Capital (published title). University of Pennsylvania. Political sociology. Donovan, John D. 1951. The Catholic Priest. A Study in the Sociology of the Professions. Harvard University. Occupational sociology. Miyakawa, Tetsuo Scott. 1951 (published 1964). Protestants and Pioneers. Individualism and Conformity on the American Frontier. Columbia University. Historical sociology. Moberg, David O. 1951. Religion and Personal Adjustment in Old Age. University of Minnesota. Gerontology. Steglich, Winfred George. 1951. The Lutheran Reformation: A Study in Institutional Genesis. University of Texas. Social movements, sociology of revolution. Fosselman, Donald Harold. 1952. Transitions in the Development of a Downtown Parish. A Study of Adaptations to Ecological Change in St. Patrick’s Parish, Washington, D.C. Catholic University of America. Urban sociology. Bailey, Kenneth Kyle. 1953. The Antievolution Crusade of the Nineteen-Twenties. Vanderbilt University (history). Burchard, Waldo Wadsworth. 1953. The Role of the Military Chaplain. University of California, Berkeley. Social organization. Gold, David. 1953. The Influence of Religious Affiliation on Voting Behavior. University of Chicago. Political sociology. Johnson, Guy Benton. 1953. A Framework for the Analysis of Religious Action. Harvard University. Theory. Holiness religion. Nelson, Leona Bernice. 1953. The Secularization of a Church-related College. University of Chicago. Sociology of education. O’Dea, Thomas F. 1953 (published 1957). The Mormons (published title). Harvard University. Vernon, Glenn Morley. 1953. An Inquiry into the Scalability of Church Orthodoxy. Washington State University. Methods. Mormon studies. Zahn, Gordon Charles. 1953. A Descriptive Study of the Social Backgrounds of Conscientious Objectors in Civilian Public Service During World War II. Catholic University of America. Peace studies. The published version available for this study lacked citations. Curtis, Jack Homer. 1954. Group Marginality and Adherence to Religious Doctrine in an American Community. Stanford University.

224

appendix i

Deane, William Nelson. 1954. The Mormons of the El Dorado Stake and the Valley City Ward. Washington University, St. Louis. Deviance/social control. Dynes, Russell Rowe. 1954. Church-Sect Typology: An Empirical Study. Ohio State University. Gray, Robert Mack. 1954. A Study of the Older Person in the Church. University of Chicago. Gerontology. Pfautz, Harold Winston. 1954. Christian Science: The Sociology of a Social Movement and a Religious Group. Social movements, organization. Bellah, Robert N. 1955 (published 1957). Tokugawa Religion. The Cultural Roots of Modern Japan (published title). Harvard University. Carter, Luther Clyde, Jr. 1955. Negro Churches in a Southern Community. Yale University (religion). Community, race and ethnic relations. Dunn, Willis James. 1955. A Study of Secularization in the Rural Protestant Areas of Isabella County, Michigan. Michigan State University. Rural sociology. Ghormley, Hugh W. 1955. Church Leadership in Polk County, Iowa. Iowa State University. Human ecology. Gregory, W. Edgar. 1955. Doctrine and Attitude: A Study of the Relationship between Religious Doctrine and Socio-Political-Economic Attitudes. University of California, Berkeley (Psychology). Jackson, Douglas Ewing. 1955. Factors Differentiating between Effective and Ineffective Methodist Ministers. Northwestern University. Occupations. Lawson, Lawrence Breslin. 1955. The Protestant Minister in Chicago. A Sociological Study of Work. University of Chicago. Occupations. Royer, Donald M. 1955. The Acculturation Process and the Peace Doctrine of the Church of the Brethren in the Central Region of the United States. University of Chicago. Schmidt, Robert George. 1955. Social Participation as a Factor in Church Growth. Washington University, St. Louis. Stafford, David Benbow. 1955. Sociocultural Change and Quakerism. A Case Study in the Functional Sociology of Religion in Terms of Reference Group Theory. Duke University. Historical sociology, social movements. Swan, Charles Lundeen. 1955. The Class-related Characteristics of Lay Leaders in the Churches of a Small Mid-western City. Northwestern University. Stratification. Wagner, Helmut. 1955. Social and Religious Outlooks of a Young Labor Elite. New School for Social Research (now New School University). Social change, labor studies. Denman, Sidney Brunson. 1956. The Conflict of Church and Sect Roles in the Southern Baptist Ministry. Duke University. Gustafson, Cloyd V. 1956. The Sociology of Fundamentalism: A Typological Analysis Based on Selected Groups in Portland, Oregon, and Vicinity. University of Chicago. Holik, John Steve. 1956. An Index of Religious Group Action. University of Missouri. Methodology.

appendix i

225

Linder, Irene Christine. 1956. Some Factors Influencing Women to Choose Church-related Vocations: A Study in Occupational Sociology. University of Iowa. Occupational sociology. Rhodes, Albert Lewis. 1956. The Effect of Status, Social Participation, Religious Fundamentalism, and Alienation on a Measure of Authoritarianism. Vanderbilt University. Social psychology. Ringer, Benjamin Bernard. 1956. The Parishioner and his Church: A Study in the Sociology of Religion. Columbia University. Blume, George Terrill. 1957. Spatial and Social Relationships of Rural Churches in Six Selected Areas of Missouri. University of Missouri. Rural sociology. Burns, Mary Sheila. 1957. A Comparative Study of Social Factors in Religious Vocations to Three Types of Women’s Communities. Catholic University of America. Occupations. Flint, John Torgny. 1957. State, Church and Laity in Norwegian Society. A Typological Study of Institutional Change. University of Wisconsin. Social movements. Larson, Vernon Wallace. 1957. Factors Related to the Religious Involvement of a Selected Group of High School Boys. Cornell University. Social control. Harrison, Paul M. 1958 (published 1959). Authority and Power in the Free Church Tradition. Yale University. Organization. Heer, David MacAlpine. 1958. The Role of the Working Wife in Catholic Families. Harvard University. Family, stratification. Heiss, Jerold Sheldon. 1958. Interfaith Marriage in an Urban Area. Indiana University. Family. Liu, William Thomas. 1958. A Study of the Social Integration of Catholic Migrants in a Southern Community. Florida State University. Community. Photiadis, John Democritus. 1958. Behavioral Conformity to Church Teaching as a Function of the Sentiments of the Individual and Membership Group Identification. Cornell University. Social psychology. Elder, Joseph W. 1959. Industrialism in Hindu Society. A Case Study in Social Change. Social change, economic sociology, development. Fahey, Frank Joseph. 1959. A Sociological Analysis of a Negro Catholic Parish. University of Notre Dame. Race and minority relations. Gibson, Delbert Lee. 1959. Protestantism in Latin American Acculturation. University of Texas. Ethnicity. Redekop, Calvin Wall. 1959. The Sectarian Black and White World. University of Chicago. Sect, Old Colony Mennonites. Wax, Murray. 1959. Time, Magic, and Asceticism. A Comparative Study of Time Perspectives. University of Chicago. Culture.

226

appendix i

Dissertations Unavailable for the Study

Robinson, Leo James. 1935. The Catholic Credit Union in the United States. St. Louis University. Cuber, John F. 1937. A Study of the Effects of the Depression upon a Group of Protestant Churches in Detroit. University of Michigan. Johnson, Joseph Kelly. 1937. A Case Study of a Religion as a Form of Adjustment Behavior. Washington University, St. Louis. Hulett, James Edward. 1939. The Sociological and Social Psychological Aspects of the Mormon Polygamous Family. University of Wisconsin. Tappan, Paul Wilbur. 1939. Mormon-Gentile Conflict: A Study of the Influence of Public Opinion on In-group versus Out-group Interaction with Special Reference to Polygamy. University of Wisconsin. Mamchur, Stephen W. 1942. Nationalism, Religion, and the Problem of Assimilation among Ukrainians in the United States: A Study of the Effect of Old-World Minority Status upon a Minority Group in the United States, with Specific References to Churches and Auxiliary Organizations. Yale University. Smith, Philip Mason. 1942. Protestant Comity in Metropolitan Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh (religious education/sociology). Bultena, Louis. 1945. A Sociological Study of 18 Protestant Churches of Madison, Wisconsin. University of Wisconsin. Gladden, James W. 1945. The Methodist Church and the Problem of War and Peace: An Analysis in Social Understanding. University of Pittsburgh. Harrison, Walter Richard. 1945. The Attitudes of the Negro towards the Church. Cornell University. Currie, Carleton H. 1946. The Association of Marital Adjustment with Marital Education, Religious Activities, and Other Factors. Ohio State University. Boyer, John Neely. 1947. The Functional Development of Christian Education in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. University of Pittsburgh. Shippey, Frederick Alexander. 1947. Religio-socio-economic Characteristics of Urban Church Officers. Northwestern University (religion). Huber, Milton John. 1949. A History of the Methodist Federation for Social Action. Boston University. Brewer, Earl D.C. 1950. Methodism in Changing American Society. University of North Carolina. Rosen, Bernard Carl. 1952. Religion, Reference Group Theory, and Group Identification. Cornell University. Lovejoy, Albert Edwin. 1957. A Study in Religious Typology: An Analysis of the Becker Continuum. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Appendix II

Origins of the American Catholic Sociological Society and the American Catholic Sociological Review

Table 1

Persons attending the organizing meeting of the American Catholic Sociological Society, March 26, 1938*

Brophy, Sr. Mary Liguori, B.V.M. Mundelein College, Chicago, Illinois Ph.D. (sociology) Catholic University of America, 1942 Brown, Laurence Creighton University, Nebraska M.A.(social service administration) University of Notre Dame, 1929 Burns, Sr. Anne, O.S.B. St. Benedict’s Col., St. Joseph, MN M.A. Marquette University (sociology), 1935 Cahalan, Sr. Canisia, S.S.N.D. Mount Mary College, Wisconsin Ph.D. (sociology) Fordham University, 1930 Clabots, Francis H., O.Praem. St. Norbert’s College, Wisconsin M.A. (sociology) Catholic University of America, 1928 Coogan, John E., S.J. U. of Detroit, Detroit, Michigan Ph.D. (political science) Fordham University, 1934 Egan, Cecille Hyson (Mrs. Howard Egan) DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois M.A. (education) Loyola University of Chicago, 1929 Friedel, Francis, S.M. University of Dayton, Ohio Ph.D. (sociology) U. of Pittsburgh, 1950 Gallagher, Ralph, S.J. Loyola University of Chicago, Illinois Ph.D. (sociology) St Louis University, 1932 Gands, Sr. Marie, O.S.U. Ursuline College, Ohio M.A. (sociology) Catholic University of America, 1936 Gibbs, Sr. Mary Henry, O.P. Rosary College M.A. (anthropology) Catholic University of America, 1932 Gross, Francis W. Notre Dame College, Ohio M.A. (education) Teachers College, Columbia University, 1917 Hilke, George C., S.J. St. Louis University, Missouri M.A. St. Louis University (sociology) 1936 Hoffman, Mathias Martin (Rev.) Columbia Col. (Loras U.), Iowa M.A. (discipline unknown), Catholic U. of America, 1924 Hughes, Vincent, O.P. St. Joseph’s College, Adrian, MI Th. Lett. (history), Friburg, 1926 Kane, Terence T., S.J. Xavier University, Ohio A.M., J.C.D. (Continued) © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004271036_010

228

appendix ii

Table 1 (Continued)

Leger, Sr. Mary Celeste, R.S.M. St. Xavier College, Chicago, Illinois Ph.D. (history) Catholic University of America, 1929 Mamchur, Stephen College of St. Thomas, Minnesota Ph.D. Yale University (sociology) 1942 McKeague, Sr. Isabel, O.S.B. Col. of St. Scholastica, Duluth, MN M.S. (social work) Catholic University of America, 1938 Minges, Sr. Seraphia, S.S.N.D. Notre Dame Mother House, WI (no information)** Mundie, Paul Marquette University, Wisconsin Ph.D. (sociology) Georgetown University, 1930 Murray, Raymond W., C.S.C. University of Notre Dame, Indiana Ph.D. (sociology) Catholic University of America, 1926 O’Leary, Joseph M., C.SS.P. Passionist Monastery, IL S.T.D., Angelicum, Rome, 1952 Reuss, Margaret Marquette University, Wisconsin M.A. (sociology) Marquette University Richardson, Margaret Barat College, Lake Forest, Illinois (no information) Schroeder, Sr. Mary Pascal, B.V.M. Clarke College, Dubuque, Iowa M.A. (sociology), University of Wisconsin, 1925 Schwartz, Sr. Mary Christina, I.H.M. Mary Grove College, Detroit, MI Ph.D. (sociology) Catholic University of America, 1938 Weberg, Frank P. College of S. Francis, Joliet, Illinois Ph.D. (economics) Catholic University of America, 1929 Weitzman, Louis, S.J. John Carroll University, Ohio Ph.D. Catholic University of America (sociology) 1931 Wiley, Thomas College of St. Theresa, Minnesota (no information) * The list of names and institutions, with corrections in the spelling of some names, is from Rosenfelder 1948. Archivists at the institutions graciously supplied surnames of many of the female religious. Information on highest graduate degrees came from archivists, Dissertation Express, Library catalog information, and Mihanovich 1946). ** According to Ann McIntyre, Mount Mary College archivist, Mother M. Seraphia Minges (1847–1938) was born and educated in Rochester, New York, as Margaret Minges. She was reported to be well educated for a woman of that time and is considered a founder of Mount Mary College since she was the religious superior of St. Mary’s Academy when the decision was made to open a college. From the life span dates it appears that she was 91 years of age at the time of the meeting and died later in the year.

appendix ii Table 2

229

First editorial board of the American Catholic Sociological Review (1940)*

Ralph Gallagher, S.J. Loyola University of Chicago Ph.D. (sociology) St. Louis University Sr. Anne Burns, O.S.B. St. Benedict’s College, Minnesota M.A. (sociology) Marquette University Arthur T. Donahoe Loyola University, New Orleans Ph.D. (history) University of Kansas Elizabeth Frances Miley, S.S.J. Regis College, Massachusetts Ph.D. (sociology) Boston College George Fitzgibbon Boston College Ph.D. (sociology) Harvard University Frank T. Flynn University of Notre Dame M.A. (sociology) University of Notre Dame (later Ph.D. University of Chicago) Paul Hanly Furfey Catholic University of America Ph.D. (sociology) Catholic University of America Franz Mueller St. Louis University Ph.D. (social science) University of Cologne Leo Robinson, S.J. Gonzaga University, Washington State Ph.D. (sociology) St. Louis University Eva J. Ross (New York City) Ph.D. (sociology) Yale University Helen M. Toole College of New Rochelle, New York (unknown) Thomas Wiley College of St. Teresa, Minnesota (unknown) * The list appears in Rosenfelder 1948: 102–03. Information on the highest degrees come from the same kinds of source as in Table 1 of this Appendix.

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Name Index Abbott, Andrew  48 Abbott, Edith  6 Abrams, Ray H.  33, 33n Adams, Herbert Baxter  13 Adams, James Luther  198 Addams, Jane  111, 112 Adorno, Theodor W.  163n Alexander, Frank D.  133, 133n Allport, Gordon  198 Ammerman, Jackson  17n Ammerman, Nancy T.  140, 140n Anderson, Andy B.  170 Anderson, Arthur L.  139, 139n Angell, James R.  123 Appleton, Floyd  18n Aronovici, Carol  6–7 Asch, Roberta  64 Austin, Mary Hunter  157n Babbie, Earl R.  166 Bahr, Howard M.  123ff., 123n Bailey, Wilfred C.  141, 141n, 142n Barker, Eileen  101n Barnes, Harry Elmer  35 Barton, James L.  156, 156n Bastenier, Albert  205 Beck, Frank Orman  173, 173n Becker, Howard P.  32, 33n, 35 Beckford, James A.  101n Bellah, Robert N.  45, 81–83, 91 Bender, Courtney  9–10 Bendix, Reinhard  49 Bensman, Joseph  136, 136n Benson, Peter L.  178 Berger, Peter L.  24, 60, 62–64, 79, 81, 102, 202, 210 Bernard, Luther Lee  12, 14 Besanceney, Paul H.  170 Beyer, Peter  100 Blackmar, Frank Wilson  13 Blasi, Anthony J.  5, 9n, 13, 14, 17, 50n, 51n, 55n, 78, 101n, 109n, 114n, 139–40, 139n, 184n, 186n, 202n Bliss, Edwin Munsell  147 Blondel, Maurice  53n

Blumer, Herbert  48, 49, 53n, 54–55, 57, 64 Boer, Roland  11 Bogardus, Emory  20 Bornman, C.J.  169 Bossard, James Herbert  19, 30–31, 147, 180 Bourg, Carroll J.  191 Bowman, Paul Hoover  134 Boyarin, Jonathan  11 Breckenridge, Sophronisba  6 Brewer, Earl D.C.  197 Bromley, David  193, 204 Brophy, Sr. Liguori  184 Brown, James Stephen  134–35 Brown, Laurence  184, 185n Brunner, Edmund deS.  7, 30, 32, 33n, 34, 113n, 153–54, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 161, 163, 163n, 169, 180, 194, 196, 197, 212 Burgess, Ernest W.  20, 22, 48, 53, 54, 125 Burns, Allen Tibbals  157n Burrhoe, Ralph  200, 201 Burton, Ernest D.  156, 156n Bushee, Frederick A.  14n Cadge, Wendy  9–10 Cahalan, Sr. Canisia  184 Cahnman, Werner  207, 207n Campbell, Angus  170 Campbell, Ernest Q.  138–39, 138n Campiche, Roland  205 Cantril, Hadley  163, 172 Caplow, Theodore  121, 123ff., 123n Capps, Donald  204 Carroll, Charles Eden  19 Carroll, Jackson W.  144–45, 144n, 145, 177 Carter, Ellwood B.  14n Carter, Luther Clyde, Jr.  142, 142n Case, Shirley Jackson  29, 30, 32 Castels, Manuel  140 Cavan, Ruth Shonle  30, 31 Chadwick, Bruce A.  123ff., 123n Clark, Elmer T.  34, 35, 36 Clark, Terry Nichols  172 Clark, Walter Houston  198, 199–200 Coe, George A.  4 Cohen, Steven M.  207, 208n

252 Commons, John R.  3, 158n Comte, Auguste  52, 54, 83 Connell, R.W.  25 Converse, Jean M.  163n, 172 Cooley, Charles Horton  13, 15, 22, 26, 54 Cooper, Arch  141n Coser, Lewis A.  54 Cuneo, Michael W.  17 Cushing, Richard  178 D’Antonio, Lorraine  202–03 D’Antonio, William V.  50, 202–03, 202n Daane, J.  200 Daniel, William Andrew  18n Dashefsky, Arnold  207, 207n Davenport, Frederick Morgan  26, 29, 30 Davidson, James D.  50 Davis, James A.  173 Davis, Kingsley  165 Dean, Dwight G.  176n Deegan, Mary Jo  57n, 159 Deets, Lee Emerson  125, 125n Demerath, Nicholas J. III  49, 166 Dewey, John  13, 23, 160 Dittes, James E.  197, 201, 202, 204 Dobbelaere, Karel  205 Dohen, Dorothy  189 Donahoe, Bernard F.  51n, 184n, 186n, 202n Donovan, John  185, 208 Douglas, Mary  198 Douglass, Harlan Paul  7, 32, 33n, 34, 35, 155–56, 157, 158, 160, 161, 175, 193, 212 Douglass, Truman Orville  155 Dove, Frederick Denton  33, 33n Doyle, Ruth  177 DuBois, W.E.B.  7, 26, 29, 32, 34, 107, 109, 112–13, 115, 149ff. Dulles, Allen  202n Durkheim, Émile  3n, 22, 24, 25, 31, 34, 35, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 80, 83–84, 84n, 195 Earle, John R.  129–30, 129n, 145 Earp, Edwin  7 Eaton, Walter  141n Eister, Allan  200–01 Eklund-Olson, Sheldon  65 Ellwood, Charles A.  14n, 20, 30, 31, 32

name index Ely, Richard  3, 26 Ensminger, Douglas  169 Facey, Paul  188 Fanfani, Amintore  32, 33n, 34 Faris, Elsworth  22, 23, 26 Faris, Robert E. Lee  20, 22, 23 Farrell, James J.  64 Faunce, William Herbert Perry  156, 156n–157n Fauset, Arthur Huff  34, 35 Featherman, David L.  170 Feuer, Lewis S.  142–43, 143n Feuerbach, Ludwig  55 Fichter, Joseph H.  48, 84–85, 179, 194, 197, 205 Field, Harry H.  164, 171–72 Finke, Roger  17n Finley, John Huston  157n Finn, Dnaiel Rush  200 Fischer, Galen M.  156, 157n Fischoff, Ephraim  15–16, 23n, 54n Fitzpatrick, Joseph P.  211n Fosdick, Raymond B.  153, 156, 156n, 157, 158, 159, 159n, 160, 160n Foster, Bruce D.  76, 167 Francis, E.K.  205 Freedman, Ronald  71, 170 Friedel, Francis  181, 182–83, 184n, 188, 212 Friedman, Norman L.  206, 207, 207n Friedrichs Robert W.  197 Froehle, Bryan T.  178 Fry, C. Luther  7, 30, 30–31, 32, 34, 147–48, 154, 157, 158, 160, 180 Fukuyama, Yoshio  6, 7, 8, 79, 165, 177 Fulcomer, Daniel  12, 16 Furfey, Paul Hanly  186, 187, 188 Gadamer, Hans-Georg  52 Gales, Caleb F.  172 Gallagher, Michael  188n Gallagher, Ralph Aloysius  181, 183, 184, 185, 185n, 188, 190, 208, 212, 213 Galpin, Charles J.  107, 169 Gannon, Francis X.  179 Garrett, William R.  191 Gates, Frederick T.  153 Gaudet, Hazel  164–65

253

name index Gay, Edwin Francis  158n Gaziano, Emanuel  48 Geddes, Patrick  170 Geffen, Rela Mintz  207, 208n Gerth, Hans  53, 54 Gettys, Warren E.  106–07 Giddings, Franklin H.  22, 23, 26, 29, 151, 151n, 156 Gilbert, James  200n, 201 Gill, Charles O.  7, 155, 155n, 176 Gillin John Lewis  33, 33n, 128n Gladden, Washington  150 Glicksman, Allen  207, 208n Glock, Charles Y.  8, 49, 61, 65, 72–79, 162, 163, 163n, 164ff., 167n, 172, 197, 200n, 201, 202, 213, 218 Goffman, Erving  64 Goldfield, David  171 Goldscheider, Calvin  120, 120n Goldschmidt, Walter R.  169 Goldstein, Sidney  120, 120n, 148 Goldstein, Warren  11 Gollin, Gillian Lindt  126–27, 126n Gorman, Eleanor Miller  14n Gorsuch, Richard  204 Gould, Amos Ralston Lowell  13 Gouldner, Alvin W.  54n, 60 Greeley, Andrew M.  48, 48n, 71, 80–81, 172–73, 179, 190, 197, 213 Gruesser, M. Jeanine  189 Gulliver, John Putnam  14n Gusfield, Joseph R.  64 Hadden, Jeffrey K.  123n, 155, 155n, 193, 194, 195, 195n, 198, 214 Halbwachs, Maurice  53n Hammond, Phillip E.  50, 165, 166, 167, 198, 204 Hammons, Stacy A.  203, 204 Han, Sang En  176n Hanson, Asael Tanner  33, 34n Harcourt, Alfred  160 Harder, Leland D.  176n Harper, Charles L.  144, 144n Harper, William Rainey  20, 212 Hart, Clyde W.  172 Harte, Thomas  187 Hartman, Harriet  207, 208n

Harvey, Charles E.  153, 158, 159, 160 Hassenger, Robert  191 Hauser, Philip M.  48, 172 Havighurst, Robert J.  134, 134n Hayes, Edward C.  14n Healey, Sr. Mary Edward  189 Heller, Celia  207, 208n Henderson, A.M.  54n Henderson, Charles Richmond  20 Herberg, Will  84, 197 Hessburgh, Theodore  202 Hewitt, Clare J.  173 Himmelfarb, Harold S.  207n–208n Hoffman, Barbara Jean  176n Hollerith, Herman  165n Hollingshead, August B.  134, 134n, 141n Holt, Arthur E.  7–8, 193 Holt, John B.  169 Homans, George Caspar  48 Honigsheim, Paul  35 Hood, Ralph  204 Hoover, Herbert  169 Horowitz, Irving Louis  101, 101n, 164 Houston, David F.  168 Houtart, François H.  197 Howard, George Elliott  19 Hughes, Everett Cherrington  26, 48, 131, 131n Hughes, Helen MacGill  131, 131n Hulett, James Edward  23n Hunt, William C.  147 Hunter, Floyd  142, 142n Husserl, Edmund  62 Hutchins, Robert M.  172 Huth, Edward Andrew  186n Imse, Thomas  186n Jackson, Douglas E.  176, 176n Jacobs, Anton K.  55n Janowitz, Morris  172 Jägerstätter, Franz  188n Jenks, Jeremiah Whipple  158n Johnson, Benton (Guy Benton), Jr.  48, 204 Johnson, Douglas W.  176n, 178 Johnston, Barry V.  22 Jones, Donald G.  45

254 Jordan, Robert Harlan  135, 135n Josephsohn, Thomas J.  3n, 211 Kallen, Horace Meyer  44, 198, 200, 201 Kantor, Rosabeth Moss  64 Kaplan, J.M.  202n Kaufman, Harold Frederick  133, 133n Keller, Albert G.  3 Kelley, Dean M.  198 Kelly, Sr. Aqunice  186, 186n, 189 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald  63, 213 Kennedy, Robert  63 Kerby, William  14 Kerensky, General Alexander  22 Kertzer, David I.  132, 132n Killian, Lewis  64 Kim, Hei C.  137 Kincheloe, Samuel Clarence  7–8, 30, 31, 35, 193, 197 King, C. Wendell  137, 137n King, Martin Luther  34n, 63 Kirk, William  170 Kish, Leslie  170 Kivisto, Peter  23, 188 Klausner, Samuel Z.  179, 197, 202, 203n, 204, 207, 207n–08n Klietsch, Ronald G.  136–37, 136n Kloetzli, Walter  165, 166, 167, 196 Knudsen, Dean D.  129–30, 129n, 145 Kolb, John Harrison  169 Kolegar, Ferdinand  54 Koval, John P.  81n Kramer, Judith R.  118–19, 118n Kranzler, George  117–18, 117n Kuhn, Thomas S.  65 Kupke, Harold G.  139, 139n Kurtz, Lester R.  53 Laidlaw, Walter  6 Lane, Angela V.  149 Lane, Ralph  189, 190 Larson, Olaf F.  169, 169n LaRuffa, Anthony Louis  132, 132n Lathrop, Julia  6 Lazarsfeld, Paul Felix  49, 50, 73, 163ff., 172 Lazerwitz, Bernard  206, 207n Le Bras, Gabriel  206 Leclercq, Jacques  205

name index Lehman, Emil  164 Leiffer, Dorothy  174 Leiffer, Murray H.  35, 36, 136n, 173ff., 193, 212 Leiserson, William Morris  158n Lenski, Gerhard E.  65, 65n, 71, 71n, 72, 72n, 73, 80, 170, 173, 213 Leo XIII, Pope  212 LePlay, Frédéric  170 Leventman, Seymour  118–19, 118n Levine, Donald N.  14n Levitt, Peggy  9–10 Liddle, Gordon P.  134 Likert, Rensis  170, 172 Linfield, Harry S.  147, 148 Lippman, Walter  158n Lipset, Seymour Martin  49 Little, David  45 Liu, William T.  142, 142n Loescher, Frank Samuel  34, 34n Lofland, John  50 Lorge, Irving  169 Low, J.O.  141 Lowi, Theodore  119–20, 119n Luckmann, Thomas  24, 60, 62–64, 63n, 79–80, 102, 210 Lunt, Paul S.  141 Luzbetak, Louis J.  178 Lynd, Helen Merrell  9, 33, 33n, 65, 65n, 107, 121ff., 122n, 127, 145, 158ff. Lynd, Robert S.  9, 33, 33n, 65, 65n, 107, 121ff., 122n, 127, 145, 158ff., 163, 180 MacKaye, Benton  170 MacKenzie King, William Lyon  159, 159n MacLean, Anne Marion  150 MacLean, Vicky M.  65, 106, 108 Maduro, Otto  56, 56n Malinowski, Bronislaw  48, 60 Malony, M.H.  200 Mamchur, Stephen  184 Mann, Albert Z.  173–74, 174n–74n Mannheim, Karl  24, 54 Maranall, Gary M.  143–44, 143n Marciniak, Edward A.  186 Marshall, Alfred  24 Martin, David A.  198 Martineau, Harriet  52

255

name index Martindale, Don  61n Marty, Martin E.  197 Marx, Karl  22, 25, 52–53, 54, 55, 57, 61, 192 Massarik, Fred  206 Mathews, Charles V.  134 Mauss, Armand  50, 203, 204 May, Matthew  8–9, 10 Mayer, Egon  121, 121n, 207, 208n Mays, Benjamin E.  34, 34n McCarthy, Eugene  187n McCarthy, John D.  64 McCourt, Kathleen  81 McCready, William C.  81 McGucken, Archbishop Joseph  75 McGuire, Carson  141n McKinney, William  144–45, 144n, 145 McKinnon, Andrew M.  55 McNamara, Patrick  190 McNamara, Robert J.  189 Mead, George Herbert  14, 22, 23, 53, 54–55, 56–57, 57n, 61, 64, 80 Meeker, Marchia  141n Merton, Robert K.  22, 45n, 50, 61 Metz, Donald  167 Middleton, Russell  76–77, 218 Mihanovich, Clement S.  188 Miller, D. Paul  125–26, 125n Miller, Kelly  150 Mills, C. Wright  24, 50, 53, 54, 60 Mills, Edgar  177 Milner, S. Burkett  176n Miner, Horace Mitchell  130–31, 130n Mitchell, Wesley  160, 160n Moberg, David O.  50, 91, 190, 196, 196n, 198, 201, 214 Morland, John Kenneth  128–29, 128n, 171 Morris, Loretta M.  181, 181n, 183, 185n, 187, 189, 213, 214 Morse, Henry N.  30, 32, 161 Mott, John R.  153, 156, 156n Moyer, Imogene  31 Mueller, Franz  188 Mueller, Samuel A.  149, 203 Mullins, Carolyn J.  57 Mullins, Nicholas C.  57 Mumford, Lewis  170–71 Mundie, Paul J.  43, 184, 184n, 186, 188 Mundy, Paul  187

Murnion, Philip J.  178 Murphy, Timothy F.  147, 148 Murray, Raymond W.  184, 184n, 188, 212 Neal, Marie Augusta  138n, 179, 191–92, 191n, 197 Neitz, Mary Jo  11, 102n Nelson, Lowry  33, 34n, 135 Neugarten, Bernice  141n Newman, William M.  198, 201, 202 Nicholson, Joseph W.  34, 34n Niebuhr, H. Richard  32, 33n, 34, 35, 36, 85, 125 Nixon, Richard M.  52, 64, 83 Nottingham, Elizabeth  34 Nuesse, C. Joseph  179, 205 O’Dea, Thomas  135, 135n O’Hara, Edwin Vincent  185, 185n O’Toole, Roger  101, 101n, 191 Odum, Howard W.  171 Ogburn, William F.  22, 23, 48, 160 Page, John S.  169 Pareto, Vilfredo  24, 52, 53, 54 Park, Robert Ezra  7, 14, 22, 53, 54, 107, 125 Parrish Charles Henry  109, 109n, 114–15 Parsons, Talcott  22, 23, 24, 26, 34, 48, 53, 54, 57, 60–61, 82n, 135n, 192, 197, 198 Patman, Wright  202n Paul VI, Pope  192 Pelton, Dewitt Lincoln  14, 15n, 18n Pemberton, Prentiss L.  44, 198, 200, 204 Perrine, Mervyn W.  143, 143n Perry, Arthur Latham  14n Perry, Everett L.  157, 165, 193, 194 Perry, Margaret Tammen  194–95 Pettigrew, Thomas F.  138–39, 138n Phelps, H.A.  184 Picard, Paul  178 Pierce, James V.  134 Pinchot, Gifford  7, 155, 155n, 176 Pius XI, Pope  185n, 212 Poll, Solomon  120–21, 120n, 207, 207n Polsky, Howard W.  118, 118n Pope, Liston  34, 35, 36, 108, 127–28, 127n, 145 Poulat, Émile  205, 206

256 Quinley, Harold E.  74n, 76, 167 Quinn, Bernard  178 Radcliffe-Brown, A.R.  141n Reed, Myer S.  4 Reep, Samuel Nicholas  114 Reiss, Paul J.  44, 186, 188, 190, 191 Reuss, Marguerite  182, 183–84, 185 Rheinstein, Max  54 Richey, Russell E.  45 Riessman, Leonard  119, 119n Ringer, Benjamin B.  165, 166 Robbins, Thomas L.  50, 52n, 101n Robertson Smith, W.  30, 31 Rockefeller, John D., Jr.  7, 121, 153, 157, 157n, 158, 159, 159n, 193, 212 Roemer, Michael K.  11n Rokeach, Milton  197 Roof, Wade Clark  50 Roozen, David A.  144–45, 144n, 145 Rosenfelder, Richard M.  181, 181n, 182, 184n, 185, 185n, 186, 187 Rosenstein, Joseph  141n Ross, Edward A.  13, 22 Ross, Eva J.  189 Rossi, Peter H.  170, 172 Roth, Guenther  54 Rowell, Newton Wesley  158n Ruml, Berardsley  159, 160 Ryan, John Augustine  158n Sanderson, Dwight  169 Sanderson, Ross W.  193 Sanger, Margaret  138 Scarlett, William  34n Schaller, Lyle E.  197 Scheler, Max  35 Schenkel, Albert F.  153, 157, 157n, 159n, 162 Schneider, Louis  45, 45n Schoenherr, Richard A.  81 Schroeder W. Widdick  196 Schuman, Howard  72, 72n, 138n, 170 Schutz, Alfred  60, 62–63, 80 Schwartz, Sr. Mary Christina  184 Seger, Imogen  165, 166 Selznick, Philip  49 Sharp, Harry  71 Sheed, Frank  187n Sheen, Fulton J.  178

name index Sherwood, Sidney  13 Shils, Edward  24, 33n, 54n, 96n Shippey, Frederick Alexander  175–76, 176n, 194, 196 Shotwell, James Thomson  3–4 Shriver, Donald W., Jr.  129–30, 129n, 145 Sieber, Sylvester  187 Simmel, Georg  14, 14n, 25, 53, 54, 55, 55n, 56, 151 Sklare, Marshall  207, 207n Small, Albion  3, 13, 14n, 20, 53, 54, 156, 211 Smelser, Neil  64 Smilde, David  8–9, 9–10 Smith, Elmer Lewis  126, 126n Smith, Rockwell C.  136n, 175 Smith, Tom W.  173 Snow, David A.  64 Sombart ,Werner  48 Sorokin, Pitirim A.  22, 24, 26, 48, 61, 198 Speer, Robert Elliott  158n Spencer, Herbert  22, 23, 52, 54, 83, 151 Spitzer, Allan  186 Srole, Leo  116, 116n, 141 Stanton, Frank B.  163 Stark, Rodney  50, 65, 72–79, 148, 162, 167, 167n, 213, 218 Starr, Ellen Gates  111 Steiner, Jesse F.  107, 115, 115n Strommen, Merton P.  178 Sumner, William Graham  3, 14n, 22, 23 Sutker, Solomon  117, 117n Suttles, Gerald  143, 143n Swan, Charles Lundeen  135–36, 135n, 176 Swanson, Guy E.  197 Swatos, William H., Jr.  3, 4, 23, 44, 181n, 194, 196 Tamney, Joseph B.  123n Tappan, Paul Wilbur  23n Tawney, R.H.  32, 33n, 34, 35 Taylor, Carl C.  7 Taylor, Graham  6, 7 Teggart, Frederick  49 Terrell, Mary Church  150 Thomas, John L.  150n, 205 Thomas, Thaddeus Peter  13 Thomas, William Isaac  14, 22, 23, 38, 125 Thompson, Robert Ellis  14n Tillich, Paul  198

257

name index Timasheff, Nicholas S.  188 Tippet, A.R.  200 Toch, Hans  64 Tolman, Frank L.  12, 16 Tönnies, Ferdinand  53 Travisano, Richard V.  64 Trimble, Glen  178 Troeltsch, Ernst  32, 32n, 34, 35, 36, 83, 85, 125 Truesdell, Leon E.  147 Tugwell, Rexford Guy  171 Turner, Ralph  64 Tyler, Ralph W.  172 Underwood, Kenneth W.  138, 138n Unterkoefler, Ernest  178 VanAntwerpen, Jonathan  49 Varga, Ivan  206, 206n Vásquez, Manuel A.  10 Veblen, Thorstein  54 Verbit, Marvin  207, 207n Vidich, Arthur  136, 136n Vogt, Evon Z.  141n Vogt, Paul L.  152, 152n Voyé, Liliane  205 Wach, Joachim  34, 35–36 Wade, Louise Carroll  6 Wallace, Henry A.  168 Wallace, Ruth  189 Wallis, Louis  30, 31 Wallis, Roy  101n Waltz, Alan K.  176n Ward, Lester  3 Ware, Caroline F.  140–41, 140n–41n Warner, Amos Griswold  13 Warner, W. Lloyd  45, 48, 116–17, 141–42, 141n, 143 Washington, Booker T.  7, 22 Waxman, Chaim  207, 208n Webber, George W.  198 Weber, Max  3n, 22, 23, 24, 25, 32, 32n, 34, 35, 36, 48, 52, 53–54, 54n, 55, 57, 60n, 71, 79, 80, 83, 85, 125, 195 Webster, David Hutton  4 Weed, W. Dwight  176n Weigert, Andrew J.  50, 80

Weitzman, Louis Gabriel  181, 183, 184 West, James (Carl Withers)  128, 133–34 Weston, M. Moran  166 Whitman, Lauris B.  44, 163, 165–66, 178, 179, 194, 197, 200, 201 Wiese, Leopold von  35, 83 Williams, J. Paul  198–99, 200, 201 Williams, Joyce E.  65, 106, 108 Williams, Rhys H.  3n, 211 Williamson, Margaret Holmes  123n Willie, Charles V.  197 Wilson, Bryan R.  101n, 144n, 205 Wilson, Robert L.  176n Wilson, Warren Hugh  7, 29–30, 32, 106–07, 113–14, 113n, 124, 151–52, 151n, 154, 180, 212 Wirth, Louis  24, 48, 115–16, 116n, 172 Wittberg, Patricia  196n Wittich, Claus  54n Wolff, Kurt H.  54 Wolters, Gilbert Francis  33, 33n Woodard, James Wroten  14–15 Woods, Sr. Jerome Frances  189 Woodward, Arthur Burnham  13, 15n Woolston, Howard J.  14n Wortham, Robert A.  26, 150 Wray, Donald Emery  141, 141n, 142n Wright, James D.  170 Wundt, Wilhelm M.  22 Wuthnow, Robert  45, 72 Yinger, J. Milton  34, 35, 36, 83, 197 Young, Clarence Andrew  18n, 19 Young, Erle Fiske  124n Young, Kimball  22, 23 Young, Pauline Vislick  33, 33n, 34, 35, 124–25, 124n Zahn, Gordon C.  187, 187n, 190, 208, 213 Zald, Mayer N.  64, 198 Zeman, Josefa Humpal  111, 112, 113 Zeublin, Charles  111–12, 113, 115 Zimmerman, Joseph F.  78n Zimmerman, Julie N.  169, 169n Znaniecki, Florian  22, 38, 125 Zuckerman, Phil  150 Zurcher, Louis A.  64

Subject Index A & A Press  203 African American communities  109, 114–15 African American religion  34, 41, 109, 112–13, 114–15, 142, 149ff. Alabama, University of  34n, 134n, 139n, 140 Alban Institute  177 Albion College  136n American Baptist Convention  41, 166 American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions  156n American Catholic Sociological Review  43, 181ff., 213 American Catholic Sociological Society   43, 181ff., 195, 198, 205, 208, 209, 210, 212, 215, 217 American Economic Association  2, 26 American Civil Liberties Union  122n American Federation of Teachers  122n American Friends Service Committee  34n American International University  16n American Jewish Committee  207n American Journal of Sociology  8n, 14, 44, 54 American Missionary Association  155 American Sociological Association  2, 16, 19, 22, 23, 35, 36, 101n, 108, 131n, 182, 189, 196, 203, 205, 206; see its former name American Sociological Society American Sociological Review  8n, 44 American Sociological Society  2, 3, 7, 31, 116n, 154, 181, 182, 183, 184–85, 186, 189, 211, 212; see its later name American Sociological Association Rural Sociology Section  30 American University  127n, 140n, 201n Amish  125n, 126 Anabaptist communities  109, 125ff. Andover Newton Theological Seminary  14n, 155, 199, 200, 200n, 201 Anti-cult movement  52 Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith  49, 74, 74n, 78, 146, 167

Anti-Semitism  75–76 Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions  45 Arizona, University of  49n, 173 Ashland University  33n Association for Jewish Demography and Statistics  206 Association for the Scientific Study of Jewry  206–07 Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry  120n, 209 Association for the Sociological Study of Jewry  120n, 207 Association for the Sociology of Religion 5, 8, 17, 44, 45, 101, 101n, 108, 111n, 123n, 176n, 181, 189ff., 195, 196, 196n, 198, 204, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211n, 213, 214 Association of Religion Data Archives  5, 17, 17n, 45, 108, 111n, 173, 176n Atlanta Studies  149ff. Atlanta University  26, 149 Australian National University  141n Authoritarian personality  102, 163n Baker University  198 Ball State University  123n Baltimore Hebrew University  208n Barna Research  177 Bates College  34n Benedictine College  33n Berlin, University  26 Bibliographic database  5, 11n, 17, 45, 108, 176n, 214 Birmingham-Southern College  36, 128n Boston College  118n, 131n, 185 Boston University  140n, 164, 175, 190 Bowdoin College  132n, 199 Boy Scouts of America  161–62 Brandeis University  131n, 132n, 191, 207n Brethren, Church of the  33, 41 Bridgewater College  33n Brigham Young University  34n, 123n Brill Academic Press  193 Brooklyn College, C.U.N.Y.  118n, 121, 121n, 207, 207n, 208n

subject index Brown University  36, 120n, 132n, 157n Bryn Mawr College  33n Bucknell University  141n Bureau of Applied Social Research  8, 49, 50, 73, 74, 146, 162ff., 168, 172, 180 Bureau of Municipal Research  159n Bureau of Research and Survey, National Council of Churches  176 Bureau of Social and Religious Research  135n, 173ff. Bureau of Social Science Research  204 Bureau of the Census, U.S.  5, 6, 146ff., 174 California, University of (Berkeley)  19, 47, 48, 49–50, 120n, 134n, 141n, 143n, 204 Survey Research Center at  8, 49–50, 73, 146, 162, 166ff. California, University of (Los Angeles)   206, 208n California, University of (Santa Barbara)   135n, 204 California, University of (Santa Cruz)   138n California State University, Los Angeles   207n Campfire Girls  161–62 Candler School of Theology  140n, 144n Canisius College  184n Case Western Reserve University  196n Catholic Church  51, 75, 81, 138, 147, 177, 178, 179, 192 Catholic sociology  43, 184, 188, 211, 212–13 Catholic University of America  14, 19, 177, 178, 179, 182, 183, 184, 184n, 186, 186n, 188n, 190n, 213 Catholic Worker Movement  183, 186 Catholicism  72, 102, 141, 142 American  33, 41 French Canadian  130–31 German American  136–37 Italian  41, 132 Puerto Rican  132 Census Access for Planning in the Church  179 Census Bureau: See Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census tract  6, 174 Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences  166

259 Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate  178–79 Center for Social and Religious Research, Hartford Seminary  177 Center for the Study of Religion, Princeton University  178 Central Intelligence Agency  201 Central Missouri State University  144n Charles E. Fuller Institute for Evangelism and Church Growth  177 Charles Fuller’s Radio Ministry  177 Charles Scribners & Sons  122n, 159 Chicago Commons  6 Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy  6 Chicago, University of  4, 13, 14, 18, 18n, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25–26, 29, 30, 31, 33n, 34n, 35, 36, 43, 47, 48–49, 53, 54, 111, 114n, 115n, 116n, 118n, 123n, 124n, 130, 131n, 134n, 135n, 141n, 142n, 143n, 148, 150, 155, 156n, 157n, 171, 172, 173, 173n, 191, 204, 207, 207n, 212 Center for Social Organization Studies  143n Divinity School  19, 20, 36, 114, 193 Chicago Theological Seminary  6, 7, 35, 193 Christendom  157 Christian Social Union  26 Christian sociology  3 Church of God, Anderson  41 Church Youth Research Center  178 City College, C.U.N.Y.  132n, 136n, 143n, 157n Civil religion  82–83, 91 Civil Rights Movement  34, 64, 85, 138–39, 140, 196n Clemson College  133n Colgate Rochester Divinity School  200, 204 Cologne, University  35, 186 Columbia Broadcasting Service  163 Columbia University  8, 13–14, 18, 18n, 19, 22, 23, 25–26, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 43, 47, 49, 50, 73, 109n, 113, 113n, 114, 114n, 117n, 118n, 122n, 123n, 125n 126n, 132n, 135n 136n, 141, 146, 147, 151n, 154, 155, 159, 160, 162ff., 172, 180, 194, 197, 198, 203n, 204, 207, 207n, 208n Commission on Religion in Appalachia  177

260 Committee for Cooperative Field Research, Federal Council of Churches  157, 193, 194 Committee for the (Social) Scientific Study of Religion  194, 198 Committee on Social and Religious Surveys  7, 32, 44, 151, 153, 156ff., 158, 162 Community Renewal Society of Chicago  177 Community studies  5, 33, 65, 106ff., 217 Computer Assisted Telephone Interview  167–68 Concordia Seminary  139n Concordia Teachers College  139n Conférence Internationale de Sociologie Religieuse  205 Congregational Church  165, 166 Connecticut, University of  136n, 202, 207n Connecticut Bible Society  6 Contemporary Jewry  207 Content analysis  39 Conversion  85, 91 Cornell University  13, 20, 31, 47, 50, 119n, 133n, 136, 136n, 158n, 169 Correlation  39, 93, 218 Counterculture  51–52 Creighton University  144n, 184, 185n Cross Currents  187 Cross tabulation  39, 76, 93, 218 Czech community  112 Danforth Foundation  196n, 200 Dar es Salaam, University of  206n Dartmouth College  173 Dayton, University of  181, 182 Definition of religion  73, 79, 84n Denominations  73 Denver, University of  171–72 Department of Agriculture, U.S.  7, 107, 146, 168ff., 180 Bureau of Agricultural Economics   333n Department of City Work, Methodist Church  174 Department of Education, U.S.  208n Department of Labor, U.S.  149 DePauw University  36, 175, 201n

subject index Detroit Area Study  71, 72, 170 Disciples of Christ  41, 166 Dissertation  12ff., 180, 210 Drake University  35 Drew University  7, 56n, 84, 191, 194 Drury College  155 Duke Endowment  178 Duke University  19, 36, 127n, 204  Divinity School  144n, 177 Dunkers  128n Emmanuel College, Boston  179, 191n Emory University  140n, 144n Episcopalian  41 See also Protestant Episcopal Church Factor analysis  39 Fairfield University  139n Farm Foundation  169 Farm workers movement  64 Federal Council of Churches  34n, 147, 152, 155n, 157, 169, 174, 176 Field Foundation  172 Florida, University of  207 Florida Southern College  126n Florida State University  20, 138n, 142n, 144n Ford Foundation  143n, 170 Fordham University  123n, 135n, 184 Fuller Evangelistic Association  177 Fuller Theological Seminary  177 Functionalism  34, 48, 54, 55, 57, 60–61, 80, 85, 214 Fundamentalist  41 Furman University  138n Gallup  171 Garrett Biblical Institute  135n, 198 Bureau of Social and Religious Research at 173ff. Garrett Theological Seminary  36, 135n General Social Survey  173 George Fox College  135n George Peabody College: See Peabody College for Teachers Georgetown University  184, 185n Girl Scouts of America  161–62 Glenmary Research Center  177, 178 Gonzaga University  183

261

subject index Goucher College  13 Gratz College  208n Greenwich House  141 Grinnell College  155 H. Paul Douglass Lecture  194, 196–98 Hamilton College  14n, 29 Hartford Seminary  6, 17n, 140n, 177, 199 Harvard University  18, 19, 25–26, 26, 43, 47–48, 81, 84, 115n, 128n, 129n, 135n, 136n, 138n, 141n, 143n, 155, 158n, 186, 191, 191n, 197, 198, 200, 200n, 204 Haverford College  34n Hebrew Union College  208n Hebrew University of Jerusalem  207 Heidelberg, University, Germany  22, 26, 48, 197 Hesston College  125n Historical method  37, 39 Holiness movement  41 Hood College  201n Howard University  34n, 114n, 127n, 140n, 150 Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science  170–71 Hull-House  31, 106, 111, 112, 173n Hungarian Jewish Community  120 Hunter College, C.U.N.Y.  16n, 208n Hutterite  41, 125 Illinois, University of (Champaign/Urbana) 142n, 143n, 204 Illinois, University of (Chicago)  142n Illinois Wesleyan University  125n Index (questionnaire summation)  38 Indiana University  13, 20, 47, 134n, 173n Information Service  176n Institute for Policy Research and Catholic studies, Catholic University  178 Institute for Religion in an Age of Science 200n Institute for Religion Research, Hartford Seminary  177 Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina  128 Institute for Social and Religious Research  7, 30, 32, 33n, 34, 37, 44, 65n, 113n, 148, 151, 156, 157ff., 168, 169, 175, 180, 193, 194, 198

Institute for Social Research  163n Interchurch World Movement  7, 30, 146, 151ff., 162, 176, 198 Interdenominational Theological Center 35 International Federation of Institutes for Social and Socio-Religious Research 205 International Society for the Sociology of Religion/Société Internationale de Sociologie des Religions  205, 209 International Sociological Association  206, 209 Internationales Jahrbuch für Religionssoziologie  44 Internet  215–16, 217 Interval level measurement  78, 95 Interview  37 Introversionist sect  144, 144n Invisible religion  63, 79–80 Iowa, University of  20, 143 Iowa College (Grinnell)  155 Iowa State University  20, 33n, 136n JAI Press  193 J.M. Kaplan Fund  44, 201, 201n–202n J.M. Ormond Center, Duke Divinity School  177, 178 J.M. Ormond Fund  178 James Madison University  126n Jewish communities  109–10, 110n, 111–12, 115ff. Jewish Statistical Bureau  148 John Carroll University  181, 183 John’s Hopkins University  13, 15, 17, 26 Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion  8n, 44, 51, 102n, 180, 203ff., 216 JSTOR  216 Jumpers  41, 124–25 Kalamazoo College  135n–36n Kansas, University of  13, 143 Kentucky, University of  130n Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation  159 Laurence University  144n Leipzig, University  22, 36 Lenox School  199

262 Leo XIII, Pope  212 Life Cycle Institute, Catholic University   177, 178 Life histories  38 Likert-type items  95, 217 Lilly Endowment  177, 178 London, University of  24, 48, 126n, 197 Long Island University  126n–27n Los Angeles Jewish Federation-Council   206 Louisiana State University  36 Louisville, University of  114n, 139n, 140n Louisville Institute  177, 178 Louisville Municipal College  114n Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary  178 Louvain, University  56n, 197, 205 Loyola University, Chicago  181, 183, 185n, 186, 188n Loyola University Institute of Industrial Relations  183, 185n Loyola University, New Orleans  84, 179 Ludlow Massacre  159n Lutheran  41 Lutheran Church in America  166, 177 Lutheran Listening Post  177 Lutheran Youth Research Center  178 Macalester College  118n Mankato State University  125n Marquette University  183, 184, 190, 196n Marxian theory  54, 55 Mary Washington College  123n Massachusetts, University of at Amherst  198 Massachusetts, University of at Boston  188n Massachusetts Institute of Technology  135n McGill University  131n Meadville-Lombard Theological School  200n Mennonite  41, 125–26 Methodenstreit  23–24 Methodist Church  41, 174, 175 Methods of data analysis  37ff., 91ff., 217 Methods of data collection  37ff., 91ff., 217 Miami University of Ohio  152n

subject index Michigan, University of  13, 15, 19, 22, 26, 47, 50, 71, 72, 130n, 136n, 141n, 172, 197, 207n, 208n Institute of Social Research at  143n Survey Research Center at  170 Michigan State University  20, 119n Middlebury College  199, 200 Middletown  9, 33, 65, 65n, 107, 121f., 127, 136, 145, 158ff., 217 Midwest Sociologist  184 Mill towns  127ff. Ministry Studies Board, National Council of Churches  177 Minnesota, University of  15n, 19, 22, 34n, 47, 50, 118n, 123n, 136n, 196n, 207, 207n Mississippi Southern College  138n Mississippi State University  133n Missouri, University of (Columbia)  20, 133n, 207n Missouri, University of (Kansas City)  144n Modernization  82 Monmouth University  16n Moravian College  30, 153, 196 Moravians  126–27 Morehouse College  34n Mormon  33, 40, 135 Mount Holyoke College  198, 199 Muhlenberg College  30, 147 Mundelein College  184 Munich, University at  207n Murray and Dorothy Leiffer Bureau of Social and Religious Research: See Bureau of Social and Religious Research National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  149 National Association of Colored Women 150 National Catholic Rural Life Conference 185n National Catholic Welfare Conference 185 National Conference of Catholic Bishops 178 National Conference of Social Workers 157n National Council of Churches  8, 176, 178, 179, 193, 194, 201

263

subject index National Federation of Priests’ Councils  81, 81n National Opinion Research Center   48n–49n, 71, 74, 76, 80, 164, 168, 170ff., 179, 190 National Pastoral Life Center  177, 178 National Resources Planning Board  171 National Science Foundation  79, 123n, 167, 173 Nazareth College, Louisville  142n Nebraska, University of  13, 19, 125n, 126, 134n, 139n, 144n Nevada, University of, Reno  204 New Hampshire, University of  120n, 207, 207n New religions  51–52, 64, 91, 100–101, 165, 200 New School for Social Research  19, 47, 121n, 122n, 136n, 139, 159, 200, 207 New School University: See New School for Social Research New York Evening Post  158n New York Federation of Churches  6 New York School of Philanthropy  155 New York Times  158n New York University  13, 19, 30, 158n, 164 Newark, University of  163 North Carolina, University o  47, 50, 115, 115n, 117n, 128n, 129n, 138n, 197ff. Odum Institute at  170–71 North Carolina State University  129n North Central Sociological Association 203 Northern Illinois University  31 Northwest Christian College  177 Northwestern University  20, 26, 35, 36, 111, 119n, 125, 135n, 174, 207n Northwestern University Settlement  111 Notre Dame, University of  20, 47, 50–51, 81n, 84, 139n, 142n, 184, 185n, 190n, 191, 202 Oberlin University  36, 113n, 151n Office of Pastoral Research, Catholic Archdiocese of New York  177 Office of Radio Research  163, 163n, 164 Ohio State University  19, 31, 33n, 134n, 152n Ohio Wesleyan University  36, 131n, 134n

Oklahoma State University  117n Ordinal level measurement  95, 217 Oregon, University of  204 Ottawa University, Kansas  200 Oxford Group  41, 199 Oxford University  123n Oxford University Press  216 Pacific, University of the  13 Pacific School of Religion  144n Parish sociology  84 Participant observation  37, 39, 91, 217 Peabody College for Teachers  19, 36, 133n Pearson product moment correlation: See correlation Pennsylvania, University of  13, 14, 14n, 18n, 19, 33, 33n, 34, 35, 43, 113, 118n, 120, 138n, 141n, 147, 202, 203n, 207, 207n Pennsylvania State University  19, 118n, 144, 197, 201 Pentecostal  132 People’ Research Corporation  172 Percept  177 Philadelphia Corporation for the Aging  208n Pittsburgh, University of  182, 184 Pittsburgh Survey  106 Pomona College  13 Portland, University of  142n Prejudice  91 Presbyterian Board of Home Missions  113n, 151, 151n, 154 Presbyterian Church in America  32, 41 Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)  41, 158n, 194 Princeton Office of Public Opinion Research 163 Princeton Religion Research Center, Gallup 177 Princeton Theological Seminary  144n, 204 Princeton University  122n, 143n, 157n, 159, 163, 172 Professional Associations  180ff. Progressive movement  3 Protestant Episcopal Church  166  See also Episcopalian Protestant Ethic  23, 34, 53, 71–72, 80, 85, 137

264 Publishers Weekly  159 Puerto Rico, University of  136n Purdue University  129n Puritans  41 Quakers  29, 41, 113–14, 124, 135 Queens University, Ontario  206n Radcliff College  140n Rad-McNally  167n Randolph Macon Women’s College  128n Red scare  153n Regional planning  170–71 Regis College (Toronto)  139n Regression, multivariate  39, 76–77, 93, 96, 218 Religion and the Social Order Series  193 Religiosity  85 Religious Congregations and Membership Study  178 Religious Education Association  157n Religious Research Association  15, 44, 100, 101n, 165, 181, 189–90, 193ff., 198, 201, 204, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211n, 212, 213 Religious Research Fellowship  44, 193–94, 208 Research Committee 22: See International Sociological Association Research organizations  146ff. Review of Religious Research  44, 51, 176, 179, 180, 194ff., 215, 216 Rochester, University of  31, 148 Rockefeller Foundation  141n, 163, 164, 170 Rockford College  31 Rollins College  200n Rosary College (Dominican University)   186n Rosenwald Foundation  128 Rowan University  208n Rural Church Commission (Federal Council of Churches)  153–54 Rural Church Movement  152 Rural communities  133ff. Rural Sociological Society  7, 30 Russell Sage Foundation  173 Rutgers University  121n, 127n, 207, 207n, 208n

subject index Sage  216 St. Edward’s University  139n St. John’s College, Minnesota  187n St. Louis Church Survey  160, 161 St. Louis University  183, 184, 186 St. Michael’s College, University of, Toronto  139n St. Michael’s College, Vermont  191 St. Paul College  139n Saint Petersburg, University  22 St. Thomas, College of  142n, 187n Sampling  38, 91, 96, 170 Sanger, Margaret  138 Sarah Lawrence College  122n, 140n, 159 Scales  38, 217 Scholars Press  203 Scientific Monthly  31 Scientology  144 Search Institute  177, 178, 179 Secondary analysis  38, 91 Sect  34, 124ff. Secularization  63, 79, 80, 85, 211 Shaker  41 Significance tests  39, 96 Smith College  33n Sociaal Kompass  44, 205, 216 Social Compass  44, 205, 216 Social gospel movement  3, 155 Social Forces  8n, 44 Social movement  52, 85, 102 Social Science Research Council  116n, 160n Society for the Scientific Study of Religion 15, 100, 101, 101n, 166, 179, 181, 190, 195, 196, 196n, 198ff., 205, 206, 208, 209, 211, 211n, 213 Society of the Divine Word  187 Sociogram  38 Sociologia Religiosa  45 Sociological Analysis  44, 51, 101, 101n, 180, 188–89 Sociology of Knowledge  24, 55, 102 Sociology of Religion  8n, 43–44, 51, 180, 193, 214, 216 South Dakota, University of  125n Southern Baptist  41 Southern California, University of  19, 33n, 35, 124n, 135n Southern Methodist University  201n

265

subject index Southern Mississippi, University of: See Mississippi Southern College Southern Sociological Society  211n Southwest Baptist College  140n Spelman Fund  159 Spiritual well-being  91, 196n Springer  216 Stanford University  13, 19, 167 Statistics  39 Stratification  85 Survey  6–7 Symbolic interactionism  54, 55, 64, 214 Syracuse University  126n, 197 Teachers College (Columbia University) 30, 154 Temple University  15n, 34n, 36, 207n Tennessee, University of (Chattanooga) 204 Tennessee State University  17n 139n Tennessee Valley Authority  171 Texas, University of (Arlington)  204 Texas, University of (Austin)  19, 47, 123n, 142n Theory, sociological  20ff. Toronto, University of  10, 131n, 139n, 143n, 191 Tougaloo College  35 Tulane University  115, 115n, 116n, 119, 196n Tuskegee Institute  22 UMI Dissertation Express  16 Unification Church  52, 101, 144 Union Theological Seminary  113n, 122n, 129n, 151n, 159, 198 United Church Board for Homeland Missions  144n United Church of Christ  79, 177 United Methodist Church  178 United Presbyterian Church  165, 166, 177 University Microfilms  16 Urban Church Effectiveness Study  166, 167

Urban studies  140ff. Utah, University of  135n Vanderbilt University  15n, 19, 47, 133n, 138n Vassar College  140n, 143n Vatican II  51, 72, 81, 188n Vermont, University of  123n, 143n Vienna, University  163 Virginia, University of  123n, 138n, 143n, 196n, 204 Wake Forest University  129n Washington, University of  115n Washington State University  19, 123n, 204 Washington University at St. Louis  19, 123n Wayne State University  119n, 125n, 130n, 139n Wellesley College  122n, 200, 201n Wesleyan University  29, 138n Western Reserve University  126n Wilberforce University  26, 150 Wiley/Blackwell  216 Williams College  14n, 199 Wisconsin, University of  13, 17, 18, 19, 22, 25–26, 26, 33, 33n, 36, 43, 47, 50, 83, 118n, 119n, 134n, 169, 175, 184, 195n, 197, 200n, 201n Wooster, College of  138n Xavier University, Cincinnati  183 Y.M.C.A.  113n, 151n, 153, 156, 156n, 157n, 161–62, 200 Y.W.C.A.  161–62 Yale University  14n, 19, 29, 65, 119n, 127n, 134n, 137n, 140n, 141, 142n, 184, 186, 204 Divinity School at  20, 36, 111, 127n, 128n, 138n, 204 Yankee City  110n, 116–17, 141 Yeshiva University  120n, 208 Youth Research Center  177, 178