Taking Talk Seriously: Religious Discourse

as Social Practice

ROBERT J. WUTHNOW
Department of Sociology
Princeton University

Talk is easily regarded as having lesser value in studies of social phenomena than action, interaction, and
organization. Yet talk is an important way in which humans act, interact, and organize themselves. In this
article, I examine how talk has been used in recent decades in the study of religion and in related work on
culture and institutions. I argue that careful empirical examination of talk has already significantly increased our
understanding of both the micro and macro processes involved in the construction of social life. I discuss four
objections to taking talk seriously and show that these objections should not deter investigations in which talk plays
a central role. I offer examples of recent work that poses new conceptual and theoretical questions, complements
quantitative studies, and provides insights about changing historical and contemporary social conditions.

Keywords: methodology, narrative, qualitative, quantitative, triangulation, cultural sociology.

FORMATIVE DEVELOPMENTS IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION

A close reading of the social science literature prior to the 1980s would suggest that religious
people rarely spoke and probably were completely mute. Standard social psychological inves-
tigations asked subjects to fill out questionnaires composed of check-the-box items designed to
capture underlying predispositions that people themselves could presumably not otherwise artic-
ulate. The best polls and surveys—ironically claiming to be how “America speaks”—used hand
cards so that the religiously mute could point to an appropriate answer. If a respondent somehow
was able to speak, the preferred answer was to be signaled by a brief grunt indicating agree or
disagree.
Not surprisingly, scholars in religious studies departments found this approach in the social
sciences unsatisfactory and thus focused much of their work on texts composed by religious
virtuosi—who had been able to speak when they were alive, but unfortunately were now dead.
Ethnographers knew best that people—even religious ones—do talk, but what people said was
more interesting if it symbolized deep cultural mentalities or was ritually enacted than if it
consisted of ordinary words (Tedlock 1995).
Obviously, what I have suggested here is an exaggeration, but it points to a history that
merits consideration. A brief stroll past the landmark studies of that era demonstrates why
an observer might conclude that religion was practiced by people who could not speak. No
better place to begin can be found than the Harvard Department of Social Relations, which
flourished in the early 1950s under the direction of sociologist Talcott Parsons and such influential
collaborators as psychologist Gordon Allport and anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn. As the leading
sociological theorist of his day, Parsons reinforced American scholars’ interest in the important

Acknowledgments: I wish to thank Courtney Bender, Wendy Cadge, Marie Cornwall, Paul Lichterman, and D. Michael
Lindsay for comments on previous drafts and the students in my graduate seminars on Qualitative Methods and Religion
and Public Life for providing a sounding board for some of these ideas.
Correspondence should be addressed to Robert J. Wuthnow, Department of Sociology, Wallace Hall, Princeton University,
Princeton, NJ 08540. E-mail: wuthnow@princeton.edu

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (2011) 50(1):1–21

work of Weber (1963) and Durkheim (1915)—including their studies of religion. It was not
Parsons’s style to conduct first-hand empirical studies, but his careful discussions of Weber did
acknowledge Weber’s interest in the particular utterances of Benjamin Franklin and Richard
Baxter (Parsons 1963; Weber 1958). And yet Parsons was less interested than Weber in the
specific meanings conveyed in these utterances than in identifying broad universal axes of social
and cultural differentiation (Parsons and Shils 1951). This interest was shared by Kluckhohn
(1951), from whom Parsons drew insights about value orientations and generalized normative
concerns. Allport’s (1950) work was to have the greatest impact on empirical studies of religion,
especially in efforts to transform William James’s (1902) ideas of healthy-minded and sick-
souled religion into pencil-and-paper scales measuring intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity. These
were, however, indexes of underlying dispositions, rather than efforts that featured religious
discourse.
Scholarship that focused on religious discourse would later emerge from students trained by
Parsons and his collaborators, but mention first needs to be made of two strands of empirical
investigation that significantly shaped how social scientists approached religious discourse. The
first, as exemplified in the work of George Gallup Sr. (Gallup and Rae 1940), Charles Glock (Glock
and Stark 1965), Greeley (1959), and Lenski (1961), approached religion quantitatively through
polls and surveys that emphasized religious affiliation, religious participation, and religious
belief. This approach usefully sought to describe religious variables in representative samples
(Hadden and Heenan 1970). Insofar as people were asked in interviews to talk in their own words
about religion, the information attained was to develop survey questions. The other approach
emphasized ethnographic research and included such important works as Small Town in Mass
Society (Vidich and Bensman 1958), Millhands and Preachers (Pope 1942), and The Family of
God (Warner 1961). These studies featured the specific locations—churches, town hall meetings,
holiday celebrations, bedside confessions, and funerals—in which religious discourse took place.
Even though the actual discourse was seldom examined, the studies did serve as a reminder
that talk might be important. Ethnographers could turn back to Middletown (Lynd and Lynd
1929:334–35), for example, and find such interesting words as these: “Land sakes! I don’t see
how people live at all who don’t cheer themselves up by thinkin’ of God and Heaven.” And “My
baby was awfully sick and almost died last year; A lady came and prayed and folks in church
went up and knelt round the altar, and the baby got well and is better than ever. The doctor says it
was prayer and nothing else did it.” But it would be awhile before social scientists came again to
the realization that such words might be worthy of serious investigation. Other approaches were
more attractive.
Between 1966 and 1980, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and Sociological
Analysis (the precursor of Sociology of Religion) included 338 articles in which surveys were
used or mentioned, but only 90 articles in which interviews but not surveys were mentioned.
The articles based on interviews typically used this method as a second-best alternative to more
systematic survey data with a larger number of cases. A study in which interviews were conducted,
for example, included this apologetic note describing what investigators characteristically saw as
the faults of this approach.

Methodological weaknesses of this study include those perennial problems associated with the interview technique:
resistance of respondents to questions of a sensitive nature, the fact that [respondents] might have interpreted a
question differently from the interviewer’s intent, and the fact that [respondents] were asked for introspective data.
The latter raises legitimate concerns about subjectivity and bias. (Shupe and Wood 1973:187)

It was not only quantitative scholars of religion who shared these concerns about the weak-
nesses of information drawn from interviews. In that same year, Yale sociologist Kai T. Erikson
was conducting qualitative interviews for a forthcoming book, in which three years later he
included this apologetic introduction.
TAKING TALK SERIOUSLY 3

If the study had been organized along more conventional sociological lines, it might have been quite different.
I might have chosen the people I interviewed more systematically, done a more thorough job of sifting through
the available statistical data, looked harder for evidence of differences within the survivor group, tried to compare
[with other] communities in the general vicinity, and taken better advantage of the opportunity I had to conduct
formal surveys. (Erikson 1976:11–12)

Despite these apparent weaknesses, Everything in Its Path won the American Sociological Asso-
ciation’s highest award the following year.
If systematic scientific surveys set the standard for rigorous studies of religion in the 1970s,
simultaneous developments were beginning to challenge this perspective. The work of Bellah
(1970a), Berger (1967), Douglas (1966), Geertz (1973), and Thomas Luckmann (1970) generated
what was known as the cultural turn in studies of religion. As products of the Harvard Department
of Social Relations, Bellah and Geertz worked on non-Western societies in which survey research
was uncommon. Bellah’s (1967) essay on civil religion paid attention to religious discourse in
presidential inaugural addresses and his essay on symbolic realism (Bellah 1970b) challenged
scholars to take seriously religious symbols and their meanings. Geertz and Douglas emphasized
symbolism and ritual and Berger and Luckmann drew on the work of Schutz (1962) to suggest the
importance of ordinary conversation in constructing and maintaining the plausibility of everyday
reality.
The 1970s also saw growing interest in religious movements that scholars considered nec-
essary to study through field observations and interviews rather than with surveys. Studies of the
Bruderhof (Zablocki 1971), Jehovah’s Witnesses (Beckford 1975), Scientology (Wallis 1977),
Satanist groups (Bainbridge 1978), the Unification Church (Shupe and Bromley 1979), the Divine
Light Mission (Downton 1979), and other movements (Glock and Bellah 1976) led sociologists
to reconsider the importance of symbolism, ritual, and discourse in the construction of religious
meanings (Bird 1979; Tipton 1982; Westley 1978; ) Another development that was to affect
scholarship about religion was interest in inclusive liturgical language inspired by the feminist
movement, which necessarily drew attention to the importance of discourse (Carveth 1977). At
least marginalized groups were speaking, the literature implied, even though mainstream religious
practitioners remained mute.

OF SCIENCE AND EPISTEMOLOGY

The methodological differences that were evident in the 1970s could be interpreted as
straightforward disagreements about the role of science. Quantitative research was preferable in
terms of the accepted canons of science (Babbie 1975). Surveys employed well-codified proce-
dures that could be replicated and that permitted generalizations to be drawn from representative
samples to predefined populations. Surveys with large numbers of respondents permitted quasi-
experimental designs to be incorporated through statistical comparisons and the use of control
variables. Qualitative researchers seldom denied the value of surveys for these purposes, but
argued that other methods were better for developing empirically grounded hypotheses, doing
innovative exploratory research, identifying deviant cases, and probing the complexities of mean-
ing and social interaction (Denzin 1970; Glaser and Strauss 1967). On these terms, there was
little for scholars to argue about: method was dictated by the research questions at hand (Means
1970).
However, there was also an epistemological assumption at issue. This was the view that
action is basically driven by underlying predispositions, of which beliefs and values are an
important part, and that these predispositions are somehow deep, inner, and long lasting, but
also difficult even for the person holding them to identify and articulate. Geertz’s (1973:94)
emphasis on “powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations” was perhaps the
4 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

most prominent, but by no means the only example. Definitional essays stressed the taken for
granted, internalized worldviews and belief systems of which religion was centrally composed
and the subjective mental and psychological functions it fulfilled (La Barre 1972:31–68; Parsons
1964; Shepherd 1972). Empirical studies registered confidence that beliefs and values could be
measured, but reflected uncertainty as to whether it was sufficient to assess them in terms of assent
to the doctrinal statements of religious organizations or necessary to consider latent functions,
subjective feelings and experiences, deeply internalized values, and poorly articulated quests for
meaning (Bouma 1970; Glock and Stark 1965:27).
This way of thinking about beliefs and values came increasingly to be questioned
by social scientists interested in other aspects of culture. Extending insights about so-
cial practices from Bourdieu (1977), Foucault (1970, 1972), Burke (1970), and others,
Swidler (1986) proposed that culture be thought of not as underlying beliefs and values
influencing behavior, but as a tool kit of habits, skills, and styles from which people con-
struct strategies of action. Habits of the Heart (Bellah et al. 1985), of which Swidler was a
co-author, suggested that talk elicited from respondents in qualitative interviews could be a
useful method for examining cultural tool kits in action. Although Habits did not dwell ex-
tensively on religion, the story of Sheila Larson, who invented her own religion, and the
book’s wider popularity encouraged scholars of religion to pay closer attention to religious
discourse.
Other developments in cultural sociology further questioned the prevailing emphasis on un-
derlying beliefs and values. Theoretical criticism suggested a reinterpretation of Geertz’s work
to emphasize symbolic practice (Ortner 1984) and drew from Foucault (1970, 1972), Searle
(1969), Habermas (1979), and Jameson (1981) to argue for the importance of research ex-
amining discursive fields, speech acts, and narrative (Wuthnow et al. 1984; Wuthnow 1988;
Wuthnow and Witten 1988). Griswold (1986, 1987a, 1987b) directed scholars’ attention to
literary texts as a source of objective data about culture and proposed a method for iden-
tifying social influences on genre and style. A similar emphasis on culture as socially pro-
duced objects was evident in Peterson’s (1976, 1979; Peterson and Anand 2004) and Cerulo’s
(1984, 1989) research on music. Neoinstitutional studies of organizations urged greater atten-
tion to ceremonies and myths (Meyer and Rowan 1977; Meyer and Scott 1983). Historical
sociology examined discursive formations in ideological, political, and religious movements
(Hunt 1984; Sewell 1980; Wuthnow 1989). Media studies suggested the importance of evi-
dence about cultural objects in advertising, newspaper cartoons, television news, religious tele-
vision, political rhetoric, and sermons (Hadden and Shupe 1988; Hart 1977; Hoover 1987;
Schudson 1989).
Apart from studies that focused specifically on religious discourse, research in the 1980s
and early 1990s also increasingly used qualitative interviews and thus incorporated informa-
tion about language. Books rather than articles were the preferred outlet for research based
on qualitative interviews. The number of book reviews in JSSR and Sociology of Religion in
which qualitative interviews were mentioned grew from 24 in 1976–1980 to 82 in 1991–1995,
an increase of 242 percent, compared with an increase from 87 to 135 in reviews mention-
ing surveys, an increase of 55 percent. In contrast, articles in the two journals mentioning
qualitative interviews increased only from 28 to 33, or 18 percent, while articles mentioning
surveys grew from 143 to 187, or 31 percent. In addition to studies that focused on new reli-
gious movements (Barker 1984; Mosatche 1984), qualitative interviews were used to supplement
survey data, in ethnographic research, and alone to examine, among others, such topics as
baby boomer spirituality (Roof 1993), Christian understandings of social justice (Hart 1992),
congregational change (Stromberg 1986; Warner 1988), evangelical schooling (Rose 1988), ex-
nuns (Ebaugh 1988), fundamentalist Protestantism (Ammerman 1987), Orthodox Jewish women
(Davidman 1991; Kaufman 1991), and retention in mainline Protestantism (Hoge, Johnson, and
Luidens 1994).
TAKING TALK SERIOUSLY 5

LINGERING MISGIVINGS

Despite the attempted reorientation in thinking about culture evident in Swidler’s and others’
work and the growing use of qualitative interview data in the 1980s and 1990s, doubts have
continued that at first blush would argue against research that focuses on talk. I mention four of
these and then discuss the weaknesses of each.
First is the concern that talk is too superficial, ephemeral, and trivial to be of interest or
to afford reliable evidence about much of anything. This notion is suggested to some extent
by Swidler’s tool kit metaphor, which suggests that people simply draw on widely varying
scripts to make up instrumental justifications for their behavior. It is further underscored by
DiMaggio’s (1997) interpretation of Swidler, reversing an earlier argument (DiMaggio and Powell
1983) that culture becomes increasingly integrated through processes of isomorphism, in which
he asserts that culture is inherently fragmented. DiMaggio (2004) argues contra Weber, for
example, that Benjamin Franklin essentially had no coherent guiding values but spoke and
acted in radically different ways depending on the situation and the disjointed context in which
he lived. If culture is indeed this fragmented, talk is hardly stable enough to merit serious
investigation.
A second concern stems from the view that deeply held beliefs and values matter most,
especially in considerations of religion, and indeed cannot be assessed by studying discourse. This
concern reflects the epistemological assumption I mentioned earlier, but has recently been revived.
In a critique of Swidler’s approach to culture, Vaisey (2009) argues that discursive approaches
focus on after the fact justifications for behavior and should be distinguished from the deeply
internalized schematic processes that actually motivate action. While it may be fine to consider
respondents’ culture talk, Vaisey suggests, evidence from semi-structured interviews “gives us
little leverage on unconscious cognitive processes,” which, by virtue of being unconscious, are
better tapped by carefully designed survey questions to which subjects can respond intuitively
and without deliberation.
A third concern arises from the fact that talk is usually elicited through qualitative research and
thus fails to provide information that meets scientific standards for replication and generalization.
If talk is ephemeral, it follows that any attempt to replicate a qualitative interview study would
fail, and this problem is exacerbated by the lack of well-codified procedures for analyzing
and quantifying discursive information. It further follows that generalization to a predefined
population is difficult, if not impossible, because interviewees may not have been selected through
systematic sampling and may talk in ways that are not representative of other respondents. Reviews
of Habits of the Heart, for example, consistently raised questions about possibilities of distortion
in the interviews and an inability to interpret them because of inadequate information about
the contexts in which they were conducted or who they represented (Baltzell 1986; Fox 1986;
Gusfield 1986).
A fourth concern reflects less unease with the general approach or use of qualitative evidence
than the other three, but appears in the implicit criticism that talk may be of interest to scholars
in other disciplines, such as cultural studies or ethnolinguistics, but of marginal importance to
sociologists. The upshot is to focus minimally on talk and only insofar as it reveals what people
believe, value, or do, and to situate these items in larger discussions of broad cultural change,
politics, institutions, and the like. A revealing quote now and then may be useful to illustrate a
point, but legitimate sociological inquiry focuses less on how discourse is constructed than on
what the investigator can infer from it about social processes (e.g., it is not hard to find books
that include an anecdote or two in the preface or introduction before turning to what the author
considers as more respectable social scientific data).
These concerns suggest caution in conducting research about talk. However, they are not
sufficient to conclude that talk should not be investigated at all. In fact, it is important to understand
the weaknesses of each concern.
6 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

The concern that talk is trivial because culture is fragmented is countered by investigations
that demonstrate patterns and structure in talk and by theoretical arguments explaining why such
patterns and structure exist. While it is true that talk may consist only of tools that speakers use
willy-nilly, Bellah et al. (1985) found that respondents from diverse backgrounds discussed a
wide range of topics in ways that relied heavily on utilitarian scripts. In subsequent work Swidler
(2001) found consistency in the use of two dominant rhetorical motifs about love and Madsen
(2009) identified overlapping scripts about seeking and dwelling among interviewees in quite
varied religious communities. The reason consistency is present includes the fact that discourse is
selected from culturally available repertoires about rights, freedom, conflict, justice, and the like
(Glendon 1991; Ignatow 2004; Tilly 1993; Williams 1995). In addition, cognitive schemas that
are learned early in life impose structure on thought and speech (Boyer 1993; D’Andrade 1995;
DiMaggio 1997), and actors use endogenous discursive devices, such as narratives, metaphors,
and frames, to restrict meaning in order to enhance communication (Benford and Snow 2000;
Kaufman 2004; Witten 1992).
The contention that predisposing values and beliefs lie in the unconscious and therefore
cannot be tapped through ordinary talk elides several important distinctions. If it were truly the
case that these predispositions reside so deeply in the unconscious that they cannot be elicited in
talk, it would be necessary to dismiss all of psychoanalysis and much of talk therapy on grounds
that talk is irrelevant to understanding the unconscious. The point is better made by observing
only that action sometimes is so ingrained that it appears to arise without thought at the moment
in which it occurs. That is as true of speech as of other kinds of behavior. One does not, for
example, have to think through one’s choice of pronouns or the place of verbs and nouns before
uttering a sentence. Talk can be an after the fact justification that reflects conscious deliberation,
but it can also be spontaneous and unreflective. There is no reason to consider such talk any
less revealing of seemingly instinctive predispositions than asking respondents their answers to
a structured survey question, even though the latter may be instructive. In either case, what lies
hidden in the black box a social scientist chooses to label the unconscious cannot be known until
the subject speaks (Swidler 2008; Vaisey 2008).
The concern about investigations of talk not meeting standards of replicability and gener-
alizability presumes, often correctly, that quantitative research does better. Yet the limitations
of quantitative research in these regards must also be acknowledged. Although replicability is a
well-accepted standard in survey research, relatively few studies exactly replicate the question
wordings, sampling strategy, mode of analysis, and hypotheses tested. The point of replicability is
less one of actual replication than of transparency, a standard that can be adhered to in qualitative
as well as in quantitative research. Generalizability does not mean, as it does in the natural sci-
ences, that any observation taken under the same conditions anywhere should produce the same
result (gravity, e.g.), but that generalizations can be made to a particular population. In practice,
that seldom means more than the noninstitutionalized adult population of a particular country
(usually the United States) in the year in which a survey was conducted. With response rates
seldom exceeding 25 percent in well-publicized polls, even that much of a generalization may
be doubtful. Furthermore, what may be described as a statistical generalization—for example,
that blacks are more religious than whites—is a generalization that does not describe all the
respondents in the sample and very likely has numerous exceptions among subpopulations and
in individual cases. Although generalizations of this kind pass as social science, it is rather the
specification of conditions under which particular relationships hold true that is better understood
as the purpose of research. Qualitative research, whether of talk or about other kinds of behav-
ior, is well suited to examining such conditions and to inquiring into the processes involved.
While numbers may reveal “how much,” investigations of talk may better illuminate “how” and
“why.” As Small (2008, 2009) has usefully argued, attempting to draw the same inferences from
qualitative interviews as from surveys is like trying to build a boat that will fly. Identifying
unique cases that interrogate epistemological assumptions should have preference, Small argues,
TAKING TALK SERIOUSLY 7

as should logical rather than statistical inference and purposive designs instead of representative
sampling.
The worry that talk is not a legitimate topic for social scientific investigation is contradicted
by the sheer prevalence of talk in social life. This is perhaps especially true of religion, where talk
ranges from sermons to congregational meetings and from conversion stories and testimonials to
religious rhetoric in political campaigns and reports of miraculous healings. As these instances
suggest, religious discourse is clearly a social practice—patterned by the social institutions in
which it is learned and in which it is practiced, explicitly taught, and implicitly modeled so that
practitioners adhere to commonly accepted rules governing the practice, internalized so that these
rules often do not require conscious deliberation, and yet observable in the structure and content
of discourse itself (Bass 1997; Stout 2001; Wuthnow 1998). To demonstrate how scholars have
been approaching these topics and to consider the methodological questions such studies raise, I
turn to some specific examples.

TALK IN QUALITATIVE INTERVIEWS

One of the common reasons for conducting qualitative interviews about religion is to sup-
plement results from surveys. Verbatim quotes, stories, and examples from interviewees provide
anecdotes and illustrations that make results more interesting for the general reader, while the nu-
meric data answer questions about frequencies and statistical relationships. Statements recorded
in respondents’ own words can reinforce readers’ confidence that survey questions have been
interpreted properly by interviewees themselves and by the investigator. In Soul Searching, for
example, Smith and Denton (2005:118) write: “To get beyond the surface descriptions that sur-
veys provide, to get to the important experiences, feelings, contradictions, processes, and complex
layers of meaning in most people’s lives requires using other methods [besides surveys], such
as directly observing and talking with people at length.” This statement introduces a chapter in
which verbatim quotes are reported from interviews with several hundred teenagers. Notably,
the argument turns the criticism I mentioned earlier on its head: survey data are now superficial,
while talk more effectively gets at deeper understandings.
But what evidence do we have that teens’ talk is a better window into meaning and complexity
than their survey responses? In an earlier chapter, Smith and Denton provide a detailed description
of two respondents, but here with information from a large number of interviews, it is the discourse
itself that provides the necessary evidence. We see, for example, that teens are often unenthusiastic
about religious abstractions, as in the case of this exchange.

I: When you think of God, what image do you have of God?

We also learn what therapeutic moral guidance means from seeing that teens themselves
frequently use the words “moral,” “guidance,” “guidelines,” “better person,” and “right and
wrong.”
A related use of verbatim quotes is to counter the generalizations that might be drawn
from surveys. A good example is in Portes and Rumbaut (2001:90), who provide statistical
evidence of the disadvantages many recent immigrants face, and then note the stereotypes and
prejudices against immigrants that follow. “To avoid this common error,” they write, “we listen
to the immigrants and let them tell of their struggles and fears.” In the chapter that follows, the
authors provide vignettes and first-hand quotes that reveal immigrants’ perceptions, language,
values, and lifestyles. Immigrants frequently believe, it seems, that they are privileged rather than
disadvantaged.
8 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

In these examples, I mention that teens and immigrants “frequently” talk in certain ways—
even though the authors do not say this—to illustrate that talk may be taken seriously, but for the
wrong reasons. Trained as social scientists are to think quantitatively, and encouraged especially to
do so in multimethod studies that are partly based on surveys, the temptation is to use quantitative
language in drawing inferences from qualitative data. Doing so implies that it is the survey data,
after all, that are more credible and opens doubts as to whether the qualitative results are reliable.
The quotes serve only as a kind of teaser, like the brief vignettes that enliven otherwise dry
newspaper articles.
The logical fix for this problem is to quantify the qualitative data. In The Dignity of Working
Men, for example, Lamont (2000:39) provides quantitative summaries of many of the results
from her qualitative interviews, such as: “Among all the American working class men I talked to,
only 25 percent can be described as very religious, and the vast majority do not define themselves
as particularly religious.” She then provides quotes from several of the men who are religious to
show how they talk about its place in their lives.
This strategy helps put evidence about talk on a more solid footing, but only to a degree.
The footing remains shaky to the extent, as in this example, that interviewees who were willing
to talk at length to an investigator inadequately represent the larger population from which they
were drawn, meaning that the critical phrase becomes “men I talked to.” It is further limited to
conclusions about broad categories, such as being religious or not being religious, rather than
dealing with the fine-grained nuances of talk itself, thus in some instances leaving readers with
the impression that a survey asking detailed questions would have actually been better.
The larger problem is that quantitative inferences are not the principal reason for conducting
qualitative research in the first place or for being interested in talk. As Small (2009) argues, the
quantitative mindset gets in the way. Consider the story of Mr. Ting with which Carolyn Chen
(2008:1) opens Getting Saved in America. The story is that Chen talks to a woman named Mrs.
Chou who says her neighbor, Mr. Ting, is more religious since coming to America than he used to
be in Taiwan. Mrs. Chou asks Chen: “What is it about going to the United States that makes people
become religious?” An interpretation of what Chen is doing here is that she believes what much
of the literature has argued, namely, that immigrants do in fact become more religious (reviewed
in Hirschman 2004; Warner 1993, 1998), to which a critic would say, yes, but that conclusion
is based on ethnographic studies that “sample on the dependent variable” by studying religious
people in immigrant congregations and thus overestimate the extent to which immigrants become
religious. Good quantitative data, a critic would point out, demonstrate that immigrants do not
become more religious (Connor 2008, 2010).
But the story of Mr. Ting actually serves a different purpose. By quoting Mrs. Chou, Chen
does not suggest that either she or Mrs. Chou is offering a statistical generalization that is true. It
is rather that Mrs. Chou expresses what nearly any reader can believe, which is that the question
about immigrants becoming religious is out there, so to speak, in the public’s perceptions. It is
not a question that only Chen herself is asking or that stems from esoteric discussions in the
sociology of religion. Furthermore, the story personalizes the question. While Mrs. Chou poses
it as a general question, the story shows that it stems from her acquaintance with Mr. Ting. That
encourages the reader to think in particular ways about individual cases and sets an appropriate
context for the 50 in-depth cases that make up the evidence for the book. The point is not that these
50 cases represent all immigrants, but that some immigrants do in fact become more religious
and these cases will illustrate the processes involved. The verbatim quotes show the language in
which these immigrants talk about their faith. It is the same strategy Chen (2005) uses in telling
the story of Susan Liao to situate a question about religion and empowerment among immigrant
women.
Fair enough, one might say, but does that tell us much about talk or only show that talk can be
used to introduce a qualitative study? To get at talk itself, an excellent example is Griffith’s (1997a)
God’s Daughters and a related article about lived religion from the same study of participants
TAKING TALK SERIOUSLY 9

in the Pentecostal movement Women’s Aglow (Griffith 1997b). Two important observations can
be drawn from this work. First, in introducing individual speakers, Griffith is careful to frame
the story so that the reader knows why the story is being told. For example, Griffith (1997b:164)
discusses “the women interviewed in studies conducted by sociologists Mirra Komarovsky and
Lillian Rubin, and the survey respondents in the Kelly Longitudinal Study” to set the context
and then explains that Dorothy’s “story is typical in the meanings she draws from her situation
and in the messages she conveys about coping with an unhappy life.” That framing cues the reader
to understand that Dorothy’s story is typical not just of women in general or of all Pentecostal
women but of the ways of constructing meaning exhibited in other studies. Second, Griffith
scrutinizes the discourse itself to suggest the role it plays in Women’s Aglow and in the lives of
women who participate. For example, Griffith (1997a:190) shows through extended quotes from
two interviewees that expressions of shame and guilt “take on scripted forms within the narrative
context” that attributes suffering to the family and thus defines personal crises as “opportunities for
personal atonement and growth.” The particular scripting evident in her interviewees’ language
and the reported contexts in which they use these scripts is similar to the self-reinvention observed
in other prayer groups and in therapeutic contexts (Davidman 1994; Fingarette 1963; Slater 1966;
Wedam and Warner 1994). Talk is of interest, not because it illustrates a broad theme (such as
hope or religiosity) that a researcher could just as well have identified in a survey, but because
talk plays an active role in subjects’ lives.
The larger point in these examples is that talk is cultural work that people do to make sense of
their lives and to orient their behavior. It is a tool kit—culture in action in Swidler’s terms—with
which to do work, but it is more than an after the fact justification. It serves rather as the means
through which values and beliefs acquire sufficient meaning to guide behavior and to provide a
template for self-understanding. Two examples will further illustrate what I mean. In his study
of evangelical and Catholic journalists and academicians, Schmalzbauer (2003) examined the
discursive strategies these writers used to bridge the gap between their personal faith and the
secular occupations in which they worked. The qualitative interviews demonstrated that theories
about privatization and compartmentalization were insufficient for understanding journalists’ and
academicians’ strategies (although some did privatize their faith and compartmentalize it from
their work). Instead, the interviewees utilized multivocality to create a kind of discursive map in
which various aspects of faith and work could be categorized. For example, some respondents
spoke of faith as a means of expressing emotion whereas their work required objectivity; others
saw peace and justice as conceptual bridges between the two; and still others found ways in
which to think of themselves as public intellectuals. It was evident in these writers’ accounts,
working as they did as producers of culture, that religious values were not simply an unidentifiable
substratum that guided their choice of vocation, but were expressed, often subtly, in their work
and in how they understood their careers. As a second example, in my research on volunteering
(Wuthnow 1991, 1995), I observed talk performing cultural work in several interesting ways. For
instance, adult interviewees reconciled altruistic and egoistic motives through the use of reported
speech that included comments others had made as a way of making their discourse heteroglossic
(Bakhtin 1981) and expressing different motives through the voices of different speakers. While
survey evidence showed that respondents held multiple and sometimes conflicting reasons for
doing volunteer work, analysis of how they actually talked about their activities made it possible
to understand the discursive devices they used to integrate these reasons. Several of the adults
also provided interesting examples of code switching and register shifts through which they
translated religious motives into nonreligious language. Among teenage volunteers, boys who
were made fun of by their classmates for doing community service countered by associating
service with hobbies that did not reflect their true selves, while girls did so by talking about
service as if it were an appropriate form of domestic caring behavior. Boys’ and girls’ discourse
differed both in the number of qualifiers their sentences included and in the occurrence of personal
pronouns.
10 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

A similar emphasis on the details of language is evident in the work of anthropologist Claudia
Strauss (1990), who has conducted lengthy multisession interviews with unemployed men, paying
close attention to the heteroglossic character of their responses. Strauss argues that a common
misunderstanding of interview data is to imagine that beliefs are internalized as sentences on a
kind of central blackboard in a person’s head and can be extracted by a researcher as substantive
themes. Instead, she finds that beliefs are “acquired from a variety of sources whose messages
are ambiguous, conveyed in various ways, and not neatly attributable to one ideology or another.”
It thus becomes necessary to pay attention “to the form as well as the content.” For example,
she observes her interviewees expressing theorized knowledge that they can readily articulate,
at other times voicing thoughts that are no less important but less easily expressed, on occasion
signaling shifts in meaning through choices of singular or plural pronouns, and often resorting to
metaphors that demonstrate agency or passivity.
As these examples illustrate, qualitative interviews often elicit discourse in which inter-
viewees talk self-referentially about themselves. The research indicates that story telling is an
important way in which individuals make sense of and give coherence to their selves (Linde
1993). The stories that people tell in interviews generally bear marks of having been told before,
including quoted speech (such as “Well, I always tell my wife that . . .”), scripted speech (such as
“my life has been like a long journey”), and a distinct narrative structure that focuses on familiar
landmark events (such as finishing school and taking a first job).
For these reasons, self-referencing talk in interviews has proven to be a rich vein for scholars
of religion who are interested in the relationships among religious meanings and personal identity.
The core narratives that people construct to make sense of their lives are sometimes built around
metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) of searching, seeking, and embarking on journeys of self-
exploration and in other cases emphasize greater spatial stability through descriptions of homes,
families, and places of worship (Roof 1993, 1999; Wuthnow 1998). Narratives about conversion
and transformative religious experiences have been of particular interest (Stromberg 1993), as
have inquiries into the ways in which religious practitioners reconstitute ascribed identities as
achieved commitments (Cadge 2005; Cadge and Davidman 2006). These and similar studies have
gone well beyond documenting the fact that many people do experience religious transformations
by showing in greater detail how these changes are accomplished, modeled, and communicated
through narratives.
Analyses of discourse about other topics offer numerous concepts that have yet to be consid-
ered as carefully in studies of religion. These include studies of “active voicing” as repair devices
in narrative reflexivity (Auburn 2005), present tense codas as indications of dominant core nar-
rative themes (Carranza 1999), intensifiers as markers of conviction and personal authority (Ito
and Tagliamonte 2003), and narrative sequencing in stories of good and bad fortune (Maynard
2003) and in accounts of moral responsibility (Cerulo 1998). Whereas the purpose of many such
studies in the literature on the sociology of discourse has been to identify discursive markers,
tropes, and categories, the task for scholars of religion would be to utilize these concepts to help
make sense of religious symbols, meaning, and behavior.

EVIDENCE FROM ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

Compared with field research involving extensive participant observation, the information
elicited in qualitative interviews must be viewed as a particular kind of discourse subject to
the constraints of limited interview time, less familiarity between interviewers and interviewees,
and the somewhat structured flow of questions and topics. Interviews are advantageous for
eliciting information about personal histories, beliefs and values, and interpretations of events.
They are well suited for questions about self-identity and personal experience and can include
discussions about friends, family, social networks, and organizations. Field investigations provide
TAKING TALK SERIOUSLY 11

opportunities for observing talk in natural settings and for examining its role in social interaction.
When qualitative interviews are conducted in conjunction with field research, an added advantage
is greater understanding of particular subcultures and social relationships. More can be known
about subjects’ relationships with one another, the contexts in which they tell their stories and
hear others tell theirs, and the experiences from which talk arises. Griffith’s (1997a, 1997b)
recognition of the scripted character of her interviewees’ stories, for example, was enhanced by
observing Women’s Aglow meetings.
As scholars have expressed greater interest in “lived religion” (Ammerman 2006; Hall 1997;
McGuire 2008), field researchers have increasingly focused on religion in settings other than
places of worship. Bender’s (2003) study of volunteers at a New York community organization
that prepared home-cooked meals for people with AIDS illustrates the value of investigating talk
about religion in nonreligious settings. Bender’s epistemological perspective is more compatible
with Swidler’s view of culture in action and with Griffith’s “lived religion” approach than with
notions of religion as unconscious beliefs and values. Her study assumes that talk is important,
not so much because it reflects some subterranean reality, but because our selves, actions, and
the meanings of those actions are shaped and renegotiated in everyday practices. How then does
religion get talked about? Through extensive field research, Bender observed that commonplace
talk about religion was facilitated by the fact that some aspects of religion are public: people
easily talked about church, preparing for religious holidays, and conservative religious lead-
ers they disliked. These safe topics also laid the groundwork for less frequent conversations
about difficult topics, such as clarifications of religious misunderstandings. In the process, talk
was concrete and situational, but also accomplished some of the work of moving people from
their comfort zones into a more pluralistic understanding of religion and themselves. Bender’s
research led her to suggest the need for greater attention to the ways in which talk about reli-
gion is shaped by specific contexts, a task that has guided her more recent work on spirituality
(Bender 2010).
If this observation has merit, an obvious next step is to consider how talk—even among the
same people—differs between religious and nonreligious contexts. The point is not to demonstrate
the obvious—for example, that people swear more in taverns than at church—but to see if
talk generates different kinds of shared understandings in religious gatherings than in other
settings and if talk in other settings knits people together in ways that may affect their religious
behavior. Suggestive work on these questions has been done by Clawson (2007), who conducted
ethnographic work in several locations among Sacred Harp singers. Clawson’s research showed
the prevalence of a common ground of spiritual practice during the meetings held at churches—a
sense of unity reinforced not only by instrumental talk centered around the music but also, as
Heider and Warner (2010) have emphasized, the synchronicity of bodies and voices. By following
some of the singers as they went about their work and interacted with neighbors at other times,
Clawson (2005) revealed a different aspect of talk as well. What appeared as a tightly bonded
community during songfests was stitched together and interlaced with other networks through
frequent exchanges of gossip that had little to do with spiritual practice. It was the small talk
about kin, cattle, carpentry, and the weather as much as anything about religion that forged bonds
of common understanding.
How talk influences its social contexts, as well as being shaped by them, has also been
examined by Paul Lichterman (2005) in his study of church groups seeking to bridge racial
divisions. Like Swidler and Bender, Lichterman is interested in broadening our understanding of
culture beyond studies of beliefs and worldviews and to ask how religion may influence action in
other ways. His research among nine Protestant-based volunteer and advocacy groups examines
in considerable detail how talk matters in constructing group identities. Not only do groups define
their own identities, but they also construct the identities of out-groups they wish to serve. He
found that volunteering alone did not build a strong sense of community. Instead, intentional
work was necessary to move past individualistic notions of charity and goodwill toward an
12 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

understanding of the collective character of groups. Lichterman was especially interested in the
silences that revealed what people did not feel comfortable talking about, as well as what they
did discuss, and whether the social concepts they talked about focused mainly on individual
persons or included talk about collective entities, such as organizations, neighborhoods, and
racial categories. Extending these results to other contexts, Eliasoph and Lichterman (2003) have
argued that studies of talk should consider not only the symbols and codes that shape individuals’
actions but also the “group style” that defines the meaning of a collectivity, including the kinds
of speech in which members can engage, the tone of meetings, and the group’s relationships with
other groups.
On one reading, the call for closer attention to group style suggests a return to funda-
mental sociological questions posed by Durkheim, Simmel, Toennies, and others about the
functioning of collectivities. Emphasizing the specificity of social contexts nevertheless chal-
lenges the assumption that social science should be centrally concerned with generalizations
about large populations that transcend local contexts. Another way in which ethnographic stud-
ies featuring talk have challenged this assumption is by specifically calling into question such
generalizations. For example, several studies have done this by looking closely at African-
American communities. McRoberts (2003), for example, examines how members of several
African-American churches in Boston talk about “the street” and come to quite different views
about how to engage with or separate themselves from the neighborhood. Similarly, Marla
Frederick (2003) shows that African-American church women in a North Carolina community
combine complex narratives of gratitude and empathy in developing narratives about helping
their neighbors. Focusing less specifically on religion, Newman’s (1999) research in Harlem
suggests that the working poor conform more closely to middle-class values than stereotypic
depictions often suggest. Newman’s work presents rich verbatim quotes that challenge broad
generalizations.

RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE IN ADVOCACY SETTINGS

If skepticism about the value of studying talk diminishes as evidence of its importance in the
religious lives of individuals and groups accumulates, that value should be even more apparent in
studies of religious advocacy. As Evans (2010) observes in his research on religious opposition
to reproductive genetic technologies, it is important to study not only how people think about
such issues but also how they talk about them “because a person’s language about their thoughts,
rather than solely their thoughts, influences others in the public sphere.” From a large number
of interviews with the lay public as well as from speeches given by religious leaders, Evans
identifies four key discourses in which opposition to reproductive genetic technologies is typically
expressed: an embryonic life discourse that emphasizes life beginning at conception, a Promethean
fatalism that argues against interfering with God’s plans, a discourse of individual human dignity
and equality that opposes the selective application of reproductive genetic technologies, and
a meaningful suffering discourse that emphasizes the value of living with and learning from
suffering.
Evans’s study is an example of discourse analysis that uses a national survey to identify broad
patterns of public attitudes and then relies on qualitative interviews to tease out the language in
which respondents’ views are expressed in greater detail. The interview guides pose various
scenarios involving illnesses and possible uses of medical technologies and ask respondents their
opinions about what should be done and the reasons for holding these opinions. The language in
which ordinary church members express their views is compared with the ways in which public
statements by religious leaders have been framed. Unlike studies in which talk is analyzed word
by word for specific narrative structures, metaphors, and discursive devices, the analysis here
focuses on substantive themes, such as an emphasis on life beginning at conception or learning
TAKING TALK SERIOUSLY 13

from suffering. These themes are not necessarily expressed fully in narrative form by particular
interviewees, but are formulated by the investigator into meta-narratives that tell a story about
how an illness comes about, how a person should respond, what the reasons for that response are,
and what the expected outcomes will be. Evans further shows how these narratives evolve from
one topic into another and shift from one conceptual domain into another. For example, narratives
about abortion provide templates for some respondents’ discourse about other topics, such as in
vitro fertilization.
Studies that examine advocacy discourse in these ways generally adopt a similar method-
ology, but vary in the topics they address and the specific questions at issue. For example, in a
previous book Evans (2002) examined bioethical debates over four decades to see if theological
arguments became less important as bioethics became professionalized. The study, based on anal-
ysis of publications as well as interviews, showed not only a decline in theological arguments but
also a shift away from rhetoric emphasizing first principles and absolute values toward discourse
featuring instrumental and procedural claims. Besides the institutionalization of bioethics as a
profession, the growing role of government commissions and hearings was a factor in these shifts.
These conclusions are similar to those identified by Moody (2002) in a different context in which
advocacy debates about water rights in California also demonstrated an increase in the prevalence
of professional and procedural discourse as hearings continued from one decade to the next.
Illustrating different results, Massengill (2008, 2009) examined how advocacy groups on
different sides of several issues developed opposing moral themes and utilized alternative
metaphors to emphasize such values as families, individual rights, community, and benevo-
lence. Similarly, Reynolds (2010) examined religious advocacy groups in the United States,
Canada, and Costa Rica to show how authoritative claims about international trade agree-
ments were formulated in the different contexts and Zubrzycki (2006) examined contested
narratives about the religious and political meanings of Auschwitz. Though less specifically
focused on religion, Polletta (2006) provides valuable evidence of advocacy movements using
moral narratives to combat child abuse, reform abortion laws, and gain rights for disadvantaged
populations.
Works examining the discourse of particular public figures has generated less interest among
social scientists than studies of multiple individuals, groups, and movements, but several notable
exceptions have appeared in which close attention has been paid to the use of metaphors and
rhetorical style. Lakoff’s (2004) work has focused on the metaphoric constructions of words
like freedom and liberty by individual leaders such as President George W. Bush, and Martin
(2003), among others, has examined evangelical code words in Bush’s speeches. Sociologist
Rieder’s (2010) The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me provides a detailed analysis of Dr. Martin
Luther King’s discourse, showing the varying circumstances under which the civil rights leader
used “black talk” and “white talk,” adopted a homiletic style, incorporated theological language,
and engaged in backstage talk with friends. Though less about religion, Alexander’s (2010)
investigation of the Obama victory focuses on the language of moral dichotomies and “walking the
boundaries.”
The question that studies of advocacy speech perennially confront is whether such dis-
course actually affects public policy. While scholars continue to argue that the media and
public opinion affect policy (e.g., Prior 2007), the argument in studies of religious discourse
appears to have shifted toward a more modest claim that discourse is a form of symbolic
expression that reflects public values and may at times facilitate interaction, but can seldom
be proven to have directly influenced public policy. Lindsay (2008a, 2008b), for example,
argues that the religious discourse of the evangelical elite he studied served as expressive
symbolism that brought evangelicalism into public consciousness along with these leaders’ ef-
fectiveness in creating networks and utilizing their convening power. Lindsay’s research also
usefully suggested differences between elites and the general public in ways of talking about
faith.
14 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

TEXTS AND TRIANGULATION

Although I have emphasized studies in which information about discourse is obtained through
first-hand interviewing and field research, it is of course important to mention the increasing
availability of textual information through electronic media and archival sources. Current and
historic newspaper editions, magazines, academic journals, television news archives, digital photo
collections, websites, music, and blogs all offer opportunities to examine religious discourse.
Content analysis in which textual material is quantified is valuable for some purposes and is
facilitated by the availability of special software. Content analysis is limited to the extent that
units of text often are not of comparable length or quality and because coding of broad substantive
themes misses important nuances in meaning and discursive style. Studies of discourse in which
content analysis has been used have examined temporal trends and spatial variation that would
have been difficult to assess through other means (e.g., Cerulo 1984, 1989; Morning 2008;
Rutherford 2009).
Besides studies of substantive themes, analyses of texts have paid some attention to other
features of discourse. In a wide ranging theoretical and empirical discussion, anthropologist
Jackson (2002), for example, considers how stories and storytelling, both in texts and in oral
communication, negotiate boundaries between public and private, reveal intersubjective fields,
and code meanings of violence, transgression, and redemption. In a more focused inquiry, Witten
(1995) examined not only such themes as judgment and sin in sermons about the prodigal
son but also described centripetal narrative constructions that restricted meaning and instances
of quoted speech in stories that demonstrated the pastor’s authority. More recently, Braender
(2009) has examined content and narrative style both qualitatively and quantitatively in frontline
soldiers’ blogs to assess their understandings of civil religion, sacrifice, patriotism, and honor.
Also departing from standard methods is Perrin and Vaisey’s (2008) study of letters to the editor
in Greensboro, North Carolina, which illustrates possibilities for coding emotional tone as well
as content and supplementing textual material with a survey of letter writers.
The increasing availability of textual material also serves as an important reminder of the
value of triangulating information from multiple sources. In my research on responses to the
feelings of vulnerability that followed the attacks on September 11, 2001, for example, I drew
from qualitative interviews, which were limited by virtue of being conducted several years after
the attacks, but also from news accounts, essays written by eyewitnesses, surveys, and real-time
emails sent and received during the attacks (Wuthnow 2010). Lindsay’s (2008a) interviews with
evangelical elites were enriched by extensive reading of their published work and stories about
them. Other examples include Ecklund’s (2010) study of scientists and several studies of advice
about marriage and parenting (Bartkowski 2004; Griffith 1997b; Wilcox 2004). Triangulation
is especially important in order to avoid what psychologist Pinker (2009) calls the “Igon value
problem.” The Igon value problem occurred in journalist Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw and
Other Adventures (2009) because Gladwell apparently relied on an interview transcript in which
the term was mentioned, rather than consulting additional sources, from which he would have
learned the proper spelling of “eigenvalue.”

CONCLUSION

I have tried to suggest here that there is a lingering history of doubt among social scientists
who study religion about the value of investigating talk, but that some of the implicit concerns
are not as valid as they may appear to be, and that in any case numerous examples can be found
of studies in recent years that have usefully examined religious talk by drawing on qualitative
interviews, ethnographic field research, and analysis of texts. Reinforcing this interest in religious
discourse are several epistemological and conceptual developments, including an appreciation
TAKING TALK SERIOUSLY 15

of the need to move beyond discussions of the difficult to study black box of unconscious
predispositions and subjective intuitions toward more observable aspects of culture, whether in
the form of survey responses or speech acts or interaction rituals. Further reinforcing interest in
the study of discourse, treatments of lived religion have argued for the importance of examining
practices in everyday life, and discussions of spirituality have noted the extent to which religious
meanings and identities are constructed from multiple repertoires rather than adhering to particular
creedal formulations.
Studies of religious talk for the most part rely on qualitative methods, which involve different
standards of evaluation from those generally considered important in quantitative research. My
review of the literature here is in no way meant to disparage survey research, but trends over
the past decade or two do suggest some concerns about the value of surveys for illuminating
important aspects of religion. Many of the best funded and methodologically most reliable surveys
include only limited questions about religion (usually only religious affiliation, participation, and
a few other generic indicators), while many of the most publicized opinion polls suffer from
dubious validity and poor response rates. Although surveys and polls continue to occupy a
prominent place in social scientific studies of religion, information from other sources is clearly
needed.
A practical advantage for scholars interested in studying religious discourse is that data
collection is relatively inexpensive, compared with large-scale surveys, and can be done with
greater sophistication and on a wider variety of topics because of the availability of electronic
archives. Social scientists’ penchant for quantification and generalization remains an epistemo-
logical challenge for studies utilizing qualitative methods. Although studies of religious discourse
have become increasingly common, disciplinary barriers continue to impede efforts to draw in-
sights from literary criticism, rhetoric, discourse analysis, media and communication studies, and
cultural anthropology.
A hopeful sign of how the study of talk may continue to inform investigations of religion,
nevertheless, lies in the fact that methods of discourse analysis are increasingly being developed
in a variety of related fields. As religion is increasingly understood not simply as an independent
or dependent variable, but as a social practice that interlaces with other aspects of everyday life,
it is being investigated not only by specialists who are especially interested in religion, but also
by scholars of culture, language, ethnicity, race, and class, to name only a few. Although it may
be true that language is sufficiently flexible that people can say anything, it is not the case that
they do. Talk conveys meaning because it is culturally patterned. What we say, how we say it,
and what we accomplish through discourse are important aspects of what it means to be human
and thus of relevance to the human sciences.
Scholars who think they are being “scientific” by doing surveys and running multivariate
statistical models are unlikely to be convinced that studying talk is worth their time. But scholars
who are truly interested in understanding religion know that talk cannot be ignored. How else
can we understand the reshaping of self-concepts in prayer groups? How else can we study the
ways in which conversion narratives are constructed? How else can we investigate the arguments
advanced by religious advocacy groups?
Future directions for research on religious discourse are not easily specified in the same
way that suggesting new topics for surveys might be. I have given plenty of examples of work
that has already shown possibilities for fruitful investigations. Those can be extended into new
substantive areas. In addition, studies are needed that continue to address basic epistemological
and methodological questions. The social scientific study of religion has had a half-century
and more to experiment with what it means to be scientific. The answer has mostly been to
quantify and generalize. Perhaps it is time to consider again whether that answer is correct.
Studying religious discourse is a way to force that consideration to the surface. It necessitates
asking again what we want to know about religion, why we want to know it, and how best to
find out.
16 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

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