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INVITATION TO THE
SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
INVITATION TO
THE SOCIOLOGY
OF RELIGION
PHIL ZUCKERMAN
Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zuckerman, Phil.
Invitation to the sociology of religion/Phil Zuckerman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-94125-3 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-415-94126-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Religion and sociology. I. Title.
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306.6–dc21
2003007398
ISBN 0-203-86652-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 978-0-415-94126-6 (Print Edition)

Sociological jargon is usually filled with latinized concepts and
complicated sentence structures. It is as if the use of ordinary
words and sentences might decrease the trust in arguments
and reasoning. I detest that tradition. So little of the sociology I
am fond of needs technical terms and ornate sentences. I write
with my “favourite aunts” in mind, fantasy figures of ordinary
people, sufficiently fond of me to give the text a try, but not to
the extent of using terms and sentences made complicated to
look scientific.
—Nils Christie
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Sociology and Religion 17
Chapter 2: Time and Place 35
Chapter 3: Religion Is Socially Learned 47
Chapter 4: Religion or Cult? 61
Chapter 5: Social Life Affecting Religion 75
Chapter 6: Religion Affecting Social Life 95
Conclusion: The Matter of Belief 115
Bibliography 131
Index 151
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my student research assistants, Gayla Hamik-

Beckley and Shana Doerr. Additional thanks and gratitude to my
friends and colleagues for their encouragement and scholarly
advice: Benton Johnson, Joseph Bryant, Mark Shibley, Peter Nardi,
Jill Brazier, and Amatzya Mezahav. I would also like to express
my deep appreciation to Nick Street, who first believed in and
supported this project. Sincere thankfulness and tremendous
appreciation for hard work and insightful editing to Damian Treffs,
Gilad Foss, and everyone else at Routledge. My ultimate thanks
and gratitude to my father, Marvin Zuckerman, and especially my
wife, Stacy Elliott, for crucial input, critical intellectual challenges,
and personal inspiration. Finally, love to Ruby Pandora Natya and
Flora Fredrika Delphina.
ix
INTRODUCTION
Some of my best friends are religious. So are some of my closest

relatives. So are most of my neighbors. The teachers and secretaries
at my daughter’s nursery school are religious, as well as the two
brothers from Egypt who own and run my favorite pizza place. My
mechanic is religious. So is my president. Some days it feels like the
whole world is religious.
Whenever I drive anywhere, I can’t help but notice the plethora
of bumper stickers telling me about Jesus’ love or God’s blessings.
Sometimes an occasional billboard along the freeway will echo
their assertions. Whenever I turn on the little television attached to
the jogging treadmill at the gym where I work out, I am entertained
by Christian rock videos or informed by Christian news broadcasts.
Whenever I walk into the chain bookstores at the nearby mall, I
am greeted by rows and rows of religious best-sellers, from
Armageddon-Apocalyptic serials to New Age spiritual advice,
from the benefits of Zen meditation to the practical wisdom of
the Cabala.
When I open my newspaper every morning, I am regularly
confronted with religious matters, from controversies over priestly
sexual abuse and child molestation in the Catholic Church to Falun
Gong members meditating in Chinese prisons. Lately there’s been
a lot in the newspapers about a California federal appeals court
ruling that the Pledge of Allegiance violates the Constitution with
its reference to God—a ruling which the Congress, the Senate, and
the president have denounced. In November 2002, hundreds of
people in Kaduna, Nigeria, were killed and injured in rioting that
erupted when a local newspaper questioned Muslim opposition
to the Miss World beauty pageant. Other current religious issues
permeating the news include religious/ethnic conflicts in Kashmir,
Sudan, Egypt, Northern Ire-land, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Macedonia,
Mexico, and Israel-Palestine. And ever since September 11, religion
1
2 Invitation to the Sociology of Religion
has been a constant media staple, with regular stories on religious

fundamentalism, the efficacy of prayer, God’s wrath, End-Times
prophecy, and so on.
The other night, my mother-in-law talked to me for over an hour
about her worries concerning whether or not her daughter (my
wife) would be able to cash in on her generous life insurance policy
after the rapture—which she is sure will happen any day now. Last
week, while standing in line at the grocery store, I noticed that the
cover of Newsweek was about Heaven. A few months earlier the
cover story was about God. And a few weeks ago, Time ran a cover
story on the Apocalypse. And as I sit here writing this paragraph
in my office of very liberal, extremely progressive, and ostensibly
secular Pitzer College—the college which The Princeton Review
website ranks fourth in the nation for “ignoring God on a regular
basis”—I realize that among my colleagues with whom I share this
hallway, one is a regularly meditating Buddhist, one is a Hindu
who has been enthusiastically sharing her revelations with me from
her recent study of the Bhagavad-Gita, and one is a self-described
“pagan pantheist” who claims to be very spiritually connected
with Earth. I’m not sure that any of my colleagues would actually
label themselves “religious.” For some, the term “religious” is
synonymous with dogmatic, fundamentalist, unquestioning, or
obedient (Zinnbauer et al. 1997). Like many of my friends (and
especially my students), my colleagues would probably prefer to
describe themselves as “spiritual”—a term which seems to imply a
reluctance to belong to a specific religious movement or to accept a
specific set of traditional beliefs, while at the same time maintaining
a sincere openness to the sacred, a desire to connect to something
bigger than ourselves, a willingness to admit that there is more to
this life than that which can be rationally understood or empirically
explained (see Marler and Hadaway 2002; Yip 2002; Fuller 2001).
But whether they prefer the label “religious” or “spiritual,” I find
myself surrounded by people who certainly would not be described
as irreligious, atheist, or secular.
The glaring truth is that despite the confident predictions of some
of the most prominent European social theorists of the nineteenth
century, religion hasn’t died. Religion has not declined in the wake
of the Enlightenment and the advances of science. Modernity has
not bred a widespread, universal skepticism. With the glaring and
Introduction 3
note-worthy exception of selected countries in Western Europe

(Bruce 2001; Grotenhuis and Scheepers 2001; Palm and Trost 2000;
Davie 1999), most of the world is actually “bubbling with religious
passions,” to quote Peter Berger (2001). Religion not only persists,
but as Batson, Schoenrader, and Ventis (1993, 4) observe, it provides
for literally millions of people “the most significant, most joyful,
the most meaningful moments of their lives.” Additionally, tens
of thousands of religious individuals and organizations are at the
forefront of sustained attempts to alleviate human suffering around
the world: feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, tending to
the sick, caring for the orphaned, and the like. Yes, religion is very
much alive and thriving on planet Earth—especially here in the
United States (Greeley 1991). According to the research of Finke
and Stark (1992), a greater proportion of Americans are church
members today than at any other time in our country’s history. A
2002 international survey conducted by the Pew Research Center
for the People and Press found that 59 percent of Americans
considered religion “very important” in their lives, compared
with only 11 percent of respondents in France, 12 percent in Japan,
25 percent in South Korea, 27 percent in Italy, and 30 percent in
Canada. Robert Fuller (2001, 1) has recently described the United
States as “arguably the most religious nation on earth.” Robert
Putnam (2000, 65) concurs, characterizing the United States as one
of the most religiously observant, God-believing, fundamentalist,
and spiritually active countries in all Christendom.
Consider:
• 96 percent of Americans profess a belief in God, a percentage

that has held steady for over fifty years.1
• One out of every three Americans claims to be a “born again”
Christian.
• One out of every three Americans believes that the Bible “is
the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for
word.”
• 68 percent of Americans believe in The Devil (Kristof 2003).
Of course, being an agnostic, I sometimes feel, well, taken aback by

it all. Some days I am intrigued and enthralled by all the religion
around me. Other days, I’m concerned. Or envious. Or suspicious.
Or amused. Or daunted. Or curious. So much faith. So many houses

of worship. So many people committing their lives to various
gods and goddesses, engaging in extensive rituals, celebrating
solemn or garish holy days, donating time and money to various
congregations and organizations. So many people seemingly
comforted by a confident belief in religious answers concerning
life’s deepest mysteries.
Take the mystery of death. I personally have absolutely no idea
what happens when you die. But a lot of people do. I remember
seeing this one particular commercial on television a few years ago
when I was living in Eugene, Oregon. I was watching Seinfeld reruns
late at night, and it was during the commercial break. There was a
commercial for shampoo and then another one for a local car dealer
and then came a commercial concerning the mystery of death. It
began on an unambiguously somber note: dreary, melancholic
music played while there were obscure images of a dark suit,
a white hand, a leather shoe being polished, and then it quickly
became apparent that what was being shown was actually a corpse
being clothed, cleaned, and prepared for a funeral. Then came the
frightening climax of the commercial: from the corpse’s point of
view we see the casket lid come closing over us and shutting with
a dull thud. The screen goes black. The music stops. It is dark and
silent and then a confident, male voice comes on asking bluntly:
“Do you know where you’re going when you die? We do.”
Then the sun comes up on the screen and the music becomes
hopeful and inspiring and the voice says something about finding
salvation and eternal life and then there is a picture of a local
church—The Lighthouse Chapel on West Eighteenth Avenue—
with its address, phone number, directions to the church, and
worship times. I never went to that particular church to find out
what happens when we die, but I know many in Eugene who did
go— once, twice, maybe even three times a week. It was a very
popular church.
Scholars have long theorized about the significance of death
when it comes to religion: fear about death, making sense of death,
hoping for life after death, and so on.
According to the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1954,
47), people are condemned to living their lives in the shadow of
death, “and he who clings to life and enjoys its fullness must dread
Introduction 5
the menace of its end.” For Malinowski, “of all sources of religion…
death is of the greatest importance.” The psychologist Sigmund
Freud (1961, 19) concurred, citing the “painful riddle of death” as
a major source of a sense of helplessness, which religion helps to
alleviate.
Recent data indicate that belief in life after death is very strong
and widespread in our country:
• Roughly 80 percent of Americans believe in life after death.

• Two out of every three Americans expect to exist in some form
following death, and most of them think their life after death
will be a positive experience.
• 86 percent of Americans believe in Heaven; 71 percent believe
in Hell.
• Over one-fourth of Americans surveyed believe in
reincarnation.
The matter of death is clearly central when it comes to religion

(Gilman, 1923). But religion doesn’t merely concern itself with
what happens when we die. Many would argue that matters of
death are actually of much less importance than the lived religious
experiences that people have, such as personal and profound
connections to God. As Rodney Stark (1999) puts it, “normal
people do talk to God”—and such connections with the divine are
undeniably important when it comes to religion. And they are more
common than you might think.
Consider my friend, Stewart Stein.2
I met Stewart in third grade. He was one of the brightest,
friendliest, most charismatic, and most mature kids in the
schoolyard. It may seem odd to describe a third grader as “mature,”
but, well, that was Stewart. We played on the same baseball team
throughout elementary school. We had our bar mitzvahs during
the same year in the same synagogue. I accompanied him and
his family on many a camping expedition in northern California
throughout high school. We lost touch during college.
And then one day while I was in graduate school I heard from a
friend of a friend that Stewart had become enlightened—that he was
a spiritual guru with followers and everything. It was a real shock.
I always assumed Stewart would become a corporate attorney or
city councilman or CEO of some corporation or agency—something

respectable and “establishment.” I was quite wrong. Stewart had
turned out very differently. He was walking around barefoot, with
long hair, beads around his neck, and leading his followers on
spiritual retreats to northern Arizona. Fascinated, I called him up,
and we began corresponding. I asked him about his new spiritual/
religious identity. He explained to me that he had been living in
Vermont for a while and had spent a year or two “in the personal
growth community,” by which he meant “workshops, seminars,
[and] speaking engagements.” And then he went on to describe
explicitly two of his direct and personal encounters with God:
I spent the first twenty-five years of my life not believing in God, and then
I started to open up to the idea of there being a God simply with the idea
that it might make my life better. I certainly didn’t buy the whole program
book, line and sinker. I just dipped my toes in the water to see how the
water was. Imagine me at a spiritual healing school being totally triggered
every time the teacher mentioned the word God! I was so opposed to it, but
I was totally fascinated by the idea of energy, how it worked in our bodies
and how it could be harnessed to create health and cure disease…. But God
was a whole ‘nother ballgame. It wasn’t until I read a brochure from my
second teacher that I ran ‘into the house, threw everything down, and had a
forty-five minute vent session where I literally called God every name in the
book. Every swear word, every curse word, every rotten thing I’d ever felt
towards God. Abandoned, shammed, tricked. You name it. It felt like five
hundred years of anger and spite opened up and let loose. I ended up flat
on my back, crying hysterically, finally ready to see if there was something
there. And then this very gentle voice came to me and started telling me
how much it loved me and how it never left me. Never.
And from a subsequent letter on another encounter with God:
So I’m sitting in the zen center… It’s a Saturday, I think, and I’m facing the
wall like everybody, when all of a sudden this really gentle energy appears
in front of me. I sensed it just to my left near my shoulder. It wasn’t a big
deal Just a presence.
And this voice inside of me says, “God?”

And this very gentle voice says, “Yes…”
It is so natural, so present, so not a big deal.
Introduction 7
So I say, “Oh…nice to have you on board.”

And the voice says, “Nice to have you on board.”
Our correspondence broke off a couple of years ago. The last I heard,
Stewart was living in northern California, leading very successful
spiritual healing seminars. My old friend Stewart’s personal
experiences with God are certainly unique, but they aren’t too far
out of the ordinary. Truth is, most Americans claim to experience
God in some deeply personal manner. Consider:
• 82 percent of Americans agree that they are “sometimes very

conscious of the presence of God.”
• 58 percent of Americans think about their relationship with
God on a regular basis.
• One in three American teenagers claims to have personally
experienced the presence of God.
As for myself, I haven’t had any experiences like those of my

friend Stewart—no direct, personal communication with God (or
any deity, for that matter). To be perfectly honest, I can’t even
claim to have ever had what might be called a deeply religious,
paranormal, mystical, life-changing spiritual experience. Sure, I’ve
had wonderful, serene moments in my life, rare times when I felt a
sense of wonder, awe, joy, serendipity, completeness, timelessness.
These moments have a subtly ethereal, fleeting quality to them.
They feel transcendent. Eating ripe wild blackberries while walking
down a gravel road in the woods of Oregon by an old cemetery one
August afternoon; surfing at Venice Beach; the night of the birth
of my first daughter; the moment I saw my girlfriend (now wife)
standing by the moonlit water’s edge at Leo Carillo beach on a
June night; listening to Nick Drake on rainy evenings; dancing to a
great band at the Porter Quad on the UC Santa Cruz campus with
painted, smiling faces all around me, sunshine splashing my body,
and magic mushrooms turning me on; and so on. Such moments
definitely evoke a powerful sense of the deep, mysterious goodness
of existence and the tragic, fragile beauty of life. But I would hesitate
to call these experiences deeply “religious” or “spiritual.” And
many would argue that without having had such an experience, I
am missing a crucial element of religion. Indeed, according to some

scholars, mystical experiences compose the very heart of religion.
In his book The Idea of the Holy (1952 [1917]), the theologian and
philosopher Rudolph Otto argued that at the very core of religion
was people’s interaction with “the numinous”—a term which
designates a feeling or experience of intense mystery, inexpressible
majesty, a consciousness of the “wholly other,” something beyond
rational understanding, ineffable, a daunting, fascinating, terrifying,
intoxicating sense of the mysterium tremendum. The psychologist
and philosopher William James, in his classic The Varieties of
Religious Experience (1936 [1902]), also emphasized mystical,
spiritual, transcendent experiences as being at the root of religion.
His appraisal of religion is replete with numerous accounts of
people’s personal, numinous experiences. Though less grandiose
or dramatic than many of the accounts collected in James’s book,
here’s one of my particular favorites:
I have on a number of occasions felt that I had enjoyed a period of

intimate communion with the divine. These meetings came unasked
and unexpected, and seemed to consist merely in the temporary
obliteration of the conventionalities which usually surround and
cover my life… Once it was when from the summit of a high mountain
I looked over a gashed and corrugated landscape extending to a long
convex of ocean that ascended to the horizon, and again from the
same point when I could see nothing beneath me but a boundless
expanse of white cloud, on the blown surface of which a few high
peaks, including the one I was on, seemed plunging about as if they
were dragging their anchors. What I felt on these occasions was a
temporary loss of my own identity, accompanied by an illumination
which revealed to me a deeper significance than I had been wont to
attach to life. It is in this that I find my justification for saying that
I have enjoyed communication with God. Of course the absence of
such a being as this would be chaos. I cannot conceive of life without
its presence. (James 1936, 69).
I remember an anthropologist I met at a conference a couple of years

ago telling me—over chips and beer—about her own life-changing
spiritual experience. She too was on top of a mountain when she
unexpectedly found herself enveloped in glowing white light,
immersed in a feeling of love, safety, serenity—she knew it was the
Introduction 9
presence of God. Such experiences as the one I quoted from James’s

book or as described by the anthropologist I met at the conference
are actually quite common. According to research undertaken by
Andrew Greeley (1975), over a third of Americans answered “yes”
to the following question: “Have you ever felt as though you were
very close to a powerful, spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of
yourself?” And more recent data from a Gallup survey conducted
in 1996 soundly affirmed Greeley’s data: 43 percent of American
adults claim to have had an “unusual and inexplicable spiritual
experience” and 36 percent of Americans surveyed answered “yes”
to the question: “Have you ever had a religious experience—that is,
a particularly powerful religious insight or awakening?” Of course,
just what constitutes a religious experience is qualitatively different
for every person. But the point is that religious experiences are not
things that happen only to the prophets of old or to gurus who have
been meditating for twenty years. Chances are, you yourself have
had one—or know someone who has.
The mystery of death, communicating with God, experiencing
the numinous—these are all important matters when it comes to
religion. And, also important: prayer (Ladd and Spilka, 2002).
Earlier, I mentioned my mother-in-law. She is a born-again
Southern Baptist Christian—and very big on prayer. She claims
that prayer has dramatically changed her life for the better; from
her relationship with her husband to her professional career, she
swears by the power of prayer. She prays before every meal (out
loud when we are at her house, silently when she is at ours). She
prays whenever she can’t sleep at night, or whenever she happens
to feel the need throughout the day. One of my best friends from
college, Jonah, who is an Orthodox Jew, also prays—at least three
times a day. Another good friend of mine, Doug, who is in graduate
film school with my wife and a recently converted Mormon (though
not a “scriptural literalist,” he is quick to point out), also prays a lot.
Doug, Jonah, and my mother-in-law are not unusual. Regardless
of what The Doors’ front man Jim Morrison passionately shrieked
about not being able to petition the Lord with prayer, note the
following:
• 90 percent of Americans say they pray, a percentage which has

held strong for over fifty years.
• Three in four adult Americans report praying on a daily

basis.
• 58 percent of Americans claim to pray weekly.
• 97 percent of those who pray believe their prayers are heard,
with 95 percent contending that their prayers have been
answered.
• One quarter of those who pray report having heard a voice or
seeing a vision as a result of their praying.
Personally, I’m pretty reluctant/skeptical/miffed when it comes to

prayer. Sure, in moments of fear or anxiety I have sort of “deeply
wished” that things would turn out all right. But I’ve never honestly
believed that my deep wishing was being heard or considered by
anyone or anything. Usually, my deep wishing just made me feel
better at the moment—a quick mental/emotional balm in a time
of great worry or stress. Anyway, I was discussing prayer with
Doug the other night—respectfully expressing my skepticism of
the whole business—and he challenged my criticisms, describing
prayer as a very profound, crucial, and significant element in his
life. I decided to ask him more about it. In a recent e-mail, I asked:
Why do you pray? What does prayer mean to you? What role does prayer
play in your life? Can you give me specific examples of times when prayer
was particularly meaningful or important in your life?
Here are excerpts from his three page, single-spaced
response:
Prayer is my entrance into faith. My faith began at a very specific moment,

it was the first time I prayed. Throughout my life I had harbored substantial
hostility towards religion. I was passionate about the idea that religion and
spirituality couldn’t even be considered legitimate fields of discourse…what
still amazes me is that while believing these things I actually tried praying.
One night before I was to teach a large climbing clinic at an indoor gym
I just didn’t feel ready at all. Without going into the ugly details of my
life at that time, suffice it to say that severe depression, the ending of a
long relationship, travel, and working too hard had worn me down… That
night I prayed. My prayer began something like “I don’t know if people who
deny the existence of God can pray but…” My life didn’t turn around right
away, the climbing clinic I taught the next day wasn’t the best ever, but I
was profoundly changed as a person as a result of that prayer, and found
myself praying the next day, and the next, and so on…
Introduction 11
That first prayer was the first time I ever engaged faith and I think that’s
why it worked. Even though I was staunchly anti religious, what I actually
did in the act of prayer was far more powerful than what I believed. This
letting go of the rational is for me what makes prayer so delightful and
freeing. As an intellectual I was driven by rational values of logic, reason,
knowledge, etc. When I found myself deeply engaged in an act as irrational
as trying to communicate with divinity through prayer I was stunned but,
mostly, delighted by the paradox. Prayer can’t be understood by means
satisfying to the rational mind, nor should it be. It exists in a separate realm
of human experience that does not bear the burden of explanation, proof,
or even truth. I should say that when I refer to prayer as irrational I mean
this in a completely positive sense, there is nothing pejorative in calling
faith or prayer irrational. I celebrate the irrational nature of prayer for its
being intuitive, inspirational, and emotional in nature. These three qualities
describe both the means of communication with God and the means by
which we enjoy the delights and rewards of prayer…
There are occasions when I pray for help creating a specific outcome
but I can’t bring myself to ask directly. I prefer to ask God to work on me
to help me hone skills, to help me be attentive to the people around me,
to support me in my efforts to gain greater spiritual insights, from these
things favorable outcomes feel more likely to arise. Of course the problem
of praying for a specific outcome is that prayers dissonant with God’s will
won’t, by definition, be answered so I try not to guess what God’s will is,
rather I hope that he will support me in my attempts at spiritual growth and
that I can apply such growth to practical situations when necessary.
Before moving to southern California my wife and I prayed a great deal
about the move, we lacked resources, we worried about our safety, we knew
that housing was expensive and hard to find, we had no idea of how the
whole thing would work. The very first apartment we looked at was the one
we took. It was cheap, in a great neighborhood, within walking distance of
our church, had a great community of other people with young children
living there. The way it worked out for us was amazing. Now is this proof
of God’s hand in our affairs? I can’t say, after all that is a question that
the rational mind asks and I don’t care about that sort of thing. From a
rational point of view it’s possible that we just had wildly good luck. The
fact of the matter is that in finding this apartment everything fell into place
and all our fears were addressed. We felt very blessed and were so grateful
to have found a new home that addressed every issue that had arisen due
to the move. Why ruin such a wonderful experience trying to prove why
it happened. In the end it happened, we were blessed and we did indeed
express our gratitude to God through prayer…
Well said. (Thank you, Doug.)

Finally, some mention of congregating. There’s a lot of it going on.
All around me, people are coming together for religious purposes,
joining religious organizations, meeting within congregational
walls to share religious experiences in a group setting. The Roman
Catholic Church recently constructed an eleven-story, 57,000-
interiorsquare-foot congregational facility here in Los Angeles at a
cost of $200 million. Considering my immediate neighbors: Sandy
to the left of my house regularly attends Catholic mass, Jean and her
family to the right of my house regularly attend Christian Science
services, and Roy and his wife behind us are very active members
of their liberal Lutheran church.
Ever since Émile Durkheim’s classic within the sociology of
religion, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915), scholars have
noted the importance of the social/communal when considering
religion. The first American sociologist of religion, W.E.B.Du Bois,
was particularly struck by the social/communal aspects of religious
life, especially in his research among African Americans. Du Bois
emphasized the degree to which black churches were not merely
“spiritual” centers, but, even more so, “social” centers providing
community, a sense of belonging, and a way to connect to others
(Zuckerman 2000, 2002).
Church membership is quite widespread: almost 70 percent of
Americans are members of a church or synagogue; and 43 percent
of Americans attend religious services two or three times a month.
Community—the communal element in religion—is definitely
important. Yes, religion involves faith and spiritual devotion, but
as William Sims Bainbridge (1997, 168) points out, it also involves
“affiliation with a social group.” In fact, some people who lack
faith, who don’t believe in God, and who don’t have any inclination
toward prayer—people who could easily be labeled irreligious—
still join congregations for the social and communal joys such
membership affords (Kelley 1997).
My own parents belong to a religious congregation, a successful
Reconstructionist synagogue in Pacific Palisades, California.
And yet, like most Jews, my parents don’t believe in God, don’t
consider the Bible holy, don’t pray, and don’t have “faith.” They
are essentially irreligious. And yet they belong to a religious
congregation. I know that a major reason they belong is simply to
Introduction 13
be with other Jews. Attending a religious congregation is a very

common way of maintaining a strong tie to people who share a
similar history, heritage, and ethnic identity (see Herberg 1955).
Stressing the social element of his congregational affiliation, my
dad always used to say to me when I was young: “Sam goes to
synagogue to talk to God. I go to synagogue to talk to Sam.”
In writing this chapter, I asked my dad to explicitly discuss his
reasons for belonging to a religious organization.
He replied (via e-mail):
I am most definitely a non-believer. I consider myself an atheist—not

an agnostic—an atheist. I don’t believe there is a “supreme being” or an
afterlife, or in the efficacy of prayer—who is there to pray to? I believe that
those who assert these things bear the burden of proof—and they have none
sufficient to persuade me. I cannot remember at any time of my life, from
my earliest childhood memories, ever believing in God and all that goes
with it…
I, a non-believer, am a member of a religious organization because:
It’s close by. I know the people who go there because they’re from the
community where I have lived for 36 years.
It makes me feel I’m part of something, a kind of Community…
It’s “entertaining” to go there: the cantor, speakers, musical performances;
afterward the oneg-shabbat (oynig-shabes)3 with food and socializing.
The special attention the Cantor pays me. Seeing people I know there (Sam,
not God). It lends a certain rhythm to life: Friday night, shul.4 Mom seems
to like it—so it’s something we do together that is diverting… The rabbi
does have a brain, and never says anything that makes me groan…all in
all, I like him…
My dad actually wrote a lot more (about his Jewish identity as a

child growing up in the Bronx, about his move to Los Angeles and
feelings of isolation, about wanting me and my brother to have a
Jewish education, etc.), but I feel the above selection illustrates well
enough the fact that people congregate for a variety of reasons, and
not necessarily the typical reasons that come to mind when you
think about people joining a “religious” organization.
So far, I have tried to convey just how much religion is all around
me by discussing my friends, family, neighbors, national survey
data, and so on. Throughout the discussion, I have briefly touched
upon what I consider to be some of the more significant elements of

religion: answers or explanations concerning the mystery of death,
direct communication with God, religious or mystical experiences,
prayer, and congregation. There are of course many more crucial
aspects of religion: rituals, doctrine, faith, morality, scripture, music,
education, proselytizing, sexual regulation, providing ultimate
meaning, and the like. But this introduction was not meant to be
comprehensive—I simply wanted to get the ball rolling by sharing
a little bit about my world and the religion therein.
You may recall that at the end of the very first paragraph of this
introduction, I quipped: “Some days it feels like the whole world is
religious.” That, of course, was a bit of an exaggeration. Somewhere
between 8 and 15 percent of the U.S. population can be described as
wholly nonreligious (Fuller 2001). According to statistics published
in the Los Angeles Times (October 25, 2001, 23), approximately thirty
million Americans claim to have “no religion.” And personally,
the truth is, while some of my best friends are indeed religious or
spiritual, most aren’t. Most of my closest friends are actually quite
removed from religion, skeptical of its truth claims, suspicious of
its practice, and dubious about its worth. My wife isn’t religious.
Neither is my brother. Nor are most of my cousins. And being
a Jew who tends to socialize with other Jews, I am often in the
company of the distinctly irreligious; Jews are perhaps the least
religious “religious” group in the world.5 Additionally, I am a social
scientist—the least religious of the academic disciplines (Stark and
Finke 2000)—and I’m a sociologist, no less. Most sociologists, at
least from my personal experience, tend to be either irreligious
or antireligious. So the fact is, I often dwell among the distinctly
secular.
But unlike my wife and my closest friends and many of my fellow
sociologists (Mills 1983; Ebaugh 2002), I am completely fascinated
by religion. Utterly and hopelessly and unabashedly fascinated by
it. I just can’t get enough of it. Most of the irreligious people that I
know don’t really care much about religion. They either ignore it or
are bored by it or assume it isn’t all that significant or erroneously
presume that it is dying out—or they just can’t be bothered
with it.
Not me. Religion is a personal fixation. I wonder how it is that
millions of people can believe the manifestly implausible. I wonder
Introduction 15
how it is that millions of people can devote their lives to, and
even die for, that which is ultimately irrational.6 I wonder why
some religions die out, while others enjoy tremendous success. I
wonder why some religious entrepreneurs are labeled crazy by
their surrounding society, while others enjoy widespread respect
and support. I wonder why some people lose their faith, and why
others suddenly attain theirs. I wonder why some countries are
extremely religious (like Ireland), while others aren’t at all (like
Iceland). I am ceaselessly interested in the connection of religion to
the arts, to politics, to sex, to war, to ethics, to race relations, to the
media, to gender construction, to family life, to law—in short, I am
ever drawn to pondering and studying the ways in which religion
is affected by various aspects of society and, simultaneously, the
ways in which various aspects of society are in turn affected by
religion. Apprehending that dialectic is what the sociology of
religion is all about.
Notes
1. All statistics/percentages cited in this chapter come from national

survey data published by Gallup (1997), Gallup and Lindsay (1999),
Greeley and Hout (1999), and Greeley (1995), unless otherwise noted.
2. Not his real name.
3. Hebrew (and Yiddish) for the weekly celebration with food and
friends following services on Friday nights.
4. Yiddish for house of prayer/synagogue.
5. For instance, only 22 percent of American Jews claim that religion is
“very important” in their lives (national average is 60 percent), and
only 27 percent of American Jews claim to have attended church/
synagogue within the seven days prior to being polled (national
average is 60 percent). According to research by Andrew Greeley
(1995), of all religious groups in America, Jews are the very least likely
to attend church (synagogue), pray daily, believe in life after death,
or believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. Jewish religion
is actually quite diluted in Israel as well, with almost half the Israeli
population defining themselves as “irreligious” (lo dati) and only
approximately 20 percent defining themselves as Orthodox (Kedem
1995). It is actually more historically and sociologically accurate to
consider Jews as constituting an ethnic group or people (am) that
contains a religious component than constituting a “religion” per se
(Kaplan 1981).
6. Leading sociologists of religion Stark and Finke (1993) take offense
at the use of the word “irrational” when describing religion,
automatically assuming that the word “irrational” is a pejorative put-
down. It needn’t be. Like Rudolph Otto (1952) and my friend Doug
quoted earlier, I use the term “irrational” in a decidedly nonpejorative
sense. Some of the most wonderful, noble, and sacred things in life are
irrational, such as love, risk, art, sex, music, altruism, and so on.
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INVITATION TO THE

Published in Great Britain by

Transferred to Digital Printing 2010

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011.

Copyright © 2003 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 0-203-86652-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 978-0-415-94126-6 (Print Edition)

Chapter 1: Sociology and Religion 17

Chapter 2: Time and Place 35

Chapter 3: Religion Is Socially Learned 47

Chapter 4: Religion or Cult? 61

Chapter 5: Social Life Affecting Religion 75

Chapter 6: Religion Affecting Social Life 95

Conclusion: The Matter of Belief 115

I would like to thank my student research assistants, Gayla Hamik-

Some of my best friends are religious. So are some of my closest

has been a constant media staple, with regular stories on religious

note-worthy exception of selected countries in Western Europe

• 96 percent of Americans profess a belief in God, a percentage

Of course, being an agnostic, I sometimes feel, well, taken aback by

Or amused. Or daunted. Or curious. So much faith. So many houses

• Roughly 80 percent of Americans believe in life after death.

The matter of death is clearly central when it comes to religion

city councilman or CEO of some corporation or agency—something

And from a subsequent letter on another encounter with God:

And this voice inside of me says, “God?”

So I say, “Oh…nice to have you on board.”

• 82 percent of Americans agree that they are “sometimes very

As for myself, I haven’t had any experiences like those of my

am missing a crucial element of religion. Indeed, according to some

I have on a number of occasions felt that I had enjoyed a period of

I remember an anthropologist I met at a conference a couple of years

presence of God. Such experiences as the one I quoted from James’s

• 90 percent of Americans say they pray, a percentage which has

• Three in four adult Americans report praying on a daily

Personally, I’m pretty reluctant/skeptical/miffed when it comes to

Prayer is my entrance into faith. My faith began at a very specific moment,

Well said. (Thank you, Doug.)

be with other Jews. Attending a religious congregation is a very

I am most definitely a non-believer. I consider myself an atheist—not

My dad actually wrote a lot more (about his Jewish identity as a

upon what I consider to be some of the more significant elements of

1. All statistics/percentages cited in this chapter come from national

Beaman, Lori. 1999. Shared Beliefs, Different Lives: Women’s Identities in

Evaluation Key Testimony.” In In Gods We Trust: New Patterns of Religious

Finney, J.M. 1978. “A Theory of Religious Commitment.” Sociological Analysis

Hoge, Dean, Benton Johnson, and Donald Luidens. 1994. Vanishing

of Conversion to a Deviant Perspective.” American Sociological Review 30:

High School Students in Relation to Background and Contextual Factors.”

Richardson, John. 1998. The Romans in Spain. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Choice Theory of Religion from a Weberian and Comparative Religions

and Secularism. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B.Eerdmans Publishing

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