Социология религии_общее (англ.) / Handbook of the Sociology of Religion

to its continuing hold upon consciousness. Shared faith and community sustain individuals.

In unsettled times, however, memory becomes more problematic (Hervieu-Leger´ 2000). Lacking a firm rooting within tradition, as with Wuthnow’s “seekers,” people devise new strategies of action, or ways of responding to the sacred. This can involve negotiation both with themselves and with others as to the meaning and practice of faith in a given life-situation. Or it may be more radical as with the conscious exploration of religious alternatives and recognition of the “merits of borrowing” symbols, beliefs, and practices from many sources. Drawing from their own experiences and an expanded menu of spiritual resources, people produce discursive strategies toward religion, as reflected in such questions asked by many today such as, “How can I find a deeper spirituality?” “What might faith mean in my life facing the problems we face today?” “Can religion relate to my everyday life in a more personal way than it did when I was growing up?” It is not so much that religion itself changes, but rather the psychological frames that people bring to it.

Alasdair MacIntyre argues that in our time “the unity of a human life is the unity of a narrative quest” (1984: 219). His point is that the task of finding order and meaning to life becomes more of a reflexive act in a world where tradition has less of a hold on us. Reflexivity implies an awareness of the contingencies of life, and the necessity for engaging and responding to those contingencies as best one can. All of which is to say that modernity, or late modernity depending on how one defines our era, has given rise to altered relations between the individual and tradition, and therefore to a fundamental change in the process of self-narration itself. Increasingly, individuals discover they must “bring” religious meaning to their lives – that is, they must search for it. Identity becomes inescapably bound up with its narration, and especially so in a quest culture as we know it in contemporary America. We become our stories in the sense that storytelling yields a degree of coherence for our lives. We gain not just upon a heightened self-consciousness but an awareness of the role we play in shaping our own identities. As MacIntyre insists, we are led to think about life and to ask ourselves: “a quest for what?” As I have written elsewhere about MacIntyre, “He forces the hardest question of all, moral in its broadest sense, and having to do with some final telos to which life is directed. Quest is not about itself, but about the narration of human intentionality and purpose, ultimately about some object of value and fidelity. His is the question modernity forces on all individuals in a ‘post-traditional’ context where the binding force of tradition is greatly diminished and agreed-upon, culturally embedded answers cannot be presumed from one generation to the next, and where individual choice in such matters becomes increasingly obligatory” (Roof 1999a: 164).

In one reading of the situation, the challenge to narrative unity is apparent in people’s use currently of self-reported designations as “religious” or “spiritual.” While 74 percent of the people polled in one of our surveys say they are “religious” and 73 percent say they are “spiritual,” the two identities are only partially overlapping. Seventy-nine percent of those who are religious claim to be spiritual, but 54 percent of those who are not religious are also spiritual. This points to a healthy balance of the internal and external forms of religion for many Americans, yet we cannot assume that one designation necessarily implies the other. The discrepancy is great enough that in terms of cultural identities, the “spiritual” and the “religious” take on separate meanings. Of interest, too, is the empirical finding that the two types of

self-identities relate quite differently to levels of religious individualism. Using a scale measuring religious individualism, we find this latter to be negatively related to defining oneself as religious but positively to defining oneself as spiritual. That is, given a high level of personal autonomy in the modern context, the religious consequences appear to be mixed: Religious identity as culturally defined appears to be undermined, but at the same time there is an enhanced self-reflection associated with greater clarity of conviction and ethical and spiritual sensitivities. In this respect we might say that personal autonomy has a double face, one that reflects the dislocations of institutional religious identities in the contemporary world, and a second that mirrors a deeply personal search for meaningful faith and spirituality. This poses an interesting, and potentially very significant problem for the analysis of personal religion.

III

For analytic purposes, it is helpful to cross-classify people’s identities as either religious or spiritual. Simple though this may be, such a typology makes problematic the intersection of inner-experiential and outer-institutional identities, and thereby sensitizes us to a wide range of religious, spiritual, and secular constituencies within contemporary society. A brief description of the major constituencies follows from the typology found in my Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion

(Roof 1999a: 178).

Statistically, the largest sector of Americans from our survey fall into the quadrant with overlapping religious and spiritual identities – roughly 59 percent of the total population. This includes the 33 percent who are “Born-again” Christians and the 26 percent who we describe as Mainstream Believers, differing in religious style but not necessarily in spiritual vitality. Here the spiritual is contained, so to speak, in and through existing institutional religious forms. William James’s “firsthand” and “secondhand” religion fuse together in a balanced whole. These are Wuthnow’s dwellers. The religious world is maintained through shared symbols, beliefs, and practices, and especially through regular interaction and communally based reinforcement. Shared practices presuppose language, symbols, and myth, vehicles all necessary for sustaining a religious thought world and guiding emotional and intentional responses to that world. In this respect, religious dwelling is emblematic of settled times, or settings where prescribed “strategies of action” not only express, but recreate experiences that fit what is generally defined as religious. Religious experience under these conditions is largely derivative; it arises out of practice, or the rehearsing of myth and narrative. In this way the unity of the “religious” and the “spiritual,” or of form and spirit, is more or less held together.

But there are serious threats to narrative unity or the “felt-whole” experiences as Herbert Richardson (1967) once called them. Some people are drawn into revering tradition for its own sake, in which case ritual turns into ritualism, doctrine into dogma, and the inherited practices of tradition become encrusted and lifeless. Rapid social and cultural change provoke antimodernist reactions of this sort as evident in fundamentalist and neotraditionalist movements across many faith communities. Being “religious” comes to mean holding on to the outward forms of doctrine, morality, and institution to the point of not having, or feeling, any serious engagement with faith as a living reality. The strategies of action are rigid and literally mandated. People who are religious

but not spiritual in this sense are perhaps more common than we presume, encouraged in part by the popular cultural meanings that have come to be attached to these identifying labels. To invoke a “religious” identity as distinct from being “spiritual” emerges as a marker distinguishing conservative fundamentalists from more moderate-minded evangelicals, charismatics, and Pentecostals. Fifteen percent of our respondents fit into this more narrow classification, people we call Dogmatists.

And, of course, there is the opposite combination – the spiritual seekers who report being “spiritual but not religious.” This configuration of responses has taken on a particular cultural meaning with the word spiritual serving as a unifying label of positive self-identity, and the word religious used as a counteridentity, describing who they are not. Here strategies of action are much less established, and often are little more than exploratory attempts at belief and practice that promise to lead to spiritual growth and personal well-being. Because spiritual seeking is largely a private matter involving loosely based social networks, this is more a striving for meaning than for belonging, but the distinction often evaporates in the lived-religious context. Spiritual quests are not necessarily antitraditional; indeed, “old” pasts are often reclaimed as in the case of Wicca, and “new” fabricated pasts get created as with ecospirituality currently. Hervieu-Leger´ (1994) observes that tradition, or at least a selective reappropriation of it, is so important that people not well-grounded within it are likely to create “imaginary geneologies.” In so doing, they lay claim to spiritual lineage and legitimate themselves as yet another constituency in the spiritual marketplace. At the hands of spiritual entrepreneurs who rationalize choices and devise technologies, meaning systems proliferate in an expanding world of metaphysical possibilities. Fourteen percent of those we surveyed fall into this category, described simply as Metaphysical Believers and Spiritual Seekers.

Research shows, as well, that there are people who do not identify as either religious or spiritual. Neither the language of religious heritage nor the inner language of a spiritual self carry much meaning. They may have “flow” experiences of the sort the psychologist Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi (1990) describes, or moments of intense excitement, energy, and creativity, but in describing them they do not turn to the shared language of faith or even to a deeply spiritual-type vocabulary. When asked about influences shaping their lives, they are likely to point to the characteristics they were born with, or their own mastery of destiny. They do not necessarily reject God-talk, but when they engage in such talk God or the sacred is imaged typically in a generalized, and highly individualized way. In many respects they are the polar opposites of the Dogmatists. Often they have explored religious possibilities but over time have worked themselves out of a religious frame of mind; rather than reifying tradition and becoming rigid and exclusivistic, they have moved toward open-mindedness to the point of being inarticulate about what they really believe. Strategies of action are embryonic, if at all evident. One would suspect there is a thin boundary separating those who make use of the word “spiritual” in defining themselves and those unable to make use of the word. Twelve percent of the people we interviewed belong to this category, labeled simply as Secularists.

As pointed out, this typology is at most a heuristic device sensitizing researchers to some crucial dimensions in the analysis of contemporary American religion. It is but a start toward gaining greater clarity and analytic control over James’s “firsthand”

religion that is often missed by sociologists focusing primarily on its “secondhand” manifestations. If we are to bring the spiritual into our explanatory schemes, we must work toward a more integrated social science building on the insights of psychology and sociology. A more systematic approach drawing more widely across these two disciplines especially promises a healthy balance for the study of religion, and one that very much is needed if we are to make sense of the deep, quite subtle religious and spiritual changes now occurring.

PART THREE

Religion and the Life Course

structures with mobilized social movement organizations, just as contemporary studies in the sociology of religion juxtapose believing and belonging (e.g., Davie 1994; Stark and Finke 2000). Religious movements have a distinctive character – at least some of the benefits they provide are supernatural explanations and compensators that yield value for those who believe (Stark and Bainbridge 1985,1987; Stark and Finke 2000). Humans find explanations for the meaning of life – and even more trivial things – highly valuable, and are willing to exchange actual rewards (time, money, or other resources) for these explanations. Of course, answers to the meaning of life are typically suspect, and only valuable if they are also taken to be true by trusted others. Hence, these explanations are, to a large extent, collectively produced goods (Iannaccone 1990; Stark and Finke 2000).

Religious socialization is the process through which people come to hold religious preferences. To understand the development of religion at the individual level, we have to know how preferences are formed and how they change. Notably, this view of religious preferences does not equate them with choices of religious affiliation, and instead takes preferences to be separate. Religious preferences are the favored supernatural explanations about the meaning, purpose, and origins of life – explanations that cannot be proven nor disproved. These preferences will help drive choices in the realm of religion – motivating religious devotion, public religious participation, and affiliation with religious organizations. In this section, I will briefly describe the development and dynamics of preferences, and how choices are influenced by both preferences and other social factors. In making religious choices, religious preferences are not the only factors taken into account. Religious decision making is also influenced by social pressures – nonreligious rewards and punishments that are attached to piety or impiety. I will deal with these social constraints on choices separately.

Sociologists interested in the dynamics of preference structures have to engage in the messy task of getting inside people’s heads and accounting for tastes (Elster 1983), which contrasts with the view of preferences favored by neoclassical economists (e.g., Stigler and Becker 1977; Iannaccone 1990). Preference structures for supernatural explanations do not spring mechanistically from the events or structural strains that occur at particular time points. This “immaculate conception” view of social movements is rejected by serious historical work (Taylor 1988), and studies in the sociology of religion that privilege macro-social revolutions in religious understandings (e.g., Wuthnow 1976; Bellah 1976; Roof 1993) are unsupported by empirical examinations (Bainbridge and Stark 1981; Sherkat 1998).

As a socialization perspective would suggest, people learn preferences for religious goods, and if religious preferences shift they do so in predictable ways in response to individual experiences or social influences. Beginning early in the life course, parents and valued others promulgate religious beliefs and understandings, and these commitments foster preferences for particular religious goods (Sherkat 1998; Sherkat and Wilson 1995). Parents, friends, spouses, and peers are valued sources of information about collective goods. Social network ties are important for generating shifts in preferences, and close friendships can (although not usually) motivate radical shifts in preferences for collective goods (Stark and Bainbridge 1980; Snow et al. 1986; Rochford 1985). Later in this chapter I will discuss varied agents of socialization at length.

People tend to prefer the familiar, and religious preferences are generally reinforced through routine religious experiences (Elster 1983; Sherkat and Wilson 1995; Sherkat

1997, 1998; Von Weisaker 1971). Religious choices are often driven by adaptive preferences. People are comforted by familiar religious explanations, and they find value and solace in the supernatural rewards and compensators of familiar religious goods. Endogenous preference shifts like adaptive preferences are a function of individual fluctuations in desire that are not a response to social influences on tastes. Instead, people’s prior consumption of religious goods makes them more desirous of similar goods – just as when people desire the same sort of soft drink they consume every day. This tendency of preferences to adapt to common alternatives leads to a substantial conservative bias in the development and reproduction of preferences (Sherkat 1998). Iannaccone (1990) explains the inertia of religious choices as a function of the development of human capital, rather than shifting preferences. From the human capital perspective, religious experiences build individuals’ stocks of religious human capital. Religious human capital enables the efficient and effective production of religious value in collective settings. Hence, the human capital perspective views preferences as stable; what is seen to change is the ability to produce religious value. Both the theory of adaptive preferences and human capital theory lead to similar conclusions regarding the development and trajectory of religious beliefs and behaviors, and they are not mutually exclusive explanations for religious dynamics. What is also common to both of these perspectives is that they lend agency to individuals making religious choices – adaptive preferences and human capital are not a function of socialization, but instead are generated endogenously by individuals.

Preferences sometimes shift endogenously in a way that promotes change rather than the reproduction of sentiment. Counteradaptive preferences occur when people aver from previously desired collective goods, and instead prefer more novel ends (Elster 1983). Hence, people sometimes may gravitate to varied religious expressions and modes of supernatural explanations, while rejecting their formerly preferred religious options. Counteradaptivity is evident in motivations for religious seekership (Sherkat 1997; Roof 1993). As with adaptivity, counteradaptivity is not the result of socialization or preference learning, but is endogenously motivated. Social influences may generate preference shifts in another way as well. People may be coerced or seduced into trying a particular good, and then come to prefer it (Elster 1983). Preference shift through seduction combines dynamic preferences with social influences on choices – which will be elaborated below. Religious seduction is clearly evident in the educational process in seminaries, where students preferring faithful orthodoxy are forced into trying more secular ideologies, which they then come to embrace (Finke and Stark 1992). Forced conversion, like that experienced by African slaves in the United States or indigenous peoples on a variety of continents on contact with Christian, Hindu, Moslem, or Buddhist crusaders, will also follow this pattern if coerced “conversion” genuinely succeeds.

Social Influences on Individuals’ Choices

Religious preferences are not the only motivations for making religious choices. Like all decisions about cultural consumption, religious choices have social consequences, and because of this religious decision making may be dominated by social influences on choices. These social influences on choices are not to be confused with socialization – if we define socialization as an influence on preferences as I have above. Instead, social influences provide an explanation for religious dynamics in spite of or in addition to

the impact of socialization. Following Amartya Sen (1973,1993), I identify three types of social influences on religious choices: (a) sympathy/antipathy; (b) example setting; and (c) sanctions (Sherkat 1997, 1998; Sherkat and Wilson 1995).

People often participate in religious groups out of sympathy for the feelings of others, despite receiving little or no benefit from the supernatural compensators supported by the collective activities. Adult children may attend church with aging parents to make parents feel better, despite being agnostic or even ill at ease with the collective benefits generated by religious activities (Sherkat 1998). In contrast, individuals sometimes participate in religious groups not because they desire the collective good generated, but instead to antagonize others who are held in disdain – an antipathetic motivation for action. Antipathy seems to direct religious choices for many participants in neopagan and “Satanic” audience cults and cult movements (Stark and Bainbridge 1985). Rather than deriving religious benefits from the actions supporting pagan or Satanist supernatural explanations, most participants seem to relish the negative impact their blasphemy has on devout Christians. Notably, both sympathy and antipathy imply considerable agency for individuals making choices. Here, participants act not because of a mechanistic link between social ties and religious understandings but, instead, as a choice to reward or punish valued or detested others. This avoids the common problem of oversocialized views of actors in cultural theorizing (e.g., Granovetter 1973; Frank 1993).

Example-setting is another potential social motivation for religious choices that does not involve preferences for religious goods. People may affiliate with religious groups and attend religious services because they wish to set an example for others. Parents are likely to join churches and attend religious services not because they find the supernatural compensators and rewards appealing, but instead to set an example for their children. Faculty members at religious schools and public political officials may also participate in order to exemplify pious behavior. However, public religionists may instead be seeking tangible rewards for their hypocritical participation (Heckathorn 1993), or avoiding punishments for impiety. Here, the motivation would not be preferences for the religious goods, nor example-setting or sympathy; instead religious participation is motivated by selective incentives and disincentives (McCarthy and Zald 1977; Hall 1988). If selective rewards or punishments are strong enough, individuals may participate in religious actions that produce collective bads (such as collective suicides, proscriptions that limit members’ occupational attainment), and people will engage in the overconsumption of religious goods for the sake of social rewards (Ellison and Sherkat 1995; Phillips 1998; Sherkat and Cunningham 1998).

Religious pursuits are no different from other behaviors in this regard. Social sanctions cause people to buy clothes they do not prefer to wear; to drink repulsive drinks; to smoke cigars; pursue deviant careers; buy expensive, unsafe, and unreliable automobiles; and so on (Akerlof 1997; Bernheim 1994; Bagwell and Bernheim 1996). Religious groups generate nonreligious social rewards by giving participants access to mating markets, contacts for business, friendship networks for children, social status in the community, and the like. Religious consumption may also prevent people from experiencing punishments such as social isolation, economic insecurity, and violent repression. The importance of social rewards and sanctions demonstrates even more clearly that personal preferences are not all that determine religious action. Social influences are not simply through socialization or endogenously changing preferences because choices are