برای دانشجویانم

by
James V. Spickard, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology, University of Redlands
Research Consulting Professor, Fielding Graduate Institute
November, 2003
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WHAT IS HAPPENING TO RELIGION? SIX SOCIOLOGICAL NARRATIVES
James V. Spickard
The title of this essay has two parts, both of which are important. There are many
stories about religion today, both popular and scholarly. Nearly everyone wants to know
“What is happening to religion?” and they also want to know “What will religion be like in
the years to come?” People generate stories that answer these questions – tales that
help them identify current trends and also help them imagine what these trends mean
for the future. Given religion’s historic importance in the West, there is always grist for
such thinking.
For example: I spend a third of the year in California, one of the least religious
parts of the United States. Not that we have no religions there; quite the contrary. I
frequently take my students on field trips to some of the more unusual churches –
everything from Biker’s Heaven (a small evangelical church that attracts motorcycle
gangs) to the Crystal Cathedral (a mega-church with over a hundred specialized
ministries and a drive-in section where one can worship from one’s car).i
Demographically speaking, however, Californians have a much lower rate of church
attendance than do residents of other parts of the U.S. Is this our future: fewer
churchgoers overall, with those religions that remain taking increasingly bizarre forms?
Or is this merely a vibrant spiritual marketplace – made unusual by Californians’
notorious openness to new trends? Whatever story we choose will not only tell us
where we are; it will tell us what the future brings.
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Another example: I spend another half of my year in Texas, which is one of the
most religious parts of the country. There, churches appear to be thriving. East Texas
has hordes of small, Pentecostal congregations, Latino Catholicism is both socially and
politically active, and Southern Baptists grow increasingly powerful. Add immigrants to
this mix and the religious landscape is as complex as California’s. It is, however,
differently nuanced. At least part of this religious vitality resembles a rear-guard action,
one recalling Americans to a supposedly simpler, more certain time. Other parts are
new, promising a true religious resurgence. If the first is true, do we set Texas, along
with California, in a general story of religious decline – perhaps a counter-eddy in a
secularizing stream? Or is the second image closer to the mark? It all depends on how
we tell the story. We can emphasize one thing, and one story will seem to fit the facts.
We can emphasize something else and a different story will emerge.
Six such stories are prominent among contemporary sociologists of religion.
Some sociologists see religion in decline and tell us about its loss of influence in daily
affairs. European religion, the relative decline of American mainline churches, and a
biographic loss of religiosity on the part of many intellectuals give this story much of its
bite. Many journalists, though fewer sociologists, tell an opposite story, one which sees
religion becoming increasingly fundamentalistic. A resurgent Islam certainly makes this
story plausible. So does the intrusion of American right-wing religion into national
politics – one of the causes of the world’s current troubles. But these are only two
views.
Other sociologists – especially American ones – see denominations shrinking but
independent congregations growing; their story talks about religious reorganization.
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Their tale emphasizes the changing shape of religious institutions – something that
indicates neither decline nor fundamentalization. Still other sociologists see religion as
increasingly a matter of personal choice – a personal EULFRODJH by which individuals
create meaningful lives for themselves at a time when they can no longer rely on social
institutions. A fifth group thinks that both organizational change and personal choice
have always been present. It focuses its story on the shape of the markets for religious
“goods” in which such organizational and personal choices are made.
Finally, a sixth tale locates religion in the midst of an increasingly interconnected
world. It identifies the globalizing process as the motor of the current era – a motor that
produces both religious declines and fundamentalisms, institutional reorganizations and
personal choices. Each of these six views puts forth its supporting evidence, but it puts
that evidence into a narrative that tells us where we are now and what we can expect in
times to come.
Please note that I use the words “story” and “narrative” deliberately here, instead
of “paradigm,” “theory,” or any other scientific-sounding word. I do so because scholars,
like other people, are led by their imaginations. Not that they ignore data; far from it.
But isolated data do not make sense all by themselves. No, data make sense only
when they are imbedded in a story that gives them meaning. The membership declines
of American mainline Protestant denominations, for example, can be interpreted as the
result of growing secularization or as the result of increased fundamentalism. They can
be seen as a shift in the relative strength of denominations and congregations, or as a
sign of growing religious individualism, or as the result of these denominations’ failure to
deliver a religious product that appeals to American consumers. Or, it can be all of
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these, set in the context of a worldwide order in which religion both responds to and
shapes such forces on a global scale.
Data alone do not tell us which of these is the “correct” story. Getting from data
to narrative requires an imaginative leap: the discernment of a pattern that makes
various data hang together. Most scholarly conflicts arise from different leaps, not from
different facts. Six main narratives currently dominate the sociology of religion: each
answers differently our questions about religion’s present and about its future.
Thematized in what follows as secularization, the rise of fundamentalism, religious
reorganization, religious individualization, supply-side market analysis, and
globalization, these narratives paint highly different pictures of religious life. Though not
always contradictory, these approaches interpret data about religion in different ways.
In doing so, each tells a different story about religion’s place in the modern world.
I shall spend the rest of this essay describing these six views.
Secularization
The story of secularization has a long and proud tradition in sociology – as throughout
modern Western intellectual life. Comte, Marx, Weber, and Freud all famously thought
that prior ages were more religious than would be the future. Their reasons were
different, of course. Marx argued that religion helped poor people endure the pain of
their oppression – an opiate that they would not need in the class-free society to come.
Weber claimed that the ideals that had motivated the early Protestant reformers had lost
their religious content, yet lived on as an “iron cage” of rational self-repression that
compelled modern folks to work hard at their professions without hope of transcendent
reward. Freud saw religion as an illusion that would vanish as humanity matured.
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In fact, the idea that “religion is not what it once was” has considerable empirical
support, even in the United States – that most religious of developed countries. There,
we have had a steady drop in mainline Protestant church membership, stretching back
to the 1950s. American religious organizations have nowhere near the social influence
that they had two centuries ago, neither in public life nor over their own members.
Young American evangelicals increasingly disagree with their churches’ moral stances,
though not on all matters. Religious intermarriage is on the rise all across the religious
spectrum. The majority of Jews no longer attend synagogue; Roman Catholic church
attendance has fallen by one-fourth since 1965. In sum, religion is a smaller part of
American life, both public and private, than it once was.ii
Europe has seen an even steeper religious decline. In Britain, membership
dropped from 30% to 14% of the adult population between 1900 and 1990. Aberdeen,
Scotland’s weekly attendance fell from 60% of the population in 1851 to 11% of the
population in 1995. Sunday attendance in the Nordic countries now amounts to
something less than 2% of the adult population. Half a world away, Australian church
attendance is as low as 5% for Anglicans and Presbyterians, though it is higher for
sectarian groups. As Steve Bruce recently put it:
The road from religion embodied in the great European cathedrals to
religion as personal preference and individual choice is a road from more
to less religion. From the Middle Ages to the end of the twentieth century,
religion in Europe (and its offshoot settler societies) has declined in power,
prestige, and popularity.iii
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This is the narrative underlying the secularization view. Once socially central,
contemporary religions are now largely voluntary organizations, a declining part even of
private life.
I need look no further than my wife’s family for a good illustration of this. Her
grandparents were Biblical literalists who believed in “the Rapture” – that at the End of
Times good Christians would be taken up bodily to Heaven, leaving the unrighteous
behind them. Her father tells the story of coming home as a small child to find no one
home – unheard of in a farming family; he assumed that the Rapture had come and that
he was one of those who had not been saved. As an adult, he left this group and
became a liberal Presbyterian. His children and grandchildren are uniformly secular,
even mocking the “true believers” from their family’s past.
I do not have space to explore it here, but the secularization tale has several
versions. One version emphasizes the fragmentation of social life, as specialized roles
and institutions are created to handle specific tasks that were formerly churches duties.
The Welfare Office has replaced the Poor Box, the psychologist has replaced the
pastoral counselor, the hospital corporation has replaced the church-run hospice.
Though Poor Boxes, pastoral counselors, and the like remain, they do not dominate
their professions as they once did.iv
Another version notes that, almost everywhere in the modern world, small-scale
communities have lost power to large-scale organizations. Religion, so often tied up
with the life of the local community, has suffered that community’s erosion. It cannot
compete with national television, sports, politics, and other forms of mass
entertainment.v
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Then there is the decline in individual religious belief. Many, perhaps most,
erstwhile members of American churches cannot name those churches’ central
doctrines. Recent research has shown that the number of Americans claiming “no
religion” has doubled over the last decade. Although Andrew Greeley has
demonstrated a difference between Catholic and Protestant religious imaginations,
almost no religious group can command doctrinal uniformity. It is no longer news that
what is preached from the pulpit often bears little resemblance to what is believed in the
pews. vi
According to the secularization narrative, pluralism is one chief cause of this
decline in religious belief. The modern world brings together many people with many
different views – unlike previous times, in which people were surrounded by people of
like faith and, thus, not likely to question their own group’s beliefs. The “growing
pluralism” version of the secularization narrative tells us that religions are threatened by
the presence of multiple views of the world. It suggests that, where worldviews coexist
and compete as plausible alternatives to each other, the credibility of all is undermined.vii
Structural differentiation, societalization, privatization, and the decline of belief
are just four of the many versions of the secularization narrative. All versions predict
that religion will fade.
The Rise of Fundamentalisms
This is not, however, the only story that tells us about religious change. The events of
September 11th, 2001, challenged the secularization narratives in some rather basic
ways. The terrorists, for example, were not uneducated yahoos, defending an old-time
religiosity. They were educated zealots who saw themselves as holy fighters, bringing
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Islam into a new era. viii The same can be said of Palestinian suicide bombers, many of
whom have been profiled by journalists in the last year. Jewish ultra-orthodox settlers
are cut from the same mold, as are middle-class American right-wing Christians. The
secularization narrative predicted none of these religious revivals.
Let’s take the case of Luke, a fundamentalist friend of mine. Luke is the perfect
example of an extreme evangelical Christian. A well-educated doctor, he sees the
world through Biblical lenses. His mission in life, as he sees it, is to spread the gospel.
He does not do so by force, but by quiet conversation. Besides talking with other
Americans, but he goes to Guatemala each year on mission, where he spreads both
free health care and God’s word.
Engaging and open, Luke nonetheless holds some quite extreme views,
including a belief in the Bible’s literal truth. Among other things, he home-schools his
eight children, preferring that they not engage with the sinful society in which they live.
He and his wife uphold a very traditional division of labor and are pleased that their
eldest daughter chose to do the same when she married young. He thinks that
mainstream religions are too lax – that they have lost their way in a world of temptation.
Above all, he sees salvation as coming only through a personal relationship with Jesus
Christ. He worries about salvation for others but is assured of his own.
Luke is not alone in American life. Middle-class extreme evangelicals are the
fastest growing group on the American religious scene.ix Unlike the fundamentalism of
the 1920s, this is not a backwoods phenomenon. These new fundamentalists embrace
education but carefully control it. They harness the new media to spread their
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message. They see themselves as a bulwark against a world gone wrong, and they
aim, each in their own way, to set it right.
African Christian fundamentalists and pentecostals are much the same. Drawn
from the most educated on that continent, these religious “conservatives” believe
precisely those things that the secularization narrative says are most implausible in the
modern world. This includes a belief in Biblical literalism, the coming apocalypse, the
aforementioned “Rapture”, and the direct experience of the Holy Spirit.x Jewish ultraorthodox
and Moslem fundamentalists take their religion’s core texts similarly seriously.
In fact, they both insist that religious law should govern everyday life and that it should
do so for others, not just for themselves. They, too, are far from uneducated. They
have, in fact, rejected the roles that modernity sets before them and have chosen
fundamentalist identities for themselves.
The narrative that I have been relating, the story that says that religion is
becoming more fundamentalistic, is a common one among journalists and political
scientists. It is not so common among sociologists or scholars of religion, in part
because it lumps disparate groups together under a label that hides as much as it
reveals.xi These flaws, however, should not keep us from identifying it as a story – one
with a good deal of explanatory power.
The “rise of fundamentalism” story runs roughly as follows. First, it
acknowledges modernity’s secularizing tendencies. It says, however, that these affect
only a minority of the world’s people, especially the left-liberal intelligentsia that controls
the Western levers of power. Fundamentalism arises, the story claims, in two places. It
appears where modernity disrupts people’s traditional ways of life – as a revitalization
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movement giving people new identities with which to manage their changed
circumstances. Becoming fundamentalist (or pentecostal or ultra-orthodox or hyper-
Moslem) allows one to express one’s opposition to change while making some sort of
change possible. Anthropologists have long been familiar with such revitalization
movements; the new versions are just harder to hide on society’s margins.
The story speaks of a second origin, however, one more personally than socially
focused. It starts from the Durkheimian insight that modern society has different rules,
and fewer rules, than do traditional societies. One thing that unites all of the world’s
various fundamentalisms is their reverence for rules – from the Southern Baptist
prohibition on dancing to the Jewish dietary codes to the complex Moslem Sharia,
known for its draconian punishments. In this view, such fundamentalisms are, among
other things, bulwarks against DQRPLH. They provide rules for those who are
uncomfortable without them. This matches my friend Luke's situation, something that
he would willingly admit. His faith sustains him as much because of what it prohibits as
by what it promises.
The story of the rise of fundamentalism, then, is as connected to the social
processes underlying modernity as is the secularization narrative. The secularization
story reads the decline of religion from modernity’s increased division of labor, from its
emphasis on the national rather than on the local community, from its emphasis on the
individual, and from its pluralism. The “rise of fundamentalism” story reads that rise as
a reaction to modernity’s destruction of traditional life and to the rule-less nature of the
modern world. In essence, the story goes, fundamentalist religion is a matter of identity.
It provides a firm grounding for those who distrust a world gone mad.
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Religious Reorganization
The two preceding narratives describe religious decline and religious rise. Our third
narrative speaks of religion’s changing shape. It claims that although religion is
weakening on the national level, it is more important than ever on the local level. This is
particularly true in the United States, whose inhabitants have long centered their
religious life on local congregations, not on a single institutional church. It tells a tale of
religious reorganization – a tale that is as plausible on the American scene as the tale of
religious decline is on the European one.
Steve Warner points out that Europe was traditionally a region of villages, each
dominated by a single church, the focal point both of religious life and of religious
rebellion. The United States, in contrast, has long had a plurality of churches, none of
which could dominate even local, much less national affairs. Moreover, these churches
were usually organized as local congregations. Except for the earliest colonial years,
there was no state church, so religion was voluntary. Americans joined and left
churches for the many personal reasons that people have for doing anything. And for
the most part, their choices depended on a local congregation’s ability to meet their
religious needs.xii
The same is true today: Americans join religious groups, not so much on the
basis of a denominational “brand” loyalty as on a sense of connection with a local
congregation. Finding “the right” community is less a matter of matching the group’s
theology to individual beliefs than it is a matter of finding a congregation whose social
patterns one finds congenial. “Church shopping” is a common practice when people
move to a new town. Churches in my city even offer booklets highlighting their best
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features. Typically, “friendliness” is high on the list; theology appears much lower down,
if at all.
Such congregations are increasingly central to American religious life. Hidden
beneath the membership declines of the big denominations is the rise of independent
congregations, small and large, which attract increasing numbers of adherents. From
congregations made up of a few families to mega-churches with membership into the
thousands, these groups often do not affiliate with the established national
organizations. Instead, they welcome all comers, play down theological distinctiveness,
and focus on providing a warm community.
This community takes many forms, as recent congregational ethnographies
show.xiii Some of these have focused on immigrants, showing how congregations give
new immigrants both a connection with their former countries and a toehold in
America.xiv Vietnamese immigrants in Houston, Texas, for example, have erected a
large Buddhist temple, which serves as both a religious and a community center for new
arrivals. San Antonio, Texas, where I now live, contains similar cultural and spiritual
“homes” for new immigrants from Lebanon, Egypt, Russia, Mexico, India, China, and so
on. There are also ethnic congregations for the older immigrant groups from Greece,
Poland, and Bohemia (Czech), for example.
If the reorganization narrative is right, such cases are not just properties of
immigrant religion, but of American religion in general. Why might religious localism be
so important today? The secularization narrative looks at macro-social trends to predict
religion’s future; what might the reorganization narrative see? So far, no group of
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scholars has worked this out in detail, but here is one possible account of what is going
on.
Among the social changes of the last century has been the growth of large-scale
social and economic institutions, which have greater and greater influence in individuals’
lives. Variously termed the “mass society”, “globalization”, and “late modernity”, this
social order greatly expands the reach of governments, big industries, and commercial
enterprises and restricts individuals’ sense of control over their own fates. One result is
a retreat to family and friends as a source of support and identity: a return to localism as
a haven in a difficult world. The religious congregation stands alongside the family in
offering personal support and close social ties – as a locus of UHOLJLRXVHPRWLRQ, to use
Daniele Hervieu-Léger’s concept.xv The growth of a mass society makes such personal
connections all the more important; religion – in its local manifestation – becomes
increasingly socially important.
This sociological explanation of religious reorganization – speculative though it is
– supports some of the versions of the secularization narrative, while opposing others.
It can easily accommodate the issues of institutional differentiation and privatization, as
these social processes underlie mass social development. It does not, however,
conclude that increasing societalization leads to religion’s decline; on the contrary, the
local becomes more important, not less, as large scale-institutions grow. And this
explanation does not suppose that the growth of mass society undercuts religious belief,
in part because it does not view belief as central to congregational life. This narrative
says that religious EHORQJLQJ is much more important to understanding current trends.
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Religious Individualization
A fourth narrative also speaks of religious restructuring, but not from one organizational
level to another. This story tells of a fundamental shift in the locus of religion from
organizations to individuals. I call this the story of religious individualization. It tells us
that individuals now pick and choose among various religious options, crafting a
custom-made religious life, rather than choosing a package formulated by any religious
hierarchy.
The story goes like this. In the past, religions were centered on churches.
People’s membership in one or another church pretty much predicted their beliefs and
actions, in part because they had been socialized into their church’s institutional
package of beliefs and practices. One could expect a Catholic to believe in the Trinity,
attend Mass, to venerate the saints, and to eat fish on Fridays; one could expect a
conservative Baptist to read the Bible daily, to pray in a specific manner, to believe in
personal salvation, and to avoid dancing and drink. Generally speaking, there was a
good match between a church’s official pronouncements and a church member’s
individual religious patterns.
That was the past. The religious present, says this narrative, is much different.
Religious diversity has grown, not just between churches but within them. Where once
most individuals accepted what their leaders told them, today they demand the right to
decide for themselves. This goes for their core beliefs as well as for the details. And
they do not feel compelled to switch religious communities when their religious views
change.
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A good deal of evidence supports this story. Not only do individuals today not
generally believe everything that their church leaders tell them they should, but
members of many churches display a diversity of religious beliefs and practices that
formerly would have been defined as heresies. In her study of a mainline Presbyterian
women’s Bible study group, for example, Jody Davie found a vast array of beliefs, many
of them specifically opposed by that denomination’s core creeds.xvi Yet, individuals in
the group found these beliefs very meaningful, even central to their individual religious
views; and they supported each other’s religious individuality. Even their clergy
supported their religious eclecticism, asking that they relate their individual religious
meanings to Presbyterian tradition rather than merely accepting what that tradition
offers. Meredith McGuire’s study of non-medical healing found a similar religious
eclecticism, as did my own study of a liberal Episcopalian congregation.xvii Clark Roof
documented this eclecticism among American Baby Boomers, arguing that a sizeable
proportion of this birth cohort could be characterized as “religious seekers”, more
interested in pursuing vibrant spiritual lives than in religiosity as defined by their
particular denominations or their congregations. xviii
The situation among Catholics is a bit different. Andrew Greeley attributes the
decline of American Catholic church attendance and financial contributions to the rankand-
file’s objection to the Vatican’s hard line against birth control.xix Nonetheless, he
says that Catholics are loyal to their religion; they just do not appreciate the hierarchy’s
attempt to define it for them. The Catholic social activists that I have studied have gone
even further in defining their own faith; the most radical of them see themselves – not
the hierarchy – as the carriers of authentic Catholic tradition.xx
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The religious individualism narrative sees both these Protestant and Catholic
developments as examples of the growing autonomy of religious believers. Individual
religion no longer mirrors an institutionally defined package of beliefs and practices.
Rather, individuals construct their faiths out of many disparate elements, not limited to
one tradition. Nancy Ammerman suggests that this effort to craft a spiritually
meaningful life may be part of the post-modern condition: a central aspect of the shape
of individuality in our era.xxi Religious individualism is a natural result.
This is not just an American phenomenon. Hamberg and Riis found similar
patterns in Scandinavia, as did Hervieu-Léger in France.xxii Indeed, Hervieu-Léger
shows how individuals no longer feel the need to conform themselves to the established
churches, but instead practice “religion jODFDUWH” – a EULFRODJH in which institutionally
validated beliefs are less and less important in individual lives. In sum, there is as much
evidence supporting this narrative as there is for the others I have discussed.
There are, however, some problems with this story, insofar as it is presented as a
general picture of religious change. Most importantly, its picture of the past is
inaccurate: it is not likely true that people once simply accepted the views of their
church leaders as their own. Meredith McGuire notes that before the Reformations of
the 16th and 17th centuries, European Christian individual belief and practice was
markedly eclectic.xxiii Individuals had a vast array of daily religious practices to choose
or reject, saints to venerate or to ignore, festivals to celebrate or avoid. Both elite and
popular religion focused on ritual practice, rather than orthodox belief. So long as
individuals adhered to such core practices as baptism and Holy Week duties, they had
considerable choice about what else they did for their religious devotions.
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In this light, we might reframe the “religious individualism” narrative a bit.
Perhaps religious individualism is not, as observers like Thomas Luckmann claim, a
natural outgrowth of late modernity.xxiv Perhaps, the balance has merely shifted back to
religious eclecticism and cultic tolerance, from the religious centralism and narrow,
controlled boundaries that the Reformations imposed.
In any event, the religious individualization narrative captures something of what
is happening to religion in the modern world. Like the secularization, fundamentalist,
and reorganization narratives, it describes a piece of what is happening and focuses on
facts that other stories miss. None of these stories, however, fully answers our two core
questions: What is happening to religion today?” and “What will religion be like in the
years to come?”
The Supply Side of Religious Markets
A fifth religious narrative claims to answer these questions fully, with a “general theory”
of how religion works in all times and places. It begins with the idea that churches do
not exist in social isolation; instead, they compete for “customers” in religious “markets.”
Those markets may consist of hundreds of competing “firms” – small churches each
trying to attract members. Or they may consist of one or a few large churches that hold
a religious monopoly. Postulating that the “demand” for religious “goods” is nearly
always constant, the religious market story claims that the dynamics of religious life are
merely a special case of the dynamics of all market behavior. If one knows something
about the characteristics of religious “firms” and the applicable religious market
structure, one can predict any specific religious future.
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The most prominent historical application of this method is Finke and Stark’s The
Churching of America, 1776-1990.xxv Creatively using church membership statistics,
the authors trace the rise and fall of several Protestant denominations over the last 200
years. Unlike Europe, with its state-supported monopoly churches, the United States
has long had a relatively free market for religion. Those churches that can attract
members prosper; those churches that cannot do so decline. Finke and Stark chart the
growth and relative decline of Congregationalists, Methodists, Baptists, and various
sectarians – the market share of each rising as it exploits promising market niches, and
falling as it liberalizes its theology and accommodates to the world. This version of the
supply-side story is relatively simple: “successful” (i.e.: growing) churches are
otherworldly and conservative; churches decline as they move “up-market” by appealing
to the liberal elite rather than to the conservative masses. Religious monopolies reduce
religious participation, as clergy do not depend for their livelihood on “selling” their
“product.” This explains Europe’s religious decline, because state churches have long
dominated the European religious market.
What, then, does this narrative recommend to religious leaders who wish their
churches to remain strong?xxvi First, deregulate the religious marketplace; and second,
emphasize the supernatural. The end of religious monopolies, we are told, will increase
the total number of church members and attenders, as a higher proportion of the
population finds churches that cater to their specific needs. Not everyone wants a
metaphysical religion, but some people do; they will stay away from church unless a
deregulated market gives them access to their kind of worship. The same is true for
biblical literalists, mystics, Wiccans, and the ritualistic: a religious free-market increases
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the total supply of religious “goods”, increasing the trade in religion overall. Yet, most
people, according to Finke and Stark, want an “old-time religion” that promises salvation
and sure answers. Their analysis of church membership trends claims to show a crosscultural
preference for supernaturalistic religions that offer a vision of a “life beyond.”
Historical data provide some support for this conclusion, as do the growth of
contemporary evangelical, fundamentalist, and pentecostal denominations (including
the various charismatic renewals) and the membership declines of American mainline
Protestantism fit this pattern well.
I do not have space to say more here about this narrative, though this narrative
has generated many cogent critiques and vigorous ripostes.xxvii This simple story – for
that is its strength – is extremely popular among young sociologists, though it has
generated more concepts than substance, quite possibly because most of its advocates
have little cross-cultural experience. No account of religious narratives should pass it
by.
Religion in the Context of Globalization
Had I written this essay a year ago, I would have stopped here. The preceding five
narratives are all well-established in sociological circles. The sixth religious narrative is
not so well-established, not because its champions are obscure but because it has not,
until recently, become a story about contemporary religious life. Until now, it has been a
topic, an approach, a set of elements to consider. But not a finished story – until
recently.
In a set of recent (and forthcoming) publications, Peter Beyer has created a story
about religion in the context of globalization – one that runs something like this.xxviii
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Once upon a time, there were many different societies around the world, each
with its own set of practices. Some of these practices helped people eat; others
organized their social relations; still others dealt with matters that we would today call
“religious”. Not that they were “religious”, in and of themselves, for “the modern sense
of what counts as religion … is a product of a relatively recent, highly selective, and
somewhat arbitrary historical (re)construction.”xxix This construction is the second step
in Beyer’s story.
As the West expanded its political and economic reach toward other parts of the
globe – an activity that we will call, for short, “imperialism” – Western scholars followed.
They saw things that looked like our post-Reformation Christianities and named them
“religions”. Thus, for example, they constructed “Hinduism” as a unitary religious
practice out of the bits and pieces of Indian temple worship. They constructed
“shamanism” as a cross-culturally coherent means by which tribal peoples interacted
with the spirit world. They attempted to construct a similar Chinese “religion”, though
the Chinese, in their inimitable way, threw this back at them, saying that they did not
have any ]RQJMLDR(literally, “belief-cults”), which was their reading of the what Christian
missionaries had brought them. Ironically, this Chinese act solidified a cross-cultural
definition of “religion” – one modeled on the religions of the West. Though there was
once no universal image of “religion”, there is one now.
Furthermore, these Western scholars posited a universal “religious sphere”, to
which all societies must somehow respond. They regarded this sphere as foundational
– because Christianity claimed to be the ground of life – and also to be transcendent,
because Christianity claimed to transcend it. Based on their history of religious wars,
“What is Happening to Religion?” J. Spickard
21
they encoded religious freedom in their constitutions. Thence they spread to
international documents: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on
Civil and Political Rights, and so on. These “religions” came to be seen as something
basic to human life, not to be denied.
The third step in Beyer’s story stems from imperialism’s backwash: the global
migrations that typify our post-colonial age. As Salman Rushdie once remarked, today
“you can live upstairs from Khomeini”.xxx A walk down Brixton Road in London brings
you face to face with religions from around the world: Pakistani Moslems next to Hare
Krishnas, Nigerian pentecostals next to Orthodox Jews.xxxi The point is not just that one
could change religions twenty times within two kilometers, if one were so inclined. The
point is that globalization has brought people together who never would have met each
other before. And new media make “living together” no longer a matter of having to
meeting physically. We all share space with the Khomeinis of the world in a way once
thought impossible.
This has consequences, especially since all these people now think that they
have “religions”, all think that they have “rights” to these religions, and all think that
these religions are somehow central to their identities. This goes also for people who
have no religion: they have a right to no-religion, having no-religion is central to their
identity, and so on.
Beyer says that this whole intellectual complex makes religion tremendously
important in the modern world. It also makes it something of a loose cannon.
Depending on local circumstances and depending on local conflicts, people can use
religious claims for social inclusion or social exclusion. They can use it to motivate
“What is Happening to Religion?” J. Spickard
22
peace or to motivate war. Unlike our secularization and rise-of-fundamentalism stories,
Beyer’s globalization narrative tells us that we can’t predict what will happen to religion
in any particular case. We can predict, however, that religion will remain important,
precisely because our definition of “the religious sphere” has made it an ideological
resource open to all manner of uses.
Were we to ask Beyer “What is happening to religion?” I think he would say, “It is
becoming very messy.” And I would have to agree.
Beyond Narratives
This brings me to the end of my essay. We have six stories about “What is happening
to religion today?” and about “What will happen to it in the future?” Much current work
in the sociology of religion revolves around one or another of these stories. Such work
supports, critiques, or tests them for their applicability to the contemporary scene. Each
of these stories is plausible, based on accumulated evidence; each highlights different
aspects of religious life. Few sociologists are wedded to any single story, though most
prefer one or two over the others. Yet, there are enough conflicts between them that
simply splitting the difference between them does not create a coherent picture of
religion’s present and future.
What, then, is one to do with such conflicting interpretive perspectives? Are they
a sign of sociology’s unscientific status – of the “pre-paradigmatic state” that Thomas
Kuhn traced in the history of the natural sciences many years ago? I do not think that
this question has an easy answer. Rather than invoking “paradigm”, I think it more
useful to remember that we are dealing with narratives. Like all stories, these narratives
“What is Happening to Religion?” J. Spickard
23
do not just organize the data that we can see. More importantly, they orient us toward
the future, toward the data that we cannot yet see.
Scholars of religion will wish to ask, among other things, “What are the
consequences of the orientations that each of these stories recommends?”
“What is Happening to Religion?” J. Spickard
24
NOTES
* I described four of the narratives covered in this essay in more detail in Meredith B. McGuire,
5HOLJLRQ7KH6RFLDO&RQWH[W, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2002), 285-300.
i Throughout this essay, I have changed the names of smaller churches but have used the real
names of those churches that are already popularly prominent. Thus “Biker’s Heaven” is a
pseudonym, but “Crystal Cathedral” is its real name.
ii See, LQWHUDOLD, Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney, $PHULFDQ0DLQOLQH5HOLJLRQ,WV
&KDQJLQJ6KDSHDQG)XWXUH (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987); Lynn
Davidman, 0RVW$PHULFDQ-HZV (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming);
Andrew M. Greeley, 7KH&DWKROLF0\WK7KH%HKDYLRUDQG%HOLHIVRI$PHULFDQ&DWKROLFV (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990); Patrick H. McNamara, &RQVFLHQFH)LUVW7UDGLWLRQ
6HFRQG$6WXG\RI1992).
iii Steve Bruce, &KRLFHDQG5HOLJLRQ$&ULWLTXHRI5DWLRQDO&KRLFH (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999), 7-8.
iv See Karel Dobbelaere, 6HFXODUL]DWLRQ$Q$QDO\VLVDW7KUHH/HYHOV (Brussels: P.I.E. - Peter
Lang, 2002).
v Bryan R. Wilson, 5HOLJLRQLQ6RFLRORJLFDO3HUVSHFWLYH (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982),
154ff.
vi Wade Clark Roof, 6SLULWXDO0DUNHWSODFH%DE\%RRPHUVDQGWKH5HPDNLQJRI$PHULFDQ
5HOLJLRQ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Michael Hout and Claude S.
Fischer, "Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations,"
$PHULFDQ6RFLRORJLFDO5HYLHZ 67 (April 2002): 165-90; Andrew Greeley, "Protestant and
Catholic: Is the Analogical Imagination Extinct?" $PHULFDQ6RFLRORJLFDO5HYLHZ 54 (August
1989): 485-502.
“What is Happening to Religion?” J. Spickard
25
vii Peter L. Berger, 7KH6DFUHG&DQRS\(OHPHQWVRID6RFLRORJLFDO7KHRU\RI5HOLJLRQ (Garden
City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1969). Berger has since changed his views.
viii Mark Juergensmeyer, 7HUURULQWKH0LQGRI*RG7KH*OREDO5LVHRI5HOLJLRXV9LROHQFH
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
ix The picture that Dean Kelley painted in 1972 has not changed. Dean Kelley, :K\
&RQVHUYDWLYH&KXUFKHV$UH*URZLQJ>D6WXG\LQ6RFLRORJ\RI5HOLJLRQ (New York: Harper &
Row, 1972).
x Philip Jenkins, 7KH1H[W&KULVWHQGRP7KH&RPLQJRI*OREDO&KULVWLDQLW\ (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002).
xi But see Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds, )XQGDPHQWDOLVPV2EVHUYHG (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1991).
xii R. Stephen Warner, "Work in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of
Religion in the United States," $PHULFDQ-RXUQDORI6RFLRORJ\ 98 (1993): 1044-93; R. Stephen
Warner, "Religion, Boundries, and Bridges," 6RFLRORJ\RI5HOLJLRQ 58, no. 3 (1997): 217-38.
xiii See, for example, Nancy T. Ammerman, %LEOH%HOLHYHUV)XQGDPHQWDOLVWVLQWKH0RGHUQ
:RUOG (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987); Jodie Shapiro Davie, :RPHQLQ
WKH3UHVHQFH&RQVWUXFWLQJ&RPPXQLW\DQG6HHNLQJ6SLULWXDOLW\LQ0DLQOLQH3URWHVWDQWLVP
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); Thomas A. Tweed, 2XU/DG\RIWKH
([LOH'LDVSRULF5HOLJLRQDWD&XEDQ&DWKROLF6KULQHLQ0LDPL (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1997); R. Stephen Warner, 1HZ:LQHLQ2OG:LQHVNLQV(YDQJHOLFDOVDQG/LEHUDOVLQD
6PDOO7RZQ&KXUFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
xiv Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet Chafetz, eds., 5HOLJLRQDQGWKH1HZ,PPLJUDQWV (Walnut
Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2000); R. Stephen Warner and Judith G. Wittner, eds, *DWKHULQJV
LQ'LDVSRUD5HOLJLRXV&RPPXQLWLHVDQGWKH1HZ,PPLJUDWLRQ (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1998).
“What is Happening to Religion?” J. Spickard
26
xv Françoise Champion and Danièle Hervieu-Léger, 'HO
(PRWLRQHQ5HOLJLRQ5HQRXYHDX[HW
7UDGLWLRQV (Paris: Centurion, 1990).
xvi Davie, :RPHQLQWKH3UHVHQFH
xvii Meredith B. McGuire, 5LWXDO+HDOLQJLQ6XEXUEDQ$PHULFD (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 1988).
xviii Wade Clark Roof, $*HQHUDWLRQRI6HHNHUV7KH6SLULWXDO-RXUQH\VRIWKH%DE\%RRP
*HQHUDWLRQ (San Francisco: Harper, 1993); Roof, 6SLULWXDO0DUNHWSODFH%DE\%RRPHUVDQG
WKH5HPDNLQJRI$PHULFDQ5HOLJLRQ.
xix Andrew M. Greeley and William E. McManus, &DWKROLF)LQDQFLDO&RQWULEXWLRQV (Chicago:
Thomas More Press, 1987).
xx James V. Spickard, "Slow Journalism? Ethnography as a Means of Understanding Religious
Social Activism,". 335(6:RUNLQJ3DSHUV 36 (2003),
; Meredith B. McGuire and James V.
Spickard, "Narratives of Commitment: Social Activism and Radical Catholic Identity,"
7HPHQRV6WXGLHVLQ&RPSDUDWLYH5HOLJLRQ 37-38 (2003): 131-49.
xxi Nancy T. Ammerman, "Golden Rule Christianity: Lived Religion in the American Mainstream,"
in /LYHG5HOLJLRQLQ$PHULFD7RZDUGD+LVWRU\RI3UDFWLFH, ed. David D. Hall (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1997), 196-216.
xxii Eva Hamberg, "Religion, Secularisation, and Value Change in the Welfare State," paper
presented at the European Conference on Sociology, 26-29 August Vienna, 1992; Ole Riis,
"Patterns of Secularisation in Scandinavia," in 6FDQGLQDYLDQ9DOXHV, ed. Thorleif Pettersson
and Ole Riis (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1994), 99-128; Danièle Hervieu-Léger,
9HUVXQ1RXYHDX&KULVWLDQLVPH" (Paris: Cerf, 1986).
“What is Happening to Religion?” J. Spickard
27
xxiii Meredith B. McGuire, "Toward a Sociology of Spirituality," 7LGVVNULIWIRU.LUNH5HOLJLRQ2J
6DPIXQQ 13, no. 2 (2000): 99-111; Meredith B. McGuire, /LYHG5HOLJLRQ6SLULWXDOLW\DQG
0DWHULDOLW\LQ,QGLYLGXDOV
5HOLJLRXV/LYHV (New York: Oxford University Press, IRUWKFRPLQJ).
xxiv Thomas Luckmann, 7KH,QYLVLEOH5HOLJLRQ (New York: Macmillan and Co., Ltd, 1967).
xxv Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, 7KH&KXUFKLQJRI$PHULFD<<:LQQHUVDQG/RVHUV
LQ2XU5HOLJLRXV(FRQRP\ (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992).
xxvi This is developed in detail in Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, $FWVRI)DLWK([SODLQLQJWKH
+XPDQ6LGHRI5HOLJLRQ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Cf. James V.
Spickard, "Review of Acts of Faith by Rodney Stark and Roger Finke," -RXUQDORI
&RQWHPSRUDU\5HOLJLRQ 17, no. 1 (2002): 100-03.
xxvii See, LQWHUDOLD, Michael P. Carroll, "Stark Realities and Androcentric/Eurocentric Bias in the
Sociology of Religion," 6RFLRORJ\RI5HOLJLRQ 57, no. 3 (Fall 1996): 225-40; James V. Spickard,
"Rethinking Religious Social Action: What is 'Rational' About Rational-Choice Theory?"
6RFLRORJ\RI5HOLJLRQ 59, no. 2 (1998): 99-115; and Lawrence A. Young, ed, 5DWLRQDO&KRLFH
7KHRU\DQG5HOLJLRQ6XPPDU\DQG$VVHVVPHQW (New York: Routledge, 1997).
xxviii Beyer’s Religion and Globalization contains the germs of this narrative, but his more recent
work has changed its shape. See especially Peter F. Beyer, "The Modern Emergence of
Religions and a Global System for Religion," ,QWHUQDWLRQDO6RFLRORJ\ 13, no. 2 (1998): 151-72;
Peter F. Beyer, "Constitutional Privilege and Constituting Pluralism: Religious Freedom in
National, Global, and Legal Context," -RXUQDOIRUWKH6FLHQWLILF6WXG\RI5HOLJLRQ 42, no. 3
(September 2003): 333-39; Peter F. Beyer, "Defining Religion in Cross-National Perspective:
Identity and Difference in Official Conceptions," in 'HILQLQJ5HOLJLRQ,QYHVWLJDWLQJWKH
%RXQGDULHV%HWZHHQ6DFUHGDQG6HFXODU, ed. Arthur L. Greil and David Bromley, Religion and
the Social Order, vol. 10 (JAI/Elsevier, 2003), 163-88. Cf. Peter F. Beyer, 5HOLJLRQDQG
*OREDOL]DWLRQ (London: Sage Publications, 1994).
“What is Happening to Religion?” J. Spickard
28
xxix Beyer, "Constitutional Privilege," 334.
xxx Quoted in Beyer, 5HOLJLRQDQG*OREDOL]DWLRQ, 1.
xxxi {Smith 2000}. One can visit Smith’s web tour at:
http://www.astoncharities.org.uk/research/religion/index.shtml .