Let's Listen to the Natives

Abstract

Following a third of a century of increasing interest and involvement in social scientific study of time seems ripe to renew an old plea that has fallen out of fashion during these years: that students of should communicate more with practitioners of religion. One example of benefit that could come from such dialogue arises out of a recent issue of this journal. It concerns inherent logic of religion, at least as viewed by many on this side of Atlantic. Rodney Stark and James McCann in Market Forces and Catholic Commitment: Exploring New Paradigm (JSSR 32: 111-123) apparently follow Stephen Warner in describing putative strength [sic] of monopolies as the about European experience. Whatever may be received wisdom in academe, reverse is among professionals. Certainly it has been so in Church of England, for at least forty years. If only we were persecuted . . . , seminary students have said. Stark and McCann's second paragraph states, In Society A Roman Catholic Church is virtually only denomination available, and more than 90% of population would state that as their preference if asked. But no one who was familiar with such societies would ask members for their religious preference, unless they were determined to use alien categories of a foreign worldview. Researchers could legitimately seek respondents' identity, and they might even do so by asking a direct question However, to be appropriate, both meaning and method would need to be different from those suggested. Similarly, assumption in such societies has long been that the average person's day-to-day experience of sacred would be less, and certainly not (pace third paragraph) far more intense in Society A, where universal culture would permeate all institutions. For it is among minorities, not among majorities, that rates of participation would be high, as would levels of belief. The succeeding paragraph attributes this traditional paradigm in sociology of religion to Durkheim, particularly to his work on Suicide (1897). Certainly, in this case Durkheim was concerned with individuals' intensity, as well as with cultural assumptions. But it has long been axiomatic among spiritual guides that, when is open to question, dispute and doubt (pace Durkheim 1951:159) then more, not the less it dominates lives. The faith that is deepest and most pervasive is of conscious, rather than self-conscious, kind. Confidently relaxed, it may not be very active, in terms of churchgoing and other such specifics. Pluralism can therefore be expected to coexist with sect-like intensity. Yet this does not invalidate view that pluralism can also coexist with, and give rise to, both