Religion and Region: Sociological and Historical Perspectives

Abstract

T1his symposium has been a brief opportunity for interdisciplinary exchange between sociologists and historians with a helpful focus on specific regional and denominational patterns. As the lively discussion following these papers has shown, The Third Disestablishment proves to be a useful springboard for interpretation of broad historical changes. We need more such interdisciplinary interchange of ideas, because sociological survey methods tend to produce aggregates of individual opinions, values, characteristics. To put these data into a social structural context, sociologists can correlate such individual attitudes with indicators of social class, political preference, religious affiliation, or level of education, for example. Nevertheless, interpretations of broad social changes, such as those Hammond has addressed, must involve a level of analysis beyond aggregates of individual opinion. A historical perspective is one important path to a more comprehensive level for sociological interpretation. Indeed, it is imperative for an understanding of social change, because the forces leading to change are not directly amenable to social survey techniques. Furthermore, we lack comparable survey data for attitudes of, for example, Massachusetts believers in 1788 and 1888, so we must rely upon extrapolations from the historical record. While this symposium has emphasized mainly what sociologists can gain from a historical perspective on their subject matter, such interchange could also benefit historians. Much historical analysis is limited by a case-study methodology, which tends to be so narrowly focused that the historian hestitates to generalize much beyond that specific instance. Chronicling the actions of individuals or groups, the historian might fail to observe or document social structural factors embedded in the actions' settings. Thus, both historians and sociologists would probably achieve better analyses and interpretations in their own fields by sharing something of each others' perspectives on the social world. Each of these four vignettes of state makeup and historical character has effectively highlighted important methodological and interpretive issues for the sociologist of religion. Williams's report of the uniquely ordinary and adamantly bland cultural flavor of Ohio suggests that that state might be ideal as a survey research site. As a native of southern Indiana, I was relieved to discover that Ohio might have actually surpassed Indiana's ordinariness. The grayness of Ohio, however, creates problems for the sociological interpreter: How can one use this feature of the state to help explain anything of its religious climate?