Rodney Stark and the Sociology of American Religious History

Abstract

In the late 1970s, Rodney Stark returned to the sociology of religion, a field he had earlier abandoned largely because he had been unable, in his words, to discover any consistent ... effects (Stark 1984:273). This return resulted from his realization that he had been treating religion as a psychological trait rather than as a group property. As he stated in his 1983 presidential address to the Association for the Sociology of Religion, So long as religion is conceived of as an individual trait, as a set of personal beliefs and practices, we can never know when and where religion will influence conformity, for research will continue to produce contradictory findings. But if we move from a psychological to a sociological conception of religion, clarity leaps from the chaos (Stark 1984:274). He then announced that he was prepared to argue theoretically and to demonstrate empirically that religion gains its power to shape the individual only as an aspect of groups (274). The resulting theory by which Stark linked group processes and individual behavior was formalized in an exchange theory (with Bainbridge 1987). It was a desire to test this general theory that led Stark to explore American history. Beginning around 1985 and continuing to the present day, Stark has embarked on an empirical testing of one portion of his general theory, the concept of religious economies, with historical data on participation that he and Roger Finke created from relatively neglected surveys and census lists (Finke and Stark 1986, 1988, 1989; Stark and Finke 1988). These new data represent what surely will be seen in the years ahead as an enduring contribution to the field of American history. In this pathbreaking work, Stark and Finke succeeded in creating remarkably accurate measurements of participation for all the major American bodies from 1776 through the present day. This information now makes it possible to study the relative membership and regional strengths of the major Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church during more than 200 years of American history. In the context of Stark's general theory, moreover, these new historical data have provided an opportunity to test the explanatory value of his concept of religious economies. In these brief remarks I want to discuss first the central importance of the Stark and Finke data to our efforts at understanding American history, and then turn to their interpretation of these new data.