"Social Research and the Churches": A Comment from a Denominational Researcher

Abstract

In Social Research and the Churches, Yoshio Fukuyama sets out to report on the current status of organized religious research by way of an overview of the history of church-based social research from the late nineteenth century to the present. The selection by the Lilly Endowment of Fukuyama to conduct this inquiry was fitting since he has been a long-time participant in, as well as an observer of, the religious research scene in the United States and has first-hand knowledge of a number of the studies mentioned in his paper. The task of reporting on the current status of organized religious research involves value judgments. The value judgments that the author has arrived at in the course of his task, which are never thoroughly articulated, color the historical analysis which comprises the largest part of the paper, resulting in a selective understanding of this history. For example, toward the end of the paper the author concludes that: