Phillip Hammond's The Third Disestablishment demonstrates that we can generate useful measures of religious commitment and behavior for diverse populations, measures which can be used successfully on small random samples as he has done with telephone interviews. Surely his work confirms the main features of our historical work, that is, of interpreting documents and making educated guesses as to their context and significance. Sometimes I have been haunted by the fear that I am simply in the business of taking impressions, reading my own projections into the material. It is something of a relief to know that sociological work of this sort can, at least in part, confirm or deny interpretation. However, more than supporting other kinds of research, Hammond's work has generated interesting data of its own kind, through the sets of correlates which enabled him to relate degrees of personal autonomy to degrees of parish involvement and to other aspects of traditional religiousness. His development of a scale of personal autonomy, combining degrees of divergence from traditional morality with the loosening of local ties, at first appeared too simple, but by the end of my reading of the study I had become persuaded of its utility. Most of all, he convincingly argues that the data reveal during the past 30 years a third disestablishment, a move away from strong involvement in traditional religious institutions and toward individual-expressive religiosity. Whether this trend will persist in the next generation, or whether there will be a re-organization of religious energy around certain communities (for example, around the Conservative Protestant denominations which have attracted so much interest), remains to be seen. Still, the current trend is unquestionable. The focus on regional differences gives rise to many interesting issues, most of which Hammond has considered. I want to focus on four that have to do with the region with which I have greatest familiarity, namely California: first, the comparison of California with Massachusetts; -second, the strong presence of Conservative Protestantism in California; third, subregions in California; and fourth, the issue (unexplored in Hammond's work) of personal autonomy and charismatic leadership. My comments on Hammond's characterization of Massachusetts and California are intended primarily to highlight some of his insights. His comparison demonstrates how a sensitive sociological questionnaire can reveal interesting divergences. In many respects, the various angles from which the four states are studied confirm each other: North Carolina on virtually all measures comes out as representative of the conservative Christian establishment. Ohio, while also strongly pious, is the epitome of moderation. California and Massachusetts appear as the liberal and less traditionally pious. However,