Christian Smith Future Directions in Sociology of Religion

Future Directions in the Sociology of Religion

A Special Section edited by:Christian Smith, University of Notre Dame

The past 20 years have seen major developments in theoretical andempirical scholarship in the sociological study of religion. Most of theEuropean founders of sociology, of course, engaged religion as animportant dimension of understanding social order and transformation.The 20'̂ century saw the production of many significant works in thesociology of religion in the United States. Yet the mostly taken-for-grantednature of the larger secularization theory that overshadowed a lot of socialscientific thinking about religion during much of the past century tendedto undermine the taking too seriously of religious institutions, culturesand movements. Old-timers today often report that when they were ingraduate school they were actively discouraged by mentors from studyingreligion. Why invest in studying something that was destined to wither anddie? They had to swim against the current to study religion. As a result, insome decades, the sociology of religion languished.

How times have changed. Unexpectedly, socio-political events inrecent decades have forced religion back onto the scholarly table forsocial scientists to reconsider. Beginning in the mid-1970s and continuingthereafter, major world events and movements - liberation theology in LatinAmerica, the Iranian Revolution, the Religious Right in the United States,Catholic Solidarity in Poland, the church-led anti-Apartheid movement'in South Africa, the strongly religious U.S.-Central America solidaritymovement, the spread of Pentecostalism in the Global South, the growingcultural power of American evangelicalism, and, of course, the eruption ofmilitant Islam sometimes violently confronting the West - forced all butthe most resistant social scientists to acknowledge that, whatever mightbe the validity of secularization theory long term, religion was clearly still apresent and important force in social, political, and cultural life that neededto be researched, understood, theorized and explained (Berger 1999). Insignificant part because of the stunting legacy of secularization theory inacademia, however - and perhaps due to the field's somewhat narrowfocus in the 1970s on "cults" and other new religious movements - manysocial scientists (as well as journalists and many of the educated public)at first found themselves lacking adequate analytical tools and so mademore than a few false starts and misguided efforts trying to make senseof the religious reality they confronted.

Despite these theoretical disadvantages, however, sociologists ofreligion in the past two decades have - often with the help of researchgrants from well endowed private foundations with interests in studying

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religion - made important strides in better understanding the energy,meanings and complexities in and of contemporary religion. Ethnographiesof religious conversion and congregational life (e.g., Neitz1987; Davidman1991; Ammerman 1997) have, for example, offered helpful inside viewsof what might otherwise have been alien religious experiences to readers.Multiple research projects on American evangelicalism greatly enhancedour understanding of the worldview, motives and organizational dynamicsof that movement (e.g., Wuthnow 1989; Smith et al. 1998; Emerson andSmith 2000; Smith 2000; Gallagher 2003). Helpful historical sociologies ofreligion improved our longer-term view of religious change (e.g., Wuthnow1988; Finke and Stark 1992; Stark 1997; Stark 2003). Scholars developednew survey measures of religion that proved much more discriminating anduseful than the religion questions they replaced (e.g., Steensland et al. 2000).Statistically oriented scholars have greatly increased the sophistication ofquantitative analysis applied to religion (e.g., Sherkat 1999; Sherkat andEllison 1999). The field witnessed major advances in our understanding ofthe relationship between religion and life outcomes, particularly deviance(e.g.. Stark 1996) and health (e.g., Ferraro and Albrecht-Jensen 1991;Ellison and Levin 1998). A host of solid field studies have enhanced ourunderstanding of the interaction of religion and immigration (Warner andWittner 1988; Ebaugh and Chafetz 2000), religion and politics (Epstein1991; Demerath and Williams 1992), and the internal transformationof religion (Roof 1999). Both survey and ethnographic methods havedeepened our knowledge about the organizational and cultural dimensionsof U.S. religious congregations (e.g., Chaves 1997; Becker 1999). The list ofnotable advances and achievements by scholars including Melissa Wilde,Richard Wood, Omar McRoberts, Michael Young, David Smilde, Don Miller,Wendy Cadge, Phil Gorski, John Evans, Michele Dillon, Mark Regnerus,John Bartkowski and many others could go on and on.

In the midst of this fruitful scholarly ferment and production, the singleresearch debate that emerged to dominate theoretical discourse withinthe field was that between the so-called new paradigm, rational choice,religious economies theory (Stark and Finke 2000; Warner 1993) vs. arevitalized secularization theory (Lechner 1991; Chaves 1994; Yamane1997). The arguments, which were frequently contentious, mobilized manyforms of individual-, congregational-, county- and national-level data to tryto determine whether religious pluralism increased or decreased religiousadherence, whether religious competition energized or underminedreligious mobilization, whether religious beliefs were eroding or maintainingstable levels, and so on. The debate produced a lot of important andvaluable research and we are that much the more knowledgeable for it. But,by my reading, that debate has lost most of its energy - particularly due tothe publication of an article (Voas, Olson and Crockett 2002) questioning

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the very usefulness of one df the key analytical indicators in the argument- and has not produced a satisfactory resolution or verdict.

My own sense is that the sociological study of religion has now enteredan ill-defined transition phase in which many scholars are moving beyondsome of the field's burning concerns of recent years but have not yet clearlyre-defined the major issues, challenges and goals for the future. A great dealof terrific work does continue to be produced by sociologists of religion. Butthe larger intellectual concerns or theoretical frameworks that often help todefine and guide social science fields for periods of time seem to me to besomewhat amorphous and wearied in the sociology of religion at present.My purpose in this article is to help the field move forward toward a greaterclarity of vision and purpose, to help solidify a firmer sense of the substantiveand theoretical agendas that matter most in the field's endeavor to make itscontribution to the larger discipline of sociology and to public understanding.I do that by first outlining a series of specific substantive and methodologicalconcerns that deserve greater scholarly attention by sociologists in thecoming years and setting the stage for the eight separate articles in thisspecial section that follow this Introduction. Second, I consider a recenttheoretical innovation concerning our model of modernity and social change

- the hypothesis of "multiple modernities" - that in my view deserves muchgreater attention and development, particularly when it comes to the study ofreligion in modernity and post-modernity Third, I advocate an alternative meta-theoretical basis on which to better pursue the sociology of religion - in fact,actually, all of sociology - in a way that I believe will be more fruitful than thetwo background approaches that currently govern most scholarship, namely,positivist empiricism and hermeneutical interpretivism. That alternative is thephilosophy of (social) science known as critical realism.

Elements of a Forward Looking Research Agenda

A lot of the best work in sociology is produced not by scholars closelyfollowing an established research program or incrementally adjustingour understanding of well-ploughed features of social life, but rather byresearchers who press into newly emerging areas of social experience,creatively crossing established conceptual boundaries, and developinginnovative approaches for understanding the seemingly well known.There is, of course, no formula for creativity of that sort, and I stand in noposition to orchestrate such movements or innovations. In this section, Iinstead pursue the more modest goal of sharing what I think are a varietyof unjustly understudied and under-developed areas of scholarship in thesociology of religion. I do not expect all of my colleagues to agree with me.But I think the following are worthy of consideration, in order to stimulatea larger conversation about fruitful future directions in the field.


Beliefs

At first glance, it may seem bizarre to suggest that beliefs need more studyin the sociology of religion. Is not religion centrally about beliefs, on theone hand? And, on the other, do beliefs even matter as causal influencesin people's lives? Are not religious beliefs either commonplace or mostlyirrelevant for the sociology of religion? Didn't old research show thatattitudes predict very little variation in dependent variables? Shouldn't weleave the study of beliefs to the discipline of religious studies? I think not,on all points. People's beliefs may be central to their religion, but that doesnot mean that sociology studies them adequately. I think we often do a poorjob of it aside from some rich ethnographies. Most survey work in religionthat engages beliefs relies primarily on the most simple survey questionsabout "belief in God" and "Bible beliefs" - about the validity of which Ihave more than a few concerns. Other sociological research on religionfocuses little on beliefs but instead on organizational structures, behavioralpractices and connections to non-religious concerns and outcomes. Yetif the sociology of religion deserves to remain a distinctive field of study

- and not simply be dissolved into apparently more foundational fields,such as culture and organizations, for example - it must be the casethat something about the particular content of religious beliefs (as theyrelated to cultures, organizations and practices) is crucially important forconstituting and motivating selves, identities, communities, organizationsand movements. If the religious contents of religious beliefs do not matter,then religion is immediately reducible to more generic features of social life,and the study of religion can be readily subsumed into the fields that studythem. I, for one, do not think that is justified. I believe that the substanceof religious beliefs finally do matter in the formation of this distinctivedimension of social life we call religion (see Smith 2003a). Yet I think wehave not done as good a job as we ought in sociologically understandingreligious beliefs and how they operate interactively in complex processes ofcognitive activity, identity formation, action motivation, collective solidarity,organizational constitution and so on. Still, promising signs of research onreligious beliefs are emerging of late. Paul Froese and Christopher Bader(2007, 2009), for example, are systematically exploring the importance ofsubstantively different beliefs about God in the United States that havepreviously been neglected. Among the articles that follow, two stand outas encouraging signs of a growing interest and payoff in better studyingbeliefs empirically. Hempel and Bartkowski demonstrate how religiousmeasurement on surveys can be improved by taking more seriously in ourquestion development the actual beliefs of particular religious groups. AndGabriel Acevedo's article suggests the importance of examining particulartheological formations in socio-political contexts to determine how and

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when they may shape presupposed cultural visions that have possiblepolitical and economic consequences. Beyond such analyses I am surethere is much more research of value and importance to be conducted onreligious beliefs and their consequences.

Bodies

Beliefs are not the only sociologically significant aspect of religiondeserving improved study. We also ought to invest in better investigatingthe role of the religious body. The body is not a new focus of study in thesocial sciences and related fields. Feminist theory has long exhorted thetaking seriously of the body for understanding social life. Foucault has alsoinspired a great deal of academic attention to bodily disciplines. Scholarsin both cultural studies (e.g., Scheper-Hughes and Wacquant 2002) andreligious studies (e.g., Coakley 2000) have emphasized the role of the bodyin cultural and religious formations. But far too little interest in the body,I think, has seeped into the sociology of religion - to our loss. Religion isvery much about the body, its comportment, treatment and enactments.One cannot adequately understand religious conversion, meanings, rituals,disciplines or communities without attending closely to the handling andbehaviors of bodies. Furthermore, religious approaches to the body havevery much to do with the relationship of religion to the family and politics.Religious beliefs are inscribed into and, in part, govern the behaviors ofbodies. And bodies partly incarnate religious beliefs and enact religiouspractices. And all of that has implications and consequences for largersocial and political relations. Taking a non-cultural approach to bodies, onthe other hand, I also suspect that there is much to learn about biologicalinputs to religious life. I cannot outline a specific research program forthe study of the body in the sociology of religion. I simply believe thatadvances in our capacity to study the body in relation to the sacred willsignificantly enrich our sociological understanding of religion. Towardthat end, two (very different) articles following this Introduction engagethe issue of the body in religious life. Winchester explores how bodiesfigure into the formation of religious selves through ongoing processesof faith conversion. And Eaves et al. examine the possible role of geneticinfluences in religious outcomes. These together only begin to scratch thesurface of the potential to improve our knowledge of religion and societyby better understanding in various ways the role of bodies in them.

Genetics

I could have entirely subsumed the topic of genetics and religion under theformer paragraph concerning the body. But because introducing genetics

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into sociology is controversial and very different from what culturally-oriented approaches to the body do, I wish to make certain points explicit.I am highly skeptical of many socio-biological approaches to explaininghuman social life and have written critically against evolutionary psychologyand related projects (Smith 2003a). However, there is no denying thatpeople are or have bodies which are biological organisms that, as far aswe know, are powerfully genetically controlled. It would be naive to viewbodies as mere corporeal "platforms" on which all of the interesting andunrelated stuff of social life is played out at another level. Our biologicalbodies are actually crucially important in the specification of the contoursof social and institutional existence (Smith forthcoming). There is no goodreason to think that genetic dispositions do not interact with socio-culturalinfluences to shape outcomes in human social life. Sociologists, therefore,should have little to fear, in my view, in collaborating with genetics expertsto better understand the complexities and consequences of mind-body-social interactions. None of that - when properly understood andpursued - needs to entail an inappropriately essentialist view of humanityor potentially racist assumptions or anything else worth resisting. As asociologist concerned about understanding religion, I am interested inlearning how an increased knowledge of genetic influences might fillout our understanding of religious dispositions, actions and choices.There may in the end be less payoff than some expect. But we have toinvestigate more to find out. The particular article by Eaves et al. on religionand genetics actually concludes that genetics play a fairly minor role inreligious outcomes among adolescents, although other research cited inthat paper finds a greater role of genetics in adults. I therefore add herea possible fuller understanding of genetic influences on religion to myagenda for important new direction in the sociology of religion.

Emotions

Sociologists have made significant headway recently in better understandingemotions and social life. Yet scholars studying religion have, in my view,not adequately incorporated a focus on and insights about emotions intoour scholarship. This may be a reaction against certain historical academicpolemics reductionistically associating religion per se with emotions (andfear and ignorance; see Smith 2003a). So, in response, scholars today whowant to take religion seriously may prefer to focus instead on organizational,cultural, political and other more sociologically "respectable" aspects ofreligion, and avoid associations that in the past have been used to dismissreligion. But I believe there is no getting around the facts that emotionsare central to human life, that emotions play a crucial role in religiousbelief and commitment, and so that we will never adequately comprehend


religion sociologically if we do not involve a keen understanding of therole of emotions in it. I see current signs that some scholars - includingR. Stephen Warner and Mary Jo Nietz and their students - are workingon religion and emotions. We need to continue and expand research andtheorizing with that focus.

Ecological Context

My list of agenda items for new directions in sociology of religion is so farlargely concerned with issues commonly thought of as operating at themicro level. But I think that the sociology of religion in coming years alsoneeds to focus on linkages including levels above that of organizations,subcultures, denominations and movements: at ecological contextsproviding multi-level analyses. Too often, even good sociological analyses ofreligion are limited to explaining dynamics operating at one level - whetherindividual religiosity, congregational attributes, organizational structures,subcultural systems, etc. - and their consequences. But we have goodreason to believe that institutional and ecological contexts -within whichreligion operates - exist at diverse levels and exert important interactivecausal influences on and with religion. We need more and better studiesthat directly analyze different aspects of religion interactions with family,peer groups, congregations, schools, neighborhoods, counties and otherstructures and environments that provide ecological contexts for religiouslife. The trick here is collecting and linking data from multiple levels of sociallife in single, coherent datasets, which tends to be more costly and difficultthan more standard forms of data collection. But working with such datasetswill push our analyses to a higher level of complexity and value. Examples ofsuch work engaging religion and contexts do exist (e.g., Ammerman 1997;Stark 1996), but much more can and needs to be done. Among the articlesin this special section, Blanchard et al. provide one model of how this maybe done, demonstrating, in their case, the effects of religious influences oncontextual compositions that in turn influence health outcomes.

Elites

The vast majority of work in the sociology of religion focuses on individuals,clergy, congregations and denominations that comprise the mass ofordinary, on-the-ground religion in the United States and beyond. This isvaluable and important. But we also know that a great deal about sociallife, including religious life, is driven not by ordinary people on the streetand their local organizations but by various kinds of institutional elites withspecial access to authority, information and financial and other resources.Most kinds of elites are harder to study than ordinary people. But I believe

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the sociology of religion can significantly enhance the contribution itmakes to the discipline and beyond by studying elites as they influenceand perhaps are influenced by religion. Relevant here are political, media,business, military, academic, artistic, literary, scientific and other elites.Again, we do not proceed without models here (Schmaltzbauer 2003;Smith 2003b; Lindsay 2007). Among the articles in this section, Ecklund'et al. provide another example of the sociology of religion focused at theelite level - in this case, on scientific elites. But much more of interestand importance in the study of elites and religion could and should betaken on in the future.

Islam

Islam is an immensely important religion in the world today, well deservingof careful and thorough investigation on many fronts. Yet, we know, thesociology of religion, particularly in the United States, is heavily weightedtoward the study of Christianity and religions practiced widely here. Anumber of fine sociologists of and publications on Islam exist, but notenough. We will increase the relevance and value of the field of sociologyof religion overall by conducting more research on Islam around the worldand in the United States and Europe. To encourage movement in thatdirection, three of the articles in this section focus on Islam. Moaddel andKarabenick examine religious fundamentalism among young Muslimsin Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Winchester explores the conversion processto Islam in the United States. And Rinaldo investigates the role of Islamshaping women's public sphere activism in Indonesia.

Cross-national Religions

Expanding the previous argument on Islam, in a global society, thesociology of religion, particularly in the United States, must engage in morecross-national, comparative research than we currently do. Increasingly,good cross-national survey data are generated, but go under-analyzed.We simply have so much more to learn about religion by expanding ourfields of vision, researching religion in other nations, and capitalizing onthe comparative method to gain analytical edges. In doing so, we wouldof course not be starting from scratch. One thinks of the work of scholarssuch as Jose Casanova, Peggy Levitt, Rob Robinson, Nancy Davis, RonaldInglehart, Grace Davie, Peter Beyer and others as models from which toproceed (e.g., see Casanova 1994; Davie 2000; Davis and Robinson 1999,2006; Levitt 2007). But, there is much more potential for internationalizingour scope of perspective with great payoff than we currently realize. Inthis, I also believe that it will be important to employ not only standard


regression forms of analysis but also Fuzzy Set/OCA methods that allowfor complex conjunctural causation and multiple paths to similar outcomes,pioneered by Charles Ragin (2000). Below, the articles by Moaddel andKarabenick and by Acevedo both analyze comparative cases to try to gainleverage of understanding on implications of Muslim faith.

Communism

A particular instance of the former focus worth singling out for mentionis the study of religion in communist and post-communist societies. Herewe have various forms of something like natural experiments with religioninvolving different regions, cultures and time periods. The potential todeepen our understanding of religion in modernity and post-modernityis great if, in addition to studying religion in the United States and theUnited Kingdom, say, we also study religion in China, Vietnam and Cuba,as well as in post-communist nations such as Russia and those of EasternEurope. Here we also have some leads to follow. Fenggang Yang hasdeveloped a major enterprise connecting the sociology of religion in Chinaand the United States (e.g., Yang 1999, 2004; Carnes and Yang 2004).And Paul Froese will soon publish a significant book on the failed Sovietexperiment to exterminate religion (2008). But so much more could andought to be done to learn sociologically about religion from the experienceof communist and post-communist societies.

These nine topical areas and different approaches - beliefs, bodies,genetics, emotions, ecological contexts, elites, Islam, cross-national andcommunism - top my list of items to add to any agenda laying out mostpromising and important new directions in the sociology of religion. Otherswould no doubt prioritize their lists differently. What matters more is that thesociology of religion today could benefit from some nudges forward, freshperspectives, new blood and forward-looking research programs. Graduatestudents and young faculty are particularly, though not exclusively, importantin this endeavor. The real task, then, is not so much to debate what shouldand should not top the agenda, but rather to develop the vision and capacityfor conducting new research and then do it.

Multiple Modernities

A helpful agenda for new directions in the sociology of religion cannotconsist simply of a list of various areas and approaches that have beenunderstudied and that promise analytical payoff with investment andattention, as important as that is. To move forward in ways that are mostfruitful I think we also need to stand back and reconsider some of ourlarger assumptions, perspectives, concerns and intellectual habits. To that

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end, I lay out two larger approaches that offer real promise in guidingthe overall direction of future thinking and research in the sociology ofreligion. The first is the hypothesis of multiple modernities. The second isthe philosophy of (social) science known as critical realism.

One master theoretical concept that has for many decades organizedfocuses, problems, explanations and interpretations within the sociologyof religion has been the idea of "modernity." Theories in most of thesocial sciences have long been organized around the pre-modern/modernconceptual divide, seeking to understand the institutional and culturaltransformations from the one to the other. In sociology, the crucial worksof Marx, Tonnies, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Parsons and many othersexplored processes of economic growth, differentiation, rationalization,individualization, urbanization and so on, as central dynamics ofa theorized process of modernization. Until the end of the 1900s,anthropology, likewise, was defined as a discipline per se by the veryconstitutive idea of the existence and interest of "traditional" pre-moderntribes, societies and cultures - in contrast to the societies of modernity.Particularly important is the fact that all such social science theoristsand theories consistently believed that modernity was unavoidablydestructive of religion, belief in spiritual realities and objective universals,non-naturalistic metaphysics, and "traditional" cultures and perspectivesgenerally. Modernity always contained "acids" - it was widely believed

- that are necessarily secularizing, disenchanting and fostering of anaturalistic and materialist outlook. By theoretical definition, religiousfaith and belief in such things as gods and natural laws, for example,became cognitively deviant and were expected certainly to fade awaywith the progress of time and the advance of modernity.

This inherited central focus on modernity in the social sciences took aparticularly sharp and systematized form after World War II. The second halfof the 20'̂ century saw the development of theories that posited modernityand modernization as largely universal, uniform, predictable and entailinginevitable dynamics inexorablytransforming the world. In sociology. Parsons(1951) theorized universal "pattern variables" and processes of evolutionarydevelopment of differentiation organizing the process of modernization. Ineconomics, Rostow (1960) theorized the "Five Stages of Economic Growth"through which all societies would pass in order to develop and modernize.An entire "Economic and Social Development" industry worked for decadesunder such theoretical notions. Thus, until as late as the 1970s, a veryparticular theoretical model for understanding modernity and modernizationdominated much of the social sciences. And this model continues to exertpowerful effects in the social sciences through its residual backgroundassumptions and models of thought - even when individual socialscientists were or are not "modernization" scholars. Especially relevant for

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present purposes is the fact that this model assumed that modernity andmodernization are not only inevitable and inexorable, but also that modernityproduces predictable patterns of uniformity and standardization -which, itturns out, was thought to resemble the particular experience of WesternEurope. Although many scholars have rejected such an approach, sucha view is by no means entirely disbelieved even today, as the writings ofscholars from Ronald Inglehart (1997) to Steve Bruce (2002) attest. Again,a key element of the uniformity that modernity is believed to engender isthe necessary and inevitable abandonment of religion, spirituality, objectiveuniversals and non-naturalistic metaphysics.

But numerous developments in recent decades have opened up animportant theoretical space for the reconsideration of modernity in moreempirically realistic and metaphysically open terms. In particular, newlyemergent on the theoretical horizon is the thesis of "multiple modernities,"which is now being articulated by the likes of Eisenstadt, Taylor, Martin,Wagner, and others (see Arnason 1989, 1991; Arnason, Eisenstadt andWittrock 2004; Berger and Huntingon 2003; Delanty1999; Eisenstadt 2000,2003; Friese and Wagner 2000; Hefner 1998; Kamali 2006; Katzensteain2006; Kaya 2003, 2004; Martin 2005; Lau 2003; Roniger and Waisman2002; Taylor 2000, 2004, 2005, 2007; Wagner 1993, 2000, 2001a, 2001b,2001c; Therborn 2003; Yack 1997). The essential idea behind the multiplemodernities thesis is that "modernity" and its features and forces canactually be received, developed and expressed in significantly differentways in different parts of the world, and - by extension, I suggest (Smith etal. 1998) - by different communities living in single societies. Thus, whilethe long-observed forces of modernization still operate through powerfulhistorical changes around the globe, the original thesis of uniformity andstandardization, including the related secularization thesis, are suspendedif not rejected. In other words, it is possible for different societies andsubcultures to be truly modern and yet not end up looking like, say, Franceor Sweden with regard to religion, culture, morality and views of scienceand metaphysics (see, e.g., Chakrabarty 2002; Davie 2002; Hefner 1998;Himmelfarb 2004). This simple yet fundamental, even radical, changein the old assumptions, images and expectations about modernity andmodernization opens up at this moment an opportunity for rethinking,re-theorizing and re-framing our empirical analyses in the social sciences,particularly with regard to religion. This opportunity creates the conditionsfor something of a potential paradigm shift in social science (and, indue time, popular) understandings of the actual nature of the world inwhich we live. And this can foster a variety of changes, including perhapsreinvigorating and advancing work in the sociology of religion.

What, then, have been the developments in recent decades that havebrought us to this moment? They include: (1. The emergence of Japan in

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the 1980s as a global economic powerhouse which, nonetheless, did notsimply come to conform culturally or socially to the Western Europeanmodel (see Bellah 2003). (2. A growing disenchantment in many sectors,particularly as expressed in "postmodernism," with Modernity in the latter20th century that focused on useful reconsiderations of the particularhistorical and cultural situatedness of the modern project, though notall aspects were particularly smart or salutary (e.g., postmodernist anti-humanism and relativism). (Note that the thesis of multiple modernitiesenables us to move beyond the false strictures of "modernity" withouthaving to fall into the serious problems of postmodernism, not to mentionan unhelpful nostalgia for pre-modern times and conditions.) (3. Thelarger economic and cultural fact of globalization and its consequences,which has raised basic questions about the real relationship betweenmodernization and Westernization, suggesting possible alternative formsof something like an "Asian Modernity," as well as casting into somedoubt the future of the nation state which was so central to the modernproject. (4. The reality of numerous modern Islamic and quasi-Islamicstates and societies (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Iran, Oman, etc.) which appear tobe appropriating modernity selectively and applying it in more customizedfashion than traditional modernization theory would have expected (e.g.,Moaddel 2007). More broadly, fairly recent so-called "post-colonial" and

"subaltern" studies in academia have driven home a similar point about thecapacities for resistance and alteration by local and subjugated cultures(e.g., Chakrabarty 2002). (5. Current developments in China, a countrywhich is clearly economically modernizing in many ways at an impressiverate yet, again, does not seem to be simply evolving inexorably towardconformity to a Western European model (e.g., Yang and Tamney 2005).(6. The diverse paths that post-communist states and societies appear tobe forging with regard to their own religious futures, particularly aroundthe role of religion in public life. (7. The growing force of terrorism, whichroutinely uses all sorts of modern technology often to promote apparently

"anti-modern" agendas. (8. The complication of what was once taken tobe a straightforward secularization theory by the empirical fact of thewidespread continuation of "traditional" religion both in the United States(perhaps the most modern nation on earth) and, as Philip Jenkins (2006)and others have shown, in much of the Global South (Berger 1996). (9. Theexperience of many traditional Muslims actually living in urban centersof Western Europe who, by all accounts, are very selectively adopting

"Western" ways, even if they seek to be and understand themselves to beentirely "modern" - as disruptive events in Paris in 2005 demonstrated.

The point here is not that all of these facts and events are to be praised,nor that they decisively refute the standard model of modernization thatposited inexorability and movement to uniformity. ("True believers" in the


extant model of modernity simply counsel confident patience, believingthat, inevitably, a homogenizing modernization process of secularizationwill eventually work its logic out.) The point is simply that real worldfacts and events have forced a reconsideration of the received modelof modernity. Again, one response has been to retrench and defend themodel. Another has been the anti-modern protest of swinging into someform of postmodernism. But in the past five years, a serious alternativehas surfaced: the thesis of multiple modernities. However dramaticallyinnovative or not the idea of multiple modernities per se is judged to be -and there are differences of views on this - I am nonetheless convincedthat it provides a most helpful and promising theoretical way to frameand interpretively explain the vast body of empirical knowledge that hasaccumulated in recent decades about the failure of the "inevitable andhomogenizing" version of modernization theory.

The handful of scholars currently thinking about the idea of multiplemodernities have not formulated a coherent and well-developed theon/, buttheir statements are highly suggestive. Political theorist and philosopherCharles Taylor (2000:367), for example, observes that a cultural approachto modernity appreciates that,

"[Tjransitions to what we might recognize as modernity,taking place in different civilizations, will producedifferent results, reflecting the civilizations' divergentstarting points. Their understandings of the person,social relations, states of mind, goods and bads,virtues and vices, sacred and profane, are likely to bedistinct. The future of the world will be one in whichall societies will undergo change, in institutions andoutlook, and for some these changes may be parallel.But it will not converge, because new differences willemerge from the old. Thus, instead of speaking of'modernity' in the singular, we should better speak of'multiple modernities.'"

Similarly, sociologist Ibrahim Kaya (2004:37-39) writes that,

"[Mjodemity is an open-ended horizon in which there arespaces for multiple interpretations. This immediatelyimplies a critique of totalizing theories of modernity... Iwant to argue that it is modernity which makes itpossible for radically plural world-interpretations to beexpressed openly, and it is for this reason that the fieldin which human beings live necessarily becomes a field

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of tensions...Modernity's openness to interpretationmakes necessary a concept of the plurality ofmodernities." (also see Kolakowski 1997)

This lack of development itself suggests that more work needs to bedone to explore, develop and synthesize the best thinking on multiplemodernities. We can, for present purposes, name a few of the key ideasunderlying the multiple modernities thesis, to give at least a preliminarysense of the assumptions and approach. First, the multiple modernitiesperspective believes that a sound understanding of modernity must rejectolder social-evolutionary and functionalist assumptions about socialchange which cast certain processes as universal and inevitable. In theirstead, assumptions about the centrality of contingency, complexity, timingand context - which themselves reflect deeper assumptions about humanagency and freedom - are adopted. Second, "modernity" itself is not asimple coherent unity, but in certain key ways an internally conflictedmovement. For example, contained within the single project of modernityare strong tendencies toward both autonomy and control. On the one hand,modernity liberates individuals from the constraining bonds of tradition,generating a multiplicity of options that give rise to choice and pluralism. Atthe same time, modernity imposes certain forms of discipline, uniformity,rationalization, and social control that counter individual liberation. Mostearly sociological theorists were aware, at least in some ways, of suchcomplexities, contradictions and unintended consequences involvedin the processes of modern social change. What remains to develop,however, is a fuller understanding about the implications of how thisinternally-contradictory and "unstable compound" of modernity shapesprospects for multiplicity and diverse outcomes. Third, it is essentialto an understanding of modernity as not simply a series of institutionalchanges, which positive science can somehow track and predict, but as acultural project of purposive human agents operating from the start withdifferent categories and beliefs about humanity, society, morality, purposeof life, etc. This cultural dimension of modernity opens up possibilitiesfor dramatic differences that the older institutionally-focused theories ofmodernity could not appreciate. Fourth, I suggest that rather than workingwith an underlying positivist empiricist model of social science, we oughtto adopt instead the approach of critical realism, which conceives ofsocieties as open systems in which multiple and complex real (thoughperhaps directly unobservable) causal forces operate interactively toproduce distinct outcomes. Fifth, modernity needs to be understood everybit as much as a cultural entity as it is a "structural" fact. By reflectingsocial science's "cultural turn" in this way, the multiple modernities thesisopens up new possibilities for considering ranges of options that modem


people and societies might take when it comes to matters of religion,science and morality. Sixth, much of what has been promoted by thereceived modernization model is actually less a scientific description ofactual processes of social change, and rather more a particular normative(anti-religious, skeptical Enlightenment) ideology of "progress" and thegood society (secular) masquerading as objective social science. Havingunmasked the normative and ideological biases baked into standardtheories of modernity, we will stand in a much better position to conductopen, relatively objective, empirical and analytical social science that betterinterprets the operations of the real social world.

That said, the multiple modernities thesis is, to date, still largely apromising suggestion, an idea just now beginning to be mapped outmore systematically in preliminary ways. What needs to happen to realizethis thesis' promise is to better explore, assess, develop and promoteit - particularly by and among U.S. social scientists, who seem nearlyuniversally oblivious to this nascent approach. Herein lies an opportunityfor scholars in the sociology of religion to contribute significantly to a newlarger perspectives with theoretical implications both for sociology as adiscipline more broadly and for our understanding of the religious realityoperating in the world today. Part of the new direction we need to envisionfor the sociology of religion must include sustained attention to anddevelopment of a theory and research program on multiple modernities.

Critical Realism

What is critical realism? Critical realism is a philosophy of (social)science that was expressed originally in the form I appropriate here bythe British philosopher Roy Bhaskar and is currently being developedby various scholars, especially in England and Scandinavia, includingArcher, Sayer, Collier and Ekstrom (see Archer 1995, 2000; Archer et al.1998; Bhaskar 1997, 1998; Collier 1994; Cruickshank 2002; Danermark,Ekstrom, Jakobsen and Karlsson 2002; Ekstrom 1992; Lopez and Potter2005; Kemp and Holmwood 2003; Harvey 2002; Manicas 1989, 2006;Outhwaite 1987; Porpora 1987, 1989, 1993, 2002, 2008; Porter 2002;Sayer 1992, 2000; Steinmetz 1998). Critical realism seeks to offer aconstructive framework for understanding science that is alternativeto both the positivist empiricist paradigm, on the one hand, and theconstructivism, postmodernism and certain versions of the hermeneuticalperspective, on the other. The struggle between these two older, broadalternatives, advanced in different times in different forms, has left thesocial sciences deadlocked in a debate that cannot be resolved withinits own terms. Critical realism seeks to transcend that sterile impasseby articulating a coherent, third way alternative. I believe critical realism


succeeds in this and so I wish to advance it further in American socialscience. For present purposes, I believe critical realism opens a windowfor understanding human social life, including religious life, in moreilluminating and satisfying ways than do rival approaches.

I cannot adequately explain here all of the ideas involved in critical realistphilosophy. It will have to suffice, at the risk of generating some confusionand perhaps controversy, simply to note very briefly some of its key ideas.Interested readers can learn more by consulting the established literatureand perhaps, eventually, a book of my own (Smith forthcoming). In itspresuppositions, critical realism prioritizes ontology (the study of being)over epistemology (the study of what and how we can know), refusingto constrain our reasoning about that which exists and how it worksby the limits of what is knowable through observation. Critical realismdistinguishes the three aspects of the real, the actual and the empirical.The real exists whether we know or understand it; the actual, by contrast,is what happens as events in the world, when objects that belong tothe real activate their powers and capacities; the empirical, by contrast,consists of what we experience, either directly or indirectly. These three,for numerous important reasons, must not be conflated. Critical realismalso believes that reality exists with its own objective structures anddynamics independently of human cognition of i t - people do not actuallyconstruct reality but only construct their beliefs about and interpretationsand understandings of reality. Critical realism also views scientificknowledge as fallible but not all such knowledge as equally fallible. Someaccounts of the real are identifiably better than other accounts. It is thejob of human knowing generally-and science specifically-to engage theprocess of sorting through the merits of different accounts. Furthermore,critical realism understands objective reality as by nature not "flat" but"stratified," existing on multiple, though connected, levels, each of whichoperates according to its own characteristic dynamics and processes. Inpart for this reason, critical realism is also strongly anti-reductionistic inits explanations. The best way to understand and explain something isusually at the level of reality at which it exists, not by reductionisticallydecomposing it into its component parts at a lower level. This is, in part,because the combination or interaction of two or more phenomena atone level often gives rise through "emergence" to new phenomena at ahigher level, which possess characteristic properties and capacities thatare irreducible to their constituent parts at the lower level from which theyemerged. Furthermore, causation is real. Causality has to do with realcausal capacities and mechanisms, not with the association of regularsequences of observed events. Thus, Hume's "successionist" theoryof causation (that so strongly influences variables-oriented sociology) isrejected in favor of causal realism emphasizing the natural causal powers


of real entities. Scientific inquiry should therefore be concemed more withthe patterned properties of causal relations and mechanisms than withthe mere regularity of observable sequences of events (Hedstrom andSwedberg 1998). Further, not only are material objects real but many (at leastpartially) non-material, emergent phenomena, such as social structuresand human cognition, are also real, insofar as they possess emergentdurable, causal power. In addition, because social phenomena are alwaysintnnsically meaningful to and for both those who constitute them (people)and who seek to understand and explain them (social scientists), socialscience necessarily has a hermeneutical dimension that requires theinterpretive work of cultural understanding. Yet interpretive social sciencecannot on these grounds reject causal analysis, because causality is realmeanings are embedded in a causally operative reality, and meaningful'cultural reasons themselves possess causal powers for humans. All socialscience therefore has an interpretive aspect, yet not all that the socialsciences study consists of meanings requiring interpretation. Within thisframework, the larger goal of science is to produce generalizable claimswhich means understanding transfactual conditions of reality more than'universal laws or probabilistic inferences to populations. Social scienceshould seek to generalize, yet in doing so focus more on the structuredand causal nature of the real, not primarily on the regularity of eventsFinally, by conceiving itself as criticai realism (instead of so-called empiricalrealism or scientific realism), this approach signals its anti-foundationalistcharacter, reasoned resistance to modernity's absolute separation of factfrom value, and readiness to engage in normative critical theory without(because of its ontological realism) collapsing into ideology and crassacademic political activism.

This fleeting and incomplete initial description of some key criticalrealist commitments and beliefs certainly raises more questions than itanswers. It is meant only to suggest some main contours of this approachand encourage further investigation into it. Through the development of acoherent framework reliant on these and related commitments and beliefscntical realism successfully transcends a host of unhappy dualisms that'have long divided the social sciences and offers the sociology of religionthe best philosophical framework within which to proceed with its work.

To try to make that promise more concrete, I provide a brief example ofapplication drawn from the sociology of religion. My example concemsthe fate of religion in the modem world and is framed at the most generallevel by the rival secularization and religious economies theories Formuch of the history of modem sociology, it was believed that modemitywould undermine the plausibility and influence of religion. That belief wasadvanced in secularization theory, which elaborated different explanationsof how and why that religious decline and perhaps extinction would


occur. Secularization theory predicted that more modemity - particularlyas represented by science, rationality, individual freedom, institutionaldifferentiation, market competition and cultural pluralism - would meanless religion. That view of religion and modernity, however, began to bedoubted by some in the 1980s and then was forcefully attacked in the1990s, especially by religious economies theory. This altemative approachargued the opposite of secularization theory, suggesting that religiouspractice itself is a rational activity, that science and religion are notnaturally in conflict, that religious pluralism spurs entrepreneurial religiousorganizations to mobilize resources, and that religious competitionincreases the share of populations that are religiously affiliated. Forvarious reasons, then, religious economies theory predicted that moremodemity-as represented by rationality, individual freedom, institutionaldifferentiation, market competition and cultural and religious pluralism -could very well mean more religion.

A great deal of scholarship in the sociology of religion in the 1990sconsisted of attempts to empirically verify or falsify these two theories.They each hypothesized opposing expectations that, in principle, shouldhave been straightforwardly testable with empirical data. Much of themost influential research in the debate employed variables analysis to sortthrough the matter. And most of that presupposed - whether wittinglyor not - a positivist empiricist backdrop to their analyses. That meantthat investigators were looking to regular associations between variablesmeasuring observable facts and events to identify law-like generalizationsabout modemity and religion that would hold across populations and cases.Does religious competition at the national level increase or decrease levelsof religious participation when viewed cross-nationally? Do higher levels ofreligious pluralism in U.S. counties lead to higher or lower levels of churchattendance in those counties? And so on. The operative assumption in theresearch and debate was that one theory or another would be vindicatedby the empirical evidence and that its vindicated, general, law-likeexpected associations between variables would be evident in whatevercontext was studied. But when all in this research dispute was said anddone a funny thing happened. The sum total of evidence produced by themany studies proved inconclusive. A 2001 state-of-the-art/^/?A7iya//?eweu/of Sociology chapter that analyzed 193 of the most important pieces ofempirical scholarship in the debate concluded definitively that no definitiveconclusion could be drawn (Chaves and Gorski 2001). Some of the studiesshowed one thing, some show another thing, and some were just unclear.Since then, the debate has lost its energy. Once again, the search for alaw-like generalization about modernity and religion ended in failure.

An alternative approach to the issue - framed not by positivist empiricismbut by critical realism - can both explain why all of these studies as


conducted and interpreted were inconclusive and can offer a constructiveand illuminating way to move the larger inquiry forward. We do not needto abandon a variables approach to the matter. But we do need to conductour variables analyses within a theoretical framework reconstructedin critical realist terms. This means the following changes. We shouldstop looking for generalizations in law-like regularities of associationsbetween observable events. We should stop thinking in zero-sum termsthat either the secularization theory or the religious economies theory istrue. We should stop assuming that the validity of one or another theorywill be manifest similarly across different contexts. We should insteadbe seeking first and foremost to identify and understand the variety ofunderlying causal mechanisms by which aspects or dynamics of modemityinfluence religion, whether positively or negatively. We should expect mostor all of the relevant mechanisms to exist in potentia within the realitycomprising religion in modemity. We should expect that different specificsociai conditions activate or trigger different mechanisms into operativeinfluence. We should expect the causal effect of each mechanism to beinfluenced by the reinforcing or neutralizing effects of other activatedmechanisms. We should therefore be looking not only for independenteffects of hypothesized causal influences but also for conjuncturai andsuppressing effects of combinations of mechanisms at work together.We should not assume that a lack of observed change in any instancemeans that no causal mechanisms are active because opposing causalmechanisms might have neutralized each other. Nor should we assumethat two cases exhibiting the same outcomes were produced by thesame causal influences because different combinations of mechanismsmight produce similar outcomes. We should also not expect triggeredmechanisms to produce similar intensities of effects in different casesas the causal influence of such mechanisms operate only as identifiabletendencies in open systems, not consistently linear effects.

What then would it look like against this critical realist backdrop for thesociology of religion to succeed in its efforts in this research program? Itwould look like identifying and becoming highly familiar with the inherentand interactive operations and tendencies of all of the important causalmechanisms existing in modern social structures and practices thatinfluence the strength and character of religion. By contrast, seekingas the sociology of religion has so far mostly done, to discover somegeneralizable covering laws would be viewed as misguided. Rather thanparadigms bashing each other over the head with empirical evidencepurporting to validate one rival theory or the other - which is what a lot ofthe 1990s saw in the sociology of religion - critical realism would direct usinstead to identify all of the plausible causal mechanisms suggested by allthe theories, and to begin to think hard about the varying social conditions


within which different mechanisms are activated, and to empiricallyexplore the characteristic outcomes produced by different combinationsof operative mechanisms. That task is, of course, much more difficult thansimply searching for two variables that always correlate. But it is the taskthat is best matched to the actual reality within which we exist.

Framed in such terms, it suddenly becomes easy to see that the followingseven distinct hypotheses might all, in fact, be correct in different contextsand under different conditions:

Religious pluralism tends to corrode the certainties oftraditional faith for believers who previously occupiedreligiously homogeneous settings,

o Religious pluralism in free religious markets tendsto mobilize religious entrepreneurs into promotionalactivities to recruit more adherents.Religious pluralism provides a social setting in whichreligious groups that possess theological tools tosustain distinction-with-engagement will tend to thrive.Religious pluralism tends to exert homogenizinginfluences that reduce the distinctions betweendifferent religious groups, producing organizationalisomorphism.Religious pluralism creates conditions in which religiousorganizations tend to differentiate themselves fromothers in their identity and practice in order to specializein and target particular niche populations of the religiousmarket.Religious pluralism tends to encourage more liberal,open, inclusive, and accommodating forms of religiouscommunity and practice.

o Religious pluralism tends to encourage moreconservative, traditionalist, sectarian forms of religiouscommunity and practice.

In fact, actually, I think that all seven of these hypotheses (and no doubtothers) are true and operative in different contexts. Modemity generallyincreases pluralism, which typically causes a variety of diverse effects.Some of them reinforce each other. Some of them counteract each other.Some may "ricochet" off each other. Some of them may neutralize others,although those others may not neutralize them. And some of them maysimply be "indifferent" to each other. The task of a critical realist sociologyof religion is to conduct theory-informed research in order, first, to sortthrough which of these hypothesized causal influences is ever operative and.


second, to then better understand the more specific causal mechanismsthat produce such operative effects of pluralism on religion, the specifickinds of social conditions that trigger different causal mechanisms,variance in the effects of different mechanisms on diverse populationsand groups within the same contexts, and the configuration of differentoutcomes that may result from these causal dynamics. By contrast, whenwe stick to the positivist empiricism form of variables social science, thesehypotheses get set up as if they were mutually exclusive competitors andthe research that sets out to test them ends up producing inconclusiveconclusions and sometimes MAD: mutual academic destruction. (I alsorecognize that some proponents of positivist empiricism claim that MADresults from misconceptions of that philosophical approach, not its truespirit and best practice.)

Recasting our sociological research on and explanations of religionwithin a critical realist meta-theoretical framework will require learningnew assumptions, ideas and perspectives and un-learning many oldpresuppositions, beliefs and habits commonly received from positivistempiricism and hermeneutical interpretivism. In one sense, critical realismoffers a dramatically different approach to social science. At the same time Ithink critical realism actually only explicitly articulates, explains and justifiesthe best of what good sociologists already intuitively know and do. Much ofthe best sociology, in my view, is already de facto critical realist sociology,whether or not anyone knows it. It still, however, makes a big differencewhen we are aware of exactly why, philosophically and meta-theoretically,we do what we do and what difference that should and does make.Sociological research is much more powerfully governed by acknowledgedor unacknowledged philosophical and meta-theoretical commitments thanmany sociologists are willing to recognize. My appeal here is that we doa much better job of surfacing our operative philosophical assumptions,evaluating them for their real merits, and -1 recommend - embrace criticalrealism as a theoretically and pragmatically superior alternative to positivistempiricism and hermeneutical interpretivism. We will, I believe, producebetter sociology generally and sociology of religion specifically and betterunderstand and justify exactly why we are doing so.

Conclusion

The sociology of religion today faces new and remarkable opportunitiesto contribute interesting and important knowledge and understandingabout the role of religion in social, political, economic and cultural lifefor scholarly and public audiences. But in order to meet and capitalizesuccessfully upon those opportunities, the field at present needs to shakeoff some besetting habits of mind, expand its horizons, re-orient its debates.

1582 • Social Forces Volume 86, Number 4 o June 2008

construct a new agenda for priority investigations, and rethink some ofits larger theoretical assumptions, frameworks and paradigms. I havesuggested some specific elements of a forward-looking research agendaand two alternative theoretical frameworks for better continued work inthe sociology of religion. The following articles in this special section onreligion also suggest potentially fruitful ways to move forward. If this helpsto prompt a larger, ongoing, fruitful discussion in the field about how betterto fulfill our collective scholarly purpose and actual work that carries outthe promising directions suggested by that discussion, then I will considerthis article and special section of Sociai Forces a success.

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Christian Smith Future Directions in Sociology of Religion

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