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"The Religious Factor" Revisited
Robert Wuthnow
Sociological Theory
, Vol. 22, No. 2, Religion, Stratification, and Evolution in Human Societies:Essays in Honor of Gerhard E. Lenski. (Jun., 2004), pp. 205-218.
Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0735-2751%28200406%2922%3A2%3C205%3A%22RFR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W
Sociological Theory
is currently published by American Sociological Association.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/asa.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgThu Jul 5 00:00:44 2007
 
The Religious Factor.
Revisited
Robert Wuthnow
Prirzceto?i U~ziversitj,
Four. decades huve passed since the publication of Gerliard Lenski's
The ReligiousFactor.
While gc~~ierull~egar(lrdas a clussic in the .sociologj- of religion, the book hashad
(I
curious Iiisforj~,ai.ge1~.becuusr of the interest it generated in dtfferencesbetween Protesta~ztsand Catholics. Irz this paper
I
provide an
alternative.
reading of'
The Religious Factor's
hipact on sociolog.
of
rc,ligion that points to it.r larger.tlieoretical it?zl,lications.
I
rrygue that the book should be understood in relation tocontinuing debafes ahout the cla.r.c.zfic.ution
of
religious traditions, ~t$fererztiationatlzong socioreligious groups, intergroup relutions mliotig religious traditions, and
,friendship
ties 11,ithitire1igiou.r conzniunities. Through ~mdel..c.tcmclirzg hese contribtc-tions, the book's legacy us \tlell us continuitie.~ nt1 new opportunities in the study ofreligion can hr appreciated.
Gerhard Lenski's
Tlie Religious Fuctor
(1963) is arguably one of a handful of"classics" among contributions by American sociologists to the social scientificstudy of religion. It stands with such works as Herberg's
Protestant-Catholic-Je~i,
(1955) and Berger's
Sacrrtl Canopj)
(1967) as a landn~ark n our understanding ofthe relationships between religion and society. It is probably unique in the number oftimes the survey on which it was based has been replicated and is certainly distinctivefor the number of distinguished scholars who have reviewed it and have incor-porated its conclusions into their own research. Four decades later, it continues tobe cited, debated, replicated, and reconsidered. Yet, like many such works, it hasbecome an icon with such multivalent meanings and implications that care must betaken to understand precisely what it has contributed and how our knowledge hasbeen shaped by it. This is particularly so in the present case because of the ratherunusual way in which Lenski's book was received and was popularized. Despite thefact that the book presented a complex argument and dealt with a wide range ofrelationships between religious and other social factors, it came largely to be viewedas an argument about differences between Protestants and Catholics. With severalsignificant exceptions, that interpretation captured the imagination of prominentsocial scientists who largely were not specialists in the study of religion, whereasthose who did specialize in the study of religioncame increasingly to view the bookas overly narrow.My aim here is to reconsider
Tlie
Religious
Factor
from the standpoint of itscontributions to the sociology of religion and to do so in a way that retrieves neglectedaspects of Lenski's arguments and thus moves the discussion beyond that of differ-ences between Protestants and Catholics to a more general set of questions about thecontinuing role of religion in social life. 1 single out four aspects of
Tlzr ReligiousFactor
that are, in my view, its most distinctive contributions. For each,
I
considerwhy it was an important contribution at the time the book was written, what scholar-ship has done to extend and refine it in the intervening decades, and how future
Sociological Tlieoij'
22:2
June 2004
J
Anierican Sociological Association. 1307 h'eu Yoik Ai'enue
'VTV,
Wasliington,
DC
20005-4701
 
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORYresearch might be directed usefully. The four contributions are (1) the classification ofreligious traditions;
(2)
the social differentiation of socioreligious groups; (3) inter-group relations among religious traditions; and
(4)
the role of friendship ties inreligious traditions. Each of these, I shall argue, is a topic that can be traced singularlyto Lenski's work but that also represents a much larger and continuing set of ques-tions with which students of religion need to be engaged.Before turning to these topics, a brief introduction to
The Religious Factor
is inorder. The book appeared initially in 1961 and in a revised edition in 1963. It wasbased on a survey conducted in 1958 among a randomly selected sample of the adultresidents of Detroit. Lenski was concerned essentially with the question of whether ornot religion continued to have significant consequences for the ways in which peopleconducted their everyday lives. Religious teachings themselves argued that faithshould affect ordinary conduct, but theories of modern society suggested that secular-ization had taken place to the point that people no longer were guided by religiousteachings. Using various measures of religion (such as religious preference, atten-dance, and belief), Lenski examined the relationships among these measures and awide variety of other activities and attitudes, including work and socioeconomicmobility, voting and political preferences, family loyalty and attitudes toward childrearing, and education. While most of the book focused on the behavior and attitudesof the lay population, one chapter examined the opinions of clergy. Lenski concludedthat the religious factor, contrary to theories of secularization, did exercise a continu-ing impact on people's lives.CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIOUS TRADITIONSIn
The Religious Factor,
Lenski classified Americans into four major "socioreligiousgroupsv-white Protestants, black Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews-andargued that these groups represented a meaningful way of mapping American religioninto distinct categories or traditions. While subsequent interpretations that focusedlargely on Protestants and Catholics make this effort at classification seem little morethan commonsensical, it constituted an important contribution to the development ofempirical research on American religion. Its significance can be appreciated best bysituating it in the scholarly milieu of the 1950s. Prior to themid-1950s, relatively littleattention had been devoted by American sociologists to the study of Judaism in theUnited States, whereas an emerging empirical literature already was developing onProtestantism and Catholicism. Herberg's
Protestant-Catlzolic-Je11.
(1955), which Lenskicites, represented a significant departure from the conventional wisdom. It not onlygave Judaism a place alongside Protestantism and Catholicism but also provided anargument that located all three in terms of Americans' quest for roots and for self-identity. Herberg's study, however, was based largely on anecdotal evidence. Lenski'sbook, therefore, served as one of the first empirical studies in which Jews, Catholics,and Protestants actually were compared. (As it happened, the
U.S.
Census Bureau didconduct a national population survey in 1957 in which religious identity was asked, thusproviding some broad demographic comparisons, but Lenski's was the first study inwhich comparisons among major religious traditions could be made that includedmeasures of attitudes, beliefs, and participation.) The comparison between Protestantsand Catholics was itself interesting as well. While American Catholics in the 1950s wereexperiencing a significant and self-conscious process of "Americanization," tensionsbetween Protestants and Catholics remained strong, at least by the standards of newspaper
of 00

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