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Government Activity and Civil Privatism: Evidence from Voluntary ChurchMembership
Robert Wuthnow; Clifford Nass
 Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
, Vol. 27, No. 2. (Jun., 1988), pp. 157-174.
Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8294%28198806%2927%3A2%3C157%3AGAACPE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P
 Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
is currently published by Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.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/sssr.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 00:01:30 2007
 
Government Activity
and
CivilPrivatism: Evidence fromVoluntary Church Membership*
ROBERT WUTHNOWtCLIFFORD NASSt
The much-considered question of civil privatism in modern society has been discussed mostlyin theoretical and normative terms. We identify one strand of this broader discussion that can betested empirically. We consider declining participation in voluntary organizations, such as churches,as a manifestation of civil privatism, which has been alleged to increase as a result of the expandingfunctions of the bureaucratic welfare state. We also present counter-arguments that question whetherthere is a tendency for large state governments to promote civil privatism of this kind. We then testthese opposing arguments with national data on voluntary membership in more than
200,000
localreligious organizations collected in
1952
and again in
1981.
The analysis, conducted at the state level,demonstrates a significant effect on membership of total government expenditure, controlling forurbanization, migration, and several other variables. We discuss the implications of these findingsfor the literature on state expansion and civil privatism.
The expanding social role of the bureaucratic welfare state has become a topic ofincreasing interest in sociology. Aspects of state expansion that have been investigatedinclude: national variations in welfare expenditures, statelevel variations
in
govenunentalredistributive programs, the timing of early adoption of national pension programs, andthe growth of various forms of state bureaucracy (e.g., DiTomaso, 1980; Hicks, 1980; Orloff
&
Skocpol, 1984; Quadagno, 1984; Wilensky, 1975). In addition to these relativelystraighforward aspects of the welfare state itself, another ramification of state expansionthat has been discussed extensively in the theoretical literature, but has not yet beenanalyzed empirically, is the role of state expansion in eroding voluntary participation insecondary groups, the process that Habermas (1975)has described as "civil privatism."This alleged effect of state expansion has been given special attention in the theoreticalliterature because participation in voluntary associations has typically been regarded asan essential component of the strength of democratic societies.In essence, Habermas argues that contradictions inherent in the role of the state inadvanced capitalist societies lead to an observable retreat from membership inorganizations that
link
individuals to the public sphere and that facilitate the articulationof public
"will
formation." Habermas is concerned with the
full
range of independent sectororganizations that perform these functions directly or that contribute to their fulfillmentindirectly. These include political action groups as well as churches, schools, community
*This paper was supported by a grant from the Lilly Endowment for research on "Religion and the Third Sector.tRobert Wuthnow is professor of sociology at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. Clifford Nass isassistant professor of communication and sociology at Stanford University, Stanford, California.
O
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,
1988,
27 (2): 157-174
157
 
158
JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION
agencies, and fraternal organizations that provide spheres of "communicative action" aboutpublic values. As the state expands, citizens presumably become less involved in thesekinds of voluntary organizations.Although this is but one of several manifestations of civil privatism (subjective "nar-cissism" often being mentioned as another), it presumably constitutes one of the moresignificant societal effects of the growth of the bureaucratic welfare state. In the absenceof such voluntary organizational involvements, individuals are. said to become increas-ingly removed from the public sphere and turn to other interests, chiefly the personalgratifications of mass consumption, atomized leisure activities, and an attenuated versionof family intimacy. The consequences of civil privatism, moreover, are said to be largelynegative for the maintenance of democracy. An atomized citizenry is likely to be sub-jected more easily to political repression since non-governmental orgmations capableof resisting repression are absent or weak. Also likely, it is claimed, is a narrowing ofthe state's interests and an eventual weakening of its capacity
to
govern. Lacking effec-tive means of organizing and articulating larger questions about values and societal goals,the public loses interest in the state and potentially perceives it with a lack of confidenceor fails to accord it legitimacy. In response, the state may resort increasingly
to
programsthat appeal to the lowest common denominator values remaining among individualsoriented toward mass consumption and private leisure; that is, the promotion of economicgrowth. Ironically, it has also been suggested that the very social welfare programs thatwere taken over from the private sector by the state may thereby become jeopardizedas the state seeks to reduce its costs sufficiently to stimulate economic expansion (Poggi,1978: 146-47). For all of these reasons, then, the relation between state expansion andcivil privatism has been of considerable theoretical interest. Yet equally plausiblearguments can also be marshalled against the thesis that state growth and size generatecivil privatism.In this paper we reconsider the arguments relating state expansion and civil privatism.We also present counter-arguments that cast doubt on the inevitability of state expan-sion resulting in civil privatism. Set in opposition to one another, these argumentsreveal the importance of adducing testable empirical assertions. Next, we furtherspecify the arguments by considering them in relation to one kind of voluntary organiza-tion
-
churches
-
which are of special interest theoretically and for which strategicallyuseful empirical evidence is available. We then empirically test the relationship betweengovernment activity and civil privatism for the United States in 1952 and 1981. Althoughwe do not test the more complex theoretical nuances of the civil privatism debate, weargue that data on the relationship between government expenditure and voluntaryreligious membership provide useful evidence with which to address these nuances.
ARGUMENTS "FOR" THE STATE EXPANSIONICIVIL PRIVATISM HYPOTHESIS 
A century and a half ago, Tocqueville established the basic framework for thepresent debate over civil privatism by suggesting a close relationship between democraticgovernment in the U.S. and voluntary civic associations. Americans' penchant for
engaging
in voluntary associations was, in Tocqueville's view, a decisive factor inhibiting tendencies
of 00

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