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Religion and identity

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26-Beckford_Ch26 4/18/07 9:47 AM Page 531
Religion, Self-identity and
the Life course
Most chapters in the Handbook up to this
point have been about religion in relation to
theoretical ideas, methods of research, forms
of organisation, interaction with politics, and
individual beliefs and actions. But the chapters
in Part VII head in a new direction. They
examine the various processes by which per-
sonal identification with religions waxes or
wanes – with the emphasis firmly on the social,
bodily and emotional contexts in which reli-
gious identities are moulded. They show that
religion is clearly gendered, embodied, emotive
and situated in changing forms of the life-course.
Beginning with an overview of theories
about religion and identity, Arthur Greil and
Lynn Davidman argue in Chapter 26 that self-
identity cannot be divorced from social and
cultural life. While considering the evolution
of psychological approaches to identity and
religion, they emphasise the more recent shift
from thinking about identity as a matter of
individual psychology to a more sociological
conception of identity as the result of interac-
tion between self and others. The contribu-
tions of symbolic interactionism, social
identity theory and narrative notions of iden-
tity have all helped explain both change and
continuity in religious identification. Indeed,
many sociological debates about the evolution
PART VII
of modernity have highlighted its impact on
religious identity as one of a growing number
of potential identities. Similarly, studies of
conservative forms of religion and of processes
of conversion, commitment, and disaffiliation
have all stressed identity’s centrality. Recent
investigations of new ‘immigrant congrega-
tions’, generational changes in religious prac-
tice and the tensions between religious identity
and other sources of identity such as sexuality
or lifestyle display a continuing concern with
the negotiation of religious identity in the
midst of rapid social change.
Linda Woodhead opens Chapter 27 with the
claim that sociologists of religion were relatively
slow to recognise the significance of gender as a
factor shaping religious ideas, identities,
sentiments and practices. But she acknowledges
that a recent shift of focus away from essentialist
notions of sex and gender towards ‘masculini-
ties’ and ‘femininities’ has created exciting
opportunities for understanding the multiple
identities that make up religious identities.
Power – cutting across inequalities of class,
ethnicity and ‘race’ – is a key to the understand-
ing of religion’s variable relations with the
gender order in society. The four types of rela-
tionship between religion and gender that
Woodhead explores are: consolidating, tactical,
26-Beckford_Ch26 4/18/07 9:47 AM Page 532
532 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
questing and counter-cultural. Developing a
highly original argument, she then analyses the
gendering of secularisation and indicates other
topics in the sociology of religion that deserve
re-examination from the point of view of their
association with the gender order. They
include the definition of ‘religion’, the interpre-
tation of religious practices, the geography of
the sacred, and the selection of research meth-
ods. By delving beneath the male-dominated
surface of religion as it is commonly organised
and symbolically represented, sociologists of
religion can gain insight into new problems
and fresh perspectives on old ones. This is
particularly relevant to understanding the
positioning of different religious groups in
relation to issues such as homosexuality,
abortion and the veiling of Muslim women –
all of which give rise to anxieties about gender.
In another argument that aims to fill an
important gap in the sociology of religion,
Philip Mellor mounts a challenge in Chapter 28
to the tendency to ignore the fact that there
is a bodily dimension to being religious. His
central claim is that the embodied experience
of religion deserves more careful attention.
This is an area in which the sociology of reli-
gion has a potentially major contribution to
make towards the enhancement of debates
about interaction between human beings, their
bodies, experiences, emotions and the socio-
cultural forces that shape the interaction. Six
models of embodiment point the way towards
a more refined understanding of the place of
religion in this interaction. Illustrating his
argument mostly with examples drawn from
charismatic forms of Christianity, Mellor
shows how sociology’s general lack of attention
to embodiment can be remedied by attending
to the body as: emotional, permeable, learning,
mimetic, mindful and global. In this way, the
complex interplay between religion, culture,
the body, emotions and experience can be
brought to the foreground of sociological
consciousness and methodically examined.
The chapter’s provocative conclusion is that
the disposition of many sociologists to regard
religion as a secondary or purely reactive prod-
uct of social, economic or political factors can
be overcome by giving due recognition to the
irreducible properties of human embodiment.
This helps to frame religion as a potentially
creative and relatively independent way of
engaging with the socio-cultural world.
Recent changes in the nature of the socio-
cultural world lie at the heart of Chapter 29
where Stephen Hunt traces their implications
for the place of religion in the individual’s life-
course. He shows that the time-honoured
practice of thinking about human maturation
in terms of the life-cycle is now giving way to
the idea of a less predictable and less sequential
model of a personally chosen life-course. This
shift – in perception as well as social reality –
is congruent with some authoritative charac-
terisations of the increasingly self-reflexive
‘project’ of the self in late-modernity or post-
modernity. The expectation is that individuals
construct forms of religiosity that reflect their
experiences of the life-course that they have
chosen. Whereas religious rites of passage, for
example, used to be associated with age-related
stages of the life-cycle, the tendency nowadays
is for the significance of fixed age categories to
be reduced in favour of more self-reflexive
negotiation of the meaning of experience in
terms of personal projects that require less
collective celebration. The decline of family
life-cycle rites is particularly damaging for the
religious socialisation of young children,
although the impact may be refracted
differently by differences of social class and
gender. Hunt also outlines the implications of
these changes for the religious outlooks,
experiences and practices of people at all
the main stages of life, concluding with a
discussion of the changing relations between
religion, dying, death and bereavement among
different ethnic groups. This is one of the areas
where the sociology of religion undoubtedly
gets to grips with what Durkheim called ‘the
serious life’.
26-Beckford_Ch26 4/18/07 9:47 AM Page 533
Religion and Identity
A R T H U R L . G R E I L A N D LY N N D AV I D M A N
The interplay between religion and identity
has been a core theme in the sociology of
religion since the classical period, although it is
not always described in those terms. One could
argue that a major theme in Durkheim’s
(1966) sociology of religion is the role of
communal ritual in fostering personal and
social identity. If the provision of meaning and
belonging are two of the most important func-
tions of religion (Greeley 1972; McGuire
1992), then it is clear that religion is intimately
bound up with people’s identity, their sense of
who they ‘really’ are. In fact, Hans Mol (1976)
goes so far as to make identity the key concept
in his definition of religion. For Mol, religion is
the ‘sacralization of identity.’
Writers like Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel
could not have used ‘identity’ in its modern
sense, because it was not available to them as a
social scientific term. According to Gleason
(1983), the term did not really become part of
the social scientific lexicon until the 1960s.
Gleason identifies both psychological and soci-
ological sources for the incorporation of iden-
tity into the social science vocabulary. Erikson
(1968) used the terms ‘identity’ and ‘ego-identity’
to refer to a ‘sense of invigorating continuity
and sameness,’ the development of which is
the primary task of adolescence. In this view,
26
the achievement of a mature identity is a nec-
essary condition to successful development.
At the same time, sociologists informed by
the symbolic interactionist tradition, including
Erving Goffman (1959, 1963b) and Peter
Berger (1963), began using the word ‘identity’
as a synonym for or as an aspect of the concept
of ‘self ’ first developed by William James
(1890) and later elaborated by Charles Horton
Cooley (1902) and George Herbert Mead
(1934). In this view, ‘identity’ is the sense of
who one is as a social being and is a dynamic
product of interaction with significant others.
Another sociological source of the term ‘iden-
tity’ was the study of ethnic groups and immi-
gration, where first Oscar Handlin (1951) and
then Will Herberg (1956) used the term to
connote identification with a collectivity.
Within a very short period, this became per-
haps the most frequent sociological meaning
of identity as other sociologists, as well as
political scientists, began using identity to refer
to an attachment to social categories, particu-
larly race and ethnicity, but also to gender and
sexual identity (Cerulo 1997; Howard 2000;
Sanders 2002). The term caught on so rapidly
and was used in such a variety of ways that, by
the 1970s, scholars were complaining that it
was too imprecise to have any scholarly traction
26-Beckford_Ch26 4/18/07 9:47 AM Page 534
534 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
(Coles 1972). More recently, Brubaker and
Cooper (2000) have recommended that ‘iden-
tity’ be abandoned by sociologists.
The call to abandon identity has apparently
not been heeded. There are by now a great
many works that consider the relationship
between religion and identity, but few of them
do this in a theoretically informed way
(Ammerman 2003). The study of religion and
identity has also been hampered by the exis-
tence within the sociological literature of
different and often inconsistent uses of the
identity concept. It is our intention in this
chapter to proceed, first, with some theoretical
elaboration of what different theorists mean
by ‘identity.’ We will then go on discuss the
variety of ways in which sociologists have
examined the relationship between religion
and identity. In our view, sociological accounts
of the transformation of religion under condi-
tions of modernity provide a convenient
narrative framework for organizing a diverse
array of studies on religion and identity into
a coherent story.
IDENTITY AND RELIGIOUS MATURITY:
PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES
Although all social scientific approaches to
identity see it as a theoretical link between the
self and the larger community, it is possible to
distinguish approaches which focus more on
identity as an attribute of individuals from
those which place the essence of identity in the
on-going interaction between self and others.
This latter conception of identity has been
more relevant to the sociology of religion and,
although we will briefly discuss the former
approach, we will devote considerably more
attention to the second, more sociological
approach.
Several studies on religion and identity,
primarily by psychologists, build on the concept
of ego-identity developed by Erikson (1968).
In Erikson’s psychoanalytic conception, indi-
viduals pass through eight stages of develop-
ment. In each stage, the ego is presented with a
dilemma that must be resolved in a satisfactory
manner if it is to continue to move to full
maturity. The dichotomy characteristic of
adolescence is the challenge of identity versus
identity diffusion. Successful navigation
through the period of adolescence results in
the achievement of a feeling of uniqueness, a
sense of continuity over time, and a state of
ego completeness. While Erickson’s ego iden-
tity is, in large part, an intra-psychic state, it
clearly has a social dimension insofar as the
achievement of a healthy identity depends on
identification with the values of a group.
Although he was working within the psycho-
analytic tradition, Erikson was particularly
sensitive to the interpenetration between the
developing personality and the history, cul-
ture, and structure of the social environment.
Erikson’s conception of identity has been
subjected to the criticisms that it is imprecise
and hard to operationalize. Marcia’s (1966)
elaboration of Erikson’s conception of identity
has proven more amenable to empirical
research. Marcia identified four identity statuses:
achievement (characterized by a commitment
to a value orientation following a period of
self-exploration), foreclosure (characterized by
a premature commitment in the absence of
self-exploration); moratorium (characterized
by self-exploration in the absence of firm
commitment), and diffusion (characterized
by an absence of both commitment and self-
exploration). Berzonsky (1989, 1992, 1994),
who conceptualizes identity not so much as a
developmental outcome as a style of thinking
about oneself, developed an instrument, the
‘Identity Style Inventory,’ in order to assess
identity-processing orientations as being
‘normative,’ ‘informational, or ‘diffuse/avoidant.’
Some psychologists of religion have
employed these concepts and measures in an
attempt to predict religious maturity. Allport
(Allport and Ross 1967) set the tone for the
study of religious maturity with his distinction
between an ‘intrinsic’ religious orientation,
which serves as an overarching motivation for
individuals concerned to realize their values
in their daily action, and an ‘extrinsic’ religious
orientation, characteristic of individuals whose
religiosity serves as a means to other ends, such
as social acceptance. While Allport originally
26-Beckford_Ch26 4/18/07 9:47 AM Page 535
RELIGION AND IDENTITY
conceived of intrinsic religiosity as more
mature than extrinsic religiosity, others
(Batson et al. 1993) have pointed out that
extrinsic religiosity may be linked with blind
conformity and a lack of compassion for
others outside the community. Batson and his
associates (Batson and Schoenrade 1991a,
1991b) have developed the concept of ‘religion
as quest’ to express their sense that mature
religiosity is characterized by an open-minded,
personal search for meaning.
Watson, Morris, and their colleagues
(Watson et al. 1992, 1998) have criticized the
religion as quest concept because it appears to
be associated, not with religious maturity and
healthy identity styles, but with identity confu-
sion and a lack of concern with religion. In a
recent study of undergraduates, Watson and
Morris (2005) made use of a measure called
the ‘Spiritual Experience Inventory’ to explore
the connection between identity styles and
religious maturity. These authors found that
‘spiritual openness’ was positively associated
with religion as quest, a diffuse/avoidant
identity style, and extrinsic religiosity and
negatively associated with identity commitment,
normative identity style, intrinsic religiosity,
and religious interest. ‘Spiritual support’ was
associated with higher levels of identity
commitment, informational and normative
identity styles, intolerance of ambiguity, and
religious interest but with lower levels of
‘religion as quest’ and a diffuse/avoidant
identity style. Watson and Morris conclude
that the attempt to associate certain identity
styles with religious maturity is fraught with
challenges in that both of their measures
of spiritual experience were associated with
psychological weaknesses as well as strengths.
The attempt to use the concept of identity to
predict and explain the quality of religious
experience is a decidedly minority tradition
within the social scientific study of religion.
A second minority tradition within the
social scientific study of religion and identity
combines concerns about identity formation
and religious orientation with an interest in
moral reasoning in the tradition of Lawrence
Kohlberg. While Kohlberg’s developmental
model of moral reasoning was formulated in
535
part as an attempt to account for moral
behavior, it has become clear that there is not a
one-to-one correspondence between moral
reasoning and moral action (Blasi 1980, 2004;
Jennings et al. 1983). Blasi (1980) has suggested
that the sense of oneself as a moral person may
be a key factor mediating the relationship
between moral reasoning and moral behavior.
Blasi argues that those with integrated identi-
ties are more likely to feel responsible for
acting in accordance with their moral values.
Within this tradition, MacLean et al. (2004)
have looked at the relationships among moral
reasoning, identity integration, religious orien-
tation, and altruistic behavior. In a study of
sixty undergraduates, McLean et al. found a
high correlation between all variables. They
conclude from their hierarchical regression
analysis that moral reasoning is the strongest
predictor of altruism but that identity integra-
tion and religious orientation function as
mediating variables. The authors speculate
that it might be profitable to conceptualize an
intrinsic religious orientation as a measure of
identity integration in the religious domain.
SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO RELIGION
AND IDENTITY
The Symbolic Interactionist Tradition:
Identity and Self
The bulk of scholarly writing on religion and
identity relies more on the symbolic interac-
tionist conception of identity than on Erickson’s
more psychoanalytic and developmental
approach. While terms like identity integration
and identity status suggest a concern with
the quality of psychological functioning, the
symbolic interactionist tradition is more
concerned with accounting for the content of
identity and with describing the identity
construction process. Fundamental to the
symbolic interactionist concept of the self are
the twin notions of the social nature of the self
and the reflexivity of the self. Building on
William James’ (1890) conception of the ‘social
self ’ and Charles Horton Cooley’s (1902)
26-Beckford_Ch26 4/18/07 9:47 AM Page 536
536 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
‘looking glass self,’ George Herbert Mead
(1934) conceived of the self as a malleable and
continuous process emerging out of interac-
tion with significant others through ‘taking the
role of the other.’ In this view, the self is
crucially shaped by the expectations of others
and the roles into which one has been cast. But
the symbolic interactionist self is not the mere
reflection of the expectations of others.
Symbolic interactions conceive of the self as
reflexive; the self is seen as having an objective
aspect – the ‘me,’ which is the reflection of the
expectations and judgments of others – and
a subjective aspect – the ‘I,’ which responds
creatively and spontaneously to the me. As
symbolic interactionists use the term, ‘identity’
is treated either as a synonym for self or as an
aspect of self. McAdams (1997) refers to iden-
tity as being synonymous with the me, the
sense we have of ourselves as an objective
reality to which the I, the subjective aspect of
self, responds.
To our knowledge, Erving Goffman is the
first scholar to use identity in its symbolic
interactionist sense as an aspect of self.
Goffman’s view of self appears to be dualistic.
On the one hand, in such works as The
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959),
Behavior in Public Places (1963a), and Relations
in Public (1968), he seems to regard self as a
performance, an individual achievement, or
even as the creation of deliberate artifice. On
the other hand, in works like Stigma (1963b),
and Asylums (1961), he seems to take a more
structural view of self, seeing it responding to
structural features of interaction. It is in these
works that he employs the term ‘identity.’ In
Stigma, whose subtitle is ‘The Management of
Spoiled Identity,’ Goffman examines the way in
which individuals with ‘abominations of the
body,’ ‘blemishes of character’ or ‘tribal stigma’
(including membership in an ethnic or
religious category) perceive and respond to
negative regard from others. In Asylums, he
describes the process by which ‘inmates’ of
such total institutions as asylums, prisons, and
convents are stripped of their ‘identity kits,’ the
resources they employ in everyday life to main-
tain a stable and positive sense of self. Although
he is not generally considered a sociologist
of religion, Birrell (1981) points out that
Goffman (1967) clearly builds upon Durkheim’s
(1964) analysis of religious ritual in his
analysis of the role played by the rituals of
everyday life in maintaining the sacredness
of the self.
While most of those working in the symbolic
interactionist tradition employ ethnographic
research techniques, Kuhn and McPartland
(1954) and others in the ‘Iowa School’ have
taken a more quantitative approach to ques-
tions of self and identity. These authors
pioneered the use of the ‘Twenty Statements
Test,’ which elicits spontaneous answers to
the question ‘Who am I?’ as a means of meas-
uring identity. Kuhn and McPartland asserted
that individuals’ ‘self-attitudes’ reflect social-
structural realities and tested this assumption
with a study of religious identification. They
found that religious identities are likely to be
more salient among members of sectarian, or
‘differentialistic,’ groups than among members
of more mainstream groups.
Identity Theory
Stryker (1980; Stryker and Serpe 1982; Stryker
and Burke 2000; see also McCall and Simmons
1966) developed Identity Theory in an attempt
to formally link identity and social structure
through the concept of role. For identity theory,
identity is the pivotal concept linking social
structure with individual behavior; thus the
prediction of behavior requires an analysis of
the relationship between self and social struc-
ture. Since everyone has multiple roles and,
therefore, multiple role identities, the key ques-
tion for identity theory becomes discovering
which identities get translated into behavior. In
this tradition, role behavior is determined by
identity salience (Callero 1985) – the probabil-
ity that an identity will be invoked across a
variety of situations – and by role commitment
– the degree to which people’s relationships to
others in their networks depend on possessing
a particular identity and playing a certain role.
Stryker and Serpe (1982) test identity theory
with a study of religious behavior, finding that
the salience of religious identities predicts the
26-Beckford_Ch26 4/18/07 9:47 AM Page 537
RELIGION AND IDENTITY
level of involvement in religious organizations.
These authors do not address the factors that
make religion more salient to some individuals
than to others in this study. Reasoning that
religion is likely to be more salient for clergy
and elders than for rank-and-file congregation
members, Krause et al. (1998) hypothesized
that clergy and elders would be more affected
by both the emotional support and the nega-
tive interactions they encounter in church.
They found this to be the case in a study of a
national sample of American Presbyterians.
Peek (2005) has analyzed the process by which
religious identity becomes salient for Muslim
immigrants to the United States.
As noted above, one issue raised by the sym-
bolic interactionist perspective and by identity
theory is the question of whether identity is
unitary or multiple. Since individuals interact
with different others and play many roles, the
perspective implies that one has multiple iden-
tities. As William James (1890, 1: 294) wrote,
‘a man has as many social selves as there are
individuals who recognize him and carry an
image of him in their minds.’ But this is at odds
with what is usually implied by the concept of
identity and by the phenomenological reality
that we ‘feel’ as if we are one person and that
we experience conflicting identities as a source
of personal crisis. Identity theory forces us to
ask how it is possible to have multiple identi-
ties while still believing ourselves to be unitary
individuals.
Social Identity Theory
The focus in identity theory is on interpersonal
or individual identity; it asks how individuals
see themselves in relation to role partners
(Thoits and Virshup 1997). Social Identity
Theory, on the other hand, concentrates on
categorical or group identity. As Thoits and
Virshup express it, identity theory focuses on
the ‘me,’ while social identity theory focuses on
the ‘we.’ As formulated by Tajfel, Hogg, and
others (Hogg 1992, 1993; Hogg and Abrams
1988; Tajfel 1969, 1970; Tajfel and Turner
1979), social identity theory is intended to be a
social psychological theory of intergroup
537
processes and the social self. Social identity
theory emphasizes the importance for self-
definitions of membership in social categories.
In social identity theory, membership in a
social category becomes the crucial basis for
behavior and self-regulation via the processes
of depersonalization and self-verification.
The primary emphasis in social identity
theory is on such basic social categories as
ethnicity, race, and gender. Less attention has
been paid to religious identity except insofar as
this can be conceptualized as a type of ethnicity.
One notable exception can be found in the
work of Seul (1999) who specifically applies
social identity theory to religious identity in
his effort to explain the frequent presence
of religion as a marker dividing groups in con-
flict. The notion of group identity featured by
social identity theorists appears to be related to
Greeley’s Durkheimian (1966) assertion that
one of the primary functions of religion is the
provision of belonging. In The Denominational
Society, Greeley (1972; see also Hammond
1988; Swatos 1981) argues that denomination-
alism in the United States gained its strength
from the fact that denominations came to
serve as a source of community for immigrants
and their children. Earlier, Herberg (1956)
argued that Protestantism, Catholicism, and
Judaism, had come to serve as ‘super-ethnic
groups’ in American society, serving to give
Americans a category smaller than the nation
but larger than the local community with
which to identify. The voluminous literature
on Jewish identity (Cohen 1983, 1997;
Dashefsky 1972; Dashefsky and Shapiro 1974;
Heilman 1996; Himmelfarb 1980; Lazerwitz
1978; Rebhun 2004) appears to employ a
conception of identity that focuses on identifi-
cation with a collectivity.
The use of identity to refer to identification
with a social category raises the question of
why certain social categories are so often the
basis of identification with a collective. Much
writing on identity and ‘identity politics’ takes
the ‘primordialist’ position that people natu-
rally identify with people like themselves.
Isaacs (1975) asserts that identity is inherently
group identity and that religion, national origins,
race, and language are important because
26-Beckford_Ch26 4/18/07 9:47 AM Page 538
538 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
they are highly visible symbols of group
identity. Van den Berghe (1981) advances the
sociobiological argument that humans are
genetically predisposed to identify with others
like themselves as a result of group selection
processes. Others (Glazer and Moynihan 1975;
Patterson 1975; Waters 1990) take a position
that has been variously called ‘utilitarianism,’
‘optionalism,’ or ‘circumstantialism.’ This posi-
tion argues that there is nothing natural or
inevitable about the categories into which
group identities often cluster. Rather, the
opponents of primordialism argue that people
identify with social categories when it appears
to be in their interest to do so. If the primor-
dialists are right, we are left with questions
concerning why people do not always respond
the way we might expect based on their group
memberships and why one category rather
than another comes to serve as the basis of
social identity in a given situation. What, for
example, determines, whether immigrants
from the Middle East will identify as Arabs or
as Muslims? If the circumstantialists are right,
we need to know more about the social
construction of identity and the process by
which identity categories come to exert power
over individuals and groups.
The Concept of Personal Identity
Both the ‘role identity’ of identity theory and
the ‘categorical identity’ of social identity
theory are related to a conception of a ‘social
self ’ (Brewer and Gardner 1996), but both
approaches recognize – even if they don’t dwell
on it – a more personal, individuated self. In
addition to identifying themselves in terms of
roles and of group and category memberships,
individuals also ask ‘What makes me unique?’
(Reid and Deaux 1996). It is this notion of a
personal self or personal identity that has been
of primary concern to Western philosophers
and psychologists since the time of Locke.
As Charles Taylor (1989) ably argues,
the question of identity is always intimately
connected to the moral question of ‘What is
the good?’ According to Taylor, when we ask
ourselves, ‘What sort of person am I?,’ we are
asking an evaluative question. We are, in effect,
asking ourselves if we are the kind of people
who merit our own approval. More recently,
Hitlin (2003) has taken a similar tack in
arguing that personal identity is intimately
connected to values. Since questions about
morality and values are often answered in a
religious idiom, a focus on personal identity
leads us to consider the important role of reli-
gion when it comes to questions of identity.
Peter Berger’s (1967) argument that the func-
tion of religion is to sanctify one’s cosmos is, in
essence, an argument that personal identity is
intimately tied in to one’s conception of the
sacred. Those who employ functional defini-
tions of religion as whatever is of ultimate con-
cern to the individual are, for all practical
purposes, linking religion to the personal iden-
tity process by definition. When Thomas
Luckmann (1967) defines religion as the
‘capacity of the human organism to transcend
its biological nature through the construction
of objective, morally-binding and all-embrac-
ing universes of meaning,’ he is implicitly
defining religion as the ground for identity.
Mol (1976) makes this same point more
explicitly when he defines religion as the
‘sacralization of identity.’ Seul (1999) posits
that it is because religion lies so close to the
core of people’s identities that it is so often the
basis for in-group identification and inter-
group conflict.
One issue raised by a focus on personal
identity is the question of stability versus
mobility. Symbolic interactionism and
identity theory suggest that identity must
shift with changes in reference others and
changes of roles; yet we have a sense that our
identity persists over time. Without this sense
of continuity, the question of who I am as a
unique individual has no meaning. Social
identity theory suggests that identity is
relatively stable, but this makes the question
of religious conversion and other shifts in
identity problematic. A focus on personal
identity forces us to ask how an individual
can have a sense of self that is simultaneously
changing and persistent.
26-Beckford_Ch26 4/18/07 9:47 AM Page 539
RELIGION AND IDENTITY
Identity as Narrative
This overview of social scientific theories of
identity has posed three questions provoked by
the perspectives we have discussed thus far:
1. How is it possible for one to have multiple
identities and yet perceive oneself as an
integral individual who has an identity?
2. What determines which roles and which
category memberships become salient in
particular social situations?
3. How is it possible to have a sense of
oneself as having an identity if identity is
always changing?
Perhaps these issues may be in part resolved
by a conception of identity as narrative.
Ammerman (2003) has criticized the literature
on religion and identity for its lack of attention
to theories of identity and has suggested that
the narrative theory of identity propounded by
Somers (1994) can serve as a good foundation
for studies of identity and religion.
For Somers, the problem with using the
concept of identity to refer to membership in a
social category as so many sociologists do is
that this seems to assert the primordial impor-
tance of ascribed, ‘essentialist,’ categories in
determining human behavior at the expense of
an appreciation for human agency. Somers
argues that people are not impelled to act in
accordance with their membership in class,
gender, or other categories; rather they use
these categories of experience as materials with
which to construct their own ontological nar-
ratives and, thus, their identities. According to
McAdams (1997), when we think of identity as
a story we tell about ourselves we have a way to
understand how people can maintain a sense
of themselves as coherent entities, even as they
balance multiple identities in the context of
continually changing social circumstances.
Anthony Giddens (1991) defines identity
tersely as ‘the ability to keep a narrative going.’
In Talk of Love, Anne Swidler (2000)
describes culture, not as a unitary set of values
and rules, but as a toolkit from which people
can choose the appropriate implements with
539
which to construct solutions to the problems
they encounter in everyday life. In this view,
culture is not a rationally organized set of
axioms and corollaries, but a series of ‘recipes’
upon which people can call in specific situa-
tions (Schutz 1967). Swidler shows how the
people she interviewed switched almost effort-
lessly between two logically incompatible cul-
tural repertoires to describe their relationships.
The notion of love as a voluntary working
relationship between two autonomous beings
derives its plausibility from the voluntary and
contingent nature of American marriage in
a time when divorce is common, while the
notion of love as a binding commitment
derives its plausibility from the legal realities of
marriage. Perhaps it is not unreasonable to
conceptualize identity as a toolkit as well. In
order to make decisions about how to act in a
given situation, individuals must draw from
their repertoire of stories about who ‘they
really are’ in order to decide upon a course of
action. What is constant about identity in this
view is not that the stories we tell ourselves
about ourselves remain the same or are even
consistent with one another, but rather the fact
of narrativity itself.
RELIGION AND IDENTITY: THE DOMINANT
SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTUAL NARRATIVE
It strikes us that one useful way to organize the
wide range of studies in religion and identity
into a coherent story is to discuss them in the
context of one popular sociological narrative:
the transition from traditional to modern soci-
eties. The relationship between identity and
modernity has been a central sociological
problem since the development of the discipline.
Emile Durkheim (1964) described pre-modern
societies as being characterized as held
together by a ‘mechanical solidarity’ born of a
sameness that derived from many individuals
being socialized to the same ascribed roles
and seeing themselves as essentially similar to
one another. Modern societies, Durkheim
argued, are characterized by ‘organic solidarity,’
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540 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
whereby individuals who have the freedom to
learn different roles and develop independent
identities are connected to one another, not by
their sameness, but by their interdependence.
Organic solidarity, while it brings with it a
challenge to the strength of the conscience
collective, also carries with it the possibility of
freedom, since social actors can now choose
what to do and who to be.
Georg Simmel (1955: 149) followed
Durkheim’s lead in contrasting the individual-
ism of modernity with traditional affiliations
with the group that ‘absorbed the whole man.’
Simmel viewed people in pre-modern societies
as being constrained by overlapping social
circles, while the intersecting social circles of
modernity leave people free to become unique
individuals. While Durkheim and Simmel are
among those who deserve credit for identifying
traditional society with constraint and modern
society with choice, it was anthropologist
Ralph Linton (1936) who popularized the
terms ‘achievement’ and ‘ascription’ as descrip-
tors of the presumed dichotomy between
modern and pre-modern roles and identity.
In The Social System, Talcott Parsons (1951)
highlights ascription and achievement as one
of the five sets of dichotomies, or ‘pattern vari-
ables,’ individuals use to orient themselves in
the social world. Ascribed characteristics –
which people consider to be fixed, immutable
or inherited – typify pre-modern societies,
whereas achieved characteristics – which ‘place
the accent on the performances of the incum-
bent, ascribed roles, in his qualities or attrib-
utes independently of any specifically expected
performances’ – are the hallmark of modern
societies (Parsons 1951: 111).
The last half of the twentieth century has
brought such extensive changes to modern
societies that many commentators no longer
speak of ‘modernity’, but of ‘post-modernity’
or ‘late-modernity.’ Nonetheless, more recent
discussions of the nature of identity in modern
societies seem more like a variation on tradi-
tional sociological discourse than a radically
different analysis. For example, Giddens
(1991) describes the societies of ‘high moder-
nity’ as being characterized by ‘chronic muta-
bility’ (p. 21), by abstract systems, by mediated
experience, by a sense of risk, and by a
‘puzzling diversity of options and possibilities’
(p. 3). Under such conditions, Giddens writes,
self-identity becomes a reflexively organized
endeavor. The self is no longer an entity but a
project. In high modernity, individuals contin-
ually refer to experts for lifestyle advice and
constantly retool their identities. In a situation
of multiple choices and uncertainty, people
tend to avoid moral questions at the same time
that they experience the threat of existential
meaninglessness. Another student of identity
in post-modernity, the psychologist Kenneth
Gergen (1991), describes a situation of ‘social
saturation,’ which gives rise to a mutable and
fragmented self.
Herbert Gans has created the concepts of
‘symbolic ethnicity’ and ‘symbolic religiosity’
in an effort to make similar points about the
malleability and contingency of contemporary
identities in the context of questions about
assimilation and the maintenance of ethnic
identity in American society. Gans (1979)
introduced the concept of ‘symbolic ethnicity’
in an effort to describe a new form of ethnicity
that was expressive and flexible rather than
fixed. For Gans, symbolic ethnicity represents
the evolution of ethnicity from an instrumen-
tal and ascribed necessity into an ‘identity
marker.’ The new function of ethnicity, in this
view, was to give people a ‘peg’ on which to
hang their identities in an increasingly large
and impersonal society. Building on the
symbolic ethnicity idea, Mary Waters (1990)
has emphasized the individual and ‘optional’
nature of this new ethnic form. Ethnicity is still
an important component of American iden-
tity, according to Waters, but it has become an
optional, personally chosen identity marker
rather than the totally ascribed characteristic it
was for the first and second generations of
immigrants. More recently, Gans (1994) has
introduced the term ‘symbolic religiosity’ to
makes the case that religion functions in a
similar way for some people in modern society.
The sociological narrative of the effects of
the transition from tradition to modernity on
identity has been a major theme in the sociol-
ogy of religion over the past fifty years.
Peter Berger, whose ideas constituted the
26-Beckford_Ch26 4/18/07 9:48 AM Page 541
RELIGION AND IDENTITY
dominant paradigm in the sociology of
religion for a generation, claimed that, while
religion in traditional societies presents itself
to the individual as a preexisting and not-to
be-questioned fact, religion in modernity is
characterized by pluralism, privatization, and
the recognition that religion is a social con-
struction. In The Sacred Canopy, Berger (1967)
argued that an awareness of multiple world-
views and the accompanying sense that religion
is a matter of personal choice would weaken
the hold religion had on modern conscious-
ness. Berger’s view of modern identity sounds
a lot like the ideas formulated later by Giddens;
for Berger (1974), modern identity is striking
in that it is peculiarly open, peculiarly differen-
tiated, peculiarly individuated, and peculiarly
reflective. Although Berger’s ‘secularization
thesis’ has now been rejected by most sociolo-
gists, including Berger himself, the notion that
religious identity in modernity is a matter of
individual choice has survived the transition to
the ‘new paradigm.’
R. Stephen Warner, who coined the term ‘new
paradigm’ as a label for the post-secularization
sociology of religion, agrees with Berger that
religious identity loses its ascribed, taken-
for-granted character under contemporary
conditions. Warner asserts that ‘religion need
not represent something in which people are
primordially rooted. Religious affiliation in
the United States is not tribal’ (1993: 1078).
Warner, however, challenges Berger’s assump-
tion that the element of choice – the ability to
accomplish one’s religious identity – weakens
religious commitment. In fact, he asserted,
choice might well strengthen religious identity,
since the very act of choosing a religion and its
beliefs and practices among various competing
alternatives may add agency and meaning to
one’s commitment. Phillip Hammond (1988)
makes a similar argument when he posits that
America is seeing a shift from a ‘collective-
expressive’ religious identity to an ‘individual-
expressive’ mode. Hammond asserts that both
religion and ethnicity retain their significance
for identity but that the nature of the signifi-
cance they have is changing.
In their attempt to capture the transforma-
tion of religious identity in contemporary
541
American society, Roof and McKinney (1987)
have spoken of a ‘new voluntarism.’ Roof and
McKinney find evidence for the new volun-
tarism in the highest rate ever of denomina-
tional switching, among Protestants, showing
that individuals feel less constrained to conform
to the patterns of religious behavior they
have ‘inherited’ from their parents. They also
find support for the existence of the new
voluntarism in the tendency of people to pick
and choose what they will and will not practice
and believe within a religious tradition as well
as the tendency to ‘mix and match’ among tra-
ditions. Finally, they see the increasing trend
toward viewing religiosity as separate from and
more important than church attendance as
an indicator of the new voluntarism. Perhaps
the most extreme exemplar of the new volun-
tarism is Sheila Larson, the woman described
by Bellah et al. (1985) in Habits of the Heart,
who claimed to have her own private religion,
which she called ‘Sheilaism.’ In a more recent
work, Roof (1993) describes Baby Boomers as
a ‘generation of seekers.’
Robert Wuthnow (1988) similarly embraces
the view of contemporary America as an arena
where individuals search for individualized
meanings they cannot find in fixed traditions.
Comparing the religious scene of the mid-
twentieth century America that Will Herberg
described in Protestant, Catholic, and Jew
(1956) to that of the present, Wuthnow
(Wuthnow et al. 1992) describes a shift from
ascription to achievement in American reli-
gious identities. He argues that Americans
have moved from a spirituality of ‘dwelling’ in
a prescribed religious space to a spirituality of
‘seeking’ (1998). Concomitant with this trend
has been a decline in the significance of tradi-
tional religious institutions and a proliferation
of special purpose religious groups. The
increasing tendency for people to see them-
selves as ‘spiritual but not religious’ may be
part of this trend.
Thus, Warner, Hammond, Roof and
McKinney, and Wuthnow all see contemporary
Americans as religious seekers engaging in
practices through which they enact their freely
chosen religious commitments and identities,
thereby escaping the limits of ascription.
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542 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Luckmann’s (1967) discussion of the privati-
zation of religion and Bailey’s (1983) work on
implicit religion can both be seen as part of
this same broad tradition. It is obvious, then,
that current scholarly writing on religion and
identity is consistent with the longstanding
sociological tradition of associating pre-
modernity with ascription, structure, and
stable identity and modernity with achieve-
ment, fluidity, and shifting identities. For both
scholars of religion and theorists of identity in
general, identity in modernity has become a
project in which individuals cobble together a
self out of multiple sources through a process
that Lévi-Strauss (1966) referred to as brico-
lage. Contemporary American religiosity, we
are told is an individualistic affair, where no
single community defines us. Instead, we draw
from multiple sources to construct unique
and fluid religious narratives (Ammerman
2003).
SPECIFICATIONS AND DISSENTS
While most contemporary case studies of
religion and identity do not directly challenge
the dominant narrative theme of the transition
of religious identity from a stable, ascribed,
and collective form to a dynamic, individu-
ated, and achieved form, they do seem oriented
toward fleshing out nuances, variations, and
apparent exceptions. Giddens (1991) argues
that, because the reflexive, malleable, and
contingent nature of modern self-identity
brings with it the constantly looming threat of
personal meaninglessness, it is possible to
observe many instances of what he terms ‘the
return of the repressed.’ Among the examples
of the resurgence of collective, more stable
bases for self-identity, Giddens specifically
mentions the appeal of religious fundamental-
ism. Many researchers have explained the
appeal of strict, encapsulated or ‘enclave’
religious groups as a response to the fluid, ten-
tative, differentiated identity of late modernity.
The 1970s and 1980s saw a sharp increase
in scholarship on the identity change process,
largely as a result of increased sociological
interest in new religious movements (Greil and
Rudy 1984a; Richardson 1978; Snow and
Phillips 1980; Snow and Machalek 1984).
Travisano’s (1970: 60) definition of conversion
as a ‘radical reorganization of identity, meaning,
and life’ is well known. Most sociological studies
of religious identity change have focused on
converts, individuals who have left the loosely
structured role options of modern society for
the more tightly structured roles of a sectarian
religious group (Barker 1984; Galanter 1989;
Richardson et al. 1979). While earlier studies
concentrated on developing ‘process models,’
of the stages through which converts typically
pass (Downton 1979; Lofland and Stark 1965),
more recent studies have focused on the
micro-structural dynamics of the conversion
process. People who join new religious move-
ments or sectarian groups generally engage in
intensive interaction with members of the
group and limit their contact with those out-
side the group (Greil and Rudy 1983, 1984b;
Snow and Machalek 1984). Greil and Rudy
(1984b) describe groups that try to change
people – whether or not they define themselves
as religious – as ‘social cocoons’ that try to
encapsulate their members physically, socially,
and ideologically in an attempt to shield them
from the influence of the larger society and to
foster identity change within the confines of
group boundaries. Although they recognize
the importance of structural factors, conver-
sion scholars have emphasized that converts
must be regarded, not as passive objects of
structural conditions, but active agents in their
own conversions (Balch 1980; Bromley 1997;
Bromley and Shupe 1979; Richardson 1978;
Straus 1976, 1979).
Although most studies have focused on the
processes of conversion, there have also been
studies of disaffiliation from religious
communities (Beckford 1978; Bromley 1991,
1997; Davidman and Greil forthcoming;
Jacobs 1987, 1989; Rothbaum 1988; Wright
1984, 1988). As Shaffir (1997) has pointed
out, much of this work has centered on
people who grew up in the open secular
society, joined an encapsulated group, and
then returned from the tightly structured
roles of the group to the loosely structured
26-Beckford_Ch26 4/18/07 9:48 AM Page 543
RELIGION AND IDENTITY
choices with which they grew up. In many
ways, the process of disaffiliation, which
depends upon a breakdown in encapsulation,
is the structural mirror image of conversion,
which involves insulation from the outside
world (Wright 1987). Conversion entails
identification with group members and the
goals of the group; disaffiliation requires
disidentification from group members, goals,
and leaders. The different structural contexts
in which the process of affiliation and disaffil-
iation take place result in some systematic
differences in their dynamics. As Beckford
(1985: 174) writes, ‘There is little in the way of
a cultural script for the passage of a person
from being a member of an intense religious
group to being a non-member.’
Research on the identity change process
typically involves the analysis of retrospective
accounts after the fact (Beckford 1978;
Davidman 1991; Greil and Rudy 1984a;
Lofland 1978; Snow and Machalek 1984;
Yamane 2000). Yamane has argued in the
more general context of the study of religious
experience that it is important for scholars to
recognize that conversion accounts must not
be understood as literal descriptions of what
has actually happened but as narratives,
stories constructed to explain and present
one’s experience of transition in a meaning-
ful way to one’s self and to others (Beckford
1978: 260). Some scholars have gone so far as
to argue that we can learn nothing about
the actual process of conversion from narra-
tives. In the view of these scholars, conver-
sion narratives are not referential, but
constitutive; they should be viewed, not
as a description of conversion, but as an
enactment of conversion (Stromberg 1993).
Rephrasing this argument in terms employed
by Somers (1994), these authors are making
the claim that conversion narratives should
be read, not as a ‘mode of representation’ but
only as an ‘ontological act’ by which individ-
uals constitute their social identities. We
would argue that, although narratives of
identity change are properly understood as
creative constructions, they may nevertheless
provide insight into the actual process of
identity reconstruction.
543
The Continuing Identity Salience
of Religious Organizations
Some writers who have looked at the identity
functions of tightly knit religious organiza-
tions have focused on groups that are seen as
somewhat more mainstream (Manning 1999).
Some scholars (Ammerman 1987; Armstrong
2000; Fields 1991; Hewitt 1989) have inter-
preted the appeal of Fundamentalism as
providing a firmer anchor for identity than is
generally available under conditions of late
modernity. Davidman (1990, 1991) has analyzed
the appeal of the more structured roles of
Orthodox Judaism for contemporary American
Jewish women. Neitz (1987) has studied
the process by which ‘low salience’ Catholics
embrace a Charismatic Catholic identity.
A number of researchers have examined the
growing tendency toward embracing an
Evangelical Christian identity (Gallagher 2003;
Hunter 1983; Smith 1998; Stacey (1990). Smith
(1998) uses his survey data on American
Evangelicals to argue against Berger’s (1967)
assertion that the pluralism associated with
modernity inevitably threatens religious iden-
tity. In fact, Smith asserts that awareness of the
threat of modernity and the concomitant sense
of being in a battle with the forces of secular-
ism serve to strengthen Evangelical identity.
Such writers as Bartkowski (2001), Hunter
(1983), Shibley (1996) and Stacey (1990) have
argued that it is a serious mistake to interpret
Evangelicism and other conservative religions
as simply shoring up identity against the
threats of modernity. Rather, these authors
argue that conservative religion will only exert
its appeal to the extent that it can rework tra-
dition and incorporate elements of modern
identity. The image that these studies paint is
neither a picture of individuals stubbornly
hanging on to traditional identity in the face of
modernity nor of succumbing to the threats
modernity poses to identity; rather we see the
creative adaptation of traditional identities to
new circumstances.
Recent years have also seen the emergence of
a tradition of scholarship that emphasizes the
role that religious organizations play in helping
new immigrants navigate the vicissitudes of
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544 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
identity in a new society (Kim 2000; Lawson
1999; Peña and Freehill 1998; Warner and
Wittner 1998; Yang 1999). In a study of
Muslim university students, Peek (2005)
describes the process by which her respondents
shifted over time from seeing their Muslim
heritage as an ascribed identity to seeing it is a
freely chosen declaration of their religious and
ethnic identity. Read and Bartkowski (2000)
analyze the role of the veil as a means of nego-
tiating gender and religious identities among a
sample of women in Austin, Texas. In a study
of second generation Korean Americans,
Chong (1998) examines the way in which the
Korean ethnic Church serves in the construc-
tion and maintenance of Korean ethnic identity.
Other researchers are looking at questions of
religious identity among an earlier generation
of immigrants. Hoge (2000) has recently agued
that Jews and Catholics in American society
confront similar identity issues. Both groups
have entered the mainstream of American
society and are facing the challenge of trying to
fully integrate into American life while retain-
ing a distinct identity, producing much anxiety
among their leaders. Some Catholics (Dillon
1999; Ecklund 2005) are confronted with the
task of trying to reinterpret their tradition in a
way that allows them to think of themselves as
good Catholics at the same time as they have
embraced mainstream American ideas about
leadership, gender, sexuality and the autonomy
of the individual. There are by now a large
number of studies on the ways in which Jewish
identity has been transformed by and adapted
to American society (Cohen 1983, 1997;
Dashevsky 1972; Dashefsky and Shapiro 1974;
Heilman 1996; Himmelfarb 1980; Lazerwitz
1978; Rebhun 2004).
The ways in which case studies of religion
and identity have served to add texture to the
sociological conceptual narrative of the effect
of modernity on religious identity are well
illustrated by a recent study of American Jews
and Buddhists. In this study, Cadge and
Davidman (2006) challenge the notion that
ascription and achievement are conceptually
distinct, dichotomous ways of constructing
religious identities. Although choice is often
portrayed as a central characteristic of religion
in contemporary America, the respondents
Cadge and Davidman study clearly combined
ideas of ascription and achievement in their
narratives of religious identity. Rather than
seeing their religious identities as either ascribed
as a result of birth or achieved as a result of
conscious choices, their respondents combined
notions of ascription and achievement in
making sense of their identities.
Another theme found in contemporary
study of religion and identity revolves around
people who struggle to balance two apparently
incongruous identities. Thumma (1991) has
analyzed the ways in which members of Good
News, a gay conservative Christian organiza-
tion, collectively reinterpret their faith in order
to construct a positive identity out of appar-
ently incompatible aspects of their selves. In
his study of identity negotiation among gay
Jews, Schnoor (2006) distinguishes four types
among his respondents: Jewish lifestylers,
gay lifestylers, gay-Jewish ‘commuters,’ and
gay-Jewish integrators. Other analyses have
focused on attempts to balance feminist iden-
tities against identities as Catholics (Ecklund
2005) or Jews (Dufour 2000). Dufour describes
the achievement of a Jewish feminist identity
as the outcome of a creative process of ‘sifting’
through available options.
CONCLUSIONS
Sociologists of religion have always been
concerned with questions of identity, but they
are now more likely than ever to use the term
‘identity.’ This increase in explicit attention to
the concept of ‘identity’ appears to be a conse-
quence of changes in the nature of religion in
late modernity. As religious identity becomes
more voluntaristic and reflexive, concerns
about the construction and maintenance of
religious identity are coming to the fore. The
version of ‘identity’ that sociologists of religion
are embracing in their study of contemporary
religious identity is one that emphasizes the
social construction of identity and the concep-
tion of identity as narrative. Thus, sociologists
are employing ‘identity’ in a way that emphasizes
26-Beckford_Ch26 4/18/07 9:48 AM Page 545
RELIGION AND IDENTITY
agency in the sociological study of religion at
the same time as they recognize the influence
of social structure on identity.
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