Formal Explanation of Religion. A Progress Report

Sociological Analysis 1984,45, 2:145-158
Formal Explanation of Religion:

A Progress Report
William Sims Bainbridge
Harvard University
Rodney Stark
University of Washington
Downloaded from http://socrel.oxfordjournals.org/ at Penn State University (Paterno Lib) on April 8, 2016
While written in response to a critique by Ray Wallis and Steve Bruce, this article provides an
overview of the first five yeaT:S of a project designed to develop· and test a general scientific theory
of religion.
To the charge that we seek a social science of religion, we plead guilty. We are also guilty
of the charge that we aim to produce a general and abstract theory to explain fundamen-
tal religious phenomena. But although we are clearly guilty, we are not contrite.
In Defense of Scientific Explanation

In their critique of our work, Wallis and Bruce express deep pessimism, concluding it
is "highly unlikely that any theory of (rather than about) religion will ever succeed." To
be sure, it may be easier to describe small features of human involvement in religion than
to explain the existence of major religious phenomena, but should we shrink from a task
simply because it is difficult? Indeed, to be accused of committing the same "reductionist
errors" as Durkheim, Marx and Freud offers us at least the reward of being in good com'
pany. These men attempted much, and if their reach exceeded their grasp, still their best
work greatly advanced social science. At the same time Wallis and Bruce condemn us
unjustly for being substantively atheistic, they assume the impossibility of the main en,
terprise to which sociologists are professionally dedicated, and thus they are wantonly
ascientific and atheoretical.
One problem is that Wallis and Bruce have a very modest notion of what a modern
scientific theory is and have rushed to their conclusions on the basis of the first pub,
Iished hints of our theory. In the draft of their paper given to us, they cite a book Bain-
bridge wrote before his collaboration with Stark, one of our miscellaneous empirical
pieces (apparently convenient to them because it followed one of Wallis's pieces in a
book), an introductory essay by Stark written in non-technical terms for a general audi-
ence (which came next in the same book), a joint piece which presents three models of
cult formation rather than yet a systematic part of our theory, and a joint essay clearly
labeled "towards a theory:'
Shortly, the University of California Press will publish the first of two books we have
written, The Future of Religion. This is a large work which combines in twenty-two chap,
ters a number of the empirical projects we have completed, many previously unreported,
connected by a coherent statement of our theoretical ideas. Many key questions in the
sociology of religion are brought into focus by our theory, and particular propositions
receive considerable support. This book demonstrates what our theory is about, and
145
146 SOCIOIDGICAL ANALYSIS
shows that it can reveal much about religion when applied to a wide variety of data. But
The Future of Religion does not present the theory as such. In our view, real explanatory
theories must be stated as systems of logicallv-related formal propositions, some more
general than others, in a structure of deduction and explication too dense to be com,
bined with expansive discussion of research findings.
Our theory itself, offered in a moderately technical and formal style, is the subject of
the forthcoming second book, A Theory of Religion. There we outline the full scope of
the theory and present relatively well-developed sketches of large sections of it. For exam'
ple, derivations from the core theory explain religious schism and the features of sects,
transform the "three compatible models" into a real theory of cult formation, and render
comprehensible the many contradictor, findings about religious conversion. Our 1980
article, "Towards a Theory of Religion," offered but the first step in the direction of this
book. The article suggested that the social features of religion could be derived logically
from seven axioms, of which the last was: "A7 (Provisional) Social organizations tend to
emerge in human society as social enterprises which specialize in providing some particu-
lar kinds of gratifications" (Stark and Bainbridge, 1980c:125). This statement is less basic
than we would like our axioms to be, and was clearly labeled "provisional:' In A Theory
of Religion, we drop it from our list of axioms, substituting a more general statement
(which becomes number six our of seven): "Most rewards sought by humans are de'
strayed when they are used." In conjunction with the other six, this axiom permits us
to derive the provisional axiom in the article. In our third and fourth chapters, we are
able to outline a deductive proof that specialized organizations will emerge in the course
of human history, churches among them.
Wallis and Bruce thus reject our theory without having seen more than a prospectus
for it. Social science is in terrible shape if some of its leading practitioners think that
a sketch of analytically useful ideas constitutes a fullv-developed explanatory theory.
True, sociologists have traditionally admired a few great books which expressed the views
of single individuals, and called these "theories?' But the physical sciences long ago aban-
doned this charismatic conception of their task and recognized that every major theory
must be developed progressively by a network of scientists, spending collective lifetimes
on the details as well as sometimes hatching a new thought in a moment of solitude.
Another sign of sociological ill-health is the quick conclusion that a whole theoretical
approach is doomed to failure if some of the concepts introduced quickly in early publi-
cations seem incomplete. We think the construction of rigorous, deductive-empirical ex,
planatory theory is a big job, requiring the work of many minds over several years. And
the final outcome of the war cannot be judged on the basis of whether the first bugle
plays exactly in tune.
We believe that scientific theory cannot spring full-grown from the brow of Zeus, or
from our own more limited minds, but must be developed progressively from inchoate
infancy to logical and empirical maturity. For more than thirty years, George Homans
has been a champion of our general approach. Recently, he spoke for us on this issue:
"Our deductive logic has not been tight, often because our propositions themselves have
only been first approximations. We have left out steps in deduction, either because they
seemed obvious, or because they took up too much space, or because we could only guess
at the given conditions. Still we know what our ideal is and we have taken some practical
steps to live up to it" (Homans, 1983:30).
FORMAL EXPLANATION OF RELIGION 147
Wallis and Bruce unjustly accused us of believing that the assumptions of the present
age, of our culture, and of contemporary science are the ultimate truth. Not so. We do
tend to believe that human knowledge progresses over the years, and thus we try to keep
up to date. But we certainly have no illusion that our decade marks the end of discovery.
Much of our published work has been in the social history of science, technology, and
popular ideology (Glock and Stark, 1966; Bainbridge, 1976, in press b), and in our field
research we have been very sensitive to the alternative world-views of the subcultures
we entered (Lofland and Stark, 1965; Bainbridge, 1978). In expressing our theoretical ar-
guments vividly and intelligibly, we of necessity have used many examples the plausibil-
ity of which rests on the cultural assumptions we share with many of our readers. Perhaps
some shamans do cure warts and cancer. But the example of a shaman who cannot really
work these miracles gets an idea across.
Here is an example about examples. As it orbits, the moon keeps the same face toward
the earth. Until recently, astronomers thought Mercury always kept the same face to-
ward the sun, and used both of these examples to illustrate the idea that a satellite's rota-
tion can be locked by gravity into a 1:1 resonance to its period of revolution. But then
it was discovered that the observations of Mercury were in error. It does not keep the
same face to the sun (instead it has a 3:2 resonance). By now, of course, astronomers have
many other examples of 1:1 resonance from the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, and ex-
periments with spacecraft have supported the principle of gravity-gradient stabilization.
The idea was a good one, even if one of the original examples was wrong. We postulate
merely that some explanations about how to achieve rewards and avoid costs are factually
superior to others. We do not pretend to know for sure which ones these are. Although
we privately believe our examples state the facts, their main purpose is illustration of
ideas, not proof.
When Wallis and Bruce accuse us of "substantive atheism:' it is our general approach
rather than our illustrative examples that they attack. If we understand their terminol-
ogy correctly, "substantive atheism" is the assumption that the supernatural really does
not exist, in contrast to the working assumption that we should proceed in our research
as if the supernatural did not exist, which is "methodological atheism:' Whatever our pri-
vate feelings on this matter, on behalf of our theory we plead innocent. Another example
from the physical sciences will make our point.
Consider the familiar and extremely valuable "law" of the conservation of mass and
energy in physics, which states that matter and energy can neither be created nor de-
stroyed but only transformed. In effect, this principle excludes the possibility of divine
intervention in the physical systems described by the law. Put the other way around, the
Creator is not bound by this principle and can, if He wishes, create mass and energy
from nothing or utterly destroy them at will. Thus physics, as a natural science, is sus-
pended when there is supernatural intervention. Physics could not get very far if it as-
sumed constant supernatural intervention in the phenomena it seeks to explain. Every
mathematical function has a domain, and the domain of physics excludes supernatural
phenomena.
Of course, in this century the "law" was amended somewhat when Einstein and his
colleagues showed that mass and energy are interchangeable. And Heisenberg's uncer-
tainty principle implies that the law can even be violated, mass and energy being spon-
taneously created or destroyed, so long as the distance and time involved are very short.
148 SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
Today, some physicists want to apply this principle from quantum theory to the very ere-
arion of the universe, and in so doing they clearly enter territory formerly reserved by
religion (Gott, 1982; Davies, 1980, 1982). But most are working in areas where there is
no necessary clash with religion, and the conservation law is quite adequate as a working
assumption.
The domain of our theory is human religious behavior which can be explained natur-
ally without reference to divine intervention. If you will, we implicitly assume a principle
of conservation of social energy, but we are quite aware of the possibility that some hu-
man experiences may fall outside our domain and violate this working assumption. Such
possibilities have not deterred physical scientists, and they should not deter social scien-
tists. More than one sociologist of religion has connected the rise of modern science with
the theological assumption that the world was created by a law-giving God who permits
his creatures to live out their lives free of intervention (Merton, 1970; Westfall, 1958).
It frankly is our aim to develop our field in directions very much like those so success,
fully explored by the physical sciences. Perhaps the better term is natural sciences, for we
view human beings as organisms which have evolved naturally, just as our universe has
evolved, governed mainly by rational principles capable of being discovered and ex-
plained by human beings. As a natural science, sociology has a long way to go. But con-
sider how many lifetimes of effort were required to construct celestial mechanics and
classical geometry. Copernicus achieved much by postulating that the earth, like other
planets, orbited the sun. But the correct shape of the orbit was only later supplied by
Kepler, a mathematical explanation in terms of gravity by Newton, and an explanation
of gravity by Einstein. If we count Thales as the first great Greek geometer, then Euclid
wrote his Elements on the basis of nearly three centuries of effort by predecessors. We,
also, have predecessors, and some of the concepts received from them still need work.
Wallis and Bruce make much of the alleged deficiencies of the distinction we make be'
tween rewards and compensators. One of our first joint publications (Stark and Bain-
bridge, 1979) contained an epistemological argument critical of the practice of "ideal
types" in sociological theory. So we are very conscious of the need to refine, simplify and
formalize each key concept. Admittedly, in some of our essays we use metaphors like
"I.O.U." to help get across the idea quickly, and have not as yet published a technical anal-
ysis of the terms "reward" and "compensator" Our two impending books will shed much
light on this matter, although a compehensive theory of human action and perception
would definitely be required before we would be completely satisfied. But we have al-
ready indicated that Wallis and Bruce are quite unreasonable to expect us to have tidied
up every detail in our vast project before sharing our progress with our colleagues. That
is like telling Mendeleev his periodic table of the elements was no good because it did
not incorporate a full theory of atomic structure, a theory only under serious develop-
ment when the man died.
One approach would be to base our theory more explicitly in the particular formula-
tions of theorists in the traditions of behavioral sociology, learning theory, microeco-
nomics, and evolutionary theory (Skinner, 1938; Miller and Dollard, 1941; Homans,
1950, 1967, 1974j Schelling, 1960j Blau, 1964j Akers, 1977; Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman,
1981; Lumsden and Wilson, 1981). However much we admire the work which has been
done in these related traditions, we cannot accept tham as a completed foundation for
our own work. There are large gaps in the conceptual development of these fields, and
some of the most important questions have yet to receive sufficient attention. While one
of us was a student of George Homans, we have not based our axiomatic system upon
his five propositions, for example, feeling that it was premature to specify exactly the psy-
chological and biological principles which produce human behavior.
One could easily frame an approximate model of the range of rewards and compensa-
tors postulated by our theory. One might adopt, for instance, the distinction between
primary reinforcers and secondary reinforcers. Primary reinforcers are those which bio-
logical evolution has programmed humans to experience as rewards and to seek. Second,
ary reinforcers are learned rewards-that is, instrumental or intermediary rewards which
humans have learned to value as means to achieve the rewards which are primary rein-
forcers. Of course, this distinction is somewhat too simple because humans do not have
a full set of "instincts" utterly unrelated to social learning, since we have evolved as a
social species for millions of years. But for an efficient theoretical outline, let us grant
the distinction. Among the secondary reinforcers are explanations. Indeed, while we
cannot encumber our language with terms like tertiary, quaternary and quintary or
quintic reinforcers, it is clear that long chains of explanations and other instrumental
rewards are often required to achieve the primary reinforcers.
In A Theory of Religion we wrote several sections on these matters, especially on the
problem of evaluaton of explanations. Wallis and Bruce take us to task for speaking of
"verification' when we should have said "falsification" We are happy that they cite two
works by Karl Popper, since these were in fact books from which we learned much and
which we already cite in A Theory of Religion, along with several other classics in the phi-
losophy of science (e.g. Braithwaite, 1953; Kuhn, 1959; Toulmin, 1960; Nagel, 1961).
About the iconoclasm of Imre LaKatos we are less enthusiastic (d. Kitcher, 1977), al-
though his lively dramatization of a mathematicians' debate over one of Euler's proposi-
tions reminds us of our own many long discussions on the details of religion theory (La-
katos, 1976). Indeed, much of our theory rests on the observation that the human capac-
ity to understand the world is tragically limited. "Some desired rewards are limited in
supply, including some that simply do not exist ... The more valued or general a reward,
the more difficult will be evaluation of explanations about how to obtain it" (Stark and
Bainbridge, 1980c). Thus, our theory is quite comfortable with the loss of certainty
which has occurred in twentieth-century mathematical logic, for this accurately reflects
the natural human condition which is the basis of our theory (Nagel and Newman, 1958;
Klein, 1980). Goedel's proof advanced logic; it did not kill it (Quine, 1982). We see no
reason for abandoning logic and the pursuit of the natural sciences just because we have
lost the hubris of imagining our ideas to be absolutes, nor can we find any reason to
shrink before the challenges of making some sense out of the world even if all hints of
chaos can never be banished.
Were we willing to accept fully the simplifications of the behaviorists, we could replace
our talk of rewards and compensators by a quantitative "hedonistic" calculus (Hernstein,
1971). That is, we might rest our analysis on Homans' first proposition: IIFor all actions
taken by persons, the more often a particular action of a person is rewarded, the more
likely the person is to perform that action" (Homans, 1974:16). Or perhaps we would use
his third: "The more valuable to a person is the result of his action, the more likely he
150 SOCIOlDGICAL ANALYSIS
is to perform the action" (Homans, 1974:25). Indeed, our theory book discusses the time
and other investments required to bring to completion a line of action in pursuit of a
reward, and presents evaluation not in terms of "verification" or "falsification" but in
terms of payoff.
Rather than speaking of correct explanations, we could speak simply of explanations
which have been heavily reinforced in contrast to those which have not. Compensators
could then be defined in terms of plans of action (chains of explanation-guided actions
to achieve instrumental rewards in pursuit of a primary reinforcer) which are not readily
susceptible to completion. Actions taken according to compensator explanations will, by
Homans' principles, receive less reinforcement than other actions which lead more di-
rectly to primary reinforcement. But if primary reinforcement is seldom if ever achieved
by any line of action, those which are compensator-guided will be reinforced by the sec-
ondary or instrumental rewards accumulated during pursuit of the line of action. But
perhaps the reader agrees with us that a behavioral analysis along these lines seems too
simple (when it is not too abstract), and the chief gains achieved by using the compensa-
tor-reward terminology are to avoid excessive reductionism and to leave much room for
the great complexity in thought and action of which human beings are capable.
This does not mean we oppose attempts to clarify our concepts by reducing them to
simple, explicit formulations. We just think that it is possible to go ahead with the doing
of sociology before psychology and biology have finished their work, and that it is advis-
able to guard against premature closure in our set of ideas. With some trepedation we
admit that both of us are exploring the possibility of achieving an advanced level of theo-
retical formalization through computer simulations of parts of our theory (cf. Axelrod
and Hamilton, 1981). Very skeptical of the work done so far in "Artificial Intelligence:'
we nonetheless recognize that if you can write your theory in a form which a computer
can follow without error you have achieved a highly explicit logical statement of your
ideas.
Already, we can report some success in the very area which concerns Wallis and Bruce.
A mathematical algorithm incorporating the concepts of reward and compensator, has
successfully run and modelled predictions of our theory in a computer simulation of a
small human society. While Wallis and Bruce claim we assume "that different modes of
explanation are required for beliefs which are true and those which are false," we find
no need for such an assumption. The program does not use separate subroutines for be-
liefs which differ in "truth value" or in their utility for our simulated persons. Computers
are dumb and require very explicit instructions. Thus the fact that one of them can fol-
low our theory suggests to us that our concepts are not nearly so vague as some people
think.
In Pursuit of Empirical Evidence

All research methodologies have their limitations and potential biases, so it is our
strategy to use the widest possible range of data sources and analytical techniques. We
have been astonished to discover vast troves of good, unanalyzed data in many archives
and libraries, especially several varieties of unjustly unappreciated census data. In publi..
cations as various as Melton's (1978) monumental encyclopedia, letters to magazine edi-
tors, directories of occult businesses, and telephone books we have found items to count
which provided good measures of cult activity. For modest sums we have been able to
administer decent questionnaires to respectable numbers of people and have found
much of interest to sociologists of religion in reanalysis of existing survey datasets. At
the very least, our research demonstrates the great opportunity which exists today for
efficient, inexpensive, yet scientifically profitable quantitative research in our field.
As Wallis and Bruce noted, both of us have much experience in qualitative, ethno-
graphic field research-especially if one counts Stark's extensive prior career in journal-
ism. Often, a theoretical or quantitative article rests on a basis of ethnographic research
hardly mentioned in the publication. For example, six months were invested by one of
us in a field study of Scientology prior to our theoretical analysis of it (Bainbridge and
Stark, 1980b), and the junior author of our quantitative study of Transcendental Medita-
tion was himself a TM trainer who had attended the Marharishi International Univer-
sity (Bainbridge and Jackson, 1981). Qualitative research has its uses in testing theory,
but its primary utility is in two other areas. First, it offers experiences and observations
which jog the imagination and thus generate new theoretical ideas. Some of these field-
inspired ideas will be discoveries of new phenomena to be the focus of subsequent re-
search, while others are tentative propositions about the way familiar phenomena are
related (d. Bainbridge, in press a). Second, qualitative field research is the main method
for documenting the culture and history of new religious organizations.
We fully agree that sociologists can learn much from getting close to the people under
study and by sharing their world. That is why, for example, one of us actually entered
Scientology, rather than merely reading up on it in the library and interviewing a few
defectors (cf Wallis, 1976). But for all the merits of qualitative research, hypothesis-test-
ing almost invariably requires systematic measurement of variables and statistical com-
parisons - all the armamentarium of contemporary quantitative social science.
Several of our studies have used geographically based rates to compare two competing
models of secularization. One is the common view that a progressive socio-cultural trend
is eroding religion until eventually it will die. The other is a set of propositions derived
from our theory which postulate a constant process of secularization, revival and innova-
tion which is not leading in the direction of extinction for religion, but of transforma-
tion. In these studies we followed Popper's (1959, 1962) strategy exactly, by deriving a test-
able proposition from each theory, opposite in their predictions, and operationalizing
them precisely so that the outcome would be unambiguous. To put it simply, the secular-
ization thesis would predict that new religious movements would appear in those (pre-
sumably backward) areas where religion in general was still strong, while all types of reli-
gion would be weak wherever secularization was most advanced. Our theory, in contrast,
views "secularization" only as a decline in the strength of particular standard religious
organizations, and predicts that new religions will arise in any area where weakened con-
ventional denominations do not satisfy the religious needs of substantial numbers of
people.
In our first geographical study, we were able to produce a good contemporary estimate
of the church-member rate for American states and SMSAs (Stark, 1980), and showed
that it had a powerful negative correlation with many measures of cult activity (Stark
and Bainbridge, 1980bj Bainbridge and Stark, 1980a; d. Stark, Bainbridge and Doyle,
1979). Aware that data from one point in time might give a distorted picture, we then
analyzed equivalent data for America in the 1920s and found the same thing (Stark and
Bainbridge, 1981b; cf. Stark, Bainbridge and Kent, 1981). Next we took a first step toward
comparing the theories in a different cultural context by replicating the research on good
Canadian data (Bainbridge and Stark, 1982). More recently, Stark has examined the
same questions with data from Europe, Latin America, and the Islamic world (Stark,
1984, forthcoming a, forthcoming b). We are exploring mathematical techniques to pro-
duce reliable church-member rates for the nineteenth century, to permit quantitative re-
search on trends over long periods of time and to test elements of our theory in yet an-
other cultural context. In each of the several tests already completed, the conventional
secularization argument failed, while our theory accurately predicted the results.
To be sure, one may now conjure up a third theory, as Wallis and Bruce hint they have
done. Since it has been concocted after the research was completed, it would be surpris-
ing if it did not appear to "fit" the facts. But, as Popper would have been quick to admen-
ish, such an after-the-fact alternative interpretation must now do battle with our theory
in new empirical research where both are put at risk of disconfirrnation. That critics of
our theory are able to convince themselves they have data which contradict our theory
is not surprising, especially when they mention them in a terse aside from their main
essay. But even "facts" are due little scientific respect unless they are weighed systemati-
cally in careful research studies where competing predictions of rival theories can be op-
erationalized in terms for which the "facts" are proper measures.
Consider the case of Britain, where, we are told, the plumetting statistics on church
membership and participation fortell the death of religion, or at least its imminent
shrinkage into insignificance. Let us grant the assertion of the present rapid decline. Why
is it happening? What does it mean? These are questions for careful research, not quick
assumption. There is no such collapse going on in the United States. Most versio~s of
the secularization thesis suggest that something like cultural progress, carried forth by
science, technology and education, is overwhelming the "superstitions" of religion. Well,
then, which country, Britain or America, is more "advanced" in these matters? If we mea-
sure "modernity" by the proportion attending college, the per capita gross national prod-
uct, or the divorce rate, then the United States is more modern and should be less reli-
gious rather than more. These observations are merely meant to suggest that a scientific
study of differences between our societies should be high on the agenda and that vague
citations of putative "facts" prove nothing. A serious quantitative study by one of our
students recently contrasted our social bond explanation of low church-member rates
with an urbanization explanation more in keeping with the secularization thesis, using
American data, and the results again conformed to our theory (Welch, 1983).
The problem of which, America or Europe, is an exception to the alleged rules of mod-
ernization has already attracted much serious attention. Our theory notes that non-reli-
gious social movements can offer compensators of a fair level of generality, even though
the most general cannot be sustained for long without supernatural justifications. And
Europe is a far more fertile field for radical political movements than the United States.
Until a radical political party gains uncontested power and actually tries to make good
its optimistic promises-in many cases until The Revolution-its most general claims re-
main empirically untested. In Europe, politics has been a more serious rival to religion
than it has been in politically placid America (Stark, 1964; Glock and Stark, 1965), but
this may change.
Furthermore, European nations all possessed established state churches largely domi-
nated by the upper classes and their allies. Thus, the opponents of the rulers had good
cause to distrust their priests and see all religion as a trick imposed on the masses to
hold them down. Even today, the formal connection between the central religious de'
nominations in Europe (and in Canada) and their national governments would shock
Americans if it came to their attention. In reviewing the accomplishments of an abun-
dant lifetime, Thomas Jefferson found more personal pride in the Virginia statute on reli-
gious freedom, which he wrote, than in the Declaration of Independence or in his presi-
dency. Compared to Europe or even Canada, the religious marketplace in America has
always been free. Virtually all persons and groups may find in it just the right brand
of religion for them, a denomination not only precisely designed to meet their needs,
but decidedly theirs in the sense that it belongs to them alone and is dominated by no
one else. The recent massive incursions into Europe by American sects and by the Mor-
mons imply that a fully open market of religion might significantly increase church mem-
bership. Again, these suggestions are only a prelude to real research on the question, but
they do show emphatically that an offhand reference to "facts" is not the proper way to
refute a theory which already has sustained systematic empirical tests.
In addition to geographic analysis, we have made extensive use of questionnaire sur,
veys. In 1979 we administered a long questionnaire to 1,439 college students in order
to test propositions derived from our theory. It had been suggested that various secular
ideologies could provide the same sense that the world is meaningful and coherent which
religion offers. Both in our own data, and in the original lOOO'respondent survey of San
Francisco residents which led one of our colleagues to suggest this hypothesis, we found
that religion alone represented a real meaning system (Brainbridge and Stark, 1981c).
Our survey also permitted us to test propositions from our theory about the crucial role
which social bonds play in making it possible for religious ideology to influence people's
behavior (Bainbridge and Stark, 1981a). Two years later, 1,465 college students responded
to another large survey, testing other propositions on the often tenuous link between
ideology and behavior (Bainbridge and Crutchfield, 1983). These surveys also showed
that respondents who said they had "no religion" were far from being secular rationalists,
but were especially open to occult or supernatural notions of a non-standard variety-a
finding at the individual level which replicates the geographical research (Bainbridge and
Stark, 1981d).
The impact of religion has always been a topic of prime interest for our research group,
and here, too, our general theory of religion has gained much support. Years ago, Stark
inserted key questions on religion into Travis Hirschi's landmark Richmond Youth Proj-
ect questionnaire on juvenile delinquency (Hirschi, 1969). Analysis showed that religion
apparently had no power to deter misbehavior, because boys who professed religious
faith were no less likely to commit crimes than were their irreligious peers (Hirschi and
Stark, 1969). But while some subsequent research agreed, other studies showed a strong
inverse relationship between religion and delinquency (Burkett and White, 1974; Higgins
and Albrecht, 1977). Our theory offered a way of resolving this debate by raising the
analysis to a higher level.
We postulated that the power of religion to deter antisocial behavior was dependent
upon a collaboration with the community at large, since our theory held that religious
influence spreads through networks of social bonds (Welch, 1981). Thus, in communities
where most citizens are participating members of churches, religion will have great
power, while in places where only a minority are, it will be unable to prevent delin-
quency even among believers. The various studies may have disagreed because they were
done in different regions of the country where the strength of churches differed. Two
separate studies, one using adult crime rate statistics, the other closely examining ana'
tional survey of youth, produced exactly this result, thus not only resolving the dispute
between previous studies but also giving strong support to our theory (Stark, Doyle and
Kent, 1980; Stark, Kent and Doyle, 1982). The same concepts underlay a study of reli-
gion's influence on women's access to elite careers, which found the church-member rate
a powerful predictor of low rates of professional achievement in women in Canada,
where the three main denominations approach the status of established churches, and
essentially no correlation for two time periods in the United States, where religion is
fully disestablished from the formal networks of power (Bainbridge and Hatch, 1982).
A pair of studies reexamined Durkheim's assertions about religion and suicide in the
light of our theory, incidentally proving that good data capable of sustaining solid tests
of classic propositions have long languished untouched. While our theory endorsed the
concept of "egoistic suicide;' it did not predict the large Protestant-Catholic differences
in suicide rates reported by Durkheim. Using American data from 1970, 1926, 1916 and
even 1906 we could find no evidence of a denominational difference, but robust negative
correlations between the church-member rate and the suicide rate gave new life to the
concept of "egoism" and demonstrated that loss of religion-afforded social bonds can in'
crease the likelihood of self-murder (Bainbridge and Stark, 1981b; Stark, Doyle and
Rushing, 1983). Also, our theory predicted that religious compensators would have some
capacity to sustain hope, and thus to deter suicide, even in the absence of social bonds,
and evidence of this emerged when we controlled statistically for migration rates. Only
after we had finished these studies did we learn of Whitney Pope's research indicating
that Protestant-Catholic differences in· suicide rates reported by Durkheim were errors
in research methodology, not "facts" distinguishing European from American religion
(Pope, 1976: Pope and Danigelis, 1981).
One of our most enduring research interests is the social processes which bring people
to "convert" to a new religious affiliation, especially when this means joining a sect or
cult. While several of our qualitative field studies focused on this question, in our quanti,
tative analyses we often have found it most practical to apply analysis to existing data,
often from a variety of studies done by colleagues (Stark and Bainbridge, 1980a). The
key importance of social bonds has been underscored by all this research, but much light
has been shed as well on the role of compensatory ideologies in attracting persons who
are deprived of rewards enjoyed by other members of the society, whether the rewards
are wealth, status or youth (e.g, Stark, 1968). But the idea that membership in a deviant
religion is typically the result of psychopathology-the 'cultists are crazy thesis--has no
place in our theory, and receives no support from the data on personal characteristics
of cult members we have assembled (Stark and Bainbridge, 1984:XVlIIj cf. Stark, 1971).
Recently, we have developed a new category of historical quantitative data on patterns
of recuitment and defection of members of radical religious groups. At twelve archives
throughout the country, the federal government maintains microfilm copies of every ex,
rant, hand-written enumeration schedule of all American national censuses from 1790
through 1910. We were able to locate detailed records giving the names and much other
data on members of such religious communities as the Shakers, Oneida, Amana, Zoar,
Aurora, Bethel, Bishop Hill and Harmony, for several different years from 1810 to 1900.
The first publication merely reported demographic characteristics of the Shakers for the
period 1840-1900 (Bainbridge, 1982). But a second project was able to track 4000 individ-
ual Shakers from 1850 to 1860, determining much about those who joined and those
who left. It also used Massachusetts state records to do the same for every five-year pe-
riod from 1850 to 1870, and permitted a fresh analysis of the ways in which the pursuit
of reward can lead to the acceptance of compensators. This work stimulated a critical
reappraisal of the methods of quantitative research on such communities, (Bainbridge,
in press c). It also represents one of several approaches we have used to examine religious
biographies of large numbers of individuals, vastly less expensive than the scientifically
richer collection of fresh data on living persons in panel-study designs (e.g., Zablocki,
1980).
Sectarian religion, in relation to low-tension denominations, has been a continuing
theme of our work (ef. Stark and Glock, 1968; Stark et al., 1971) and was one of the
first sets of questions our theory engaged. Put simply, all religion provides general com,
pensators, while sects also provide efficacious specific compensators for scarce rewards
of which the members are relatively deprived. Our definition of sectarian tension, based
on earlier work by Benton Johnson (1963), was derived from the core theory and was
shown capable of reliable, unambiguous measurement in analysis of an existing set of
survey data (Bainbridge and Stark, 1980c).
Another study examined 417 American-born sects, noting that social encapsulation
resulting from very high tension with the surrounding sociocultural environment se-
verely inhibited both growth and reduction of tension over time (Stark and Bainbridge,
1981a). Using survey data comparing recent recruits with life-long members, we found
support for our proposition that recruits are relatively deprived, and we identified a
mechanism which often transforms a moderately high-tension group into a lower tension
denomination (Stark and Bainbridge, 1984:VII). A study in mathematical modeling re-
vealed how important a period of rapid growth can be in sustaining the morale required
for continued health of a religious movement (Stark and Roberts, 1982). Our theory says
much about the process of schism in religious groups, and Doherty's (1967) study of the
Hicksite sect not only fulfills our theoretical predictions but provides a model for future
research on this important topic.
Case studies of particular religious organizations often suggest insights and can help
evaluate and perfect theories. In addition to the studies cited above on the Unification
Church, Scientology, The Process, TM, and the Shakers, we have in preparation a series
of others. Especially interesting are the Mormons and Christian Science, two innovative
religious movements which arose to prominance in nineteenth-century America. Ini-
tially both quite successful, they have gone on separate paths over the past two genera-
tions, the Mormons growing exponentially and the Christian Scientists fading away.
Analysis of these contrasting cases in terms of our theory reveals much about the condi-
tions which maintain success or lead to decline (Stark, 1983, forthcoming c). Social his-
156 SOCIOIDGICAL ANALYSIS
tories have many of the same strengths and weaknesses as ethnographies, and in both
it is difficult to control for the impact of historical accident because the UN of cases" is
typically only one. Statistical studies of large numbers of religions, like our research on
501 American cults, can resolve this problem.
Conclusion
This review of the first five years of our collaborative work makes it clear that our corn-
mitment is to the social scientific study of religion. Wallis and Bruce say such scientific
pursuits are impossible. We respond: To the extent we have achieved any of our aims,
a social science of religion must be possible. Thus, our dispute with Wallis and Bruce
turns out not to be philosophical but ultimatelvjempirical. Quite simply, we believe we
have done a good deal of what Wallis and Bruce say cannot be done.
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Formal Explanation of Religion:

In Defense of Scientific Explanation

In Pursuit of Empirical Evidence

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