Wuthnow - Two Traditions in The Study of Religion

Two Traditions in the Study of Religion Author(s): Robert Wuthnow Source: Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,
Vol. 20, No. 1 (Mar., 1981), pp. 16-32 Published by: Wiley on behalf of Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1385335 . Accessed: 06/06/2013 00:11
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16 REFERENCES
JOURNALFOR THE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION
Bainbridge,William Sims 1978 Satan's Power:Ethnography of a Deviant Psychotherapy Cult Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress. Bainbridge,William Sims and Rodney Stark in "Sectarian tension." Review of Religious press Research. 1979 "Cult formation: Three compatible models." Sociological Analysis 40: 283-295. Glock, CharlesY. and Robert N. Bellah 1976 The New Religious Consciousness. Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress. Lofland,John and Rodney Stark 1965 "Becoming a world saver: A theory of conversion to a deviant perspective." AmericanSociologicalReview 30: 862-875. Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge 1979 "Of churches,sects, and cults: Preliminary concepts for a theory of religious movements." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 18: 117-131.
in "Towards a theory of religion: Religious press a commitment." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. in "Networks of faith: Interpersonal bonds press b and recruitment to cults and sects." AmericanJournal of Sociology. Stark, Rodney, William Sims Bainbridgeand Daniel Doyle 1979 "Cults of America: A reconnaissance in space and time." SociologicalAnalysis 40: 347-359. Stark, Rodney, Daniel P. Doyle, and Lori Kent forth- "Rediscovering Moral Communities: coming Churchmembershipand crime." Wuthnow,Robert 1976 The ConsciousnessReformation.Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress. 1978 Experimentation in American Religion. Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress.
Two Traditions in the Study of Religion

ROBERT WUTHNOW*
Bainbridge and Stark's essay on The ConsciousnessReformation illustrates conceptual and theoretical ambiguities characteristicof researchin the scientific study of religion more generally. This paper traces these ambiguities to the presence of two competing, but poorly differentiated, epistemological traditions. An examination of the assumptions implicit within each of these traditions provides a basis for clarifyingthe distinction between religious symbolism and religious belief, the concept of meaning, the difference between consistency as an attribute of belief and coherence as an attribute of reality, and the role of interpersonal bonds in maintaining the plausibility of religious symbolism.An emergingthird perspectivethat appearsto circumventsome of the limitations of the two major epistemologicaltraditions is also discussed.
For much of its recent history the scientific study of religion has been divided by competing intellectual presuppositions. Often the subject of discussion in the journals and at professional meetings, these divisions continue to influence the selection of research problems, the conceptualization of variables, and even the decision of which
*Robert Wuthnowis Associate Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and Director of Princeton's Program in Science in Human Affairs. ? Journalfor the Scientific Study of Religion, 1981,20 (1):16-32 16
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variables to employ in research. They also inform the selection of methodological styles, the application of statistical techniques, and the interpretation of research results. Of itself, intellectual disagreement is not an unhealthy state of affairs. It is the failure to understand the assumptions underlying these disagreements that produces ambiguity and conceptual confusion. In the scientific study of religion such confusion and ambiguity has been much in evidence. The existence of intellectual disagreements has been widely admitted, but little has been accomplished toward clarifying the nature, sources, and implications of these disagreements. As a result, it is not necessary to search far in order to find examples of strikingly discrepant conclusions being drawn from the same data or from similar sets of empirical observations. The Bainbridge-Stark essay contains much that is worthy of comment. It also illustrates the deeper conceptual and theoretical ambiguity that currently pervades research in the scientific study of religion. Rather than responding only to questions of method and interpretation,therefore, I shall direct my remarksprimarilyto the deeper presuppositions that underlie these ambiguities. I shall outline several broad developments in the history of the scientific study of religion that have, in my view, contributed significantly to the present state of affairs. This approachwill allow issues to be addressed that go well beyond the specific points raised by Bainbridgeand Stark. I shall argue, contrary to a widely held view, that the main lines of division in the study of religion do not correspond to the cleavage between quantitative and qualitative methods. Nor do they coincide with the disjuncture between scientific and humanistic perspectives. Close examination of the history of the field reveals instead that it has been divided principallyby two competing epistemological orientations. The first, derived from Cartesian dualism, dominated the field during its initial development and maturation. The second, a wholistic epistemology that came to be articulated primarily in phenomenology and in textual hermeneutics, emerged in response to problems that became increasingly apparent in the dualistic conception as the field evolved. The wholistic approachwas not entirely successful at resolving these problems, however. For at least the past two decades both orientations have been representedin varying degrees in the majortheoretical and empiricalformulationsthat have guided work in the field. Although the resultant admixture has frequently been productive, it has also left a heavy residue of terminologicalambiguity which, in turn, has contributed to misunderstanding in the conduct and interpretation of research. Only by sorting out the presuppositions inherent in the two epistemological traditions that have shaped the study of religion does it appear possible to advance beyond the current conceptual confusion.
In the early phases of its development, the scientific study of religion was unified by a common epistemological outlook, even though several distinct theoretical perspectives came into being during this period. This epistemological outlook was a derivative ultimately of Cartesian dualism. At the heart of the dualistic conception of reality was the idea that a perplexing gulf existed between the self, acting as a thinking
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subject, and the world of objects surroundingthe self. The fundamental characteristic of the human condition according to this analysis was alienation; i.e., the knowing subject's awareness of being cut off from the object world. In Marx's view alienation was the subjective counterpart of economic contradictions that estranged the laborer from his products, from his fellow laborers, and from himself. For Weber life was characterized by an erosion of meaning inherent in the process of rationalization through which the self gradually lost control of the world it had created. Similarly for Durkheim, the greatest problem facing humanity was the moral estrangement of the individual from the society in which he lived and from the corporate rules of this collectivity. With alienation identified as the fundamental dilemma of human existence, the highest calling of scholarship became that of reuniting subject and object. Indeed, the great humanistic endeavor which lent modern scholarship its motivating force claimed as its primarygoal the task of reclaiming the object world for the knowing self, thereby reconciling the two and reinstating the self to its natural position as master over the object world. To this end, the central purpose of human knowledge came to be identified as demystification, to be accomplished through what Ricoeur (1973) has aptly termed a "hermeneuticsof suspicion." Demystification of the object world and of the forces in it impelling fear and estrangement in the knowing self was to be accomplished by adopting a skeptical attitude concerning the "objectivity" or reality of the object world. By questioning its nature, the world of objects was to be unmasked and shown to be no longer an immutable fact of the external non-human world but rather a product of human creation. Once the world of objects was thus unmasked, it could be re-created, controlled, and appropriatedby the self for its own uses. In this way subject and object were to be reunited and alienation was to be overthrown. While there were important nuances that can be overlooked for present purposes, the commonphilosophicaloutlook on which the scientific study of religion was founded stressed, in short, that all of reality was divided fundamentally into two categories consisting of subject and object, that humanity was broken by this division, and that this brokenness could be healed by the strategic application of skeptical knowledge. The source and function of knowledge, the epistemological agenda of the Cartesian perspective, lay in the recognition that the self was the originator of knowledge, that the world of objects existed ultimately through and only through the subject's knowledge of this world, and that the self gained mastery over the world and thereby conquered self-estrangement primarily by extending its knowledge of the world. This conception of knowledge had decisive implications for the study of religion. Having as its focus the worship of and subjugation of human desires to objects conceived of as supernatural entities existing entirely beyond the realm of human manipulation or control and, moreover, exerting constraint over human affairs, religion, so conceptualized, stood forth as an example of ultimate reification within the Cartesian framework. It was, in Marx's terms, one of humankind's "alienated life elements," symptomatic of the alienation of subject from object, an expression however naive of the human quest to heal the breach between consciousness as actor and the constraints of the object world impinging continuously on the actor's freedom. Contrary to the realization of Enlightenment hopes for emancipation of the human
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spirit, however, the prevailing tendency of religion was to reify the object world as a product of forces entirely beyond human control, rather than to acknowledgeits human sources. The immediate task of humanistic scholarship, therefore, became that of demystifying the "objectivity" of religiously conceived objects by demonstrating that forces perceived religiously as emanating from the gods were in fact identifiable as alienated elements of the human world itself. From the classic dualistic conception of religion the main research orientation that developed might best be described as a radical sociology of knowledge approach, the aim of which was to demonstrate through empirical investigation of the social world that religiously-perceived forces were merely a reflection of other, more obviously human realities. The common epistemological thread running from Descartes to Marx to Freud was a reductionistic view of knowledge that equated understanding of religious phenomena with the capacity to discover their correlates in the various economic, societal, and biological dimensions of the human world (cf., Bellah, 1970: 246-257). It is instructive to recognize that this search for correlates was made possible only by the fact that reality had in the first place been divided into two components the subjective and objective - which were then rediscovered to bear an empirical relation to one another! The particular genius and basis of lingering attraction of the radical sociology of knowledge approachto religion lay in the fact that paradoxicallyit met the humanistic agenda of reclaiming the object world for the subject, while at the same time it appeared, at least initially, to provide a firm foundation for scientific analysis by reducing the subjective realm of religious belief to the more objective realm of economic, social, and biological conditions. This fortunate union of humanism and science failed to achieve its original aspirations, however. In the name of humanism, as Marx saw most clearly, science found it necessary to invert the original subject-object relationship, focusing increasingly on the subjective elements of religion (i.e., belief), while attempting to explain them in terms of the more objective facts of the social world. Though rooted in the initial humanistic conception of dualistic reality, the radical sociology of knowledge tradition evolved in a direction that ran counter to both the philosophical and epistemological agendas that had inspired it: the former,insofar as in practice it became necessary to identify religion as a subjective phenomenonwhich it then proceeded to alienate from the human actor by attributing religious belief to the object world from which the actor was already cut off; the latter, in that the radical sociology of knowledge approach subverted the higher order epistemological goal of explaining the (apparently)known - vis., the functioning of the gods - in terms of the (heretofore)unknown - the wishes and needs of the knowing subject, replacing this higher order aim with what has always been the more rudimentary and less satisfying strategy of normal science, namely, explaining the unknown in terms of the known (here, religious belief in terms of observable social variables). The chief difficulty in sustaining this inversion, apart from the inherent tensions that evolved in relation to its humanistic origins, was that the radical sociology of knowledge approachcould be regarded as scientifically satisfactory only as long as the constructed, and therefore reducible, character of the "objective" life world to which
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religion was to be reduced was denied. There was, therefore, an inevitable tendency within the dualistic tradition toward (1) reification of the object world - a tendency that became fully pronounced with the triumph of empirical positivism; (2) exaggeration of the distinction between culture, which was presumed to be subjective, and social structure, which was presumed to be objective; and (3) an increasing bias in research on religion to focus on the cognitive dimension of religion, making it possible for religion to be conceived of primarily as culture and, therewith, to be regarded as explicable in relation to social structure, as opposed to the ritualistic, behavioral, and institutional elements of religion that could not be separated as easily from social structure. II If reductionism became a serious problem in the dualistic tradition, as it did particularly for those inspired by the original humanistic agenda of reconciling object with subject rather than reducing subject to object, then an obvious solution was to reconceptualizereligion. In order to save religion from reductionism, it was necessary that religion be conceived as something other than an external object. Most importantly, the idea of the supernaturalas being a constraining force external to the knowing subject had to be circumvented,for the main line of theoretical argumentation in the radical sociology of knowledge approach had attempted to demonstrate that these constraining forces were not in fact manifestations of the supernatural, but mythologized expressions of the social and natural world. The reconceptlalization that began to take shape was concerned above all with avoiding traditional assumptions that cast religion within the epistemological frame of the subject-object split. In this effort, the distinction between part and whole became an attractive alternative. Increasingly there developed what might be called a wholistic approachto the study of religion. In the wholistic tradition the essential element of religion has been conceived of, not as the worship of realities external to the self, of which belief in the supernatural constitutes the clearest example, but as an expression of universal quests for meaning in life. This orientation is in fact common to most of the frequently cited definitional discussions of religion in the social scientific literature (e.g., Bellah, 1970: 16; Berger, 1969: 24-28; Geertz, 1973: 87-125). Meaning, as conceptualized in these discussions, is an attribute of symbolism, including objects, acts, events, and utterances, and is assumed to be defined by the context in which a symbol or set of symbols appears. In short, meaning is contextual. Bellah, describing meaning associated with religious symbolism, writes, "Meaning in this sense is location in a context, in a larger interrelated framework defined by values or norms of a more general order than the specific act or object" (1970: 260-261).Berger and Luckmann(1966)emphasize the role of "symbolic universes" in conveying meaning to individuals and collectivities. Geertz (1973: 126-141) stresses that sacred symbols mediate between the ethos of immediate activities and more general conceptions of reality. The contextual definition of meaning derives from linguistic formulations, particularly those of Saussure (1959) and Langer (1951), in which the meanings of
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words are given by the contexts, ranging from sentences to entire texts, in which they are used. This definition has also been widely assumed in social scientific treatments of meaning that bear little affinity to one another on the surface. For example, Cantril's (1941: 59) discussion of the psychological factors motivating social movements treats meaning as a "frame of reference" making isolated stimuli interpretable. Seeman's (1959; 1972: 472) extension of this argument conceptualizes meaninglessness as "a sense of the incomprehensibility of social affairs, of events whose dynamics one does not understand and whose future course one cannot predict . . ." Jung (1963: 246) speaks of psychological meaning as presupposing "a view of the whole." Fingarette (1963) describes it as a scheme that makes everything "hang together" in a new way. Other discussions have focused less on the cognitive aspects of meaning, but have also stressed the idea of context. Laski's (1961) work on ecstatic experiences suggests that an intuitive feeling of wholeness and relatedness often accompanies these experiences. Maslow (1962, 1970) has made similar claims in his work on peak experiences. Frankl (1963, 1969) emphasizes the concept of purpose in his work on meaning, but the role of purpose is primarily one of providing a context in which to relate more proximate activities to one another. In all these approaches meaning connotes context. The necessary condition for understanding the meaning of a symbol is to know what context or frame of reference the symbol connotes. Given this contextual conception of meaning, it is then important to recognize that contexts can be differentiated in terms of scope or comprehensiveness. Some symbols point to narrow realms of activity, give meaning only to the activities within that realm, and derive their meaning entirely within this narrowcontext. Narrowmeanings and contexts, however, require larger contexts in order for them to be integrated (cf., Berger and Luekmann, 1966). There is, in other words, a kind of hierarchyof contexts for which meanings can be sought. Moreover, as one moves toward larger and more encompassing contexts, a limiting point is finally approachedin which questions about the meaning of the whole of reality must be addressed. These include questions such as: What is the meaning of life? What are the ultimate conditions of existence? How did reality begin and how will it end? What absolutes can be identified within the whole of reality? Such questions, addressed tacitly or explicitly, have been the focus of the world's religions. In the wholistic tradition, therefore, the distinctive feature of religious systems came to be identified as symbolism that attempted to evoke meanings embracing the whole of reality. Equating religion with wholistic symbolism proved to be an effective way of protecting religion from the reductionistic tendencies inherent in the dualistic tradition. It was Wittgenstein (1974) who, though inadvertantly, articulated most clearly the reason why. Defining the "world"in his famous first proposition as "all that is the case," Wittgenstein went on to assert that "the meaning of the world must lie outside of the world" or, in his more poetic assertion, "the solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time." Put'differently, the meaning of the whole of reality is itself not a part of the world of facts. Symbols that point to the meaning of the whole occupy a different plane from those pertaining to the empirical world. The realm with which religion is concerned,therefore, is neither reducibleto the empirical world nor a phenomenon that can be investigated empirically.
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Wittgenstein himself failed to perceive the full significance of his formulationas an alternative to the subject-object conception of reality and reverted in his own life to a form of private mysticism that protected his religious convictions from objective reductionism by making them purely subjective. What his formulation provided, nonetheless, was a simple statement of a new epistemological view that was to have a profound impact on the study of religion, albeit only remotely attributable to Wittgenstein's own influence. As with the dualistic outlook, the wholistic perspective contained within it a distinct image of human nature and an epistemological agenda that reflected this image. The fundamental problem facing humanity was no longer identified as one of reconciling subject and object, but was defined as a search for wholistic meaning. The quest for meaning was of ultimate concern because reality was conceived to be fundamentally divided, just as it had been in the subject-object split, but now divided between part and whole (in this sense it is appropriateto say that a basic dualism lay also at the core of the wholistic tradition). The gap between part and whole left the events of life that the individual inevitably experiences as parts of a larger drama of existence fragmented and lacking in meaning because the meaning of the whole context of which they were a part could not be grasped either cognitively or experientially. Yet, with the exception of treatments attempting to resolve this problem simply by denying the possibility of finding ultimate meaning, the prospect that the gap between part and whole could be mediated was held open. Symbols were the key. Rituals, transcendent experiences, art, religious liturgy and doctrine were recognized as means by which faith in the existence of wholistic meanings could be inspired and communicated. The role of scholarship, therefore, was not so much to arrive at a cognitive understanding of the meaning of existence, but to clarify the meanings that were conveyed by transcendent symbols. The wholistic tradition de-emphasized belief and cognition, focusing instead on symbols as the defining element of religion. The source of knowledge of greatest value to the resolution of the human dilemmawithin this tradition was no longer the knowing subject but the symbol within which lay meanings that could only be grasped intuitively. Emotion, will, and experience were as important to this quest as cognition. Nonetheless, the wholistic tradition also gave cognitive knowledge an important place insofar as this knowledge enhanced the capacity to understand the manner in which symbols functioned. The major methodological approaches that emerged within the wholistic tradition were phenomenology and hermeneutics. The former,particularly in Heidegger's work, was preoccupiedwith the question of being in an ultimate or wholistic sense, focusing on the manner in which symbols convey meanings about the nature of being. Phenomenology fit compatibly within the epistemology of the wholistic tradition in that it stressed the exploration of the meanings that were associated with symbols. Hermeneutics also provideda methodology that gave supremeimportanceto the study of symbolism, particularlyin its quest to reconstruct the meanings intended in written texts by their original authors and audiences. Both phenomenology and hermeneutics provided particularly attractive methodologies for the study of religion since each explicitly denied the possibility of
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reducing religious symbolism to any other aspect of reality. Unlike the dualistic tradition, phenomenology and hermeneutics treated religious symbols as objective realities (whence Bellah's term, "symbolic realism"; 1970: 254), and stressed the value of examining the meanings attached to these symbols. Neither of these approaches, however, proved to be particularly successful in establishing a solid basis for the scientific study of religion. Whereas the dualistic tradition provided a rationale for assuming that generalizations could be made about the relationships between religious belief and social conditions and suggested that such information was of value, phenomenology and hermeneutics both fell shy of supplying a method for discovering generalizations about the meanings of symbols. For its part, phenomenology faltered because the meaning of a symbol, understood contextually, must be studied in relation to the specific context in which someone uses it. Any symbol will have as many meanings as it has contexts, each user interpreting it in relation to the context in which he or she employs it. To fully understand the meanings of a symbol in all the richness of detail and empathy that the phenomenologicalmethod dictated, therefore,proved to be an impossible task. Hermeneutics foundered on a related problem. While its quest to reconstruct the original meanings of religious texts proved valuable for the purpose of textual criticism, no satisfactory method existed in many cases for verifying that these meanings were in fact the original intentions of the authors of the texts. Moreover,the reconstructive method did not provide a satisfactory solution for dealing with the fact that texts and other symbols acquire quite different meanings in different contexts. Because of their limitations as directives for empirical research, phenomenology and hermeneutics came to serve the study of religion primarily as a theoretical rationale for the importance and nonreducibility of religion, while the dualistic tradition continued to supply the major definitions and concepts used in research investigations. Not surprisingly, observers of the field have commented frequently on the breach between theory and research. Less often have they perceived the deeper epistemological differences contributing to the perpetuation of this breach. Consequently, efforts to bridge the gap have generally been constructed with ad hoc borrowings from both traditions and with patchwork conceptual compromises, but seldom with explicit acknowledgment of the fundamental assumptions differentiating the two approaches. III An understanding of the assumptions underlying the dualistic and the wholistic traditions provides a basis for clarifying the ambiguity that has surroundedthe study of meaning systems and of religious symbolism more generally. Discussions of religious meanings have generally associated the concept of meaning with symbolism. Religious symbols exist in the form of written texts, verbal utterances, rituals, social institutions, and stylized behavior and events. As concrete objects they can be examined empirically. One set of symbols can be compared with another and the behavioral, attitudinal, and emotional patterns associated with the use of each set can be assessed. Evidence can be obtained by examining texts, rituals, and other symbols directly or by questioning individuals for whom symbol systems are meaningful. In the
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latter case, as in the former,the unit of analysis is the symbol or cluster of symbols, not the individual as is the case in standard social psychological research. Confusion has often been present in discussions of religious meaning because the idea of meaning systems, itself a product of the wholistic tradition, has not been distinguished carefully from concepts rooted in the dualistic tradition, such as worldview and belief system. The distinction is far more important than one of mere stylistic preference. A meaning system refers to the dominant meanings in a culture that are associated with a particular set of symbols. Its distinguishing feature is an identifiable set of symbols with which interpretations, feelings, and activities can be associated. A world-view or belief system, in contrast, consists of all the beliefs that an individual holds about the nature of reality. An individual's world-viewcan thus be comprised of beliefs about any number of different symbols, but a meaning system, by comparison, pertains to one set of symbols, even though these symbols may be used in a number of different texts, settings, or collectivities. The two concepts are also differentiated in terms of the importance they attach to the role of cognition. World-viewsare creations of thinking individuals; it is the knowing subject of the dualistic tradition who reflects on the world and who holds beliefs about this world. Or, as Bainbridge and Stark observe, the idea of a world-viewimplies that individuals are amateur philosophers, an assumption compatible with the Enlightenment image of humanity. The concept of meaning system necessitates no such assumption, however, only a willingness to treat symbols as objects in their own right. Meanings evoked by symbols occur at the emotional and volitional levels as well as at the cognitive level. A symbol provides a bridge between raw experience and some sense of a larger reality. But this sense may be as much felt, intuited, worshipped,held in awe, acted upon, hoped for, trusted in, or tacitly accepted as codified conceptually, understood cognitively, or articulated verbally. The vast majority of studies examining religious phenomenausing survey research techniques have focused on belief systems or world-views rather than on meaning systems. These studies have chosen the individual as the unit of analysis and have attempted to identify patterns of belief within the social psychology of the individual survey respondent. Among the conclusions that can be drawn from these studies are: (1) the number of factors or dimensions of individual belief is nearly as varied as the number of samples and sets of items employed; (2) beliefs measured by items with highly similar wordings often cluster together, but the relationships are often weaker than expected and, more generally, the human psyche displays a remarkabletolerance of inconsistency and ambiguity; (3) responses to these cognitive items are predicted best by cognitive variables such as education and religious training; (4) individuals with greater exposure to certain kinds of cognitive training show greater consistency in their beliefs than do others; and (5) the relationship between beliefs and social conditions is much less determinant than once predicted by the classic theorists of the dualistic tradition (cf., Converse, 1964). Studies in which religious symbols, rather than individuals, serve as the units of analysis, have been relatively uncommon and have been conducted almost entirely outside the confines of quantitative sociology. Levi-Strauss' (1963) work on primitive myths, Ricoeur's (1967) examination of the symbolism of evil, and Weber's well-known
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discussion of theodicies represent some of the few examples of social research concerned explicitly with the study of symbolism. In these cases data were drawn exclusively from religious texts. Examples of data drawn directly from the users of symbolism are virtually nonexistent outside of anthropology (one significant exception is Bainbridge's [1978] valuable discussion of symbolism in a satanic cult). The Bay Area survey on which the Consciousness Reformation was based was an attempt to examine and compare the implications of several symbol systems that have enjoyed prominencein American culture. Moreover,it did so not by studying symbols in the abstract but by soliciting data directly from individuals. The purpose of the study was to identify people who found each of these symbol systems meaningful and to comparethese people in orderto examine the behavioraland attitudinal orientations associated with each symbol system. To this end, persons interviewed were grouped into seven categories on the basis of a number of survey items, such that each group consisted of persons who used one set of symbols, or combination of symbols, more often than any other set. This procedureallowed comparisons to be made among four major sets of wholistic symbolism - theism, individualism, social science, and mysticism - as well as three mixed sets. Comparativeanalysis of these categories of respondents permitted conclusions to be drawn about the kinds of activities, values, and specific attitudes associated with each symbol system as it existed in the Bay Area in 1973. The study provided a comparative look at the meanings associated with specific clusters of symbols in an empirical social context. It represented an effort to examine problems long held to be important within the wholistic tradition - but using empirical methods. Bainbridge and Stark's analysis of the Bay Area data and of their data from University of Washington students represents a concern, not with symbol systems, but with the content of individuals' belief systems, as suggested in their introductory remarks on world-views. The problem with which their analysis is concernedis rooted in the epistemology of the dualistic tradition, particularly in its emphasis upon the subjective quality of individual religious beliefs and in its assumptions about the predominately cognitive character of religious belief. This problem falls squarely within the tradition of research mentioned above that has been concerned with patterns of individual belief. It is, however, as I indicated in the original study (1976: 189-190), quite different from the problem with which that study was concerned.That the two problems derive their epistemological justification from two traditions differing in so many respects should be sufficient to suggest that more is at issue than the mere manipulation of statistics.1 Nor does this criticism apply uniquely to the
1. At the methodological level I find it curious that Bainbridge and Stark's attempt at replication and reanalysis (1) used only half of the original Bay Area sample, thereby greatly reducing levels of variation in meaning systems; (2)based this decision on the desire to avoid weighted responses, but failed to recognizethat all nondescriptiveresults reportedin the originalstudy were based on nonweightedresponses;(3)did not use the original question wordings or response categories but relied on untested Likert-typeitems; (4) did not employ the exact combination of items used in two of the original scales; (5) did not publish their proceduresfor handling miscellaneousresponse categories and missing data; (6)analyzed only twelve of the original 28 items; (7) chose only one method of factor analysis and did not defend this choice; (8) ignored the arguments from historical and survey evidenceregardingthe multidimensionalityof the various meaningsystems and the need to combinespecificitems to delimit the content of each meaningsystem; (9)ignoredthe multivariateanalyses in the original study that demonstratedthe independenteffect of each meaningsystem controllingfor the others,
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Bainbridge-Starkessay, because one of the most curious features of the scientific study of religion is that virtually all of its major conceptualizations of religion focus on symbols, while empirical studies have been concerned almost entirely with beliefs. A second point that can also be clarified with reference to the different assumptions inherent in the dualistic and wholistic traditions concerns the tendency, not only in the present case but in a number of similar discussions, to confuse the concept of consistency with that of coherence.Consistency is an attribute of the beliefs of a specific individual. It is a measure of the extent to which beliefs - presumed (usually by the social scientist) to be compatible with one another - in fact exist simultaneously within the individual's cognitive world-view.As an empiricalproblem, consistency is admirably suited to standard survey research procedures where any number of statistical measures are available for determining the extent to which particular beliefs go together with one another in a sample of individuals. The difficulty with studies concernedwith consistency arises however when, from the degree of consistency, an inferenceis made about the degree to which a person's life has meaning or the degree to which a particular symbol system provides meaning (a major argument in the Bainbridge-Stark discussion). This inference rests on the assumption that meaning presupposes a sense of coherence.The concept of coherence, however, implies something quite different from consistency. The two derive from different epistemological traditions. The concept of consistency reflects the subjective, individualistic view of religion implicit in the dualistic tradition and this tradition's historic emphasis on rationality. The fully-functioning subject is expected to have a view of the world that is accurate and internally consistent. Inconsistency is tantamount to unsophistication, maladjustment, improper cognitive socialization or, as in Freud, symptomatic of repressed drives. Even though the assumption that people strive to attain cognitive consistency has been challenged repeatedly by empirical findings (an excellent discussion is found in Westie, 1965), the emphasis placed on rationality in the dualistic tradition has made this assumption difficult to abandon. The concept of coherence,by contrast, derives from the concern with the meaning of reality, expressed in the wholistic tradition. Whereas consistency is an attribute of an individual's belief set, coherenceis an attribute ascribed to reality. Reality is said to have meaning if some sense of coherence can be attributed to it; that is, if it appears to hang together in such a way that its elements bear a relation to one another. Thus, when Berger (1969) describes religion as nomizing, he is referringto orderor coherence sensed as an aspect of reality, not to a pattern of consistency among an individual's beliefs. Wilfred Cantwell Smith's (1979: 133) characterization of the modern skeptic "for whom life consists of a congeries of disparate items among which they find no coherence" clearly refers to an attribute ascribed to reality, rather than a lack of
and for a variety of cognitive, political, and religious factors; (10) ignored the conceptual distinction between items dealingwith generalizedmeaningsand items dealingwith specificactivities; and (11)ignoredthe fact that religious nonparticipationwas definedas a type of religious experimentationbut that items measuringit were includedin only one of the five experimentationindexes. In short, their argumentis built on a highly selective pass through the data that in no way replicates the original study. It should also be noted that the logic of typological constructionand analysis, includingits dissimilaritiesfrom unidimensionalscaling techniques,was discussed at length in the appendix of the original volume and need not be repeated here.
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consistency among beliefs. Moreover,such discussions have explicitly rejected the idea that a consistent cognitive world-view is a precondition for perceiving coherence and meaning in reality. Geertz (1968: 97) describes religious traditions as "collections of notions" rather than well-formulatedsets of beliefs. Dumont (1977: 20) asserts that the coherence implicit in ideologies lies primarily in "unstated views." Foucault (1972: 37) argues for treating systems of knowledge as a "dispersion of elements" rather than conceptual unities. Smith's (1979) distinction between faith as a dimly felt perception of coherence and belief as an attempt to articulate faith also reflects this point of view. Bainbridge and Stark fail to distinguish clearly between coherence and consistency. Their discussion of the different levels of consistency and inconsistency within individuals' belief systems does not provide a sufficient basis for their assertions about the ability of different symbol systems to lend meaning or coherence to life. The sense that life is meaningful - that there is coherenceto existence - can be provided by a single symbol system or by symbols drawn from a combination of systems. The hallmark of a pluralistic culture, in fact, is the number of such symbol systems from which to choose. Mary Douglas (1973: 82) states the point well in her discussion of individuals' world-views:
A classification system can be coherentlyorganizedfor a small part of experience,and for the rest it can leave the discrete items jangling in disorder.Or it can be highly coherentin the orderingit offers for the whole of experience,but the individualsfor whom it is available may enjoy access to another competing and different system, equally coherent in itself, from which they feel free to select segments here and there eclectically, not worrying about the overall lack of coherence.
She also points out that some symbol systems blend easily with others, while other symbol systems require exclusive adherence. One implication of the Bay Area research is that the more recently emerging meaning systems, namely social science and mysticism, appear to be more capable of tolerating a variety of simultaneously held symbols than do traditional theistic sources of meaning. Bainbridge and Stark's investigation provides additional support for this idea.2It should not be concluded, however, that belief consistency will necessarily be a mark of theism more than of other symbol systems. Much depends on the degree to which tolerance of diversity is institutionalized. A recent study of Lutherans, for example, found that less than three percent adheredconsistently to all of the ten beliefs theologians of the denomination had prescribed as normative tenets of the Lutheran tradition (Wuthnow, 1980). The Lutheran emphasis on faith alone mitigated the ability of the church in this case to requirestrict consistency of belief. Nor can it be argued, as Bainbridge and Stark seem to suggest, that consistency is necessarily a product of interaction within a "network of faith." A recently completed study of nearly a thousand members of sixty urban communes has replicated the meaning system items used in the Bay Area study (Aidala, 1979). The study was able not only to reproduce
2. I do not consider their findings a valid criticism of the methodology originally employed, however. The original analysis was quite explicit in documenting the multidimensionalityof the various meaning systems. Indeed, the choice of items for the construction of empiricalindicators was dictated by the desire to measure meaning systems representing the confluence of several distinct ideas. The methodology was one of constructing typologies capable of sorting out specific combinations of responses, not one of identifying unidimensionalscales.
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the original meaning system measure but to: (1) examine combination types in further detail, (2) demonstrate that these symbol systems were differentially and predictably espoused in different types of communes, and (3) show that a number of attitudes and activities were associated with the different symbol systems. The study found little evidence, however, to suggest that the close interaction of commune memberswith one another led members to adopt highly consistent world-views. Perceptions of consistency appeared to vary more than actual levels of consistency. The evidence demonstrated that communes espousing certain symbol systems as an official ideology were more tolerant of inconsistencies among the beliefs of their members than were communes espousing other symbol systems. This finding brings us to a remaining presupposition in contemporary religious research, also illustrated in the Bainbridge-Starkessay, that requires clarification in light of the dualistic and wholistic traditions. Bainbridge and Stark suggest that interaction is the necessary ingredient sustaining the plausibility of belief systems (also see Stark & Bainbridge, 1980). In various forms this notion has become quite popular in recent years. Berger's (1969) idea of "plausibility structures" is a kindred notion, suggesting that definitions of reality are convincing only when supported by what Berger calls "conversation." Roof (1978) draws on this idea to explain why "localistic" church members hold more tenaciously to traditional orthodox beliefs than do cosmopolitans. Greeley (1976) has pointed to the "communal" basis of religious commitment among Catholics, arguing for the importanceof "belonging"as a religious need equal to that of "meaning." The importance of group interaction has also been stressed in the great numberof studies of new religious movements that have appeared in the past few years. The rediscovery of the group is a welcome corrective to a field in which the social psychology of the individual has long reigned supreme. The difficulty with this emerging interest is that only one view of the role of the group, rooted implicitly in the epistemology of the dualistic tradition, has been articulated. The result has been a rebirth of sociological reductionism, this time in the subtle guise of what might be termed "sociometric reductionism." This new reductionism rests on the traditional dichotomy between subject and object. While religious belief continues to be treated as an attribute of the subject, interpersonal bonds have become the new element of the objective world with which to explain these beliefs. The existence of subjective beliefs is presumed to depend on the prior, more objective existence of an interpersonal network. The new sociometric view also attaches undue importance to the primary group. Bainbridge and Stark suggest that religion is a viable meaning system because it involves interpersonalbonds, whereas symbolism of other kinds, such as individualism or social scientific symbolism, cannot possibly be a source of meaning because it fails to correspond with interpersonal networks. This argument appears credible with referenceto a highly communalisticmeaning system such as Christianity (Gager,1975; Roof, 1975), but is clearly unsatisfactory as a general understanding of symbolism. To suggest that close interpersonal bonds are a necessary condition for symbols to be communicated meaningfully is to deny the symbolic character of most of the major social institutions shaping modern culture and to go against the most insightful
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analyses of these institutions (e.g., Sennett, 1976; Foucault, 1979; Polanyi, 1957). A closed social network that forms its own definition of reality may find it easier to instill these definitions into the cognitive orientations of the group. But this argument fails to reckon with the complexities of modern society. While modern societies can be regarded as exchange systems, as Bainbridge and Stark argue, systems of exchange are, as Durkheim knew, rooted in noncontractual relations of contract, in symbolic dramatizations that render contractual exchange legitimate, and are present as an analytic dimension of all social exchange. Within the wholistic tradition it has always been recognized that these dramatizations need not be codified in articulate creeds to be effective. Indeed, they are likely to be more powerful if they communicatemeanings that are simply taken for granted and, thereby, enjoy the de facto status of taboo.3
IV
The foregoing has distinguished the main assumptions of the two traditions of influence in the development of the scientific study of religion, indicating some of the weaknesses of each tradition, and discussing the confusion over meaning, belief, consistency, coherence, and plausibility structures which arises from an uncritical blending of the two traditions. In my view, much of the apparent disparity between my research on meaning systems and Bainbridge and Stark's essay is attributable to the fact that the two discussions are concernedwith quite different problems grounded in two quite different theoretical traditions. I have also suggested that greater conceptual clarity can be attained by recognizing the assumptions implicit in each tradition. The criticisms directed at both traditions, however, suggest that neither provides an entirely adequate basis for the scientific study of religion. It is necessary, therefore, to complete this discussion by pointing briefly to what appears to be a promising third alternative. This emerging framework,most clearly evidenced in the work of Roland Barthes (1967, 1972), Mary Douglas (1966, 1973, 1979), Jurgen Habermas (1979), and Michel Foucault (1965, 1970, 1972, 1979), offers a method of structural analysis for the investigation of symbolism, including religion (see Pettit, 1975, for a general introduction to the method). Structural analysis, to give this perspective a name, takes symbolism as its domain of inquiry. Unlike the dualistic tradition, it treats symbols as observable objects, rather than presuming to tap into the subjective realm of individual attitudes and beliefs.
3. Bainbridge and Stark also question whether or not each meaning system studied in the Bay Area is "distinct." My criteria for arguing for their distinctness were:(1) the historical uniqueness of their origin and development,including the different institutional bases originallypromulgatingeach meaning system, (2) the distinctiness of the content of the major orienting symbols employed in each, (3) differences in the social locations of persons espousing each as a dominantmeaning system, (4)differencesin the attitudes and behavior associated with each meaning system, and (5)the capacity of each meaning system to effect variations in social experimentation controlling for all the other meaning systems simultaneously. If Bainbridge and Stark's assertions were to be supported,controllingfor the effects of theism should have wipedout the effects of all the other meaning systems on the experimentation variables. The evidence on p. 254 disconfirms this claim, demonstratingthe independenteffects of each meaning system on each experimentationindex, controllingfor the effects of the other meaning systems. Nowhere,moreover,did I assert that the differentmeaning systems could be distinguished by high statistical associations among items used in the construction of the meaning system typology. Items were selected precisely because of their ability to delimit the content of the symbol systems under consideration.
30
Symbols include acts, objects, events, and utterances. A response to a survey item, such as "I believe in God," is treated as an objective utterance, a symbol, rather than a mere indicator of an internal but unobservable orientation. Unlike the wholistic tradition, structural analysis is concernedwith identifying the conditions that make a symbol meaningful not with describing in elaborate detail what these meanings are. This distinction sets structural analysis apart as a method capable of going beyond the descriptive technique of phenomenology. The value of this distinction has been demonstrated in linguistics. Modern linguistics advanced beyond philology primarily by abandoning its predecessor's preoccupationwith the meanings of words and by focusing its attention on the problem of what made words meaningful. Chomsky (1965) was able to identify generative rules of grammar explaining the conditions under which it became meaningful to utter a statement such as "The salt is on the table," while avoiding the endless task of describing all the connotations of these words to each speaker or hearer. Structural analysis extends this logic to the examination of symbols more generally, arguing that rules conditioning the meaningful use of symbols can be identified, while recognizing that the specific meanings conveyed will vary from one situation or person to the next. Structural analysis is built on the recognition that conditions affecting the meaningfulness of symbolism consist of several types. Habermas (1979), following Searle (1969), suggests that symbols are more likely to be regardedas meaningful if the following correspondences can be shown to exist: (1) between the symbol and the internal state of the speaker - sincerity; (2)between the symbol and reality - truth; (3) between the symbol and rules of language - comprehensibility;and (4) between the symbol and the social environment - legitimacy (also see McCarthy, 1978). This last correspondencerepresents the proper domain for the social scientific investigation of symbolism, but it is acknowledged to be only one of the conditions rendering symbols meaningful. There is, in other words, a conscious rejection of sociological reductionism. It is symptomatic of this awareness that recent examples of structural analysis have been sharply differentiated from Levi-Strauss' earlier "structuralist" approach,which claimed to be capable of unmasking the true meanings contained within bodies of symbols (see Leach, 1974; Burridge, 1967; Douglas, 1967). Theoretical and empirical work reflecting this, still poorly articulated, orientation have adopted a variety of different approaches in searching for the specific conditions or rules affecting the meaningfulness of symbols. One of Levi-Strauss's (1963) lasting contributions to this effort has been the idea that meaningful symbolism is often patterned after the major varieties of social exchange existing in a society. Parson's (1978) discussion of "gift of life" imagery in Christianity draws heavily on this insight. Mary Douglas (1966, 1973, 1979) has been concerned chiefly with the correspondence between body symbolism and the organization of social collectivities. Her work suggests that the symbolization of boundaries is vital to the maintenance of order within social life and to the meaningfulness of symbolic codes. In her view, the nature of symbolic classifications is an important condition influencing the meaningfulness of specific symbols. Foucault (1965, 1970) has also dealt with the relation between categories and symbols and in his more recent work has examined the ritual dimension
31
of social acts, such as imprisonment, punishment, and factory work, that dramatize modes of social organization (1979). Searle (1969), focusing on promises as a type of symbolic utterance, has examined the manner in which the arrangement of words themselves contribute to the meaningfulness or "illocutionaryforce" of the utterance. Other approaches stress the role of social factors contributing to the meaningfulness of symbols. For example, the structural perspective has been adopted to develop hypotheses about the relations between the structure of ideologies and social environments characterizedby different types of resources (Wuthnow,1981). Common to all these approaches is the assumption that patterns - structures - can be identified among symbols themselves, including the symbolic dimension of all social activity, fulfilling the requirements necessary for any particular symbol to communicate meaningfully. The method of structural analysis thus offers promising opportunities for the scientific study of religion, particularlyin its circumventionof the problematicdivision between subject and object in the dualistic tradition and in its formulation of a research agenda going beyond the wholistic tradition by shifting attention away from the description of symbolic meanings to the identification of conditions that make symbols meaningful. Most of the work needed to articulate, to test, and to extend this perspective still lies ahead however.
REFERENCES Aidala, Angela A. 1979 Ideological Systems: A Longitudinal Study of Norms, Values, and Ideology in Sixty Urban Communal Living Groups. PhD Dissertation, Unpublished Department of Sociology, Columbia University. Bainbridge,William Sims 1978 Satan's Power. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress. Barthes, Roland 1967 Elements of Semiology. New York: Hill and Wang. 1972 Mythologies. New York:Hill and Wang. Bellah, Robert N. 1970 Beyond Belief New York:Harper& Row. Berger, Peter L. 1969 The Sacred Canopy. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor. Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann 1966 The Social Construction of Reality. GardenCity, N.Y.: Anchor. Burridge, K.O.L. 1967 "Levi-Strauss and myth." Pp. 91-118 in EdmundLeach (ed.),The StructuralStudy of Myth and Totemism. London: Tavistock. Cantril, Hadley 1941 The Psychology of Social Movements. New York:Wiley. Chomsky,Noam 1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press. Converse,Philip E. 1964 "The nature of belief systems in mass publics." Pp. 206-261 in David E. Apter (ed.),Ideology and Discontent. New York: Free Press. Douglas, Mary 1966 Purity and Danger. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1967 "The meaning of myth." Pp. 49-70 in EdmundLeach (ed.),The StructuralStudy of Myth and Totemism. London: Tavistock. 1973 Natural Symbols. New York:Vintage. Douglas, Mary and Baron Isherwood 1979 The World of Goods. New York: Basic Books. Dumont, Louis 1977 From Mandeville to Marx. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fingarette, Herbert 1963 The Self in Transformation.New York: Harper& Row. Foucault, Michel 1965 Madness and Civilization. New York: RandomHouse. 1970 The Orderof Things. New York: Random House.
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JOURNALFORTHE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION 1973 "Thecritiqueof religion."UnionSeminary QuarterlyReview 28: 205-212. Reprinted in C. E. Reagan and D. Stewart (eds.),The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur.Boston: Press. pp. 213-222. Roof, Wade Clark 1975 "Traditional religion in contemporary society: A theory of local-cosmopolitan plausibility." American Sociological Review 41 (April):195-208. 1978 Communityand Commitment.New York: Elsevier. Saussure, Ferdinandde 1959 Coursein GeneralLinguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill. Searle, John R. 1969 Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seeman, Melvin 1959 "On the meaningof alienation."American Sociological Review 24 (December): 783-791. 1972 "Alienationand engagement."Pp. 467-527 in Angus Campbelland Philip E. Converse (eds.), The Human Meaning of Social Change.New York:Russell Sage. Sennett, Richard 1976 The Fall of Public Man. New York: RandomHouse. Smith, WilfredCantwell 1979 Faith and Belief. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge 1980 "Networks of faith: Interpersonal bonds and recruitment to cults and sects." American Journal of Sociology 85 (May): 1376-1395. Westie, Frank R. 1965 "The American dilemma: An empirical test." American Sociological Review 30 (August):527-538. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1974 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities Press. Wuthnow,Robert 1976 The ConsciousnessReformation.Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress. 1980 "Theparadoxof faith and doctrine."Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, October 1980. 1981 "Comparative ideology." International Journal of ComparativeSociology 21 (3-4).
1972 The Archeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock. 1979 Discipline and Punish. New York:Vintage. Frankl,Viktor E. 1963 Man's Search for Meaning. New York: Washington Square Press. 1969 The Will to Meaning. New York: New AmericanLibrary. Gager, John G. 1975 Kingdom and Community. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Geertz, Clifford 1968 Islam Observed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1973 The Interpretationof Cultures.New York: Harper& Row. Greeley,Andrew M. 1976 The American Catholic. New York: Basic Books. Habermas,Jurgen
1979 Communication and the Evolution of
Society. Boston: Beacon Press. Jung, Carl G. 1963 Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York:Vintage. Langer, Susanne K. 1951 Philosophy in a New Key. New York: Mentor. Laski, Marghanita 1961 Ecstasy. London:Cressent Press. Leach, Edmund 1974 ClaudeLevi-Strauss. London:Penguin. Levi-Strauss,Claude 1963 StructuralAnthropology.New York:Basic Books. McCarthy,Thomas 1978 The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas. Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press. Maslow, Abraham 1962 Towarda Psychology of Being. Princeton: D. Van Nostrand. 1970 Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences. New York:Viking. Parsons, Talcott 1978 Action Theoryand the Human Condition. New York:Free Press. Pettit, Philip 1975 The Concept of Structuralism. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress. Polanyi, Karl 1957 The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press. Ricoeur,Paul 1967 The Symbolism of Evil Boston: Beacon Press.

Wuthnow - Two Traditions in The Study of Religion

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Two Traditions in the Study of Religion Author(s): Robert Wuthnow Source: Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,

JOURNALFOR THE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION

Two Traditions in the Study of Religion

JOURNALFOR THE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION

JOURNALFORTHE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION

JOURNALFORTHE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION

JOURNALFORTHE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION

JOURNALFORTHE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION

JOURNALFORTHE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION

JOURNALFORTHE SCIENTIFICSTUDY OF RELIGION

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