Table of Contents

Introduction: Atheism, Faith, and the Social Scientific Study of Religion

PART ONE • PARADIGMS IN CONFLICT
1. A New Look at Old Issues
2. Rationality and the “Religious Mind”
3. Secularization, R.I.P.

PART TWO • THE RELIGIOUS INDIVIDUAL
4. The Micro Foundations of Religion
5. Religious Choices: Conversion and Reaffiliation

PART THREE • THE RELIGIOUS GROUP
6. Religious Group Dynamics
7. Catholic Religious Vocations: Decline and Revival

PART FOUR • THE RELIGIOUS ECONOMY
8. A Theoretical Model of Religious Economies
9. Religious Competition and Commitment: An International Assessment
10. Church-to-Sect Movements

Appendix: Propositions and Definitions
Notes
References
Index

About the Author

Rodney Stark is Professor of Sociology and Comparative Religion at the University of Washington. Among his many books are The Rise of Christianity (1996), The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation (California, 1985), and, with Roger Finke, The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (1992). Roger Finke is Professor of Sociology at Pennsylvania State University.

Reviews

A "crucial exposition in an increasingly combative dispute about method in the sociology of religion."--"Times Literary Supplement