Download 3301 Lecture 7

Sociology 3301: Sociology of Religion
Lecture 7: Becoming and Being Religious 1: Religious Socialization Over Time
It has been argued by Zuckerman (2003) that, at its root, people become religious
through a social learning or socialization process. The argument was that if someone –
anyone - was born and raised in a devout Muslim culture, and another a devout Christian
enclave in the American South, they would in all likelihood be either Muslim and
Christian respectively. From this, he asserted that religious identity and conviction aren’t
generally so much a matter of choice, faith, or soul searching as a matter of who and what
one’s parents, friends, neighbors, and community practice and profess. Religion is, on
this view, an accident of birth.
Not everyone would entirely agree with this view, and many can think of
exceptions. For that reason, today we begin looking at the process of being and becoming
religious. Yes, Zuckerman may be right in many cases: people are socialized into their
religious identities and orientations, beliefs and practices (or lack thereof) by those close
to them. Nevertheless, we must be careful to avoid an oversocialized conception of
human beings that leaves no room for individual interpretation of, or deviance from,
social norms. As we will see, the transmission of religion from a community to its
residents, from parents to children, and even from a religious group to its members is not
perfect. Religiosity also changes over the course of an individual’s life, and this may be
magnified or diminished by broader changes taking place in a person’s sociocultural
environment. Some even argue that it is the individual’s lived religion, in all of its
uniqueness, which ultimately matters. Though this may lead us to an equally problematic
undersocialized conception of humans, it is nonetheless an important position to consider.
Religious Socialization and the Intergenerational Transmission of Religion:
Socialization is the process whereby individuals are taught the beliefs, values, and
norms (i.e. the culture) of their community and society. Religious socialization, in turn, is
how religion is reproduced and transmitted from one generation to the next. The same
processes by which people are socialized into culture generally can be seen more
specifically in religious socialization.
For most of human history and in most parts of the world, people become
religious by inheriting their beliefs and practices from their ancestors. In early societies,
religion is inherited from the clan. It serves as an extended family unit, and there is little
difference seen between one’s society and one’s family. In such societies, religious
beliefs are passed from generation to generation through stories, folktales, ballads, and
chants which were told and enacted in a ritual context. Children learned the beliefs and
practices through this informal form of socialization, and no distinction can be made
between general and religious socialization. The transmission of religion takes place
more or less mechanically.
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As societies grow in size and complexity, such as during the industrial revolution
in the West, the nuclear family emerged as the core. Under such conditions, religious
socialization becomes more distinct and primarily the job of parents, together with other
social organizations like congregations, youth programs and schools. Religious
socialization occurs through these agents in societies where religion has been
institutionally separated from an earlier, integrated culture that carries religious meaning
and practices everywhere. While informal socialization continues, the intergenerational
transmission of religion outside the home becomes more formalized (e.g. in Sunday
schools and the like, instruction is often supervised by professionally trained clergy and
educators). In turn, religious primary and secondary schools grow as parents seek to
reinforce their religious teachings – especially as public schools grow more secular.
Thus, those studying religious socialization focus on the major agents of
socialization in modern society: parents and the family, congregations, and religious
education, peers and schools. All socialize by providing models for children to observe
and imitate, by providing positive reinforcement for the desired and negative
reinforcement for unwanted religious beliefs and behaviors.
Social Learning Theory:
Social learning theory suggests that parents are the primary models for and agents
of religious socialization, and most research shows that family religiousness is the most
powerful predictor of adult religiousness. This is particularly true of mothers, though
grandparents can also play a role. If parents have a strong religious identity and engage in
religious education and practice at home, children will be more likely to develop and
maintain the religious practices to which they were exposed. This is a powerful process,
yet it is not inevitable. Indeed, several variable characteristics of parenting and family life
have been shown to affect outcomes: (1) quality of relationships; (2) unity of tradition;
and (3) stability of family structure.
With regard to quality, religious socialization is stronger in families characterized
by considerable warmth and closeness – where parents enjoy marital happiness and show
affection towards their children. Having parents that are supportive and accepting rather
than judgmental also plays a part. In such cases, children are likely more receptive to
their parents’ beliefs and preferences – religion included.
Turning to unity, higher levels of marital conflict are found in marriages between
people of different religious backgrounds. This disrupts the religion/family linkage and
thereby weakens the socialization of children into a faith. When there is unity religious
practice is more open and the couple is more likely to want to pass this on. Families with
religious unity give more reinforcing religious cues to kids. Conversely, parents from
different backgrounds send mixed messages. Indeed, intermarriage may lead kids to
withdraw from religious commitments altogether instead of choosing one parent’s faith
over another. Thus, parents are more likely to transmit religious affiliation and their faith
perspective to their children when they have common religious commitments.
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Family stability, finally, is important. Intact families are more likely to practice
religious rituals, attend services, and affiliate with a religious tradition. This translates
into stronger religious socialization of children and a greater likelihood that children will
continue with religious practice as adults than seen among single-parent households and
step-families. This is in part because single parents are less involved in faith communities
and divorced fathers are less involved in religious socialization.
Of course, the roles played by family unity and stability in religious socialization
have significant implications for the future. With the rise in religious intermarriage in
recent decades due to globalization, reduction in stigmas surrounding intermarriage,
increased rates of marital dissolution in the last century, and the breakdown of the
traditional family structure in favor of a diverse array of alternatives, the future
intergenerational transmission of religion may be adversely affected.
Channeling Through Peers and Schools:
Parents may also have more indirect influence on their children’s subsequent
religiousness by channeling them into groups, settings, and experiences (such as
friendships and schools) that reinforce their religious socialization efforts in the home. As
many of us know, from childhood to later adolescence friends have an increasing
influence on kids’ lives. This includes their religious beliefs and practices. Longitudinal
studies confirm that youth religiosity is significantly predicted by peers’ religiosity.
When peers’ attendance is low, youth attendance is low – and vice versa.
Another extrafamilial agent of socialization over which families have some
discretion is schools. Some parents like to send their kids to religious schools that align
with family religious teachings, while others go so far as to home school their kids. While
the effect of such practices is not as strong as that of parents and peers, the fact is that the
more one’s schoolmates attend services, the more one is likely to attend. However, it is
not merely being in a religious school that matters, but the level of religiosity within the
school.
This is just a cursory overview of the many factors that go into childhood
religious education, but it gives the flavor of the major processes involved.
Religion Over the Life Course:
Religiosity does not proceed in a straight line over the course of life for most
people, either upward or downward or straight across. Sociologists recognize this and
thus have sought to identify systematic patterns of variation in religiosity over the life
course. As modern society has become more pluralistic, differentiated, even fragmented,
it has become harder to find these patterns. Still, I will try to bring some order out of all
this and consider how religion evolves and changes as people age and experience major
events in their life course.
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Since we have discussed childhood above, we begin with adolescence. Several
longitudinal data sets in this area tell a similar (and hardly surprising) story: adolescence
is a major period of instability. Often that instability manifests itself in religious decline
(e.g. dropping off of religious attendance). Yet, there are some caveats to this. First, most
adolescents only change their levels of religious attendance slightly (e.g. from weekly to
bi-weekly). Second, very few (7%) went from regular attendance to non-attendance.
Third, 15% reported increased levels of attendance. What this adds up to is that, despite
an overall trend, the religious story of adolescence is not simply one of uniform decline.
It is more a period of religious polarization. When looked at more closely, compared to
those whose religiosity drops off, those whose increased during adolescence tended to
come from highly religious families and from conservative Protestant traditions,
suggesting the continuing importance of religious socialization in later years of
childhood.
Turning to emerging adulthood, it is the case that in every society adolescents
make a transition into adulthood. In some traditional cultures this involves elaborate,
maybe even dangerous rites of passage conducted in the context of religious celebrations.
Even in the West, adult baptism, confirmation, and bar/bat mitzvah’s may dimly echo
these, but cannot really be seen as corresponding transitions into adulthood in the secular
world.
For most Western youth today, the passage to adulthood is far from clear. Half as
century ago, the age of 18 was quite significant as you graduated from high school,
entered college or work, could vote, drink, and (for men) could be drafted. As well, the
average age of marriage and childbearing was much lower, so 18-22 effectively
represented a sort of divide or transition to self-sufficient adulthood. Not any more.
Today young people stay financially connected to their parents, delay marriage (or have
‘starter marriages’), and postpone childbearing, if they have any. Those who leave home
for college and return have been called boomerang kids. Now even college graduation
doesn’t often separate things. Arnett (2004) calls this grey area, the years between 18-29
today “emerging adulthood.” Some, less generally, have called it “adultescence.”
Not surprisingly, this period is characterized by considerable instability,
compounded by the labor market, cost of living, and the process of leaving home. The
effect of all this on religion is clear: emerging adults are the least religious adults. On
measures of service attendance, prayer, and religious importance, emerging adults
consistently register lower levels of religiosity than others. They also tend to be less
involved in and committed to a wider variety of other, nonreligious social and
institutional connections, associations, and activities (e.g. volunteer groups). Indeed, it
doesn’t matter if they attend college or not. It is their lack of stability in work and
personal relationships that is the hallmark of emerging adulthood as a developmental
stage.
Mature adulthood is characterized for most people by two of the most significant
life course events: marriage and childbearing. Both family formation events are related to
higher levels of religious practice, while, conversely, divorce and cohabitation generally
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reduce religious activity. However, there are important qualifications that must be made,
The exact timing of such events mediates their influence on religious behaviors (e.g.
people who have kids in mature adulthood boost their religious participation while those
who do so earlier do not). Also, mature adulthood is often fraught with responsibilities
and stresses that can negatively affect religious involvement. For those who buy into
“competitive parenting,” Sunday may not mean church so much as a day to run their kids
around to numerous activities. Stress at work, concern for aging parents, saving for
retirement, and the like may take one’s mind off religion, while, in contrast, personal
illnesses or tragedies may do the opposite. The point is that there are a variety of
countervailing influences at work during this stage of life that affect religious
involvement.
In later life, studies consistently show that religion increases in importance and
involvement (e.g. attendance, prayer, ratings of religion as “very important,” etc.) One
explanation for this rise in religiosity in later life is that participation provides a system of
social, emotional, and spiritual support. As people age they lose social ties and their role
in society changes. They retire and lose friends. The social ties of religious congregations
help to fill this void. Many religious communities also still believe in the concept of
respecting one’s elders as opposed to the prevalent ageism in the secular world. Older
adults are also encouraged to perform volunteer work through religious organizations,
providing social ties and an opportunity to participate in important productive activities.
There is even evidence that such involvement may have health benefits for older adults.
Krause (2001) suggests that people in active social networks have better mental and
physical health. People with stronger support systems like found in religious
organizations also live longer (Hummer et.al, 1999). Indeed, ultimately, religious ties are
uniquely suited to relieving the fear and uncertainty of death.
Age, Cohort, and Generational Effects on Religion:
Beyond focusing on different age groups and current religious fluctuations
between them, it is important that we do not consider that the effects of aging on
religiosity are constant over time. For example, it is unlikely that someone experiencing
adolescence in the Great Depression will experience religiosity over the life course in the
same way as someone coming of age in the 1960’s. Living through a specific period of
history combines with the “age effect” to represent a “period effect.” Together, these
produce what sociologists call a “cohort effect, that of being a certain age at a certain
period of time.
Cohort analysis reminds us that cultural context shapes the expectations of agerelated behavior. Indeed, the “emerging adulthood” discussed above may be more
properly seen as a cohort phenomenon as it did not exist 50 years ago (and might not in
the future). This highlights the importance of looking at cohorts (or several, making up a
“generation”), but also illustrates the difficulty of separating age and cohort effects in any
particular analysis.
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A good example of how age and cohort/generation can independently affect
religious participation is Dillon’s (2007) analysis of longitudinal data collected over a 60
year time span. This included 2 cohorts born 8 years apart (1921 and 1929). The older
group were children of the Great Depression, often served in the military in WWII, and
experienced the social upheavals of the 1960’s when in their 50’s. The younger cohort
did not experience the deprivation of the Depression so much, were too young to serve in
WWII, and were almost to middle age by the ‘60’s. These differences were not so much
in cohort as in generation.
Dillon’s study showed that religiousness did not follow a linear trend across the
life course so much as a U-curve. Religiousness was high in adolescence and later life
and generally lower in middle adulthood. That this pattern was the same for both
generations suggests that age effects might be at work more than cohort effects.
However, the timing of the post-adolescence decrease differed between the generations:
the younger group declined in their 30’s while the older did during their late 40’s. This
suggests a cohort or generational explanation: the older group remained more committed
to social institutions, including religion, for a longer period of time.
Using more contemporary data, generational analysis in the sociology of religion
has grown more popular in the past few decades as the baby boomers have worked their
way through the life course, spawning the “millenials” and “echo” generations.
The key to a generational analysis of religion is to understand how the period
influences fundamentally shape the outlook of people who live through them at key
developmental moments (e.g. adolescence). That unique outlook then shapes the specific
way the generation understands and practices religion. Wade Clark Roof (1993; 1999)
argues, for example, that the particular generational experiences of baby boomers led
them to fundamentally reorient themselves to religion by adopting the posture of spiritual
seekers. Having come of age in the 1960’s-1970’s, being fully exposed to the cultural
ferment of the time as well as the authority damaging revelations of the Vietnam war and
Watergate, boomers feel authorized to choose their own religious paths, emphasize the
experiential aspect over the doctrinal, and tend to be skeptical of traditional religious
organizations. They are, in a word, “spiritual not religious.”
This brings us back to cohorts. Cohort replacement – the replacement of older
cohorts (through death) by younger cohorts – is a fundamental engine of social change.
Roof’s argument that boomers are remaking American religion reflects this idea: that
their seeker orientation, passed on to their kids, will gradually replace older cohorts more
oriented toward traditional religious practices.
Yet, for this to occur, boomers need to effectively socialize their kids into their
spiritually seeking orientation. Have they done this? No comprehensive study of
generation Y (“echo boomers”) yet exists. Yet some scholars have highlighted the
spiritual quest of the post boomers. Flory and Miller (2008) argue that this generation
also has formative experiences specific to their time and place which influences their
orientation to religion. They inherit an ethos of questioning institutional authority and
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focusing on a personal journey. This has been reinforced by unethical and hypocritical
actions of some major institutions (e.g. corporate crime, poor handling of pedophilia in
the church). Beyond this, generation Y has been affected by the increasing pluralism of
the world exhibited in both their neighborhoods and new media, leading to an attitude of
relative tolerance and acceptance of difference.
How do these cultural influences and generational responses affect the practice of
religion? Flory and Miller argue that post boomers approach religious institutions with
some suspicion and so focus on the quality of relationships therein more than on the
institution itself. They also emphasize experience and embodiment in their religious
practices. Though in the spiritual marketplace, they are not content simply to browse and
consume, but want a hand in the production of the religious goods to be consumed
(“expressive communalism”).
According to Wade Clark Roof (2009), generational patterns like these not only
have significance in terms of individual level beliefs and practices, but also in the
implications for the religious organizations that have to adapt to these generational shifts.
Faced with children of baby boomers who have no strong attachment to particular
religious institutions, but who, as “digital natives” (who have never lived in a world
without such technology) are strongly attached to their mobile devices, religious
organizations must respond. They are currently scrambling to figure out ways to harness
the power of new media in order to connect with this new generation. Successful
congregations need to recognize the ways the cultural winds are blowing and find ways
of putting up sails to harness the power of these winds rather than fighting or ignoring
them.
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