Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion

Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. By Rodney Stark and Roger Finke. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 343 pp. $48.00 (cloth); $18.95 (paper).

At a recent American Academy of Religion meeting, after a brilliant paper was presented on God and religious experience, the speaker was asked this question by an academic: "But how can you say these things in our postmodem, anti-enlightenment, pluralistic age?" Acts of Faith secures the thesis that not just talk about, but devout belief in, God is rational, widespread, and shows no sign of abating. For a vast number of well-educated, articulate human beings talk of God is not very difficult at all.

Acts of Faith is an important treatment of the sociology of religious belief and should be considered required reading by anyone interested in the social standing and assessment of religion. It overturns the conventions of a great deal of earlier sociological inquiry into religion and stands as a model of clarity and rigor.

Rodney Stark and Roger Finke begin by documenting the social and intellectual history of atheism, noting how history, sociology, and psychoanalysis have been employed to exhibit the irrationality of religious belief. They underscore how many of these projects have done little more than presup- pose the credulous nature of religion. There is something darkly humorous about the many techniques employed by "intellectuals" and social scientists to explain why religion persists and even grows amidst "modernity." Stark and Finke's analysis is devastating.

From the outset through to the last chapter the writing is crisp and at times quite amusing. Here is a passage from the introduction, lamenting the fact that many sociologists focus their work on fringe religious groups: A coven of nine witches in Lund, Sweden, is far more apt to be the object of a case study than is, say, the Episcopal Church, with more than two million members. Some of this merely reflects that it is rather easier to get one's work published if the details are sufficiently lurid or if the group is previously undocumented. A recitation of Episcopalian theology and excerpts from the Book of Common Prayer will not arouse nearly the interest (prurient or otherwise) than can be generated by tales of blondes upon the altar and sexual contacts with animals (p. 19).

Stark and Finke have written a text that abounds in technical case studies, while at the same time giving us a book that is a pleasure to read.

The introduction and first three chapters alone are a tour de force. They expose the blatant inadequacy of sociological work that reads religious belief as pathology or flagrant irrationality. They challenge the thesis of impending, virtually inevitable secularization, for instance, in part by refuting the claim that in the distant past almost everyone was religious. There have always been unbelievers, shoulder to shoulder with believers.

Chapter 4 begins Stark and Finke's constructive analysis of the rationality and life of religion, mostly focusing on Christianity, with some attention to Islam, Buddhism, and other religions. The study takes place under three headings: The Religious Individual, The Religious Group, and the Religious Economy. The work ranges over psychology and the behavior of institutions. Definitions of religion and other crucial terms in their work are carefully, explicitly presented.

My only reservation about the text is its occasional over-reliance upon economic terms in their analysis. Consider this definition: "A religious economy consists of all of the religious activity going on in any society: a 'market' of current and potential adherents, a set of one or more organizations seeking to attract or maintain adherents, and the religious culture offered by the organizations" (p. 193). While poetry may be in short supply here, there is still something refreshing about a constructive, scholarly treatment of religion in society that is based on empirical, not merely speculative grounds.

I close by highlighting one of the many lessons drawn by Stark and Finke. Forms of Christianity that essentially divest the faith of its classical, historical identity do not fare well. Stark and Finke comment on John Shelby Spong:

Spong's own diocese is a disaster area. Rather than serving as a refuge for millions of "exiles" from traditional beliefs, as Spong proposes, the diocese of Newark has suffered devastating membership losses throughout the bishop's more than twenty years in office. From 1978 to 1996 Spong's diocese declined by more than 40 percent, compared with a decline of 16 percent for the denomination as a whole (p. 261).

Stark and Finke also expose the self-destructive nature of a theology like Don Cupitt's that jettisons God:

Cupitt's prescription [to take leave of God] strikes us as rather like expecting people to continue to buy soccer tickets and gather in the stands to watch players who, for lack of a ball, just stand around. if there are no supernatural beings, then there are no miracles, there is no salvation, prayer is pointless, the Commandments are but ancient wisdom, and death is the end. in which case the rational person would have nothing to do with church. Or, more accurately, a rational person would have nothing to do with a church like that (p. 146).