"Choice and Religion provides a detailed critique of 'rational choice' to demonstrate that industrialisation has secularised the western world and that diversity, far from making religion more popular by allowing individuals to maximize their returns, undermines it. The claim that competition promotes religion is refuted with evidence from a wide variety of western societies. Bruce also examines the Nordic countries and the ex-communist states of eastern Europe to explore the consequences of different sorts of state regulation, and to show that ethnicity is a more powerful determinate of religious change than market structures. Where religion matters, it is not because individuals are maximising their returns but because it defines group identity and is deeply implicated in social conflict."--BOOK JACKET.

Collectivistic Religions draws upon empirical studies of Christianity in Europe to address questions of religion and collective identity, religion and nationalism, religion and public life, and religion and conflict. It moves beyond the attempts to tackle such questions in terms of 'choice' and 'religious nationalism' by introducing the notion of 'collectivistic religions' to contemporary debates surrounding public religions. Using a comparison of several case studies, this book challenges the modernist bias in understanding of collectivistic religions as reducible to national identities. A significant contribution to both the study of religious change in contemporary Europe and the theoretical debates that surround religion and secularization, it will be of key interest to scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, political science, religious studies, and geography.

Many people these days regard religion as outdated and are unable to understand how believers can intellectually justify their faith. Nonbelievers have long assumed that progress in technology and the sciences renders religion irrelevant. Believers, in contrast, see religion as vital to society's spiritual and moral well-being. But does modernization lead to secularization? Does secularization lead to moral decay? Sociologist Hans Joas argues that these two supposed certainties have kept scholars from serious contemporary debate and that people must put these old arguments aside in order for debate to move forward. The emergence of a "secular option" does not mean that religion must decline, but that even believers must now define their faith as one option among many. In this book, Joas spells out some of the consequences of the abandonment of conventional assumptions for contemporary religion and develops an alternative to the cliché of an inevitable conflict between Christianity and modernity. Arguing that secularization comes in waves and stressing the increasing contingency of our worlds, he calls upon faith to articulate contemporary experiences. Churches and religious communities must take into account religious diversity, but the modern world is not a threat to Christianity or to faith in general. On the contrary, Joas says, modernity and faith can be mutually enriching.

Rational Choice Theory and Religion considers one of the major developments in the social scientific paradigms that promises to foster a greater theoretical unity among the disciplines of sociology, political science, economics and psychology. Applying the theory of rational choice--the theory that each individual will make her choice to maximize gain and minimize cost--to the study of religion, Lawrence Young has brought together a group of internationally renowned scholars to examine this important development within the field of religion for the first time.

This collection of essays brings together scholars who use frameworks provided by Marx and Critical Theory in analyzing religion. Its goal is to establish a critical theory of religion within sociology of religion as an alternative to rational choice.

With this consumer guide, readers can review 99 world religions and utilize proven shopping comparison techniques to base their decision about which to adopt on the things that really matter - what you have to wear, whether you can have sex, what you can and can't wear, and where you'll go when you die.

"It's widely acknowledged that American parents from different class backgrounds take different approaches to raising their children. Upper and middle-class parents invest considerable time facilitating their children's activities, while working class and poor families take a more hands-off approach. These different strategies influence how children approach school. But missing from the discussion is the fact that millions of parents on both sides of the class divide are raising their children to listen to God. What impact does a religious upbringing have on their academic trajectories? Drawing on 10 years of survey data with over 3,000 teenagers and over 200 interviews, God, Grades, and Graduation (GGG) offers a revealing and at times surprising account of how teenagers' religious upbringing influences their educational pathways from high school to college. GGG introduces readers to a childrearing logic that cuts across social class groups and accounts for Americans' deep relationship with God: religious restraint. This book takes us inside the lives of these teenagers to discover why they achieve higher grades than their peers, why they are more likely to graduate from college, and why boys from lower middle-class families particularly benefit from religious restraint. But readers also learn how for middle-upper class kids--and for girls especially--religious restraint recalibrates their academic ambitions after graduation, leading them to question the value of attending a selective college despite their stellar grades in high school. By illuminating the far-reaching effects of the childrearing logic of religious restraint, GGG offers a compelling new narrative about the role of religion in academic outcomes and educational inequality"--