¹ Special thanks must be given to Professor David Moberg of Marquette University who encouraged me to devote time to the field, enlightened me about it, and read some of my earlier comments on this topic. In addition I would like to thank the anonymous readers who read the first draft for this journal.

² I first observed this when reading Nelson's, JamesMoral Nexus (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971).Google Scholar Well grounded in relevant sociological theory in the manner of H. Richard Niebuhr this work nevertheless is naive in accepting datum on prejudice from the studies of Glock and Stark. The latter studies are markedly flawed by dubious presuppositions easily critiqued by a theologian. For this see Strommen, M., et al., A Study of Generations (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1972)Google Scholar, chaps. 4 and 9. On the other hand there are theologians like David Tracy, whose works have been informed by careful reading of social sciences, theoretical and survey oriented. This is very clear in Blessed Rage for Order (New York: Seabury, 1975)Google Scholar, chap. 5: “The Religious Dimension of Common Human Experience and Language,” where Tracy analyzes “religion” in a manner compatible with the conclusions of this paper. He begins with Lonergan (see note 16 below) and suggests, as does this paper, that there is no need for a single universal definition of the term.

³ A founder and leading proponent of political theology is Metz, J. B. (see his “Political Theology” in The Concise Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Rahner, K. [New York: Seabury, 1975], pp. 1238–43Google Scholar). His recently published English language anthology, Faith in History and Society (New York: Seabury, 1980)Google Scholar covers much of his development and reveals his and fellow theologians' debt to the Frankfurt School version of critical theory. A parallel figure in liberation theology is Gustavo Gutierrez (A Theology of Liberation [New York: Orbis, 1973]Google Scholar). For a good and brief introduction to and comparison of both perspectives see Fiorenza, Francis P., “Political Theology and Liberation Theology” in McFadden, Thomas M., ed., Liberation, Revolution and Freedom (New York: Seabury, 1975).Google ScholarFierro's, AlfredoThe Militant Gospel (New York: Orbis, 1977)Google Scholar is a developed critique of both movements. Gregory Baum's address, “The Impact of Sociology on Catholic Theology,” delivered to the 13th annual convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America touches on the changes in the Church, the assimilation of sociology into theological studies, the historical nature of knowledge and, thus, relativity. He discusses political and liberation theology in a sociological context that is exceedingly well grounded (see: Proceedings of the CTSA 30 (1975), 1–19Google Scholar).

⁴ See Berger, Peter, A Humor of Angels (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1969)Google Scholar, chap. 2, “The Perspective of Sociology: Relativizing the Relativizers.”

⁵ To the already over-quoted comments by Marx (“Religion is the opiate of the people”) and Freud (religion equals illusion), one could add Max Mueller (religion is a “disease of language”) and Edward Tylor (religion is imperfect philosophy). See Berger, Peter, “Some Second Thoughts on Substantive versus Functional Definitions of Religion,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 13 (1974), 125ff.;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDemerath, N. J. and Hammond, Philip E., Religion in a Social Context (New York: Random House, 1969)Google Scholar, chap. 1, “The Primitive Material Tradition”; and Budd, Susan, Sociologists and Religion (London: Collier Macmillan, 1973)Google Scholar, chaps. 1 and 2, for some comments about the nineteenth century reductionistic phase of the study of religion. As the latter two authors amply demonstrate, the attempts to force the complex phenomenon of religion into simplistic categories are an invalid form of reduction, i.e., they do not meet a scientific purpose (to formulate universal explanations in the most simple terms possible) because they ignore divergent data. This “definition by assassination” (Berger) can be dismissed without fear. Invalid forms of reductionism are explored in Nielsen, Kai, “Some Methodological Remarks About Reductionism,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 42 (1974), 236–38.Google Scholar

⁶ Among those social scientists attempting a substantive approach are the phenomenological school (Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Mircea Eliade) and contemporary sociologists such as Robertson, Roland, The Sociological Interpretation of Religion (New York: Schocken, 1970)Google Scholar, and Peter Berger.

⁷ Among those social scientists attempting functional approaches are Bellah, Robert (“Religious Evolution,” American Sociological Review 29 [1964], 258–374CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Geertz, Clifford (“Religion as a Cultural System” in Bainton, Michael, ed., Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion [New York: Praeger, 1966], pp. 1–46);Google ScholarLuckmann, Thomas (The Invisible Religion [New York: Macmillan, 1967]Google Scholar); and Yinger, J. Milton (The Scientific Study of Religion [New York: Macmillan, 1970]).Google Scholar The classical work of Durkheim generally falls into this category as does that of Malinowski; some argue that the former has elements of both types of definition present.

⁸ When an emphasis on “praxis” is in the forefront of theological discussion, the question of whose experience is normative becomes very heated. Third World and European theologians have disputed the degree of secularization in society and indeed the meaning of the word (see references in footnote 3). The complexity of the problem is found in Shiner, Larry, “The Concept of Secularization in Empirical Research,” JSSR 6 (1967), 207–20.Google Scholar He outlines six uses of the concept and, inevitably, ties a solution of the problem to difficulties we will touch in this paper.

⁹ See Robertson, p. 42.

¹⁰ Tillich's clearest statement and development of this formulation is in The Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper & Row, 1957).Google Scholar Sociologists using this variant are Bellah and Yinger.

¹¹ See Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System.”

¹² See Luckmann, The Invisible Religion.

¹³ Robertson, pp. 29-43. Smith, W. Cantwell in The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: New American Library, 1963)Google Scholar agrees with Robertson but goes further. The concept “religion” is a product of the differentiation/segmentation of the Enlightenment and thus should not be applied in a wider context. In fact he argues for dropping the word from our vocabulary.

¹⁴ See Spiro, Melford, “Religion: Problems of Explanation and Definition” in Bainton, , p. 89.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Dobbelaere, Karel and Lauwers, Jan, “Definitions of Religion: A Sociological Critique,” Social Compass 20 (1973/1974), 542;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Penner, Hans and Yonan, Edward, “Is a Science of Religion Possible?” Journal of Religion 52 (1972), 131–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ The distinction appears in Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), pp. xi and 70;Google Scholar the work develops the relationship of historicity and theology in depth.

¹⁷ See Budd, p. 7.

¹⁸ Two very good examples of this type of work are to be found in Friedrichs, Robert W., A Sociology of Sociology (New York: Free Press, 1970)Google Scholar and Gouldner, Alvin, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (New York: Avon, 1970).Google Scholar

¹⁹ In 1957 Merton's, Robert “Latent and Manifest Functions” in his Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1957), pp. 19–84Google Scholar, indicated that three interlocking postulates of functional theory were to be empirically tested if the theory was to remain scientific. In 1970 Friedrichs noted that nothing in that line had been done. In fact some suggested an identification of its postulates with scientific method (see Friedrichs, chap. 10).

²⁰ Ideology has multiple meanings. I find useful the definition Schillebeeckx, Edward gives in Christ (New York: Seabury, 1980), p. 902Google Scholar: “Ideology is the totality of conceptions and convictions that claim to be an exact reproduction of a particular state of affairs…. On close analysis … [it] is more the by-product of unconscious, suppressed longings or the really predominant economic forms of society…. Ideology is a form of ‘false consciousness’… [i.e., it is] a consciousness which does not recognize the real scope of its claim and therefore has a broken relationship to reality.” For further development of this concept see Berger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966)Google Scholar, introduction; and Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1936).Google Scholar

²¹ See the section of Merton's “Latent and Manifest Functions” entitled “Functional Analysis as Ideology.” See also Gouldner, p. 334.

²² Friedrichs, pp. 270-72.

²³ Winter, Gibson, Elements for a Social Ethic (New York: Macmillan, 1966).Google Scholar See also Robertson, p. 37.

²⁴ Winter, p. 187.

²⁵ The issue of the “real” meaning of religious action/belief is touched by Budd, pp. 7ff., who notes that the functional approach is quite amenable to exploration beyond the vision of the believer. This parallels Merton's “Latent and Manifest Functions.” It also raises very serious questions about truth. Says Robert Bellah ruminating on his classroom bouts with students: “What came through … was the assumption that the social scientist understood what people were doing when they are being religious in ways deeper than they do… I was arguing that my own allegedly scientific concepts have a higher ontological status than the religious realm I was studying…. It did not consciously occur to me that… [there was] a conflict of world views” (“Confessions of a Former Establishment Fundamentalist,” Bulletin of the Council on the Study of Religion [December 1970], 3–6Google Scholar). A closely parallel critique of the “enlightened mind” can be found in Dobbelaere and Lauwers, p. 548. An interesting position on the posture of the sociologist studying the self image of the believers in a Latin American context can be found in Maduro, Otto, Religion and Social Conflict (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1982).Google Scholar He affirms the utility and desirability of the suspicion and a lack of confidence that a sociologist has; he believes this is appropriate to scientific reserve. He asserts that one must not fall into anticlerical moralism which thinks it finds “ulterior motives” (see: pp. 17-18). The real question is how easily one can separate the postures; Maudro is quite enthusiastic about scientific reserve and the truth it produces. Caution seems in order.

²⁶ What I am suggesting here parallels the concerns that have become associated with Van A. Harvey since the publication of his The Historian and the Believer (New York: Macmillan, 1966).Google Scholar There is a morality of sociological knowledge in contemporary thought as truly as there is one of historical knowledge.

²⁷ Berger, , “Second Thoughts …,” pp. 128–29.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ironically, Dobbelaere and Lauwers accuse Berger of precisely the same thing—ideological usage. Harvey, Van A., in “Peter Berger: Retrospective,” Religious Studies Review 5 (1979), 1–10Google Scholar, points out that Berger used functional and substantive definitions, depending on context. This switch, his ambivalent use of the relativity issue in the sociology of knowledge, and his peculiar use of transcendence as a concept have led Harvey to suggest that Berger reflects the crisis of contemporary theology rather than provides a solution. One is virtually forced to explore Berger in depth, as he has touched many of the points central to the liberation and political theology debates and has attacked the movements directly. See Berger, Peter, Pyramids of Sacrifice (New York: Basic Books, 1974)Google Scholar and other sources noted by Harvey.

²⁹ See Barbour, Ian, Myths, Models and Paradigms (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), p. 78.Google Scholar

³⁰ Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith is the best concise statement of themes discussed here.

³¹ One does not have to be as vehement as Leonard Wheat to realize that Tillich may be confusing. In his Paul Tillich's Dialectical Humanism (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970)Google Scholar, Wheat argues that Tillich was a humanist whose concealed message was that God is man. Wheat suggests he fooled many; his standard of interpretation is Kaufmann's, WalterThe Faith of a Heretic (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961).Google Scholar One might suggest a great deal of projection in Wheat despite his extensive review of Tillich's writings and his critics. Hick, John, The Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 57–59Google Scholar, discusses the middle ground between naturalism and supra naturalism that Tillich attempted to create. He questions the success of this alternative. These questions of naturalism leave us with the impression that the “ultimate concerns” concept is open to the use (abuse?) that occurred in the social sciences.

³² See Friedrichs for an excellent unmasking of this “cloak of neutrality.”

³³ Friedrichs, Robert, “Social Research and Theology: End of Detente?” Review of Religious Research 15 (1974), 113–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁴ Gouldner, pp. 258-62.

³⁵ Friedrichs, , Sociology, pp. 271–72, 249–50;Google Scholar see also Spiro, pp. 105-106. Spiro argues that religious beliefs are not means but ends.

³⁶ In Unsecular Man: The Persistence of Religion (New York: Schocken, 1972)Google Scholar Greeley applies Geertz's definition (see above, footnote 7) uncritically and without the nuance that characterizes his work on religion and assimilation.

³⁷ Berger, The Sacred Canopy, appendix. For his revised review, see “Second Thoughts….”

³⁸ See Spiro.

³⁹ Dobbelaere and Lauwers accent the role of social science in discussing usage in society. Maduro, Religion and Social Conflict, esp. chaps. 1, 3, and 28, makes a strong case for understanding specific circumstances in the sociological study of religion.

⁴⁰ See Berger, , “Second Thoughts…,” p. 128;Google Scholar and Combs, Eugene and Bowlby, Eugene, “Tolerance and Tradition,” Studies in Religion 4 (1974/1975), 315–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴¹ See Gadamer, Hans G., Truth and Method (London: Sheed and Ward, 1975).Google Scholar

⁴² See footnote 25 above and Bellah, Robert, “Christianity & Symbolic Realism,” JSSR 9 (1970), 89–96.Google Scholar The substance of this article appears in Bellah, , Beyond Belief (New York: Harper & Row, 1970)Google Scholar as part of chap. 15.

⁴³ See Robbins, Thomas, Anthony, Dick, and Curtis, Thomas, “The Limits of Symbolic Realism,” JSSR 12 (1973), 259–71.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Kuhn's, work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)Google Scholar, revolutionized the history of science and placed it on center stage as far as philosophical theory is concerned. For subsequent developments see Barbour, Myths, Models and Paradigms and Garry Nutting, ed., Paradigms & Revolutions (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Dittes, James, “Secular Religion: Dilemma of Churches and Researchers,” Review of Religious Research 10 (1969), 65–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁶ See Allport, Gordon W., The Individual & His Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1950).Google Scholar The concept is drawn from the realm of theology (p. 145).

⁴⁷ Here Dittes is paraphrasing Pruyser, Paul, A Dynamic Psychology of Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).Google Scholar

⁴⁸ See Smith, Huston, Beyond the Post-Modern Mind (New York: Crossorad, 1982)Google Scholar, chaps. 4 and 6: “Excluded Knowledge” and “Science and Theology: The Unstable Detente.” Smith's critique extends to Kuhn and Polanyi and once to Barbour. As his approach represents a particularly good statement of the position, I note that I agree with his vision of the limits of science but demur when he posits a necessary identification of science and control.