He did this partly by being a contrarian. Stark was, however, very effective at provoking interest in his research questions. Stark is sometimes credited with reviving the sociology of religion, though that ignores the critical work of his peers and rivals, such as Robert Bellah and Peter Berger. "His prose was clear, compelling and abundant.” “Thousands of articles and books have sought to build upon or challenge Stark’s bold claims,” Conrad Hackett, senior demographer at the Pew Research Center, wrote on Twitter. Those who emphasize their difference and social deviance, on the other hand, will see numbers increase. According to his research, religious groups that make it easier to join and participate will-counterintuitively-see fewer people join and participate.
The “rational choice theory,” as it was called, also led Stark to make influential arguments about religious competition and why some movements grow and others decline. “If you assume that people make rational choices about religion, you start seeing how the world works a whole lot better.” “That is the basis for my whole sociology of religion: people are as thoughtful and rational about their religious choices as they are about other choices in life,” Stark once said. It could only be understood in terms of social connections and people’s rational choices. In more than 30 books published across seven decades-including The Churching of America 1776-1990, with Roger Finke The Future of Religion, with William Sims Bainbridge and The Rise of Christianity, by himself-Stark countered that religious life wasn’t any different from other human activity. And he rejected academic accounts of belief as “false consciousness” or fundamentally irrational.
He rejected the common assumption that people practice a religion because they agree with the theology, arguing creedal affirmations are secondary to social connections. Stark made the case that religious conversion, commitment, and cultural vitality should be understood in terms of costs and benefits. Rodney Stark, the influential and controversial sociologist who argued for rational choice in religion, died last month at age 88.
0 kommentar(er)
