Sociology of Religion Readings List
Readings for Comprehensive Exam in Sociology of Religion
All sociologists of religion should be familiar a core set of readings in order to claim professional competence, as background to eventually teaching in the sociology of religion, and as intellectual context to help become an original producer of significant scholarship in the field. The purpose of doctoral exams is to provide occasions for students to master the core literatures of their fields of interest and research. Scholars differ on exactly what literature belongs on such core lists of readings. Listed below, however, are the readings which ND graduate students will be expected to master for the program’s doctoral comprehensive exams in the sociology of religion. Among the core questions in the sociology of religion—which the readings below address in various ways and about which doctoral exams in sociology of religion will ask—are the following:
1. Subject: What is “religion?” Why and how are people religious? How is religion expressed in social terms and forms?
2. Methods: How can we study religion sociologically? What are the characteristic strengths and weaknesses of different methodological approaches, especially as they relate to larger theoretical interests and perspectives and types of research agendas and questions?
3. Modernity: How does the historical transition from “pre-modern” to modern (and postmodern?) society affect the strength and character of religion? Does modernity secularize or not? Are there multiple modernities? What might that mean?
4. Participation and Communities: What social factors and processes influence individuals’ religious beliefs, commitments, practices, conversions, switching, etc. and the strength and character of religious communities, traditions, and subcultures?
5. Reproduction and Change: What influence does religion exert in maintaining and/or challenging established social practices and institutions, through politics, cultural transformation, or other means?
Review the current area exam list.
Many of the readings that have historically been included on the area exams can be found below:
Core Reading List
Ammerman, Nancy. 1997. Congregation and Community. Rutgers.
Ammerman, Nancy. 2006. Everyday Religion. New York: Oxford University Press (Chs. ???).
Ammerman, Nancy. 2013. Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes. New York: Oxford University Press. (Pp. 1-55, 288-304).
Ammerman, Nancy 1997. “Golden Rule Christianity,” pp. 196-216 in David Hall (ed.), Lived Religion in America. Princeton.
Asad, Talal. 1993. “The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category.” In Genealogies of Religion.
Becker, Penny. 1999. Congregations in Conflict. Cambridge.
Bell, Daniel. 1980. “The Return of the Sacred?” The Winding Passage. Basic Books (Ch. 17).
Bellah, Robert. 1967. “Civil Religion in America.” Daedalus. 96 (Winter). Pp. 1-21.
Bellah, Robert. 1964. “Religious Evolution,” American Sociological Review 29:358-374 (also in Bellah, Beyond Belief. Harper and Row.)
Berger, Peter. 1969. The Sacred Canopy. Anchor.
Berger, Peter L. 1996. “Secularism in Retreat.” The National Interest. (Winter).
Beyer, Peter. 2006. Religion in Global Society. New York: Routledge.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. “Genesis and Structure of the Religious Filed.” In Religious Institutions, Craig Calhoun (ed.). Greenwich: JAI Press.
Bruce, Steve. 2002. God is Dead. New York: Blackwell.
Calhoun, Craig, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (eds.). 2011. Rethinking Secularism. New York: Oxford University Press. (Chapters).
Casanova, Jose. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago.
Chaves, Mark. 1994. “Secularization as Declining Religious Authority.” Social Forces. March. 72(3): 749-775.
Chaves, Mark and Phil Gorski. 2001. “Religious Pluralism and Religious Participation.” Annual Review of Sociology. 27: 261‑281.
Cimino, Richard and Christopher Smith. 2014. Atheist Awakening: Secular Activism and Community in America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Comaroff, John and Jean. 1991. Of Revelation and Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Davidman, Lynn. 1991. Tradition in a Rootless World. California.
Davie, Grace. 1990. “Believing Without Belonging.” Social Compass. 37: 456-69.
Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger. New York: Prageger.
Durkheim, Emile. 1995 [1915]. Karen Fields, translator. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Free Press. [Chris Smith has a reading guide available for this book.]
Eisenstadt, S.E. 2000. “Multiple Modernities.” Daedalus. Winter, 129(1): 1-29.
Evans Pritchard, EE. 1976. Witchcraft Oracles and Magic among the Azande (abridged with an Introduction by Eva Gillies). Oxford: ClarendonPress. (Introduction, pp. vii-xxix; Chs. 1-4, pp. 1-64.)
Finke, Roger and Rodney Stark. 1992. The Churching of America, 1776-1990. Rutgers. (read Chapter 1, skim Chapters 2-7).
Fowler, Robert Booth. 1989. Unconventional Partners. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Religion as a Cultural System” and “Ethos and Worldview,” in The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books.
Gorski, Phillip. 2000. “Historicizing the Secularization Debate.” ASR. 65:1 (February): 138-167.
Hadaway, Kirk, Penny Long Marler, and Mark Chaves. 1993. 1993. “What the Polls Don’t Show: A Closer Look at U.S. Church Attendance.” ASR. 58: 741-52. (Also see follow-up symposium in ASR, 63(1), Feb 1998).
Hervieu-Leger, Daniele. 2002. Religion as a Chain of Memory, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Hunter, James. 1983. “The New Religions: Demoderization and the Protest against Modernity.” In Bryan Wilson (ed.). The Social Impact of New Religious Movements. Rose of Sharon Press. Pp. 1-19.
Iannaccone, Laurence. 1994. “Why Strict Churches are Strong.” AJS. 99(5): 1180-1211.
Iannaccone, Laurence. 1990. “Religious Practice: A Human Capital Approach.” JSSR. 29 (September): 297-314.
James, William. 1902. Varieties of Religious Experience. Lectures II and III (Circumscription of the Topic and The Reality of the Unseen). (various publishers)
Lofland, John and Rodney Stark. 1965. “Becoming a World-Saver: a Theory of Conversion.” American Sociological Review. 30: 862‑875.
Luckmann, Thomas. 1967. The Invisible Religion. Macmillan.
Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton University Press.
Mahmood, Saba. 2016. Religious Difference in a Secular Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1954. “Magic, Science and Religion.” In Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. New York: Doubleday.
Mauss, Marcel. 1990. The Gift. New York: WW Norton.
Martin, David. 1978. A General Theory of Secularization. New York: Blackwell. Pp. 1-99.
Martin, David. 2005. On Secularization: Toward a Revised General Theory. Burlington (VT): Ashgate (Intro, Chapter 9).
Marx, Karl. “Theses on Feuerbach.” “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction.” “The German Ideology: Part I” (up to A2). In Robert Tucker (ed.). 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader. Norton.
McRoberts, Omar. 2005. Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black Urban Neighborhood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Neibuhr, H. Richard. 1929. The Social Sources of Denominationalism. (various publishers)
Norris, Pippa and Ronald Inglehart. 2004. Sacred and Secular. Cambridge: Cambridge.
Pattillo-McCoy, Mary. 1998. “Black Church Culture as a Community Strategy of Action,” ASR. 63:6 (December): 767-784.
Pope, Liston. 1942. Millhands and Preachers. Yale. (Chs. 5, 8-10, 14).
Riesebrodt, Martin. 2009. The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of. Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Stark, Rodney. 1997. The Rise of Christianity. Harper San Francisco.
Shils, Edward. 1982. The Constitution of Society, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (chapters on the sacred).
Slade, Stanley. 1994. “Popular Spirituality as an Oppressive Reality.” In Guillermo Cook (ed.). New Face of the Church in Latin America. Orbis Books.
Smilde, David. 2007. Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Smith, Christian et al. 1998. American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving. Chicago.
Smith, Christian. 2003. Moral Believing Animals. Oxford.
Smith, Christian (ed.). 2003. The Secular Revolution. California. (Introduction and select chapters).
Smith, Christian. 2003. “Theorizing Religious Effects among American Adolescents.” JSSR. 42(1): 17-30.
Snow, David A., and Richard Machalek. 1982. “On the Presumed Fragility of Unconventional Beliefs.” JSSR. 21 (March): 15-26.
Spiro, Melford E. 1966. “Religion: Problems of definition and explanation.” In Anthropological approaches to the study of religion, edited by Michael Banton, 85-126. New York: Praeger.
Stark, Rodney & Roger Finke. 2000. Acts of Faith. California.
Steensland, Brian, et al. 2000. “The Measure of American Religion: Toward Improving the State of the Art.” Social Forces. 79. (September): 291-318.
Thompson, E.P. 1966. The Making of the English Working Class. Vintage (Esp. Chs. 11, 12).
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1969. Democracy in America. Doubleday (Pp. 277-301, 441-454).
Voas, David and Mark Chaves. 2016. “Is the United States a Counterexample to the Secularization Thesis?” American Journal of Sociology. 121: 1517-1556.
Walzer, Michael. 1965. The Revolution of the Saints. Harvard. (Pp. 1-65).
Warner, Stephen. 1993. “Work in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States.” AJS. 98:5 (March): 1044-93.
Weber, Max. [1958]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Scribners.
Weber, Max. [1978]. Economy and Society. California (pp. 3-33, 399-602).
Weber, Max. “The Social Psychology of the World Religions,” “The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” and “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Direction.” In Gerth and Mills (eds.). 1946. From Max Weber. Oxford. Pp. 267-359.
Wilson, Bryan. 1979. Contemporary Transformations of Religion. Oxford. (Ch 1)
Woodberry, Robert and Christian Smith. 1998. “Fundamentalists, et al.” Annual Review of Sociology—1998. Vol. 24. Annual Reviews. pp. 25-56.
Wuthnow, Robert. 1988. The Restructuring of American Religion. Princeton.
II. Focus Area Lists
A. Global Religion
Almond, Gabriel, Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan. 2003. Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms Around the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
An-Na’im, Abdullahi Ahmed. 2008. Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Sharia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Appleby, Scott R. 2000. The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press.
Banchoff, Thomas, Ed. 2008 Religious Pluralism, Globalization, and World Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bender, Cadge, Peggy Levitt, and David Smilde. 2012. Religion on the Edge. New York: Oxford University Press.
Beyer, Peter. 2000. “Not in My Backyard: Studies of Other Religions in the Context of SSSR-RRA Annual Meetings.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 39(4): 525-530.
Beyer, Peter. 2006. Religion in Global Society. New York: Routledge.
Bowen, John. 2016. On British Islam: Religion, Law, and Everyday Practice in Shari’a Councils. Princeton University Press.
Brown, Karen McCarthy. 2001. Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Brusco, Elizabeth. 1995. The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Burdick, John. 1993. Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil’s Religious Arena. Berkeley, University of California Press.
Cadge, Wendy and Elaine-Howard Ecklund. 2007. “Immigration and Religion.” Annual Review of Sociology 33: 359-379.
Casanova, Jose. 2012. “Rethinking Public Religions.” Rethinking Religion and World Affairs.Ed. Shah, Timothy Samuel, Alfred Stepan, and Monica Duffy Toft. New York: Oxford University Press.
Cavanaugh, William. 2009. The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chidester, David. 1996. Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia.
Chidester, David. 2014. Empire and Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff. (1991). Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Davie, Grace. 2002. Europe: the Exceptional Case, London: Darton, Longman, Todd.
Dressler, Markus. 2015. Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dressler, Markus and Arvind Mandair. 2011. Secularism and Religion-Making. New York: Oxford University Press.
Freston, Paul. 2004. Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Geertz, Clifford. 1968. Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Grim, Brian and Roger Finke. 2007. “Religious Persecution in Cross-National Context: Clashing Civilizations or Regulated Religious Economies?” American Sociological Review 72: 633-658.
Haar, Gerrie ter. 2011. Religion and Development: Ways of Transforming the World. Hurst and Co.
Hirschkind, Charles. 2006. The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hopkins, Dwight et al. 2001. Religions/Globalizations. Durham: Duke University Press [relevant selected chapters].
Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Touchstone (chapters 6 and 7).
Hurd, Elizabeth Shakman. 2008. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Jakelic, Slavica. 2010. Collectivistic Religions: Religion, Choice, and Identity in Late Modernity. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company.
Juergensmeyer, Mark. 2003. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Jenkins, Philip. 2002/2011. The Next Christendom. New York: Oxford University Press. [Optional related: Jenkins, 2008, The New Faces of Christianity, Oxford.]
Jenkins, Philip. 2009. God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kurzman, Charles. 2004. The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (Chapter 3).
Laitin, David. 1986. Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change among the Yoruba. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Little, David and Donald Swearer (eds.). 2007. Religion and Nationalism in Iraq: A Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Levitt, Peggy. 2007. God Needs no Passport, New York: The New Press.
Lopez, Donald. 1999. Prisoners of Shangri La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mandaville, Peter. 2007. Global Political Islam, New York: Routledge.
Martin, David. 2002. Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish. Oxford: Blackwell.
Miller, Donald and Tetsunao Yamamori. 2007. Global Pentecostalism, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Norris, Pippa and Ronald Inglehart. 2004. Sacred and Secular. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Provost, Rene. Mapping the Legal Boundaries of Belonging: Religion and Multiculturalism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Riesebrodt, Martin. 1993. Pious Passion. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Robbins, Joel. 2004. “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33: 117-143.
Roy, Olivier. 2004. Globalizing Islam. New York: Columbia University Press
Scott, Joan Wallach. 2010. The Politics of the Veil, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sells, Michael. 1998. The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Shakman-Hurd, Elizabeth. 2015. Beyond Religious Freedom. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Selections.)
Sharpe, Eric. 1986. Comparative Religion: A History. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co.
Shenhav, Yehouda. 2006. The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Slade, Stanley. 1994. “Popular Spirituality as an Oppressive Reality.” In Guillermo Cook (ed.). New Face of the Church in Latin America. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.
Smilde, David. 2007. Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Smith, Christian. 1991. The Emergence of Liberation Theology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Smith, Douglas. 1965. Religion and Politics in Burma. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Stepan, Alfred. 2000. “Religion, Democracy, and the ‘Twin Tolerations.’” Journal of Democracy 11(4): 37-57.
Sullins, D. Paul. 2006. “Gender and Religion: Deconstructing Universality, Constructing Complexity.” American Journal of Sociology 112(3): 838-880.
Toft, Monica, Daniel Philpot, and Timothy Shah. 2011. God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics, New York: Norton.
Tweed, Thomas. 1997. Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami. New York: Oxford University Press.
Trinitapoli, Jenny and Alexander Weinreb. 2012. Religion and AIDS in Africa, New York: Oxford University Press.
van der Veer, Peter. 2001. Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Vasquez, Manuel and Marie Marquardt. 2003. Globalizing the Sacred: Religion Across the Americas. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Wickham, Carrie. 2002. Mobilizing Islam. New York: Columbia University Press (Chs 6 & 7).
Witte, John and M. Christian Green. 2011. Religion and Human Rights. New York: Oxford University Press.
Woodberry, Robert. 2012. “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy.” American Political Science Review 106: 244-274.
Yang, Fenggang. 2011. Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule. New York: Oxford University Press
B. Religion, Civic Engagement, Politics, and Social Activism
Aminzade, Ron and Elizabeth J. Perry. 2001. “The Sacred, Religious, and Secular in Contentious Politics: Blurring Boundaries.” Pp. 155-178 in Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics, R. Aminzade, J. A. Goldstone, D. McAdam, E. J. Perry, W. H. J. Sewell, S. Tarrow, and C. Tilly (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ammerman, Nancy T. 2005. Pillars of Faith. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (Chapters 5 & 6).
Asbridge, Thomas. 2004. The First Crusade. New York: Oxford University Press (Chapters 1, 2, and 11).
Beyerlein, Kraig and Mark Chaves. 2003. “The Political Activities of Religious Congregations in the United States.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42:229-246.
Beyerlein, Kraig and John R. Hipp. 2006. “From Pews to Participation: The Effect of Congregation Activity and Context on Bridging Civic Engagement.” Social Problems 53:97-117.
Billings, Dwight B. 1990. "Religion as Opposition: A Gramscian Analysis." American Journal of Sociology 96:1-31.
Chaves, Mark. 2004. Congregations in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Chapter 3).
Christiano, Kevin. 2007. Religious Diversity and Social Change: American Cities, 1890-1906. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ebaugh, Helen Rose, Janet S. Chafetz, and Paula F. Pipes. 2006. “Where’s the Faith in Faith-Based Organizations? Measures and Correlates of Religiosity in Faith-Based Social Service Coalitions.” Social Forces 84:2259-2272.
Emerson, Michael and Christian Smith. 2000. Divided by Faith. Oxford.
Epstein, Barbara. 1991. “The Religious Community: Mass Politics and Moral Witness.” In Epstein. Political Protest and Cultural Revolution. California. (Ch. 6).
Gorski, Phillip. 2003. The Disciplinary Revolution. Chicago: Chicago.
Harris, Fredrick. 2001. Something Within: Religion in African American Political Activism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hoffman, Bruce. 1995. “‘Holy Terror’: The Implications of Terrorism Motivated by a Religious Imperative.” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 18:271-284.
Juergensmeyer, Mark. 2003. Terror in the Mind of God. Berkeley: University of California Press (Chapters 7-11).
Juergensmeyer, Mark. 2008. Global Rebellion. Berkeley: University of California Press (Chapters 1, 2, 6, & Conclusion).
Kurzman, Charles. 1998. “Organizational Opportunity and Social Movement Mobilization: A Comparative Analysis of Four Religious Movements.” Mobilization3:23-49.
Kurzman, Charles. 2004. The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (Chapter 3).
Lichterman, Paul. 2005. Elusive Togetherness. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Livezy, Lois. 1989. “U.S. Religious Organizations and the International Human Rights Movement .” Human Rights Quarterly 11:14-81.
McVeigh, Rory and David Sikkink. 2001. “God, Politics, and Protest: Religious Beliefs and the Legitimation of Contentious Tactics.” Social Forces 79:1425-1458.
Munson, Ziad. 2008. The Making of Pro-Life Activists. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (Chapter 7 and pages 193-196).
Nelson, Timothy. 1996. “Sacrifice of Praise: Emotion and Collective Participation in an African-American Worship Service.” Sociology of Religion. 57(4): 379-96.
Nepstad, Sharon Erickson. 2004. Convictions of the Soul. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nepstad, Sharon Erickson. 2008. Religion and War Resistance in the Plowshares Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (especially Chapter 2).
Osa, Maryjane. 1997. “Creating Solidarity: The Religious Foundations of the Polish Social Movement.” East European Politics and Societies 11:339-365.
Pfaff, Steven. 2001. “The Politics of Peace in the GDR: The Independent Peace Movement, the Church, and the Origins of the East German Opposition.” Peace & Change. 26:280-300.
Smith, Christian. 1991. The Emergence of Liberation Theology. Chicago.
Smith, Christian. 1996. Resisting Reagan. Chicago. (pp. xv-86, skim 87-132, read 133-208).
Smith, Christian. 2000. Christian American?: What Evangelicals Really Want. Berkeley, CA:: University of California Press (Chapter 3).
Smith, Christian (ed.). 1996. Disruptive Religion. Routledge. (Introduction)
Stark, Rodney. 2004. For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Unruh, Heidi Rolland and Ronald J. Sider. 2005. Saving Souls, Serving Society. New York: Oxford University Press.
Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady. 1995. Voice and Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Chapter 13).
Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky. 2002. Mobilizing Islam. New York: Columbia University Press (Chapters 6 & 7).
Wood, Richard. 2002. Faith in Action. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Woodworth, Steven E. 2001. While God Is Marching On. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press (Chapters 6, 7, 13 & 14).
Wuthnow, Robert. 1999. “Mobilizing Civic Engagement: The Changing Impact of Religious Involvement.” Pp. 331-363 in Civic Engagement in American Democracy, edited by T. Skocpol and M. P. Fiorina. Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press/Russell Sage Foundation.
Wuthnow, Robert and John H. Evans. 2002. The Quiet Hand of God. Berkeley: University of California Press (Chapters 1, 7, 9, 14, and 15).
Wuthnow, Robert. 2004. Saving America? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Wuthnow, Robert. 2009. Boundless Faith. Berkeley: University of California Press (Chapter 5).
Young, Michael. 2006. Bearing Witness Against Sin. Chicago: Chicago.
Zald, Mayer N. and John D. McCarthy. 1987. "Religious Groups as Crucibles of Social Movements." Pp. 67-95 in Social Movements in an Organizational Society, edited by M. N. Zald and J. D. McCarthy. New Brunswich, NJ: Transaction.
C. Religion, Gender, and Family
Armour, Ellen and Susan St. Ville. 2006. Bodily Citations: Religion and Judith Butler. New York: Columbia University Press. “Judith Butler in Theory” (pp. 1-12), Chapter 4, “Disturbingly Catholic” (Alliaume, pp. 93-119), and “Afterword” (Butler, pp.276-281, 287-289).
Brown, Karen McCarthy. 1991. Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chapters 7 and 8 (pp. 204-257).
Burdick, John. 1993. Looking for God in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chaves, Mark. 1997. Ordaining Women. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Chs. 1, 2, 7, 8.
Chong, Kelly. Deliverance and Submission: Evangelical Women and the Negotiation of Patriarchy in South Korea. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center.
Davidman, Lynn. 1991. Tradition in a Rootless World: Women Turn to Orthodox Judaism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Edgell, Penny. 2006. Religion and Family in a Changing Society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton.
Fustel de Coulange, Numa Denis. 1864/1955. The Ancient City. Book Second: The Family, pp. 40-53, 56-59. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books.
Foucault, Michel. 1978/1990. History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction. Part One: We Other Victorians (pp. 3-13), Part Three: Scientia Sexualis (pp. 53-73), and Part Four: The Deployment of Sexuality, Chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 81-102). New York: Vintage Books.
Gallagher, Sally. 2003. Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Gallagher, Sally. and Christian Smith. 1999. “Symbolic Traditionalism and Pragmatic Egalitarianism.” Gender and Society. 13(2): 211-233.
Griffith, R. M. 1997. God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Housenecht, Sharon and Jerry Pankhurst. 2000. Family, Religion and Social Change in Diverse Societies. Chapter by Kevin Christiano. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hout, Michael, Andrew Greeley and Melissa Wilde. 2001. “The Demographic Imperative and Religious Change in the US.” American Journal of Sociology.107:468-500.
Konieczny, Mary Ellen. 2013. The Spirit's Tether: Family, Work, and Religion among American Catholics. New York: Oxford University Press
Luker, Kristin. 1984. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Marler, P. L. 1995. “Lost in the Fifties: The Changing Family and the Nostalgic Church,” in Work, Family and Faith in Contemporary Society, Eds. N. Ammerman and W.C. Roof. New York: Routledge, pp. 23–60.
Martin, Bernice. 2001. “The Pentecostal Gender Paradox: A Cautionary Tale for the Sociology of Religion.” In Richard K. Fenn, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Sociology of Religion. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Moon, Dawne. 2004. God, Sex and Politics: Homosexuality and Everyday Theologies. “A Theoretical Introduction” (pp. 1-18) and Chapter 6, “Body, Spirit and Sexuality” (pp. 147-179). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Nason-Clark, Nancy. 1997. The Battered Wife: How Women Confront Family Violence. Chapters 1-3. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
Neitz, Mary Jo. 1987. Charisma and Community: A Study of Religious Commitment within the Charismatic Renewal. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.
Nussbaum, Martha. 1999. Sex and Social Justice. Chapter 4, “Judging Other Cultures” (pp. 118-129) and “American Women” (pp. 130-153). New York: Oxford.
Orsi, Robert. 1994. The Madonna of 115th Street. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Orsi, Robert. 2005. Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them. Chapter 4, “Two Aspects of One Life: Saint Gemma Galgani and My Grandmother in the Wound between Devotion and History, the Natural and the Supernatural” (pp. 110-145). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Riesebrodt, Martin. 1993. Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1992. Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Schusler Fiorenza, Elizabeth. 1983/1988. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. Chapter 4, “The Jesus Movement as Renewal Movement within Judaism” (pp. 105-159). New York: Crossroad.
Smilde, David. 2007. Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Stacey, Judith. 1998. Brave New Families: Stories of Domestic Upheaval in Late Twentieth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Stolzenberg, Ross, M. Blair-Loy and Linda Waite. 1995. “Religious Participation in Early Adulthood: Age and Family Life Cycle Effects on Church Membership.”American Sociological Review. 60: 84-103.
Weber, Marianne. 1919/1998. “Authority and Autonomy in Marriage.” Pp. 215-220 in Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley, The Women Founders. Boston: McGraw Hill.
Wilcox, Bradford. 2004. Soft Patriarchs, New Men. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Woodhead, Linda. 2001. “Feminism and the Sociology of Religion: From Gender-blindness to Gendered Difference.” In Richard K. Fenn, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Sociology of Religion. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
D. Religion and Education, and Schooling
Baker, David. 1998. “The ‘Eliting’ of the Common American Catholic School and the National Education Crisis.” Phi Delta Kappan 79, no. 8:16-23.
Barrett, Jennifer, Jennifer Pearson, Chandra Muller and Kenneth Frank. 2007. “Adolescent Religiosity and School Contexts.” Social Science Quarterly 88(4):1024-37.
Beyerlein, Kraig. 2004. “Specifying the Impact of Conservative Protestantism on Educational Attainment.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43:505-518.
Billings, Dwight and Robert Goldman. 1979. “Comment on ‘The Kanawha Textbook Controversy’.” Social Forces 57:1393-1398.
Binder, Amy J. 2002. Contentious curricula : Afrocentrism and creationism in American public schools. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Brinig, Margaret and Nicole Stelle Garnett. 2014. Lost Classroom, Lost Community: Catholic Schools’ Importance in Urban America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
Bryk, Anthony S., Valerie E. Lee, and Peter Blakeley Holland. 1993. Catholic schools and the Common Good. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Cheng, Albert. 2014. “Does Homeschooling or Private Schooling Promote Political Intolerance? Evidence from a Christian University.” Journal of School Choice 8(1):49-68
Cohen-Zada, Danny and William Sander. 2008. “Religion, Religiosity and Private School Choice: Implications for Estimating the Effectiveness of Private Schools.” Journal of Urban Economics 64(1):85-100.
Cohen-Zada, Danny and Todd Elder. 2009. “Historical Religious Concentrations and the Effects of Catholic Schooling.” Journal of Urban Economics 66(1):65-74.
Coleman, James Samuel and Thomas Hoffer. 1987. Public and Private High Schools: The Impact of Communities. New York: Basic Books.
Darnell, Alfred and Darren E. Sherkat. 1997. "The Impact of Protestant Fundamentalism on Educational Attainment." American Sociological Review 62:306-315.
Dee, Thomas. 2005. “The Effects of Catholic Schooling on Civic Participation.” International Tax and Public Finance 12(5):605–25.
Dill, Jeffrey. 2009. “Preparing for Public Life: School Sector and the Educational Context of Lasting Citizen Formation.” Social Forces 87(3):1265-90.
Dill, Jeffrey. 2012. “Protestant Evangelical Schools and Global Citizenship Education.” Pp. 615–32 in International Handbook of Protestant Education, (ed.) W. Jeynes and D. Robinson. Netherlands: Springer.
Ecklund, Elaine Howard. 2010. Science Vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think. New York: Oxford University Press.
Elder, Todd and Christopher Jepsen. 2014. “Are Catholic Primary Schools More Effective Than Public Primary Schools?” Journal of Urban Economics 80:28-38.
Feinberg, Walter. 2006. For Goodness Sake: Religious Schools and Education for Democratic Citizenry. New York: Routledge.
Glanville, Jennifer L., David Sikkink, and Edwin I. Hernandez. 2008. “Religious Involvement and Educational Outcomes: The Role of Social Capital and Extracurricular Participation.” The Sociological Quarterly 49:105-137.
Godwin, Kenneth, Jennifer Godwin and Valerie Martinez-Ebers. 2004. “Civic Socialization in Public and Fundamentalist Schools.” Social Science Quarterly 85(5):1097-111.
Greeley, Andrew M. 2002. Catholic High Schools and Minority Students. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.
Gross, Neil and Solon Simmons. 2009. “The Religiosity of American College and University Professors.” Sociology of Religion 70(2):101-29.
Guest, Mathew. 2013. Christianity and the University Experience: Understanding Student Faith. London: Bloomsbury
Hill, Jonathan and Kevin den Dulk. 2013. “Religion, Volunteering, and Educational Setting: The Effect of Youth Schooling Type on Civic Engagement.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 52(1):179–97.
Hill, Jonathan. 2009. “Higher Education as Moral Community: Institutional Influences on Religious Participation During College.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 48(3):515-34.
Hill, Jonathan. 2011. “Faith and Understanding: Specifying the Impact of Higher Education on Religious Belief.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50(3):533-51.
Jacobsen, Douglas and Rhonda Jacobsen. 2012. No Longer Invisible: Religion in University Education. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jeynes, William. 2003. Religion, Education, and Academic Success. Greenwich, Conn.: Information Age Pub.
Jeynes, William. 2004. “Comparing the Influence of Religion on Education in the United States and Overseas: A Meta-Analysis.” Religion and Education 31(2):83-97.
Jeynes, William H. 2007. “Religion, Intact Families, and the Achievement Gap.” Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, 3.
Jha, N. and C. Polidano. 2013. “Long-Run Effects of Catholic Schooling on Wages.” Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.
Kim, Young-Joo. 2011. “Catholic Schools or School Quality? The Effects of Catholic Schools on Labor Market Outcomes.” Economics of Education Review 30(3):546-58.
Lehrer, Evelyn L. 1999. “Religion as a Determinant of Educational Attainment: An Economic Perspective.” Social Science Research 28:358-379.
Mayrl, Damon and Jeremy Uecker. 2011. “Higher Education and Religious Liberalization among Young Adults.” Social Forces 90(1):181-208.
McCloskey, Patrick. 2008. The Street Stops Here: A Year at a Catholic High School in Harlem. Berkeley: University of California Press.
McFarland, Michael, Bradley Wright and David Weakliem. 2011. “Educational Attainment and Religiosity: Exploring Variations by Religious Tradition.” Sociology of Religion 72(2):166-88.
McKune, Benjamin and John Hoffmann. 2009. “Religion and Academic Achievement among Adolescents.” Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 5:1-21.
Meyer, John W., David Tyack, Joane Nagel, and Audri Gordon. 1979. “Public Education as Nation-Building in America: Enrollments and Bureaucratization in the American States, 1870-1930.” American Journal of Sociology 85:591-613.
Morgan, Stephen L. 2001. “Counterfactuals, Causal Effect Heterogeneity, and the Catholic School Effect on Learning.” Sociology of Education 74:341-374.
Morgan, Stephen L. and Aage B. Sorensen. 1999. “Parental Networks, Social Closure, and Mathematics Learning: A Test of Coleman’s Social Capital Explanation of School Effects.” American Sociological Review 64:661-681.
Morgan, Stephen L. and Jennifer J. Todd. 2009. “Intergenerational Closure and Academic Achievement in High School: A New Evaluation of Coleman's Conjecture.” Sociology of Education 82:267-285.
Muller, Chandra and Christopher G. Ellison. 2001. “Religious Involvement, Social Capital, and Adolescents’ Academic Progress: Evidence from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988.” Sociological Focus 34:155-183.
Page, Ann L. and Donald A. Clelland. 1978. “The Kanawha County Textbook Controversy: A Study of the Politics of Life Style Concern.” Social Forces 57:265-281.
Peshkin, Alan. 1986. God's Choice: The Total World of a Fundamentalist Christian School. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reese, William J. 1985. “Soldiers for Christ in the Army of God: The Christian School Movement in America.” Educational Theory 35:175-194.
Reese, William J. 1982. “Public Schools and The Great Gates of Hell.” Educational Theory 32:9-17.
Reimer, Sam. 2010. “Higher Education and Theological Liberalism: Revisiting the Old Issue.” Sociology of Religion 71(4):393-408.
Rose, Susan D. 1988. Keeping Them Out of The Hands of Satan: Evangelical Schooling in America. New York: Routledge.
Rose, Susan. 1993. “Fundamentalism and Education in the United States.” In Fundamentalisms and Society, Marty, Martin E. and Scott Appleby (eds.), 452-489. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Sander, William. 2001. Catholic Schools: Private and Social Effects. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Scheitle, Christopher. 2011. “Religious and Spiritual Change in College: Assessing the Effect of a Science Education.” Sociology of Education 84(2):122-36.
Scheitle, Christopher and Buster Smith. 2012. “Religious Affiliation, College Degree Attainment, and Religious Switching.” Religion, Work and Inequality 23:205–26.
Schmalzbauer, John. 2013. “Campus Religious Life in America: Revitalization and Renewal.” Society 50(2):115-31.
Schwadel, Philip. 2011. “The Effects of Education on Americans' Religious Practices, Beliefs, and Affiliations.” Review of Religious Research 53(2):161-82.
Schwadel, Philip. 2015. “Explaining Cross-National Variation in the Effect of Higher Education on Religiosity.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 54(2):402-18.
Sherkat, Darren E. and Alfred Darnell. 1999. “The Effect of Parents' Fundamentalism on Children's Educational Attainment: Examining Differences by Gender and Children's Fundamentalism.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 38:23-35.
Small, Jenny and Nicholas Bowman. 2011. “Religious Commitment, Skepticism, and Struggle among U.S. College Students: The Impact of Majority/Minority Religious Affiliation and Institutional Type.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50(1):154-74.
Stevens, Mitchell L. 2001. Kingdom of children : culture and controversy in the homeschooling movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Stroope, Samuel. 2011. “Education and Religion: Individual, Congregational, and Cross-Level Interaction Effects on Biblical Literalism.” Social Science Research 40(6):1478-93.
Uecker, Jeremy and Jonathan Hill. 2014. “Religious Schools, Home Schools, and the Timing of First Marriage and First Birth.” Review of Religious Research 56(2):189-218
Uecker, Jeremy E. 2008. “Alternative Schooling Strategies and the Religious Lives of American Adolescents.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47:563-584.
Uecker, Jeremy. 2009. “Catholic Schooling, Protestant Schooling, and Religious Commitment in Young Adulthood.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 48(2):353-67.
Uecker, Jeremy. 2008. “Alternative Schooling Strategies and the Religious Lives of American Adolescents.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47:563-584
Wagner, Melinda Bollar. 1990. God’s Schools : Choice and Compromise in American Society. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
III. Sociology of Religion Grads Should Read (On Their Own) To Be Well-Educated (not required coverage on doctoral exams)
Becker, Penny E. 1999. Congregations in Conflict. Cambridge.
Bellah, Robert et al. 1985. Habits of the Heart. California. (Chapters 1-6, 9-10)
Burdick, John. 1993. Looking for God in Brazil. California.
Chaves, Mark. 2003. Congregations in America. Harvard.
Christiano, Kevin. 2007. Religious Diversity and Social Change: American Cities, 1890-1906. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ellison, Christopher and Jeffrey Levin. 1998. “The Religion-Health Connection.” Health Education and Behavior. 25(6): 700-720.
Emerson, Michael & Christian Smith. 2000. Divided by Faith. Oxford.
Finke, Roger and Rodney Stark. 1992. The Churching of America, 1776-1990. Rutgers.
Gorski, Phillip. 2003. The Disciplinary Revolution. Chicago: Chicago.
Greeley, Andrew. 1989. Religious Change in America. Harvard.
Hadaway, Kirk, Penny Long Marler, and Mark Chaves. 1993. 1993. “What the Polls Don’t Show: A Closer Look at U.S. Church Attendance.” ASR. 58: 741-52. (Also see follow-up symposium in ASR, 63(1), Feb 1998).
Hunter, James. 1983. American Evangelicalism. Rutgers (pp. 3-19, 49-101).
Hunter, James. 1991. Culture Wars. New York: Free Press. (sections on religion.)
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books.
Jenkins, Philip. 2002. The Next Christendom. New York: Oxford.
Keister, Lisa. 2008. “Conservative Protestants and Wealth: How Religion Perpetuates Asset
Poverty.” American Journal of Sociology. 113:1237-71.
Keister, Lisa. 2007. “Upward Wealth Mobility: Exploring the Roman Catholic Advantage.” Social Forces. 85:1195-1226.
Lechner, Frank. 1991. “The Case against Secularization.” Social Forces 69 (June): 1103-19.
Mannheim, Karl. 1963. Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
Neibuhr, H. Richard. 1929. The Social Sources of Denominationalism. (various publishers)
Nelson, Timothy. 1996. “Sacrifice of Praise: Emotion and Collective Participation in an African-American Worship Service.” Sociology of Religion. 57(4): 379-96.
Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone. Simon and Schuster. (Ch. 4).
Roof, Wade Clark. 1999. Spiritual Marketplace. Princeton.
Roof, Wade Clark and McKinney. American Mainline Religion. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers.
Stark, Rodney. 2004. For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Stark, Rodney. 1997. The Rise of Christianity. Harper San Francisco.
Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge. 1987. A Theory of Religion. New York: P. Lang.
Stark, Rodney and Charles Glock. 1968. American Piety. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Steensland, Brian, et al. 2000. “The Measure of American Religion: Toward Improving the State of the Art.” Social Forces. 79. (September): 291-318.
Wilde, Melissa. 2007. Vatican II. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Woodberry, Robert and Christian Smith. 1998. “Fundamentalists, et al.” Annual Review of Sociology—1998. Vol. 24. Annual Reviews. pp. 25-56.
Wuthnow, Robert. 1994. Producing the Sacred. Illinois.
Young, Lawrence (ed.). 1997. Rational Choice Theory and Religion: Summary and Assessment. New York: Routledge.