Rethinking religious social action: what is "rational" about rational-choice theory?

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 1998 by James V. Spickard

Though there has been much talk of late of a "new paradigm" in the sociology of religion (Warner 1993; Sherkat and Wilson 1995; Young 1997; Stark 1997), there seems to be some disagreement about just what it is - even among its proponents. On the one hand we have authors like R. Stephen Warner (1993), Roger Finke (Finke 1989, 1990, 1997; Finke, Guest, and Stark 1996), and Rodney Stark (Finke and Stark 1988, 1992), who present a model of religious "economic" and "markets:"

At the level of entire communities and societies, models of religious markets and religious regulation challenge the predictions of secularization theory, asserting instead the vitality of religion in pluralistic settings (Iannaccone 1995a: 78).

On the other hand we have authors like Laurence Iannaccone (1988, 1990, 1995a, 1995b, 1997) and Rodney Stark (again) (Stark 1997; Stark and Bainbridge 1987; Stark and Finke 1993; Stark and Iannaccone 1993) who emphasize a rational-choice theory of human action that they claim explains why religious markets work as they do. These scholars argue that the rules that explain individual religious actions, if taken in the aggregate, explain the behavior of religious markets. The rational-choice approach "seeks to . . . integrate numerous predictions within a single conceptual framework and provide theoretical explanations for observed empirical regularities" (Iannaccone 1995a: 78).

Both approaches use economic metaphors, and both agree on the notion of a religious economy. They agree that churches may be thought of as religious "firms" competing for adherents in a structured marketplace. Market "regulation restricts competition by changing the incentives and opportunities of religious producers and the options of religious consumers'" (Finke 1997: 46). In this view, so-called "secularization" is just the natural consequence of religious monopolies - state-sponsored churches - which, like all monopolies (say proponents), fail to meet "consumers" needs. In closed markets, churches lose out to their cultural competition: sports, rock concerts, and television. "Religious institutions in the United States," on the other hand, "operate within an open market . . . [and are] constitutively pluralistic . . . [and] structurally flexible" (Warner 1993: 1045). And - not incidentally - they are well-attended, because they work to attract customers.

It may well be that this critique of the secularization thesis is circular. By measuring religion by church attendance, changes in life-orientation and worldview are obscured (Riis 1992; Buckser 1995; Demerath 1995). Likewise religions that favor church attendance over other forms of devotion will appear more vital, no matter what the market structure (Carroll 1996: 227-8). Yet there is little doubt that churches remain important parts of the American social landscape, even if religious discourse has become less prominent (Carter 1993). Discourse may be secularized, but the market model highlights the continuing vitality of religious institutions.

The advocates of rational-choice theory go further, however. Besides supporting the notion of a religious marketplace, they propose a way to connect market behavior with individual religious action (Finke and Stark 1992: 250-255; Stark and Finke 1993; Finke and Iannaccone 1993; Stark and Iannaccone 1993). Economists have argued for decades that markets work the way they do because of the millions of decisions made daily by consumers and producers, each rationally calculating profit and loss. Rational-choice theorists of religion import this model, arguing that its success at predicting market-level behavior tells us how religious consumers act.(1) Specifically, we can throw out old notions about religious irrationality. Religious people are not looney or deluded; they use the same reasoning processes as everyone else to gain the goods they seek. The European philosophical bias against religion, which variously degraded it as "false consciousness" (Marx), "neurosis" (Freud), or "masochism" (Nietzsche) need not rule (see Finke and Stark 1992: 250), Stark 1996: 170).

Yet as Fireman and Gamson (1979: 8) warned us about rational-choice approaches to social movements, "Beware of economists bearing gifts." Few sociologists today equate religion with irrationality, as the almost uniform rejection of the "brainwashing" explanation for conversion to new religions reveals (see Bromley and Richardson 1983). Assuming that rational-choice theorists are not just debating a straw man, what kind of religious "rationality" do they advocate? Do their assumptions hold up to intellectual scrutiny? Using one particularly clear version of these assumptions, this article will attempt to see where the rational-choice approach's rationality really lies.

There is no point in being coy about it: I shall find these assumptions wanting. But this need not force us to suppose religious irrationality, nor does it imperil the market model of religious behavior. In the first case rationality comes in more than one kind; in the second, the market model's ties to rational-choice theory are adventitious, not essential.