Religion, Deviance, and Social Control. - book reviews

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 1998 by John H. Simpson

RODNEY STARK AND WILLIAM SIMS BAINBRIDGE. New York and London: Routledge, 1997, 206 pp.

This well-written book - a truly good read - is divided into two sections: religion and deviance, religion as deviance. The latter has chapters on cults, religious insanity in 19th century America, and a comparison of some 19th century American utopian communities - the Shakers, Oneida, Zoar - that varied in the control of sexual behavior. The section on religion and deviance assesses the effects of social and moral integration on suicide, crime, delinquency, drinking, and the use of drugs.

The book is an important collection of essays about the religion-deviance nexus. Also, it can be read as a methodological primer illustrating the elegance and power of appropriate indicators of clearly-stated constructs embedded in well-formed propositions that are tested using straightforward methods. The book is a near-perfect example of how to do sociological research and tell a story about it, a story that is accessible to undergraduate students and holds the attention of professionals as well.

One reason the book will hold the attention of professionals is the debate in its pages that is joined with Durkheim and by extension with almost the entire sociological profession. The authors argue that most theorists and researchers assume that religion either has no effects or, if it does, the effects can be easily explained because religion is really something else, an epiphenomenon: false consciousness, an illusion, or in Durkheim's case a mere reflection of society and a proxy for social integration. The book is a frontal assault on that notion. Durkheim's Suicide is the opponent.

Durkheim explained the apparently greater suicide rates among Protestants compared with Catholics in terms of egoism - the absence of strong stable attachments or social integration. He downplayed anomie - the weakness or lack of rules, norms, and values - and, ultimately, sought to reduce moral integration (the absence of anomie) to social integration (the absence of egoism) according to Stark and Bainbridge.

Using church membership rates as an indicator of moral integration and population turnover rates as an indicator of social integration, Stark and Bainbridge show that both moral integration and social integration have strong effects on suicide rates in urban areas of America. Furthermore, they find no Catholic effect on suicide suggesting that contemporary American Catholics do not differ from other Americans in terms of moral integration. They speculate that suicide has become 'psychiatrized' among Catholics in America. It is now attributed to mental illness and no longer viewed as a mortal sin, a category that Protestants have always lacked.

The argument with Durkheim continues in a dissection of his European data, his sources, and what he could reasonably claim. The Protestant-Catholic difference in suicide holds only for Germany. England's low rates cannot be explained in terms of England being "Catholic-like." Its vigorous Protestant pluralism in the 19th century does explain the low rates observed there.

The analysis of all the topics addressed in the book is set within the Stark-Bainbridge theoretical frame that accounts for the power of morally integrated communities to dampen deviance. Their frame enables them (unlike most sociologists or criminologists) to recognize and explain the effectiveness in curbing deviance of organizations such as the Prison Fellowship, the Nation of Islam, Promise Keepers, and parochial schools. These organizations embed individuals in moral communities that are serious about religiously-based rules, norms, and values.

Wherein lies the power of moral integration to control deviance according to Stark and Bainbridge? Essentially, obeying religious rules and norms leads to religious rewards. The burdens of relative deprivation, disappointed desires, and mortality can be offset by supernatural payoffs. "[The] gods can offer heavenly glory in return for earthly suffering" (p. 22). That, it should be observed, is a theological explanation for a social reality: the relation between religion and deviance. I do not object to the fact that it is theological.

However, is it not true that some people do religious things and obey religious rules for reasons that may have nothing to do with supernatural payoffs in another life? Religion can stimulate aesthetic pleasure. Incense and music have their appeals. Sex may be better (a great secret). Some people may, simply, enjoy the idea of God and the variety of intellectual pleasures, challenges, and possibilities that it entails. (Shocking!) I find no fault with Stark and Bainbridge's sociology, but I do think that their theology could be broadened a bit.

John H. Simpson University of Toronto at Mississauga Canada