The Churching Of America, 1776-2005: Winners And Losers In Our Religious Economy (Paperback)

by Roger Finke (Author), Rodney Stark (Author) "We did not intend to make major revisions to the history of American religion, but unless reason and arithmetic have failed us, we have done..." (more)
Key Phrases: Methodist Episcopal Church, United States, New England (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Praise for the first edition:

"If Roger Finke and Rodney Stark are right, the current understanding of American religious history ought to be turned upside down . . . A pugnacious book."––New York Times

"Essential reading."––Kirkus Reviews

"Impressive . . . Bound to generate lively discussion––and not a little controversy––within the nation’s church community."—U.S. Catholic

In The Churching of America, 1776–2005, Roger Finke and Rodney Stark once again revolutionize the way we think about religion. Extending the argument that the nation’s religious environment acts as a free market economy, this extensively revised and expanded edition offers new research, statistics, and stories that document increased participation in religious groups from Independence through the twenty-first century. Adding to the thorough coverage of "mainline" religious groups, new sections chart the remarkable development and growth of African American churches from the early nineteenth century forward. Finke and Stark show how, like other "upstart sects," these churches competed for adherents and demonstrate how American norms of religious freedom allowed African American churches to construct organizational havens with little outside intervention. This edition also includes new sections on the ethnic religious communities of recent immigrants—stories that echo those told of ethnic religious enclaves in the nineteenth century.

Bringing together timely new information and evidence, this provocative book insists, more than ever, on a major reevaluation of established ideas about American religious institutions. Written with lively prose, it will stir debate within church and academic communities, as well as among laypersons interested in the history of religion.

About the Author
Rodney Stark was for many years professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington. In 2004 he became University Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 347 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press; Revised edition (April 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813535530
• ISBN-13: 978-0813535531
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #161,499 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The stricter the better, June 18, 2005

By	César González Rouco (Madrid, Madrid Spain) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If someone thinks that religion, in order to attract new believers, should be in harmony with this world, woe betides him, he seems to be wrong. The authors explain that for more than two centuries, in America, the religious denominations with better scores in rates of growth were those which were organized sect-like, i.e., maintained distance with the world by imposing heavy demands upon his flock (but also granting them great rewards). On the other side, those which tried and compromised, in order to relieve tensions and differences with their society (i.e., those church-like) have been steadily declining. Difference pays, assimilation and ecumenism leads to bankruptcy.

Why? Read the book and you will find out, and although perhaps you will be somewhat shocked to see religion explained by often using economic terminology, do not worry, the book is not irreverent. Besides, it is not a difficult read (only 300 pages) though it is not a light read either (content: 5 starts; pleasure: 4 to 3).

P.S. For more information, I would also suggest reading the reviews of the first edition of this work ("The Churching of America, 1776-1990").

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Churching America, April 3, 2009

By	Gerard Reed - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Critics of American Evangelicalism too often ignore the historical data detailed in The Churching of America 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, c. 1992) by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark. In America, at least, intellectuals have contributed little to church growth or to the preservation of orthodox doctrine. Instead, they have generally contributed to their demise. Rather than a Christian nation losing its complexion of faith, this nation has been successfully christianized during the past 200 years.
This success story, "The churching of America was accomplished by aggressive churches committed to vivid otherworldliness" (p. 1). These churches have not generally enjoyed a friendly press. For example, historians have generally described folks "involved in the Holiness Movement" or backward Bible-belt Fundamentalists as "unsophisticated souls, sadly out of joint with modern times" (p. 5). They were, scholars declaim, "losers," incapable of meaningful dialogue with their world.
Finke and Stark, however, insist they were winners, not losers. They may have lacked the intellectual acumen favored by scholars. But enthusiastic sects, not the more refined denominations from which they came, christianized the nation. As H. Richard Niebuhr understood, "'In Protestant history the sect has ever been the child of an outcast minor¬ity, taking its rise in the religious revolts of the poor'" (p. 43). So America's poor joined sectarian movements and the nation now testifies to their success. When George Whitefield preached, the people flocked to hear him, while established clergy (sounding much like David Wells today) denounced him. The faculty of Harvard published a Testimony against the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield and His Conduct in 1744. Harvard's professors disliked Whitefield's enthusiasm, his itinerancy, his emotional appeals. Yet the people (including Ben Franklin) heard him gladly.
Somewhat later, between the War for Independence and the Civil War, Methodists and Baptists flourished. Few of their ministers were educated, and during their dynamic decades neither group established seminaries to train them. Older denominations (Congregationalists; Anglicans; Presbyterians) had an educated clergy, but they failed to match the evangelistic success of their more enthusiastic competitors. Following the Civil War, however, the Methodist "miracle" turned mirage-like as the movement slipped into the pattern marked by more mainline churches. The "confident, even boisterous, church" of Asbury and Cartwright took on the more starched-shirt qualities of New England academicians. The first Methodist seminary was established in 1847; by 1880 there were 11. Prosperous Methodists wanted educated clergymen, rivaling those in Anglican and Presbyterian pulpits. Revivals and camp-meetings, which had fueled Methodist fires, faded away. German-trained professors quickly overturned "American Methodism's traditional no¬tions of sin, conversion, and perfectionism" (p. 158).
Methodism failed, wrote George V. Wilson in 1904, because "empty speculative bablings are uttered from pulpit, rostrum, and professor's chair, where positive truth should be uttered with power of the Holy Spirit resting on the speaker, convicting and not creating doubt. . . . Revivals are scarce. . . . [and] sermons are preached without a single appeal to the sinner to accept Christ Jesus now'" (p. 168). Wilson's verdict, Finke and Stark say, sums up why sectarian movements, becoming churches, lose their ethos and numbers.
Unlike the Methodists, Southern Baptists maintained their antebellum character, relying on farmer-preachers rather than seminary-trained pulpiteers, resisting the worldly accommodations which typified the more "liberal churches." Southern Baptists sustained their movement from the Civil War to WWII. During the past three decades, however, a similar struggle has beset the Southern Baptist Convention. "Moderates" and "traditionalists" have battled for control of the seminaries. Whether a basically fundamentalist denomination can recover control of its "modernist" educational institutions remains to be seen. Finke and Stark, however, clearly suggest that if they fail their dynamic evangelistic endeavors will soon be noticed exclusively by historians. In their dynamic days, along with a down-to-earth clergy, Methodists and Baptists imposed "significant costs in terms of sacrifice and even stigma upon their members" (p. 238). Other-worldly movements gain the most converts; accommodating churches, emphasizing respectability and reasonability, lose members.
So too, Pre-Vatican II Catholicism flourished in America, demanding its members pay the cost of discipleship. Post-Vatican II Catholicism, like Methodism, has relaxed its demands and lost its adherents. While liberal Protestants have rejoiced in the new "openness" and "tolerance" of today's Catholic Church, those very traits seem to underlay the widespread losses it's experienced.
Finke and Stark are sociologists, teaching in secular universities. They seem simply interested in highlighting the truth about America's religious history. Their work forces us to reinterpret much that passes for "church history" as well as what we propose the church do vis-a-vis the world.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exposing the myth of diminishing religious belief in the US, March 1, 2008

By	Ima Pseudonym "Entil_Zha" (Somewhere) - See all my reviews

For years, Americans have been fed the story that religious belief in America is diminishing, as more citizens "drift away" from various churches toward secularism. The authors of this book, who examined thousands of church records and other documents from a more critical viewpoint, show this belief is false.

The statistics, when evaluated objectively rather than through the typical "falling away from God" paranoia, show religious activity in the US has actually been rising since Colonial times. Data doesn't lie. While church membership was higher on paper during the Colonial period, this is only because Colonies and individual towns were managed directly through local churches. These churches collected taxes from all citizens. Therefore churches showed high "membership" rates since nearly all citizens were listed on their rolls. Anyone who paid taxes or fees for residency were counted as "members." Other, less objective researchers have missed this point, and claimed high membership meant a high level of religious fervor during the early Colonial period. This really wasn't the case. Remember, only 35 of the 105 Mayflower colonists were Puritans. The others were merchants, fishermen, trappers, and others who were simply traveling to America. Most histories don't note this.

Why are Americans constantly bombarded by the idea that the US is becoming "less Christian" than it was before? Primarily it's because certain sects have lost members while others gained them. Some sects that were dominant in early America barely exist today.

Another force is also at work here. Religious leaders love to portray the church as "oppressed" by evil secular forces. They'd rather appeal to followers' emotions and fears than admit that American churches are doing rather well. Doing so wouldn't give church leaders the opportunity to paint an "us vs. them" battle, or to insist that Christianity is under attack.

Fincke & Stark have done a great service by conducting their statistical analysis of the reality of this situation. While church leaders will wail and gnash their teeth at the authors' conclusions, rational people may start to understand how the American public has been manipulated. That's a good thing.