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| Bellah et al. see religion as rather similar to political participation, at least so far as providing a base in which to be grounded. They seem to believe this at least in part by the frequency with which religious and civic memberships were mentioned by their interviewees, as the activities that brought meaning to their lives. (Reading obituaries is a good source for gauging what people, or at least their survivors, found most significant in their lives. Another good source is wedding announcements--although the happy couple typically have shorter histories from which to draw.) It is interesting to follow their argument about the privatization of American religion, along with other of society's institutions (For sociologists, an institution is not a building with a wall around it, but a patterned set of activities, essential to society, e.g., family, religion, education, polity, economy.) "Today, religion in American is as private and diverse as New England colonial religion was public and unified" (p. 220). The authors seem distinctly ambivalent about this change, at times (like Ehrenhalt) sounding a bit wistful about what has been "lost." Of course, one can argue that at least some of what has been lost is good riddance. Think of the Sunday mass at St. Nick's, with the priest mumbling in Latin , back to the congregation. One need not embrace guitars and dancing to entertain the notion that the more participatory Catholic service is more meaningful--and probably more like the celebrations of the early Christians--than mass at St. Nick's in the 1950's. |
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