Religion as an 'Independent Variable'

...They confirm laboriously what you already know...

...Lenski also tries to evaluate the relation of the religious factor to such disparate phenomena as installment buying, birth control, vertical mobility, use of leisure time, methods of disciplining children, attitudes toward free speech, drop-out rates in school, kin-group loyalty, gambling and divorce, use of a family budget and interest in foreign affairs...

...What emerges from this study is an appreciation of religion as an "independent variable...

...Accordingly, our "pluralistic society" may turn out to be merely a "polite euphemism" for "compartmentalized society," or at best a steppingstone leading to it...

...It will tell you quite a bit that you don't know, along with some facts that you might even prefer not to know...

...We have given up the old ideal of the "melting-pot...

...Reviewed by ROBERT E. FITCH Professor of Christian ethics, Pacific School of Religion Too many books of social statistics are a bore...

...On the basis of his findings, he scrutinizes religion in its relationships with economics, politics, the family, education and science...

...For instance, those who think of religion as an opiate for the American Negro will find that now it is a focal point for the energies of social reform...

...Among the many questions raised are the effects of religious affiliation on regularity in voting, support of the Republican or Democratic party and liberal or conservative political alignments...

...White Protestants differ from Negro Protestants in that the former are liberal only about freedom of speech and foreign aid, while the latter are liberal only about racial integration and the welfare state...

...The book establishes careful controls with reference to class, social prestige, financial success and length of residence in the U.S...

...Of the religious groups, only Jews lean toward liberalism on all four questions...

...but this cannot be attributed to their experience as a minority people, or as an urban people, since these experiences have not had the same effect on other people...

...Roman Catholics come close to dead center, except that they incline to conservatism on racial integration...

...Jews appear to be the most prosperous of the major socio-religious groups...

...Nevertheless, says Lenski, "contrary to the expectations of the nineteenth century positivists, religious organizations remain vigorous and influential in contemporary American society...

...It is written in a clear and straightforward manner and contains, for those who are interested, a discussion both of the theory and the technique behind its inquiry...

...Lenski lists several probabilities: rising rates of church attendance, increasing support for welfare state policies, a slowing of the rate of material progress and of scientific advance, rising birth rates, narrowing latitudes for the exercise of free speech, fewer restraints on gambling and drinking, more support for the Democratic Party and an increase in intellectual heteronomy...

...Even when it appears to be most acculturated, religion retains a capacity for critical transcendence...

...Gerhard Lenski, in collaboration with others, surveyed four religious groups—white Protestants, Negro Protestants, Roman Catholics and Jews—in Detroit...

...The dust jacket features endorsements by Seymour Martin Lipset, Will Herberg, and H. Richard Niebuhr, who speak of the book as "required reading of the utmost importance the most careful and judicious study in empirical sociology of religion that I have encountered...

...And they are badly written...

...In distinguishing conservative from liberal political views, Lenski takes four significant factors into account: attitudes on the welfare state, freedom of speech, racial minorities and international affairs...

...They use pseudo-scientific methods to lend dignity to parochial views...

...One marked difference between Jews and the three other groups is that their communal organizations are more lively than their forms of religious association...

...The working class, we are told, is conservative on all but the first issue...

...The Religious Factor is anything but a bore...

...One of the disturbing developments pointed up by Lenski is that our so-called pluralistic society may be moving toward the sort of situation which exists in Holland or in Lebanon, where all major institutional systems are obliged to take account of socio-religious distinctions...

...I can only concur, and add that this is the most rewarding and disturbing piece of literature in its field to come to my attention since the publication of Herberg's Protestant-Catholic-Jew...

...If present trends in the relative growth rate of the various religious groups continue, what lies ahead...