Undoubtedly there is, as Bryan Turner suggested, a code that gives the idea of a “strong program” a positive normative charge. Let’s take pause to understand what this is about. What we call the “strong program” in the sociology of religion refers to a perspective that focuses on religion as an autonomous phenomenon that has causal impact, rather than something that is determined by non-religious factors. Apart from the clearly normative binary of strong/weak, what is the attraction of this image?

First, for people of faith, the autonomy of at least some religion is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the reality of the supernatural, and thus is a logical analytic goal. Indeed, as Asad and others have argued, the carving off of a domain of social reality as “religious,” autonomous, and separate from other, “secular” domains was precisely a mechanism by which the early modern Church was able to maintain a space for religious authority vis-à-vis encroaching secular authority. Likewise, Courtney Bender has recently argued that the residual categorization of religious experience as ineffable, pre-cultural, and inexplicable extends from attempts of early twentieth-century scholars to carve off a domain of human experience that would not be susceptible to scientific analysis. We should not be surprised that this is an enduring motivating interest in the scientific study of religion.

Second, at least since Kant, the idea that human beings give form to the world, rather than simply being determined by it, has been one enduring basis of the idea of human freedom. And for scholars who, regardless of whether they have faith, see the concept of human freedom as a cornerstone of human dignity and morality, the irreducibility of religion is an important image. Christian Smith’s work on “moral, believing animals,” for example, clearly works in this direction, as do Charles Taylor’s writings on the self and religion.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the idea of a phenomenon’s autonomous reality provides a time-honored foundation of legitimacy for a discipline’s professional activity. If there is a domain of knowledge dealing with X, it is most obviously in the interests of specialists in that domain to underline and drive home the reality and importance of X. Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics has become the seminal text in linguistics precisely because it succeeds in portraying language as an irreducible formal system of signs beneath the messy details and disorder of actual speech. Emile Durkheim sought to create a foundation for sociology in turn-of-the-century France by arguing that society was a reality sui generis that needed a new discipline to study it. Talcott Parsons sought to do the same in the U.S. context through his thesis that scholars from different disciplines and countries had simultaneously and independently converged on the “voluntaristic theory of action,” in which values and norms were irreducible. And most recently, Jeff Alexander has largely succeeded (if we judge by the burgeoning numbers in the ASA Culture Section) in creating a foundation for cultural sociology by arguing that culture is an autonomous phenomenon that has causal power.

But I would like to suggest that the “strong program” is actually a weak model for where we should be going in the sociology of religion, for one negative and one positive reason. First, while a healthy sub-discipline probably does depend on studying a phenomenon that actually exists, the politics of representation also needs to be taken into account. In his description of the religious inclinations (or disinclinations) of various social classes and strata, Max Weber argued that there was an elective affinity between the position of intellectuals (such as priests, theologians, and scholars) and the rationalization of religion. Of course, in sedentary societies there will always be “religiously musical” individuals who become specialists in thinking through and logically organizing ideas regarding the supernatural. But they also thereby create a role for themselves as theological interpreters, and thus have a rational self-interest in emphasizing the importance of logically coherent religious thought. This rational self-interest becomes a political interest insofar as it simultaneously dis-empowers people who do not engage in rationalized religious practices. When having a “moral order” is considered a fundamental component of human nature, then those whose religious practices (or lack of them) appear eclectic and inconsistent become less-than-human “others.” When “true” religion is considered autonomous and disinterested, then people whose religion is oriented towards practical interests and engaged in everyday life are portrayed as insincere and vacillating, and their religious practice as inauthentic and unsustainable. We sociologists of religion need to soberly realize that our structural position is going to lead us time and again to emphasize the sui generis reality, coherence, and irreducibility of our subject matter; and need to have enough self-reflexivity to realize that this may unduly impact our analysis, and in ways that in turn may unduly impact people.

Second, arguments about the autonomy of religion should not dominate our research, even though they legitimately remain of interest for some, including those who feel their faith threatened by science, or for those interested in neo-Kantian arguments that underline humans’ freedom by pointing to their form-giving capacity. Beyond these topics, the “autonomy of religion” issue remains of limited interest in the larger debates of the discipline. Indeed, while the main point picked up in discussion of the working paper was the assertion of vitality in the sub-discipline, I think John Evans is right to suggest that the trend line depicting articles on religion in major journals should be read as flat. At a minimum, given the growing public interest in religion over the past two decades, I think we need to ask why this upward trend is not more impressive.

Instead of trying to continually prove that religion matters, we should take the “stronger” starting point that “of course religion matters,” and simply concentrate on what it is and how it is involved in contemporary social and political issues. Not “why does it still exist?” but “how does it exist?” “how does it relate to its ‘others’?” “how does it affects people’s lives?” and, of course, “who creates it?” “who has the control of its means of production?” “who has an interest in its moving in this direction or that?” In such an approach, religion can plausibly be either cause or effect (or non-causal), and either good or bad (or neutral). Such a robust engagement of the problems of modernity is what will make the sociology of religion a vital subfield and contribution to our social world.

But while a small part of us is relieved by the emergence of a strong program, a larger part shares Smilde and May’s concerns about the increasing focus on religion as an autonomous, independent variable. This emphasis seems to rest on the assumption that religion consists primarily of a set of fixed beliefs, preferences, and dispositions that exist deep inside of individuals, which they will reveal to us if only we ask the right questions. In this essay, we will offer two critiques of this general approach, pieces of which have been raised by other participants in this discussion. First, insights from cultural theory call into question an image of belief as stable and coherent. To be clear, we are not saying that belief is always fragmented and changing, or that it never operates autonomously. Instead, we are arguing that the extent to which belief is stable and coherent ought to be considered an open empirical question. In line with this, our second critique concerns the limited ability of common sociological methods—such as ethnographic observation, in-depth interviews, and surveys—to answer these empirical questions about the nature of belief. This is not to say that we do not support efforts by sociologists and others to develop innovative methodologies that better answer these questions. Rather, we argue that the current sociological toolkit best equips us to focus on questions about how religion operates socially.

Cultural theory suggests that religion is, among many other things, a lens through which actors themselves understand the world, and a vocabulary through which they explain that world and justify their actions within it. Much of the sociology of religion contributing to the development of a strong program does not engage with these insights from cultural theory, focusing instead on individuals’ beliefs and practices apart from the social context in which they are manifested. While this research often shows that these beliefs and practices are shaped by participation in the social (e.g., organized religion) or affect individuals’ social behaviors, much of religion itself is conceptualized in an individual-centric way. We find these questions less compelling than ones that, drawing on cultural theory, are attuned to the social and relational quality of religion. What we have come to call a “sociology of social religion” shifts the focus from an individual’s supposedly coherent set of deeply held beliefs that motivate action to an emphasis on religion’s social manifestations, such as how people draw on religion to make sense of their lives in varied and context-specific ways. It asks what this variation says about the contexts as much as what it says about the religion.

Our research on religious activists in the New Sanctuary immigrant rights, intelligent design, and healthcare reform movements suggests that the ways people talk about religion and activism often change according to the social context, as does the coherence of the beliefs they express. According to a strong program that understands religion as an autonomous independent variable, this might indicate that the people we studied did not hold genuine beliefs or that our research instruments were improperly calibrated to capture them. Rather, our training as sociologists directs us to study people’s responses to survey, interview, and informal questions about their religion as context-specific forms of talk that are interesting to study as social facts in themselves, whether they approximate more deeply held beliefs or not. For instance, participants in movements often express an understanding of activism as lived religious practice when they are participating in activist causes with other people from their faith communities, while they talk about the religion-activism relationship in a more nuanced, fragmented way with their close friends. Similarly, lobbyists working for progressive religious advocacy organizations tend to justify and articulate their motivations for particular policy positions in very different ways depending on the context. When addressing their own faith communities, they point to specifically religious reasons for their policy positions. When mobilizing support for their positions in public, however (often collectively as members of broad-based interfaith coalitions), they will articulate the common moral principles upon which they all agree. Finally, in negotiations with legislators and fellow policy experts, they will stick to more technical and legalistic arguments. While some may seek to pin down what these professionals actually “believe,” a study of social religion would turn instead to questions of how and why these individuals pivot between different discourses in different contexts. By citing these examples from our research, we are not trying to suggest that people’s beliefs are not genuine or do not “really” exist. Rather, our findings suggest that people’s religious beliefs and practices are not necessarily standardized across social time and space; instead, social context shapes religion’s social manifestations. Different contexts appear to draw individuals and groups to articulate their beliefs in different ways, so that various (or no) aspects of their religious repertoires are highlighted through their interactions with different groups.

What added purchase might a sociology of social religion give us? By examining religion’s social manifestations, we will inevitably uncover multiple interactions between religion and other cultural and political objects—empirical realities that will better enable us to speak to broader theoretical issues in sociology. Rather than proving that religion matters by demonstrating its autonomous power, this approach shows that religion matters because it interacts with other elements of culture in shaping how people communicate and live with others in countless social settings. Our call for a sociology of social religion is not a call, however, to privilege collective religious spaces like congregations as the primary sites for religious production. Indeed, a sociology of social religion need not focus on organized religion at all—another benefit of this approach. Researchers can focus on how people talk about religion with each other inside and outside of “religious” spaces, how they draw on religious and spiritual beliefs together to make sense of their common situations, or how they mobilize religious and moral rhetoric in different social contexts. In this way, the approach we are outlining answers the call by Levitt et al. to push beyond congregationalism.

Another important advantage of this approach is in its move away from individualized religion, which is associated with some religious traditions more than others. This might encourage sociologists to study more diverse traditions and modes of spirituality, facilitating more nuanced analyses. Religion does not necessarily live in the individual, as some forms of doctrine suggest: it is produced and enacted socially. More attention should be paid to the ways in which these social productions and enactments happen. How do different groups of actors articulate their understandings of religion’s role in their lives? How does this shift in different settings? How do they draw boundaries around what is and is not religion? Do they carry religious symbols, stories, and rhetoric into spheres of their everyday lives that social scientists might not consider “religious”? And do they attribute varied beliefs and actions to religious motivations or structures? How do they account for changes in their religious or spiritual engagements? These questions are intended to show that a program for the sociology of social religion is not necessarily in opposition to the strong program. It merely calls us to focus our energies elsewhere, urging a rediscovery of the ways in which religion itself is a social phenomenon.

The report assesses religion research with models of disciplinary growth. It implies that one sign of vitality in the field of sociological research on religion is the increasing proportion of studies that take religion as an independent variable. Borrowing language from the sociology of science, the report finds that religion research is developing a “strong program,” according to which religion is figured as the causal mover in a variety of social processes, rather than the effect of some other, more important factor(s). This too is good news for readers who have invested intellectual energies in the field, as it is likely to invite more sociological respect for religion as a research topic.

But how happy should we be? The terms of discussion give me some pause. They re-circulate social science’s widely shared conventional wisdom that causal strength is what makes a topic important, fundable, and assignable in classes not already dedicated to that topic. The discipline already hosts widespread agreement that it is good to entertain causal questions and to seek their answers most of the time, and the report seems to confirm that the religion sub-discipline is no different from others in that regard: an interesting footnote informs us that only 10% of the articles in the report’s large sample did not use causal analysis. But is independent variation the only, or necessary, mark of those topics most worth our attention? The report does not necessarily endorse that view. The term strong program describes one kind of research design; it need not imply an evaluation of the subject of study. The trouble is that the language of “strength” is hard to hear without evaluative connotations, and when attached to the language of causal variables, it will be easy enough for social scientists to suppose that a “strong” program, which specifically seeks out religion’s independent effects, produces the best contributions to knowledge of religion and the biggest warrant for reading that research. And what’s wrong with that? Everyone likes a hero; no one really aspires to play but a bit part in social life.

To carry the theatrical metaphor further, I suggest that we be wary of becoming infatuated with a character who turns out to be the strong, silent type. What about religion makes it a causal first-mover? How does it move? What makes it strong? I don’t claim to have read nearly all the studies that have invoked religion as an important causal factor. But social researchers have observed that we still don’t know so much about exactly how religion causes outcomes of interest. To take just one example, the world of political and civic activity: we still have a lot more to learn about the different ways religion may influence voting, volunteering, protesting, and the launching of revolutions.

Let me say clearly: Mine is absolutely no argument against causal analysis or strong programs—quite to the contrary.  Studies of religion’s independent effects have taught us a great deal about religion’s roles in the social world and in individual lives. These expanding lines of research no doubt have a lot more to tell us about religion’s effects, too.  The point is, rather, that at this point in the sociology of religion’s development, assigning religion the status of independent variable also invites more conversation.

The problem, partly, is that we have continued to trade on a narrow understanding of religion. As the authors of “Toward a new sociology of religion” say, and as I have said elsewhere, religion is often equated with “belief systems” or creeds, all the while our studies—particularly of non-Christian religion—show that beliefs and faith in the certainty of beliefs are not always as central to religious practice as the terms of our research often assume. A study that makes religion the causal actor can be interesting and intriguing, but I want to ask this actor—the strong, silent type—to say more: does that (causal) strength come from the “personal religious beliefs” that we often use as the stand-in for “religion”? Does it grow out of the status- or subculture-building power of religious identity? Or does that strength come from the self-building, life-organizing power of religious ritual? Might it depend on the organizational forms that our strong, silent type leans on? Maybe strength by itself isn’t quite as telling as we assume.

The report points to cultural sociology as a sub-field with a quite well-established strong program; some would say it has several. Is that strong program the kind that the sociology of religion has been developing? So far, the comparison would be rather weak. One of the major turning-points in understanding the “strength” of culture, Ann Swidler’s well-known article on culture as a tool-kit, was both a statement about culture’s independent and mediating causal effects and, simultaneously, a detailed exploration of how culture works. While not all agree on whether or not the took-kit model counts as evidence of a strong program, it was written and read as a statement about the fact that culture matters, and also about how culture matters in different ways and in different contexts.

In the quarter-century since then, the “how” question has remained central. Cultural sociology’s highly variegated “strong program” would be hard to characterize as the strong, silent type; so I offer another (roughly sketched!) movie metaphor: cultural sociology’s strong program(s) sounds a bit like Sybil, the famous character of psychiatric as well as celluloid record, who carried twenty-six personalities. Culture is many things. The subfield has put a great deal of good energy into proliferating culture concepts: discourses, narratives, binary codes, symbolic boundaries, group styles, vocabularies, and more. “Culture” talks about its strength(s) in a great variety of personae, since cultural sociologists find that no single concept can adequately cover the very different kinds of independent effects that culture has on social life, and on culture itself. “Culture” is many things in the same way that “social structure” is many things. Students of networks, class orders, role sets, status hierarchies, patriarchy, or institutionalized racism use their specific terms of inquiry and hence would not usually characterize their respective objects of study simply as “social structure.” Similarly, cultural sociologists learn specific ways to explore what later becomes “culture” again when communicated to a broader audience of non-specialists.

Sociological work on religion does not run in entirely parallel fashion. Distinctions inside the category of religion still work on a more substantive, less purely analytic basis: Islam, evangelical Protestantism, Pentecostalism, etc. Before some of its current strong programs took off, the sociology of culture worked in this more substantive vein, too:  we studied, and of course still study and need to keep studying youth culture, popular culture, mass culture, African-American culture, American culture. When sociologists of religion depart from the language of variables and say more about what aspect of religion interests us, we tend to borrow our specifying terms from other sub-disciplines, and thus to study religious organizations or religious practices or religious identity.

“Religion” and “culture” are not parallel entities. A strong program that would tell us more about how religion works may need different models of how to expand a sub-field, which neither Sybil nor the strong, silent type can provide us. Religion research may always need to view religion embedded in, manifested by, or instantiated in the primary tropes of other subfields. Choosing a book title, I thought a long time about what metaphor could communicate what religion does and what people do with religion in public, and settled on the statement that religion “has a civic life,” among other lives—though maybe not twenty-six. We need metaphors that the language of independent and dependent variables can’t really give us, in order to represent how religious institutions, groups, and individuals live religion and are animated by religion. If the growth of a strong program in religion alerts the skeptic to religion’s power in the social world, that’s a useful start. Then we can take the next step towards a conversation about how religion works and what religion is.