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Talip Küçükcan

Multidimensional Approach to Religion: a way of looking at religious phenomena

Abstract: Modern societies have by nature a corrosive effect on traditional forms of religious life and lead to decline in the scope and influence of religious institu- tions and in the popularity of religious beliefs. This article argues that prophecies of traditional seculariza- tion theory failed to predict the future of religion in the contemporary world. Although modernity caused a degree of rupture between religion and society, there has also been a global revival of religion in the last two or three decades. In order to understand the transfor- mation of religion and its comeback, various manifes- tations and expressions of religion must be analyzed.

This article shows that religion is a multidimensional phenomenon. One’s acceptance of and position to- wards a supernatural being, towards an ultimate reality and its manifestations involve a multidimen- sional process that includes attitudes, beliefs, emo- tions, experiences, rituals, and community and be- longing. This article concludes that a multidimensional approach to religion, if revised and re-developed by taking into account the varieties and specificities of Islam, can help us better understand the Muslim world, enable us to make cross-cultural comparisons about the status of religions, and finally to equip us to make better predictions about the future of religion.

Current developments and recent social and cultural transformations under the forces of globalization indi- cate that the prophecy of traditional secularization thesis seems to have failed to capture the ongoing influence of religion. Proponents of secularization theory such as Bryan Wilson, Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann and Karel Dobbledare established an unavoidable and casual connection between the beginning of modernity and the decline of traditional forms of religious life. Generally speaking theorists of secularization process argued that religion would lose its influence on social and political life once the society absorbs the values and institutions of modernization. For Wilson1 for example “seculariza- tion relates to the diminution in the social significance of religion”. Shiner2 on the other hand, identifies six types or areas of secularization with several predictions about the future of religions. Before we move onto the analysis of whether these predictions came through or not in the real world, it will be a useful exercise to remember the range of prophecies. Shiner’s first type of secularization is the decline of religion, which pointed out that “the previously accepted symbols, doctrines and institutions lose prestige and influence. The culmination of secular- ization would be a religionless society”3. The second type of secularization - “conformity with this world” - pre- Talip Kucukan

Associate Professor of Sociology, Center for Islamic Studies, Istanbul, Turkey.

Author of the book:

Politics of Ethnicity, Identity and Religion:

Turkish-Muslims in Britain (1999). Co- author of the books:

Dogal Afetler ve Din:

Marmara Depremi

Uzerine Psiko-Sosyolojik Bir Arastirma (2000);

Avrupa’daki Türklerin Türkiye – Avrupa Birliði Ýliþkilerine Etkileri - Hollanda Örneði- (2004).

E-mail:

[email protected]

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dicted that “the religious groups or the religiously in- formed society turns its attention from the supernatural and becomes more and more interested in this world”4. The third type of secularization - “disengagement of soci- ety from religion” - claimed that “society separates itself from religious understanding which has previously in- formed it in order to constitute itself an autonomous re- ality and consequently limits religion to the sphere of private life5. The fourth type, described as “transposition of religious beliefs and institutions”, prophesized that functions of religious knowledge, behavior and institu- tions would have a world-based outlook.

“Desacralization of the world”, as the fifth type of secu- larization, predicted that the world would gradually be deprived of its sacral character and become an object of rationally explained sphere, rationality replacing super- natural beliefs mysterious approaches. The sixth type of secularization, taking the form of “movements from sa- cred to a secular society”, on the other hand refers to so- cial change, and indicates that the secularization will be completed when all the decisions in society are based on rational and utilitarian considerations rather than reli- gious principles6. Contemporary developments on the globe and recent debates in social sciences indicate that such comprehensive claims and predictions of the secu- larization theory have only limited validity and success, most of them being confined to Western Europe. Davie7 describes this as en exception rather than the rule, even though the old thesis holds, evidencing that in the last two hundred years secularization has made an immense progress8.

Although modern societies have by nature a corro- sive effect on traditional forms of religious life and lead to decline in the scope and influence of religious institu- tions and in the popularity of religious beliefs9, as Bell10 notes, existential questions of culture remain inescap- able and “some new efforts to regain a sense of the sa-

cred point to the direction in which our culture – or its sentient representatives - will move.” After observing the global rise of religion, Peter L. Berger11, who was once the proponent of secularization theory, admits “that the assumption that we live in a secularized world is false.

The world today, with some exceptions.... is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever”. He argues that the whole body of literature ex- plaining secularization and its repercussions is essen- tially mistaken. Modernization did not necessarily led to the decline of religion. Even in highly modernized societ- ies like the European ones, religion succeeded to pre- serve its presence especially in individual consciousness if not institutionally. Regarding the relation between reli- gion and secularization in Europe, Daniéle Hervieu- Léger makes a strong point in her acclaimed book Reli- gion as a Chain of Memory where she argues that a chain connects an individual believer to a community, and the tradition (or the collective memory) constitutes the basis of the existence of this community. Hervieu- Léger12 contends that “by placing tradition, that is to say reference to a chain of belief, at the center of the ques- tion of religion, the future of religion is immediately as- sociated with the problem of collective memory.” Mod- ern European societies, especially France, she argues, have experienced a crisis of collective memory to some degree which led to a break in the chain depriving the memory of religion. She13 concludes however that the chain that connects memory to religion is being re-in- vented in modern European societies.

Recent developments and contemporary social, cul- tural and political transformations clearly show that reli- gion is an important force today. There is an increasing tendency towards religion in USA, the Middle East, the East Asia, the South America, the Eastern Europe and nu- merous other places. Transnational religious networks are being formed and communication revolution en- Key words:

religion, secularization, modernity, revival of religions, religious experience, Islam

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abled religion to become a global reality in world poli- tics. Scholars and thinkers spend tremendous effort to analyze the nature and transformation of religion both in its traditional and modern forms. This article aims to chart influential approaches to understand this universal phenomenon known as religious commitment and to ex- amine leading theories concerning dimensions and mea- surement of different aspects of religiosity and reli- giously informed behavior. Political scientists, anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists have been concerned with various aspects of religion and its influence on individual and society as well as with the measurement of religiosity and religious commitment since the establishment of these disciplines. No matter how we define religion, it has many aspects and dimen- sions. As pointed out by Wearing and Brown14 the ques- tion of dimensionality remained a persistent question in the analysis of religious beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.

In the last two decades sociologists and psychologists of religion have spent considerable time and energy to the conceptualization and measurement of religious commit- ment15. Discussions on the nature of religious commit- ment moved from simple and reductionist arguments as whether religiosity is a unitary phenomenon or a multi- dimensional matter towards more sophisticated issues culminating in synthesis of various theoretical frame- works which were developed for the analysis of this com- plex phenomenon. In order to make a meaning of cur- rent developments as a whole and to see in which areas secularization is effectively taking places, it is a necessary exercise to look at relevant theories.

There are numerous definitions of religion. Since there is no universally agreed meaning of religion it may mean different things to different people. As Thrower16 points out in the concluding chapter of his book Reli- gion: The Classical Theories, the first thing that will strike anyone trying to answer the question of what is re-

ligion, “will be the sheer number and variety of (these answers), the second will be the realization of how little, if anything, these answers have in common and the third (...) will be the realization of how culture bound the ma- jority of these answers are.” As the purpose of this article is not to delve into many meanings of religion, suffices it so say that depending on social and cultural contexts and their mind-sets, people perceive and understand re- ligion in different ways. Even within the same religious tradition there are varieties of interpretations regarding the meaning of religion and its relations to individual and society. Religions cannot be perceived as monolithic belief systems because monolithic approaches to religion fail to appreciate the variety of religious experiences and expressions of religious orientation17. As displayed

throughout human history religions are not static but dy- namic forces. It is this dynamism and fluidity, which en- able religions to survive on personal as well as societal levels.

Religious commitment entails more than one dimen- sion. As McGuire18 rightly notes ‘there are many facets of religion.’ One’s acceptance of and position towards a su- pernatural being, towards an ultimate reality and its manifestations involve a multidimensional process com- prising attitudes, beliefs, emotions, experiences, rituals, the community and the feeling of belongingness. Hill and Hood19 argue that ‘any construct as complex as reli- gion is likely to be multidimensional in nature’ ‘because religion deals with people’s ultimate concerns and pro- vides both personal and social identity within the cosmic or metaphysical background.’ Research on religious com- mitment supports this observation and indicates that re- ligiosity is not a one-dimensional experience in individu- als’ lives20. This means that religious orientation has various dimensions. One of the earliest theorists on the dimension of religiosity proposed a four-dimensional model in approaching religious orientation and religious

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group involvement21. Lenski, from the point of view of the content, identifies these dimensions as follows: 1- the ‘associational’ dimension, which includes frequency of religious involvement in worship and prayer services;

2- the ‘communal’ dimension, which relates to the pref- erence and frequency of one’s primary-type relations; 3- the ‘doctrinal orthodoxy’, which refers to the intellectual acceptance of the prescribed doctrines of the church;

and 4- the ‘devotionalism’, which involves private or per- sonal communion with God through prayers, meditation and religious behavior. As these dimensions indicate, re- ligious commitment has cognitive, relational, behavioral and ritualistic components

Glock22 has also contributed to the discussions on the conceptualization of religious orientation by propos- ing a five-dimensional model23 of ‘conceptual framework for the systematic study of differential commitment to re- ligion.’ Glock argues that despite the great variety of de- tails, all world religions share general areas in which reli- giosity is manifested. These are the five core dimensions of religiosity: ‘the experiential’, ‘the ritualistic’, ‘the ideo- logical’, ‘the intellectual’, and ‘the consequential’. Ac- cording to Glock24, the ‘experiential dimension’ of religi- osity refers to the achievement of direct knowledge of the ultimate reality or to the experience of religious emo- tions in the form of exaltation, fear, humility, joyfulness and peace. The ‘ideological dimension’ gives recognition to the fact that all religions expect that the religious per- son should hold certain beliefs to which followers are ex- pected to adhere. The ‘ritualistic dimension’ includes specific religious practices expected of religious follow- ers to perform either individually or communally.

Among them prayer, worship, pilgrimage and feasting can be mentioned. The ‘intellectual dimension’, in

Glock’s framework, is constituted by the expectation that the religious person should have some knowledge about the basic tenets of his/her faith and its religious scrip-

tures. The ‘consequential dimension’, on the other hand, encompasses man’s relation to man. This means that the

‘consequential dimension’ includes religious prescrip- tions, which determine the attitudes of the adherents as a consequence of their religious belief. Glock argues that these are the core dimensions of religious commitment being shared by different religions of the world.

On the basis of this five-dimensional explanatory framework, Stark and Glock25 attempted to document the nature of religious commitment in America and added several sub-dimensions to the original framework.

In what concerns religious belief ‘orthodoxy’, ‘religious particularism’ and ‘ethicalism’ were used as indicators for measuring the religious belief. ‘Worship’, ‘commun- ion’, ‘organizational participation’, ‘financial support’, and ‘saying table prayers’ or ‘grace’ were used, on the other hand, as the main indicators of performing reli- gious practices and rituals. Later, Faulkner and DeJong26 devised items and developed a scale in order to test Stark and Glock’s five-dimensional model of religiosity.

Faulkner and DeJong used 23 items of the scale to see the interrelationship among the five dimensions of religi- osity. Their findings led them to conclude that these di- mensions were positively related. After the analysis of correlations among the five dimensions of religiosity, they also argued that their findings ‘indicate the interde- pendent nature of these measures of religious involve- ment’. However, Faulkner and DeJong27 pointed out that

‘the degree of relationships differs for the various dimen- sions. This diversity in degree of relationships lends sup- port to the view that religious involvement is character- ized by several dimensions’. Nudelman28 also tried to measure the dimensions of religious commitment by us- ing the model proposed by Glock29, Stark and Glock30. After analyzing data on Protestant and Roman Catholic Church members, Nudelman concluded that ‘devotion’

and ‘participation’ appeared to be two important dimen-

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sions of religiosity. Based on his findings, he further ar- gued that religious commitment was neither a one di- mensional nor a multidimensional phenomenon.

Some researchers widened the scope of scales and measures regarding the multidimensionality of religion.

King31, for example, has developed a framework for the analysis of religious commitment and proposed nine di- mensions to measure religiosity. These dimensions are delineated as 1- ‘Credal Assent and Personal Commit- ment’ which refers to the acceptance of the fundamental tenets of a religion such as belief in God, the Scriptures, eternal life, salvation etc.; 2- ‘Participation in Congrega- tional Activities’ which is about taking part in organized religion such as participating in Church activities regu- larly and actively; 3- ‘Personal Religious Experience’

which encompasses prayer, repentance and union with God; 4- ‘Personal Ties in the Congregation’ which in- cludes church membership and frequency of meeting fel- low-believers and organizing social events with them; 5-

‘Commitment to Intellectual Search Despite Doubt’

which relates to critical stimulation and search for mean- ing; 6- ‘Openness to Religious Growth’ which includes moral growth and continuous struggle to understand re- ligion better; 7- ‘Dogmatism’; 8- ‘Extrinsic Orientation’;

9- ‘Financial Behavior and Financial Attitude’ which re- fers to donations to church or financial contribution to religious events; and lastly, 10- ‘Talking and Reading about Religion’ which refers to the frequency of reading Bible and other religious texts and discussions about re- ligion.

These dimensions are similar to those proposed in the earlier research. ‘Credal Assent and Personal Com- mitment’ includes for example, Glock’s ‘ideological’, and Lenski’s ‘doctrinal orthodoxy’ dimensions. Similarly,

‘Participation in Congregational Activities’ is related to Glock’s ‘ritualistic’ and Lenski’s ‘associational’ dimen- sions. ‘Personal Religious Experience’ on the other hand,

corresponds to Glock’s ‘experiential’ and Lenski’s

‘devotionalism’ dimensions. King and Hunt32 later re- vised the early findings and subsequently proposed a new model on similar lines. On the King-Hunt model Roof33 notes that it had provided the most comprehen- sive conceptual framework to test the multidimensional- ity model.

Instead of using the concept of ‘dimension’ Verbit34 proposed the concept of ‘components’ in his attempt to develop a theoretical framework suited for understand- ing religiosity. Verbit argues that ‘religion has several

‘components’, and an individual’s behavior vis-à-vis each one of these components has a number of ‘dimensions’’.

He identifies six components of religion including

‘ritual’, ‘doctrine’, ‘emotion’, ‘knowledge’, ‘ethics’ and

‘community’. In Verbit’s model, these six components of religion are measured along four dimensions as ‘con- tent’, ‘frequency’, ‘intensity’ and ‘centrality’. Of these di- mensions ‘content’ refers to the elements of one’s reli- gious repertoire and denotes the ‘direction’ of his/her religious behavior, indicating participation or non-par- ticipation in any item of religion. The dimension of ‘fre- quency’, on the other hand, measures the ‘amount’ of involvement of a person in religious behaviors and prac- tices. ‘Intensity’, as argued by Verbit, refers to the degree of determination or consistency in relation to one’s posi- tion towards religion. The fourth dimension, ‘centrality’, measures the importance a person attributes to religious tenets, rituals and sentiments.

Drawing upon earlier models and studying dimen- sions of religiosity among Catholics, O’Connell35 also proposed two more dimensions in addition to the five presented by Stark and Glock. O’Connel argued that the consequential scale should be divided into two main di- mensions, as individual and societal consequences, to find out the relationships between the dimensions of re- ligiosity. The same year, Himmelfarb36 invented a synthe-

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sized form of a typology of religious involvement and ar- gued that religious involvement has at least two ele- ments: ‘doctrinal beliefs’ and ‘ritual observance’.

Putney and Middleton37 on the other hand tried to analyze the dimensions of religious ideology by focusing upon the following aspects: 1- Orthodoxy (the belief in traditional doctrines and creeds); 2- Fanaticism (impos- ing religion on others; the desire to share religious ideol- ogy with others): 3- Importance (personal significance of religion) and; 4- Ambivalence (awareness of holding con- tradictory attitudes toward religion). More recently Hilty and Morgan38 devised a Religious Involvement Inventory which measures seven dimensions of religiosity: 1- Per- sonal Faith (time spent to improve the knowledge, un- derstanding and practice of faith); 2- Intolerance of Am- biguity (making decision between two choices to have a clear idea about faith); 3- Orthodoxy (importance, sig- nificance and centrality of religion in one’s daily life, fre- quency of communicating with God); 4- Social Con- science (Importance of affiliation to community and institutional identity); 5- Knowledge of Religious History (extent of information about the facts, figures and events in the history of one’s faith); 6- Life Purpose (meaning of life, satisfaction or despair with life); and 7- Church In- volvement (frequency of attending Church activities and amount of contribution). As it can be seen, once again, the dimensions proposed by Hilty and Morgan have some overlapping themes with the ones identified by the other authors. It can be argued that the common ground amongst these authors and their proposed dimensions is the fact that they view religion as a multidimensional phenomenon and thus measure its various aspects ac- cordingly. Somewhat differently Maranell39 also joined the group of scholars who have a multidimensional ap- proach to the study of religion. Maranell’s religious attitude’s scales include the following eight dimensions:

1- Church orientation scale (attitudes towards Church

membership, its activities and functions); 2- Ritualism scale (importance, significance and frequency of the ritual of worship, prayer and ceremonies); 3- Altruism scale (co-operation, brotherhood, sympathy and concern for others); 4- Fundamentalism scale (literary belief and conviction in the holy book); 5- Theism scale (belief in the existence and superiority of God); 6- Idealism scale (belief in the establishment of justice, freedom, equality and peace); 7- Superstition scale (attitudes towards irra- tional beliefs); and 8- Mysticism scale (belief in higher states of mind beyond reason, belief in union with God and in manifestation of the spiritual).

So far, we have discussed the most influential and thus widely cited approaches to the measurement of reli- giosity. These approaches argue for the view that reli- gious commitment is a multidimensional human experi- ence and its variety cannot be understood within the framework of a one-dimensional interpretation of reli- gious belief and behavior. Religious beliefs, attitudes and behaviors are complex phenomena and therefore one cannot reduce the manifestations and impact of religion to a single variable. Any attempt to understand and ana- lyze such complex processes entails a multidimensional approach to religion because it is self-evident that reli- gion is a multifaceted social reality and psychological ex- perience. However, against the near-dogmatic status of multidimensional understanding of religion, Clayton and Glagged40 argued that ‘religiosity is primarily a commit- ment to an ideology and the other so-called dimensions are merely expressions of the strength of that core com- mitment’. This view should not overshadow the fact that despite the existence of a core or a center in any reli- gion, the manifestations of this core element are very rich and the variety of religious expressions and religious influences warrant the employment multidimensional methods to understand religion.

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Conclusions

This article argues that prophecies of traditional secularization theory failed to predict the future of reli- gion in the contemporary world. The old thesis which predicted the disappearance of religion from the social, political and cultural life under the forces of rationality and modernity is no longer valid. Therefore a new ap- proach or at least a revised theory of secularization is needed in order to capture the dynamics of the revival and return of the sacred in the modern secular era. It is true that modernity caused a rupture between religion and society to some degree, however, in the last two or three decades there has been a global revival of religion everywhere except few exceptions. In order to under- stand the transformation of religion and its return, vari- ous manifestations and expressions of religion need to be analyzed.

As the Figure 1 makes it very clear, there has been a heated debate over the dimensionality of religion and many scholars devised different tools to understand this global reality. The analysis of the leading theories, as we have tried to suggest, indicates that the religious commit- ment and involvement are multidimensional phenomena (see Figure 1). The core dimensions of a religious com- mitment include belief, knowledge, practice and experi- ence. It should be pointed out that each dimension of a religious orientation might have numerous sub-dimen- sions because of the nature of religious experience.

Therefore all theories and explanatory frameworks for the analysis of religious commitments are susceptible to omitting some of the dimensions and sub-dimensions of religiosity. Nevertheless, they are a useful means for identifying the general patterns. As Glock41 points out, however, ‘the real challenge lies in the cross-cultural study of religious commitment’. This reminds us that the conceptual frameworks or at least the overwhelming ma-

jority of case studies on which multidimensional scales were established are Judeo-Christian in nature. This is a very serious shortcoming in an increasingly multi-reli- gious world where religions such as Islam rather than Ju- daism and Christianity are expanding more rapidly.

Almost all of the theoretical frameworks discussed in this article were developed after studying predominantly Christian believers and manifestations of Christian

religious experience. It is therefore questionable whether these methodological approaches can explain non- Christian religious experience in general and

manifestations of Islamic orientation in particular. At this juncture, it becomes clear that more research is needed on subjects other than Christians to test the reliability and applicability of theories and approaches developed by psychologists and sociologists of religion for the measurement of religiosity. Comparative research will also facilitate the development of more inclusive and coherent methodological approaches for the study of

‘the varieties of religious experiences’. Although

religious revivalism and more dynamic manifestations of religion have been taking place on a global scale, the Muslim world has a unique case because Islam manifests itself effectively in arts, literature, science and politics.

Current discussions amongst sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists and political scientists focus on the Muslim world more than on any other. The number of publications, conferences, and news and TV programs confirm the fact that there is an increasing interest in the expressions of Islam. In conclusion, multidimensional approach to religion, if revised and re-developed through taking in to consideration the varieties and peculiarities of Islam, can help us understand Muslim world better and would enable us to make cross cultural comparisons in what regards the status of religions. In

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the end, they will also give us the possibility to make better predictions about the future of religion.

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Bell, D. ‘The Return of the Sacred? The argument on the future of religion’ British Journal of Sociology, Vol.

28, No. 4/1977, pp. 419-449.

Berger, P. L. ‘The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview’ in Peter L. Berger (ed.), The

Desecularization of the World, Resurgent Religion in World Politics, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washing- ton, 1999, pp.1-18.

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13/1974, pp. 135-145.

Davie, G., ‘Europe: The Exception That Proves the Rule?’ in Peter L. Berger (ed.), The Desecularization of the World, Resurgent Religion in World Politics, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, 1999, pp. 65-83.

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in J. E. Faulkner (ed.) Religion’s Influence in Contempo- rary Society, Readings in the Sociology of Religion, Charles E. Merril, Ohio, 1972, pp. 38-56.

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24, No. 1/1985, pp. 75-86.

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King, M., ‘Measuring the religious variable: Nine pro- posed dimensions’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Re- ligion, Vol. 6/1967, pp. 173-185.

King, M. and Hunt, R., ‘Measuring the religious vari- able: Amended findings’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 8/1969, pp. 321-323.

King, M. and Hunt, R. (1975) ‘Measuring the reli- gious variable: National replication’ Journal for the Sci- entific Study of Religion, Vol. 14: 13-22.

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Lenski, G., The Religious Factor, A Sociological Study of Religion’s Impact on Politics, Economics, and Family Life, Greenwood Press, Connecticut, 1961.

Maranell, G. M., Responses to religion: Studies in the social psychology of religious belief, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 1974

Nudelman, A. E., ‘Dimensions of Religiosity: A Fac- tor-Analytic View of Protestants, Catholics and Christian Scientists’ Review of Religious Research, Vol. 13, No. 1/

1971, pp. 42-56

O’Connell, C. M., ‘Dimensions of Religiosity Among Catholics’ Review of Religious Research, Vol. 16, No. 3/

1975, pp. 198-207.

Putney, S. and Middleton, R., ‘Dimensions and corre- lates of religious ideologies’, Social Forces, 39/1961, pp.

285-290.

Rémond, R., Religion and Society in Modern Europe, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1999

Roof, W. D., ‘Concepts and Indicators of Religious Commitment: A Critical Review’ in R. Wuthnow (ed.) The Religious Dimension: New Directions in Quantitative Research, Academic Press, London, 1979, pp.17-45.

Shiner, L., ‘The Concept of Secularization in Empiri- cal Research’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Reli- gion, Vol. 6, No. 2/1967, pp. 13-22.

Stark, R. and Glock, C. Y., American Piety: The Na- ture of Religious Commitment, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1968

Thrower, J. Religion: The Classical Theories, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1999

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Notes:

1 Wilson, B., Religion in Sociological Perspective, Ox- ford University Press, Oxford, 1982, p. 149.

2 Shiner, L., ‘The Concept of Secularization in Em- pirical Research’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Reli- gion, Vol. 6, No. 2/1967, pp. 209-216.

3 Ibid., p. 209.

4 Ibid., p. 211.

5 Ibid., p. 212.

6 Ibid., p. 216.

7 Davie, G., ‘Europe: The Exception That Proves the Rule?’ in Peter L. Berger (ed.), The Desecularization of the World, Resurgent Religion in World Politics, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, 1999, p. 76;

Davie, G., Religion in Modern Europe, A Memory Mu- tates, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, pp. 25-26.

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8 Rémond, R., Religion and Society in Modern Eu- rope, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1999, p. 187.

9 Bruce, S., Religion in the Modern World from Ca- thedrals to Cults, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, p. 26.

10 Bell, D. ‘The Return of the Sacred? The argument on the future of religion’ British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 28, No. 4/1977, p. 448.

11 Berger, P. L. ‘The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview’ in Peter L. Berger (ed.), The

Desecularization of the World, Resurgent Religion in World Politics, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washing- ton, 1999, p. 2.

12 Hervieu-Léger, D., Religion as a Chain of Memory, Polity Press, Oxford, 2000, p. 125.

13 Ýbid., p. 141-162.

14 Brown, L. B. ‘Classification of Religious Orienta- tion’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 4/

1964, p. 143.

15 Roof, W. D., ‘Concepts and Indicators of Religious Commitment: A Critical Review’ in R. Wuthnow (ed.) The Religious Dimension: New Directions in Quantitative Research, Academic Press, London, 1979, p. 17.

16 Thrower, J. Religion: The Classical Theories, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1999, p. 202.

17 There are many studies, which support the argu- ment that religious experience has a vast diversity and variety. For this line of argument see William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1895 (Original work published in1906); Michael Argyle, Psychology of Religion, Routledge, London, 2000. For an attempt to chart Is- lamic religious experience see Frederick M. Denny, ‘Vari- eties of Religious Experience in the Qur’an’ in S. Seikaly and R. Baalbaki (eds.) Quest for Understanding, Ameri- can University Press, Beirut, Lebanon, 1991, pp. 185-202

A recent book, which includes numerous scales and mea- sures strongly, suggests that there are many aspects of re- ligion. See Peter C. Hill and Ralph W. Hood Jr., Measures of Religiosity, Religious Education Press, Alabama, 1999.

18 McGuire, op. cit., p. 13.

19 Hill, P. C. and Hood R. W. Jr., Measures of Religios- ity, Religious Education Press, Alabama, 1999, p. 269.

20 For the most comprehensive coverage providing detailed analysis of numerous scales and measures of various dimensions of religion see Peter C. Hill and Ralph W. Hood Jr., Measures of Religiosity, Religious Education Press, Alabama, 1999. See also Peter C. Hill and Ralph W. Hood Jr. (1999); for a critical review of lit- erature on research focusing on approaches to the reli- gious commitment, see Roof, W. D., ‘Concepts and Indi- cators of Religious Commitment: A Critical Review’ in R.

Wuthnow (ed.) The Religious Dimension: New Direc- tions in Quantitative Research, Academic Press, London, 1979, pp.17-45.

21 Lenski, G., The Religious Factor, A Sociological Study of Religion’s Impact on Politics, Economics, and Family Life, Greenwood Press, Connecticut, 1961, pp.

21-24.

22 Glock, C. Y. ‘On the Study of Religious Commit- ment’ in J. E. Faulkner (ed.) Religion’s Influence in Con- temporary Society, Readings in the Sociology of Reli- gion, Charles E. Merril, Ohio, 1972, p. 39.

23 The article which is entitled ‘On the Study of Reli- gious Commitment’ was first published in July-August 1962, Research Supplement of Religious Education, New York City: The Religious Education Association: 98-110.

24 Ibid. p. 40.

25 Stark, R. and Glock, C. Y., American Piety: The Na- ture of Religious Commitment, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1968, pp. 62-80.

(11)

26 Faulkner, J. E. and DeJong, G. D., ‘Religiosity in 5- D: An Empirical Analysis’ Social Forces, 45/1966, pp.

246-254.

27 Ibid., p. 253.

28 Nudelman, A. E., ‘Dimensions of Religiosity: A Fac- tor-Analytic View of Protestants, Catholics and Christian Scientists’ Review of Religious Research, Vol. 13, No. 1/

1971, p. 46.

29 Glock, C. Y. ‘On the Study of Religious Commit- ment’ in J. E. Faulkner (ed.) Religion’s Influence in Con- temporary Society, Readings in the Sociology of Reli- gion, Charles E. Merril, Ohio, 1972, pp. 38-56.

30 Stark, R. and Glock, C. Y., American Piety: The Na- ture of Religious Commitment, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1968.

31 King, M., ‘Measuring the religious variable: Nine proposed dimensions’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 6/1967, pp. 173-185.

32 King, M. and Hunt, R., ‘Measuring the religious variable: Amended findings’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 8/1969, pp. 321-323.

33 Roof, W. D., ‘Concepts and Indicators of Religious Commitment: A Critical Review’ in R. Wuthnow (ed.) The Religious Dimension: New Directions in Quantitative Research, Academic Press, London, 1979, p. 24.

34 Verbit, M. F., ‘The Components and Dimensions of Religious Behavior: Toward a Reconceptualization of Re- ligiosity’ in Philip E. Hammond and Benton Johnson (eds.) American Mosaic, Social Patterns of Religion in

the United States, Random House, New York, 1970, pp.

26, 27.

35 O’Connell, C. M., ‘Dimensions of Religiosity Among Catholics’ Review of Religious Research, Vol. 16, No. 3/1975, pp. 200-203.

36 Himmelfarb, H. S., ‘Measuring Religious Involve- ment’ Social Forces, 53/1975, pp. 606-618.

37 Putney, S. and Middleton, R., ‘Dimensions and cor- relates of religious ideologies’, Social Forces, 39/1961, pp. 285-290.

38 Hilty, D. M. and Morgan, R. L., ‘Construct valida- tion for the Religious Inventory Involvement Inventory:

Replication’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 24, No. 1/1985, pp. 75-86.

39 Maranell, G. M., Responses to religion: Studies in the social psychology of religious belief, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 1974.

40 Clayton, R. R. and Gladden, J. W., ‘The Five Di- mensions of Religiosity: Toward Demythologizing a Sa- cred Artifact’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 13/1974, p. 142.

41 Glock, C. Y. ‘On the Study of Religious Commit- ment’ in J. E. Faulkner (ed.) Religion’s Influence in Con- temporary Society, Readings in the Sociology of Reli- gion, Charles E. Merril, Ohio, 1972, p. 54.

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