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The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. By Roger Finke and Rodney Stark. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992. xvi, 328 pp. $22.95, ISBN 0-8135-1837-7.)
Sociologists of religion Roger Finke and Rodney Stark wrote this book in a deliberately provocative manner, and sure enough, it has irritated historians of American religion. No wonder, for the reader will not get five pages into this work before being told that the field of American religious history "suffers from glaring, systematic biases." It favors the old-line Protestant establishment faiths of colonial heritage with inordinate attention, it is more interested in the history of ideas than of actions and organizations, and it absolutely refuses to attend to quantitative evidence.
These criticisms are familiar to long-time veterans of this field but probably seem bewildering to religious...