An immense intellectual shift is taking place in the social scientific study of religion. During the past few years many of its most venerated theoretical positions – faithfully passed down from the famous founders of the field – have been overturned. The changes have become so dramatic and far-reaching that R. Stephen Warner identified them “as a paradigm shift in progress” (1993:1044), an assessment that since then “has been spectacularly fulfilled,” according to Andrew Greeley (1996: 1).

This chapter reviews a small portion of this major paradigm shift: the dynamics of religious economies. Elsewhere (Stark and Finke 2000) we offer a more complete theoretical model, developing propositions explaining individual religious behavior, the dynamics of religious groups, and a more comprehensive examination of religious economies. Here our goals are far more modest. First, we will briefly contrast the new paradigm with the inherited model. Next, we offer a few of the foundational propositions for understanding religious economies. Finally, we use recent research to illustrate the dynamics of religious economies.

A PARADIGM SHIFT

The Old Paradigm

Since the founding of the social sciences, the study of religion has been dominated by a paradigm where religion is explained as an epiphenomenon, serving as a salve for social ills, and relying on the unchallenged religious authority of a monopoly to make religious beliefs plausible. As an epiphenomenon, Durkheim (1912/1976) and others viewed religion as an elaborate reflection of more basic realities.