Religious people differ greatly from one another, so much so that you really cannot put them all in the same category. One of the main differences between the sociology and psychology of religion is how practitioners respond to this issue. Sociologists want to focus on religious culture, which means focusing on what is common to the people of that culture. Psychologists, in contrast, are fascinated by how people differ and want to get down to detail about what they call “individual differences.”

Exactly how best to do that, in connection with religion, is not straightforward. You can claim that every person is unique. That leads to case studies of particular religious individuals. That approach can yield much interesting material, but it is hard to move from case studies to generalizations of any kind. We need to find a middle way between assuming that all religious people are the same and of regarding each one as unique. That requires some kind of classification.

Individual differences in religion pose two main questions. One focuses on how religious people differ from nonreligious people. The problem with that question is that religious people differ so much among themselves that it is hard to find clear differences between religious and nonreligious people. The other question focuses on how religious people differ between themselves and seeks to explain those differences psychologically. I suggest that it is helpful to subdivide religious people in some relevant way before comparing them with the nonreligious, else the diversity of religious people confuses the comparison.

In this chapter, I will consider two main ways into these issues. One is to start with demographic variables or general personality variables, and see how religion maps onto them. For example, we can consider how men and women differ. The alternative approach is to survey the many ways in which religious people differ from one another, and to propose some types or dimensions that will be theoretically fruitful in distinguishing among them.

Gender

One of the most interesting differences in religiousness is that between men and women. The basic fact is fairly clear – more women than men attend church in countries such as the United States and the UK, where the psychology of religion has mainly flourished. The best recent overview of research on this topic is that of Leslie Francis and Gemma Penny (2014).