Background

Recent scholarship on the social embeddedness of religion indicate that religious choices are often best explained through social ties, and religious belief and practice is influenced by congregational embeddedness. Berger’s theory of secularization argued that plausibility structures were maintained by interactions with others with the same worldview, and that outgroup ties can reduce one’s certainty in religion and be detrimental to the religious group. Taken together these approaches suggest that religious certainty functions like Coleman’s conceptualization of social capital.

Purpose

The purpose of this present study is to begin to conceptualize religious certainty as a form of social capital: something that inheres in social relationships and serves as a resource for future religious action of the individual; as well as potentially serving a resource for congregations.

Methods

Using the Baylor Religion Study 2005 data I operationalize religious certainty as the certainty in the belief of the existence of God, and then perform logistic regression on certainty in God’s existence using social ties variables. Then I operationalize religious participation as attendance and run a multiple regression on attendance using certainty in the belief of God as an independent variable.

Results

The findings from the logistic regression on certainty indicate support for the hypotheses concerning social ties and certainty. The study finds that family religiosity and the number of friends one has who attend the same congregation the higher odds of certainty; whereas and the number of non-religious friends one has decreases the odds of certainty in the existence of God. The multiple regression on attendance suggests that religious certainty, net of all other variables, has a strong positive influence on attendance.

Conclusions and Implications

The results offer preliminary support for the argument: religious certainty does in fact appear to be a form of social capital since it inheres in social relationships and serves as a resource for individual action. This has important implications for congregations as those with higher stocks of social capital will have greater resources for religious action. It also offers some empirical support for the microfoundations of Berger’s theory of secularization.

中文翻译：

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作为社会资本的宗教确定性

背景

最近关于宗教的社会嵌入性的学术研究表明，宗教选择往往最好通过社会联系来解释，宗教信仰和实践受会众嵌入性的影响。伯杰的世俗化理论认为，合理性结构是通过与具有相同世界观的其他人的互动来维持的，外群体联系会降低一个人对宗教的确定性并对宗教群体不利。综合起来，这些方法表明宗教确定性的功能类似于科尔曼对社会资本的概念化。

目的

本研究的目的是开始将宗教确定性概念化为社会资本的一种形式：社会关系中固有的东西，并作为个人未来宗教行动的资源；以及可能为会众提供资源。

方法

使用 Baylor Religion Study 2005 数据，我将宗教确定性操作化为相信上帝存在的确定性，然后使用社会关系变量对上帝存在的确定性进行逻辑回归。然后我将宗教参与作为出勤率进行操作，并使用对上帝信仰的确定性作为自变量对出勤率进行多元回归。

结果

关于确定性的逻辑回归结果表明支持有关社会联系和确定性的假设。研究发现，家庭宗教信仰和参加同一会众的朋友数量增加了确定性的可能性；而一个非宗教朋友的数量减少了上帝存在的确定性。出勤率的多元回归表明，除去所有其他变量后，宗教确定性对出勤率有很强的积极影响。

结论和意义

结果为该论点提供了初步支持：宗教确定性实际上似乎是一种社会资本，因为它存在于社会关系中并作为个人行动的资源。这对会众具有重要意义，因为那些社会资本存量较高的会众将拥有更多的宗教活动资源。它还为伯杰的世俗化理论的微观基础提供了一些实证支持。