American Sociology: Worldly
Rejections of Religion and Their Directions - Book Reviews.
In 1985
Yale University Press published Arthur Vidich and Stan Lyman’s book titled American Sociology: Worldly Rejections of
Religion and Their Directions. One of
the first review by Lewis Coser was an unfortunate “low blow” to the
authors from a man who had spent a career critical of Art Vidich’s work. Rather than finding common ground, Coser
sought to find fault with the author’s assessment of the history of sociological
thought – what might be called a “I am smarter than you are” attitude.
Subsequent
reviews by James Casey, James Rule, Henrika Kuklick, Stephen Baskerville, Peter
Kivisto, Robert J. Antonio, James A. Beckford, Edward Gross, Susan E. Henking,
J. David Hoeveler, Jr., Danièle
Hervieu-Léger, Charles H. Page, William
H. Swatos, Jr., Joseph A. Varacalli, Edward A. Tiryakian, Jessie Bernard, Alan
Sica, Gerd Kahle and Eli Zaretsky were generally favorable even though some had
their own “bone to pick” about why the authors selected certain sociologists
for analysis and omitted others or focused too narrowly on Puritanism in view
of the variety of other Christian and Judaic influences in America. Kuklick
found the author’s analysis compelling and went so far as to suggest that their
analysis should have been expanded beyond the arena of sociology to address
other disciplines that have been similarly affected by the legacy of Puritanism
in American social and political values. Tiryakian felt American Sociology was its best in its analysis of trends prior to
World War II. The emergence of Jewish, Catholic and Black voices in latter half
of the twentieth century was not addressed – an omission that Tiryakian found
troubling even though he praised the authors by stating “not only is the
substance of this book intrinsically interesting, but so also is the technical
execution of top caliber...”
 |
| Arthur J.. Vidich |
Perhaps
the most compelling reviews were written by Peter Kivisto, Jessie Bernard and
Edward Gross. Kivisto offered insights
in Max Weber’s theories and how these influenced the author’s analysis of American Sociology. In contrast Bernard praised the authors for
their open mindedness to heterodox conceptions of sociodicy as sources for
"intellectual visions" suitable for modern societies. Similarly, Gross lauds the authors for their
emphasis on the role of sociology in offering hope of insight and light in
place of the comfort and warmth of religion. After reading all of these
reviews, I was impressed by the overwhelming support for the fundamental theory
of sociodicy that Art Vidich and Stan Lyman set forth in this magnum opus work.
 |
| Stanford Lyman |
Readers
interested in an independent analysis of American
Sociology will find below brief excerpts from these disparate reviews
published in the American Journal of
Sociology, Sociological Analysis,
Theory and Society, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History,
History, The British Journal of
Sociology, Symbolic Interaction, Sociology, Bulletin of Sociological
Methodology, The Journal of Religion, The American Historical Review, Archives
de sciences sociales des religions,
Contemporary Sociology, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,
the Review of Religious Research, American Journal of Education, Sociological
Forum, Science, Zeitschrift für
Politik and Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences.
1. Review
by Lewis Coser (1913-2003)
Having
myself defended heterodox ideas about the past and the present of sociology, I
approached American Sociology with favorable anticipation. Alas, this proved to
be unwarranted.
Blog Author’s Historical Comment:
It is worthy of note that Lewis Coser’s worldviews received unflattering
treatment in Vidich and Lyman’s book and therefore his review of this book appears
to reflects a disgruntled critic nursing a long term tête-à-tête with the
authors.
2. Review
by James T. Casey
“The authors
argue that the failure of the Puritan goal to establish the kingdom of God on
earth did not lead, in later sociological thought, to the rejection of that
kingdom, but rather to its secularization-it was to be a kingdom without God. I
would take issue with some of the authors' arguments. They see sociology's
development in the United States as working through questions bequeathed by our
Puritan heritage. It was most certainly more of a reflection of what was
happening on the Continent as well. Others might take issue with Vidich's and
Lyman's neglect or dismissal of some sociological giants, but I think their
fundamental thesis is provocatively stated and suggests that now that we've
exorcized our Puritan past we are ready to develop a science of society
appropriate for a modern industrial age.”
3. Review
by James Rule (1943-)
“This is
an idiosyncratic and provocative book. The authors hold that the history of
American sociology is to be understood as a quest for secular substitutes for
an earlier world-view shaped by Puritan theology. At best, this is an
illuminating look at intellectual and cultural forces whose role in shaping the
study of society have been poorly understood. At worst, it is a one argument
book whose single argument is made to carry more weight than it can bear.”
4. Review
by Henrika Kuklick (1942-2013)
Like other
disciplines, sociology has a history rich with incidents that its present
practitioners would rather not remember, some of which its founding fathers
concealed. If you delight in revelations of such incidents, you will enjoy this
book. The expose form of this book follows from the authors' concern to define
the distinctive national character of American sociology, and to explain this character
as a function of the intolerant Protestantism of the discipline's founders. The
theme of the book is an eccentric variation on a familiar argument: because
American sociology was developed by persons who were either former ministers or
men of the social type who would have become clergymen in earlier times, the
discipline translated Protestantism's concerns for worldly reform into secular
terms, seeing social scientific research as worthwhile because it could be used
to improve the lot of humankind. Unlike other historians of sociology, however,
they stress the Protestant tradition of conceiving the polity as a covenant
between God and the citizenry, representing normative social theories as
secularized prescriptions for the realization of the covenant.
5. Review
by Stephen Baskerville (1950- )
Their
central thesis is that American sociologists in the mainstream of this
evolutionary progression 'transvalued' the theological ethics of Protestant
Christianity, and Social Gospel movement, into a set of equally teleological, a
priori, assumptions about the 'purpose' of human existence and the perfectibility
of human beings in society. The main
problem with the theological motif is that, whereas several of the sociologist
considered were avowedly influenced by Protestant associations and values,
others, doubtless the majority after the First World War, were not…
….Vidich
and Lyman are alone in trying to set the substance of sociological research
within a meaningful and intellectual development. Their study is worth reading
if only for the range and significance of the issues it raises.
Stephen
Baskerville, History, Vol.
71, No. 233, October 1986, pp. 468-470.
6. Review
by Peter Kivisto (1949- )
The book is
clearly not an apologia for sociology, but neither is it a condemnation of the
entire enterprise. Rather, it is a sustained and careful critique from the
vantage of two senior scholars who are, simply put, 'for sociology’. To better
understand their complaints with sociological orthodoxy, it is useful to
identify who among the heterodox they identify with as well as to determine
what it is about the work of these thinkers that suggests a promising basis for
an alternative sociological vision. Rather than eschewing any effort aimed at
contributing to social change, they offer the possibility of constructing a new
sociodicy. The task in a post-Puritan America is to build upon their work in
the process of constructing an appropriate sociodicy, one that meets the
demands of the day in our errand in the industrial wilderness. Seen in this
light, this exceptional book is a prolegomenon to that task.
Conceived as
'neither a history nor an exegesis' (Vidich and Lyman 1985: xi), the book is,
instead, a hermeneutic effort to ferret out the linkages between Protestantism
and the variegated forms of sociology that took root in American soil.
Underpinning it is a conviction that it is impossible to simply cast off the
cloak of one's culture at will. Though not made quite so explicit, it seems to
me that this assumption serves to distinguish this analysis from more conventional
treatments, which tend to treat the history of the discipline as entailing a
unilinear progressive emancipation from religion. Put another way, the book
casts doubt on the belief, held not merely by American sociologists, but by
Enlightenment intellectuals in general: namely, that it was possible to
illumine the world, to construct a world free from myth, by severing any
connectedness from tradition.
7. Review
by Robert J. Antonio (1945- )
Vidich and
Lyman contend that functionalism and statistical sociology were components of a
single paradigm that provided a rationale for technocratic practices.
Functionalism provides an inner-worldly substitute (institutionalized value
patterns) for other-worldly religious belief. In the Rational Society
redemption is the outcome of sociologically enlightened state policymaking,
which perfects social structure in the image of its immanent Protestant value
pattern. Vidich and Lyman brand this technocratic “sociodicy” as eviscerated
theology.
The
sociological “establishment” has weathered many assaults over the past twenty five
years and will undoubtedly survive this one. On the other hand, this book
points to cracks in its foundation. Despite its limitations, American Sociology deserves attention because
it raises dramatically a most important intellectual problem. It declares that
the Protestant value base of mid-twentieth century American society is in
ruins. For this reason. Vidich and Lyman are in direct opposition to neo-functionalist
efforts to shore up the old liberal meta-theoretic edifice. American Sociology
points explicitly to the bankruptcy of technocratic liberalism.
The genius of American Sociology is the argument that the course of
secularization ultimately returns science and society to their subjective
moorings. In the end the good ship has already set sail for the life-world and
public philosophy. Vidich and Lyman, however, overestimate Protestantism’s
contribution to the present crisis and consequently exaggerate the positive
cultural consequences of its decline. Claims about the pacifying effects of
secularization must be conditioned by a much deeper analysis of culture and
technocracy and broader consideration of the Enlightenment tradition and
political economy.
8. Review
by James A. Beckford (1942- )
If you
have ever wondered how the USA, the hot-house of many varieties of
individualism, also became a veritable laboratory of scientifically engineered
collectivisms, you will find Vidich and Lyman's book an invaluable source of
solutions. The central thesis is that strains of Protestant meliorism and
reformism were mixed with versions of Comtean evolutionism to produce
distinctive visions of perfectible communities of free individuals.
Thus,
beginning with ante-bellum theorists of a slavery-based society and concluding
with Bellah-inspired pleas for the restoration of a sacred covenant between the
American people and their many gods, this scholarly and readable book charts
the trajectory of American sociology's twin origins in Protestantism and
science. The sub-title misleadingly implies a unilinear trend away from the
former towards the latter, but both personal experience and much of Vidich and
Lyman's own material convince me that American sociology continues to hold
Protestantism and science in an uneasy yet creative, tension.
But the
originality of their book lies in its relentless, and absorbing, documentation
of the many- sided connection between the Christian religion and the
problematics of classical American sociology. The history of sociology was
badly in need of their irreverence and iconoclasm. Perhaps the decline of
hagiography is another indicator of secularization.
James A.
Beckford, Sociology, Vol. 20, No. 1
(February 1986), pp. 158-159
9. Review
by Bulletin of Sociological Methodology
This book
is the first historical study by senior scholars that attempts to rewrite the
discipline’s first century by putting forward a powerful thesis. The authors do
not write from a predominantly political angle. Rather, they have taken an idea
from Max Weber's sociology of religion and tried to show that (American)
sociology, until very recently, was religion by another name.
10. Review
by Edward Gross (1921-2013)
In their
social and intellectual history of American sociology, Vidich and Lyman seek to
tell us not only what various sociological theorists and schools have
contributed but to do something more difficult and more revealing. They argue
that whatever their differences, theorists have been engaged in a search for
ways in which it might be possible to substitute “a language of science for the
rhetoric of religion.” Even when they turned their backs on society and
rejected any role in government, sociologists, with their roots in Protestant
religion, could not stop themselves from seeking ways to form a better, even a
utopian, social world. For myself - thinking of the special interest of the
journal - I had intended only to skim the first 150 pages that precede the
discussion of Chicago sociology and the symbolic interactionists. But, once
started, 1 found myself reading the whole book from start to finish, almost in
a single sitting. Students should have the same experience, not the least
reason being the exposure to an unusually high caliber of sophisticated,
parsimonious, and elegant style of writing.
But if we
look more deeply into the thesis that the authors advance, something additional
is revealed. They give us not only a brilliant light on this history of
American sociology but provide us with what Lyman, in one of his seminal articles,
refers to as an “account” of that history. We are told not only what
sociologists had to say about society and what sort of vision they brought to
their work but why they offered it. We see them as seeking unceasingly not only
to “do” sociology but to offer justifications for the sociological way of
seeing the world and of its potential for carving meaning in what seems a
fragmented, anomic, desperate world. Perhaps the crowning justification is
still the towering Durkheimian achievement in showing that even the ultimate
rejection of life itself, suicide, is socially structured.
One final
recollection is worth making, this one from Louis Wirth. He was fond, in his
elementary theory course, of offering his own justification of sociology. He
posed a scene in which a man was lying unconscious on the street. A medical
person could test for signs of life; a psychologist could test for reflexes.
But what could a sociologist do, being interested only in the group? A
sociologist, said Wirth, could start going through the man’s pockets, where
documents would speak to his family attachments, his citizenship and community
rights, memberships, and other indications of wealth and status, all generating
far more information than other scientists might give us. I believe it was Park
who said that a person’s memberships and affiliations make up much of his
identity and the whole of his obituary. The loss of religion that Vidich and
Lyman describe with such intensity has, on balance, yielded a sociology that is
no substitute for the abandoned religion and cannot offer any hope of such a
religion. But in place of the comfort and warmth that have been lost, sociology
offers the hope of insight and light. The question of whether that
justification is sufficient can only be answered by sociological research
itself.
11. Review
by Susan E. Henking (1955- )
This
volume is a welcome addition to literature on the place of religion in the
history of the human sciences, in particular to that literature that identifies
connections between American Protestantism and the discipline of sociology as
institutionalized in the United States. In it, Arthur J. Vidich and Stanford M.
Lyman provide a synopsis of sociological ideas ranging from antebellum
proslavery systems to such contemporary varieties of sociological endeavor as
social systems theories, neo-Marxism, and the work of Erving Goffman.
Unfortunately,
this depiction of the connections between Protestantism and sociology is not
fully satisfactory for the student of religion. Vidich and Lyman are clearly
neither theologians nor historians of American religion, and, hence, their attention
to the theologies and movements of Protestantism does not match the subtlety of
their presentation of sociological ideas. Seen through their eyes, American
Protestantism is substantially more monolithic than American sociology.
A final
flaw, somewhat startling given the professional identifications of the authors,
is the emphasis on ideas almost to the exclusion of institutional interactions.
The authors point to the formative role of structural transformations of late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American society, yet they virtually
ignore institutional connections between religion and sociology evident in the
history of the discipline and the relevance, for example, of sociological
analyses of disciplinary formation and professionalization for their topic.
This is perhaps not surprising given the Weberian flavor of the work, but it is
disappointing.
12. Review
by J. David Hoeveler, Jr. (1943- )
American
sociology is replete with the language of Protestantism, and unquestionably
many of its tenets are the secular variants of inherited religious views of
life. The authors make this pattern clear in some convincing and useful
chapters, especially those dealing with Giddings, Talcott Parsons, and Albion
Small. In these sections the evidence is more carefully marshaled and more
concrete; the authors are not left to apply a priori a mechanistic framework to
their subjects.
13. Review
by Danièle Hervieu-Léger (1947- )
This
French language review praises Vidich and Lyman’s work for its insights in
American social science. He contends that the author provide an exceptional
analysis of the role of religion in American sociology.
14. Review
by Charles H. Page (1910-1992)
The
"secular covenant," the role of the state, and the "civil
covenant," the authors contend, have been the guiding concerns of
"virtually all" American sociologists from the outset. Although some
of these influences - for example, Midwestern Progressivism and the rise of the
counter- culture in California-are attended to by Vidich and Lyman, their
rewriting of the history of American sociology comes close to a religious
determinism that goes far beyond the constraints of Weber's classic. However
legitimate these criticisms may be (of course they reflect my own biases), I
strongly recommend this erudite, provocative, and indeed enchanting book to all
serious students of American sociology. Those who fail to read it will be
losers.
15. Review
by William H. Swatos, Jr. (1946- )
The book
can be assessed at many levels. With regard to the straightforward thesis that
early American sociology reflected in many ways the social and cultural systems
of its founders who had entirely been reared in Protestantism, the argument is
overwhelmingly compelling. But why should we expect otherwise? American culture
was permeated by a Protestant worldview, and social science intellectuals just
as all American intellectuals in this period – were largely the produce of that
worldview, whether they thought they were or not. This has clearly shaped the
agendas not only of sociology but also of all other disciplines practiced in
the United States to some degree or another. To the extent that sociologists
are unaware of this heritage, the book makes a valuable contribution. Particularly
important, though not to be overemphasized, in this connection is their
forthright treatment of the earliest uses of sociology in this country in the
context of the justification and maintenance of Afro-American slavery, a fact
too often suppressed in disciplinary histories: The authors skillfully use the
"race problem" as illustrative of the salvationist character of
American sociology. The book is so persuasively written that it is tempting to
swallow it whole. In fact, it needs careful dissection, with the various
strands that are bundled together teased out to see whether or not they provide
the sustenance claimed for them. The compelling thesis that establishment
sociology in America perpetuated establishment ideology when establishment
theology became intellectually bankrupt can be maintained without forcing early
American sociology to lie on a Procrustean bed.
16. Review
by Joseph A. Varacalli (1952- )
The Vidich
and Lyman volume provides a powerful, scholarly, lucid, useful, and
"neat" (perhaps a bit too neat) interpretation of the emergence and
subsequent evolution of American sociology. The authors argue that the
foundations of American sociology, from the Civil War through roughly World War
I, were significantly (not totally) based on American Protestant theology,
especially that of the "Social Gospel" which was concerned with
establishing the Kingdom of God on earth.
In large part, American sociologists, at least until the anomic and
alienating 1960's, had thus retained the original spirit of Protestant world
salvation by translating the idea of the sacred Puritan covenant into that of a
utopian, secular civil society in which the science of sociology would provide
authoritative grounds for America's moral redemption. That no sociodicy is
capable of serving as the functional equivalent of a theodicy is an issue that
the authors leave unaddressed.
One final
and significant assumption must be brought to the fore: in accepting Weber's
understanding that the Occident is undergoing a pervasive rationalization and
secularization of thought, Vidich and Lyman eliminate, by fiat, any possible
positive integrative role for religion in modern society and in the
construction of sociological theories. Whether the authors have tapped
correctly an irreversible historical watershed in the relationship of man to
the universe or whether their analysis suffers from a secular myopia generated,
in part, by their immersion in the milieu of the New School for Social Research
remains to be seen.
17. Review
by Edward A. Tiryakian (1921- )
Briefly,
American Sociology is at its best in examining the pre-World War II interplay
in the United States between the development of sociology and the Protestant/Puritan
cultural matrix. The geographical or regional coverage is wider than that in
most accounts, since Vidich and Lyman examine early southern sociology as well
as the important ‘nativistic’ Midwestern setting and also the California
setting of sociology, the latter a sort of crossroads between southern and
eastern influences that produced some important innovations. Not only is the
substance of this book intrinsically interesting, but so also is the technical
execution of top caliber, with historical inaccuracies and typographical
mistakes virtually absent, making for solid reading pleasure.
Perhaps,
in the spirit of Weber's analysis, we should say that, for American sociology,
the search for a this-worldly sociodicy has been more important than finding
it-or, as Lessing once pointed out, the search for truth is more bearable than
finding it. Vidich and Lyman have provided us with a good search of the deep
structures of American sociology, but there are other diggings to be done
before we get to the roots of our contemporary situation. In any case, for
their search we are thankful.
18. Review
by Jessie Bernard (1903-1996)
When
justice was removed from sociology, when both theodicy and sociodicy were wiped
off its slate, when only the "logy" (or science or means) component
remained that could be used for any end, or by anyone or anything, something
critical happened to the discipline. It became less and less a liberal art or
one of the humanities and more and more a professional technological skill
available to anyone who could pay for it. "Thereafter sociology turned
away from a vision of the ends [justice] and toward an unstinting effort to
improve the means (methods)" (288). In this effort it was spectacularly
successful. As a dedicated sociologist who wants to see her discipline become
as good as possible, I welcome this. As Vidich and Lyman seem also to do. For,
as noted at the beginning of this essay, they look to heterodoxies as sources
for "intellectual visions" of sociodicies suitable for modern
societies (307). Feminism is one such heterodoxy. As a feminist I am happy to
be engaged in this enterprise.
19. Review
by Alan Sica (1949-)
This is… a
valuable book, for its bibliographical mining, its strong thesis, the unusually
clear writing, and the scholarly gravity-especially now when sociology has
reached dire straits and needs, perhaps, to look backward before mastering the
future. Yet it is not about American sociology altogether. It is more a
monograph that highlights the place of religious thinking and feeling in
selected works of some American intellectuals, most of whom have passed into quiet
oblivion precisely because their ideas became utterly antique. It is not quite
accurate to equate or merge true theodicy with today's sociodicy.
Alan Sica,
Science, New Series, Vol. 229, No.
4719 (Sep. 20, 1985), pp. 1255-1257
Kahle’s
review is printed in German and explains how this book reflects the history of
American sociology.
Gerd
Kahle, Zeitschrift für Politik, NEUE
FOLGE, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Juni 1988), pp. 215-217
21. Review
by Eli Zaretsky
If the
purpose of this work was to establish that there were many important
connections between Protestant thought, both in its evangelical and its earlier
Puritan incarnations, and sociology, especially in its early phases, then the
work must be considered a success. Among the Protestant themes that the authors
discern in American sociology are the idea of a saving elite (saints, social
scientists), the idea of civil society as a moral covenant or brotherhood, the
need to justify the existence of evil or suffering (theodicy, sociodicy) as
well concurrent longings toward perfectionism, utopianism, and perfect management.
But if the
authors' intention was to offer an overall interpretation of American
sociology, as their title suggests, the book must be judged a failure. There
are several reasons for this. First, simply to link a body of modern social
thought to religion is to state a truism. Human beings are moral creatures with
moral feelings about themselves and others. Ever since the first millennium
B.C., and in certain ways much earlier, the basic framework for thinking about
human life has been religious. Only in the nineteenth century, the intellectual
history of which is dominated by the process of secularization, did this begin
to change. Simply linking secular thought to religious thought tells us
nothing; there are implications to this link that the authors never draw.
In spite
of these criticisms, this remains an important work for all students of the
history of the behavioral sciences. American sociology is a unique tradition;
whatever its connections with classical European social theory it comes deeply
out of the American reform tradition and nineteenth-century American thought.
This tradition was, at its core, evangelical Protestantism in its ambivalent
relationship to market individualism and the spread of corporate capitalism.
The authors have made an important contribution in pointing to the existence of
this connection. Unfortunately, the real task of specifying its nature and
evaluating its meaning do not seem to have been considered by the distinguished
authors of this study.
Professors Vidich and Lyman
Respond:
The
reviewer misstates the theme of the work and thus has been led into judging it
"a failure" for not offering "an overall interpretation of
American sociology." Our book is an examination of American sociological
knowledge, with a specific focus on the transvaluation of the rhetorics of that
knowledge from religious to scientific terminologies. By "usurping the
traditional position of theology," sociologists have taken God's work (we
believe unwittingly) out of His hands and put it ever so confidently into their
own. The search for secular solutions to problems of theodicy has pushed
American sociology into a wide variety of applied and social work directions,
leading it to formulate sociodicies for any and all social problems. Our book
examines the consequences and the directions taken by American sociology as a
result of its commitment to the cure of souls and the perfection of society. It
does not proceed as "conventional intellectual history" nor does it
"follow Edward Shils's lead in organizing [its] material 'ecologically.' “Insofar
as our book traces sociological developments in specific schools and regions of
the United States, it stands as a corrective to Shils's study. The authors and
schools we selected for treatment were purposefully chosen to cover the full
range of theoretical problems confronting the field, in areas such as
self-formation, community, race relations, stratification, work,
industrialization, mass phenomena, social movements, the state, and the moral
foundations of social order. They cover the entire history of American
sociology from 1854 to the present. That less attention is paid to some
thinkers, as, for example, W. I. Thomas and Charles Horton Cooley, is fully
explained and justified in the text (pp. 145, 146, 180, 195, 206, 210; 57, 153,
164) and accords with the thematic of our project. It is wrong to claim that we
do not given attention to George Herbert Mead (see pp. 270-272). The reviewer
has not grasped the argument of our book. Our position is that the heritage of
Protestantism has not provided sociology with an adequate public philosophy for
comprehending, let alone ameliorating, the problems of a secularized society.
The reviewer's view of Robert Bellah's exhortation, that sociology should
"live up to its responsibilities," is not our own, but an unsupported
quasi-secular canopy covering up contemporary sociology's embarrassing lack of
new clothes. If it were true that "to link a body of modern social thought
to religion is to state a truism," all criticism would be superfluous. It
is tendentious trivializing to assert that "ever since the first
millennium B.C., and in certain ways much earlier, the basic framework for
thinking about human life has been religious." That statement misses our
point: Protestant thinking has had a special and limiting effect on American
sociology's capacity to think about American society and its human life.
Vidich
& Lyman, Journal of the History of
the Behavioral Sciences, Volume 22. October 1986, pp. 384
