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Increasing attention to spirituality is an important trend in gerontology, human services, and health sciences. Spirituality is complex, overlaps with religion, infuses all human life, and therefore is difficult to study. Diverse methods are used in its investigation, and numerous scales measure its components. Almost all of the research reveals its significant connections with health and other aspects of well-being. Professional applications of the research findings have been limited by complex religious and cultural values, insufficient research, and ethical considerations. Unlimited opportunities for further study include the need to evaluate the impact of all religions and ideologies that claim to enhance spirituality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to explore the sociology of religion. because the essence of being of sociologists, like other people, is spirit and everyone is inescapably encased in an atmosphere at the supernatural, it is impossible to step outside spiritual realities in order to study them with complete research objectivity. For this reason, careful attention to the foundation of postulates and assumptions that underlie research is an essential feature of the sociology of religion. To sum up, the definitional issue is largely resolved by recognizing that what is actually dealt with in the sociology of religion is not religion alone, but religion plus spirituality.

Social indicators of spiritual well-being (SWB) are desirable for quality of life studies. They also are needed in the sociology of religion because promotion of spiritual health is a central objective of most religious institutions, because evaluation of the alleged functional and dysfunctional consequences of their endeavors is of increasing social significance, and because the claim that SWB is promoted more effectively by non-religious than by religious agencies should be tested. Several strands of exploratory research which aim at the eventual development of an index of SW B are summarized. For example, questionnaires of 123 respondents indicate that seven-tenths believe it is possible for people to know whether or not they possess SWB. Two-thirds believe they possess it, but most think that only few or half of the population have SWB. The conceptual, theoretical, and empirical problems which spring from diverse definitions and divergent criteria of SWB are typical of most subjects when they are first introduced into the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1970s many minorities in American society are "coming out." In sociology this trend is reflected by the wholesome formation of many groups identified by religious or ideological perspectives. It is stimulated by the recognition that there is no "value-free" sociology, which also reminds us that the values of scientists often have been interpreted as vices. Most such values can be viewed as virtues. Implications for the sociology of religion of the virtues of integrity, humility, love, justice, vision, and transcendence are all discussed. All are interrelated. Together they help to check harmful imbalances of distorted values and demonstrate that sociologists wear the spectacles of both sociology and faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing pragmatic and scholarly interest in spiritual well-being (SWB) makes the development of instruments for its analysis increasingly important. Factor analysis of items from survey research in Sweden and the U S.A. resulted in seven indexes. The strongest pertain to the Christian faith, self-satisfaction. and personal piety. all of which are significantly correlated with subjective SWB. Three more indexes summarize involvement in political, religious, and charitable volunteer service activities. Findings within and between subcategories of respondents in the two nations were surprisingly similar. The ten indexes explore only a few components of the complex multidimensional phenomenon of SWB. The area and the indexes require additional research; yet the indexes can be used for scientific, clinical and evaluative purposes in religious research, in the social indicators, quality of life, and wholistic health movement, in psychological and pastoral counseling, and in program planning and evaluation studies even as they undergo further modification and validation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 1973 survey of the members of the Religious Research Association (RRA) and individual subscribers to its journal, Review of Religious Research (RRR), reveals a constituency that consists predominantly of males who are ordained Protestant clergymen, over half of whom are employed in college and university teaching, sociology being their leading subject field. Half of the members have belonged for six years or more, and two-thirds of the members also belong to the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR), and more than half are members of the American Sociological Association. The RRR and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion were evaluated as the most helpful of five journals rated. Some ambivalence about the future independence of the RRA was evident, but in general there is a favorable orientation toward cooperative activities with the SSSR and Association for the Sociology of Religion. Current dilemmas of RRA leaders can be overcome by explicit planning to maximize its distinctive objectives for it is a viable organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the International Consultation-Conference on the Sociology of Religion that was held in Washington D.C. from September 8 to 10, 1962. Ecumenical in the sense that participants came from all parts of the world, the meeting was jointly sponsored by the Religious Research Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. It was supported by a grant from the Hazen Foundation. More than eighty registered participants represented twenty nations, including Canada, Colombia, India, Japan, Malaya, New Zealand, Pakistan, Poland, Puerto Rico and Sierra Leone besides Western Europe and the United States. Following greetings by Dr Lauris Whitman on behalf of the Religious Research Association and Professor Horace Fries; president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the first session consisted of summary reports on current work in the sociology of religion. Prepared papers by Dr Norman Birnbaum of Nuffield College, Oxford University, and Professor Charles Y. Glock of the University of California in Berkeley were followed by extemporaneous presentations representing other parts of the world.

Quoique le pluralisme vertical plonge ses racines dans Ia Réforme du 16e s, il n'est apparu véritablement aux Pays-Bas qu'au 19e s. Volontairement ou parfois comme consequénces latentes d'autres décisions, des »digues« ont peu à peu été organisées par les principaux groupes idéologiques autour de leurs membres parce qu'ils estimaient que le contrôle social à partir de la conscience individuelle était devenu insuffisant, et qu'il fallait le renforcer par des moyens plus extérieurs. Les conflits entre les groupes religieux, tout autant que la lutte contre les effets de l'industrialisation et de l'urbanisation ont joué en premier lieu, le désir d'obtenir des subsides gouvernementaux ont joué ensuite. Les principes de la séparation de l'Eglise et de I'Etat, quoique repoussés, ont été implicitement reconnus par les groupes idéologiques par l'intermédiaire d'autres explications comme celle de Ia »sphère de souveraineté «chez les Protestants ou le principe de »subsidiarité« chez les Catholiques. L'ensemble à eu pour effet de déplacer, dans ces groupes, le centre d'intérêt des fins vers les moyens. L'auteur remarque que pour des raisons propres aux Etats-Unis, les mêmes courants semblent s'y développer actuellement. Si l'acceptation ou le refus de cette orientation nouvelle est une question d'échelles de valeurs propres, il revient aux spécialistes des sciences sociales d'en estirner et le coût social et les avantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the need for further research to integrate the scattered findings in previous sociological studies. The author asserts that the tendency of sociologist to neglect the sociological study of religion minimizes a very significant type of social interaction, a major form of group behavior, and a chief source of social control. He suggests further research on the natural history of social institutions, institutional interrelationships, social interaction, communication, social control, socialization, social stratification, occupational sociology, and sociology of conflict.

It is difficult in the Netherlands than in most other nations to define clear boundaries of the Sociology of religion, for religious considerations are clearly interwoven with every aspect of Dutch society. Historically the background of the sociology of religion in the Netherlands lies in its broader parental discipline. Dutch sociology of religion still dearly bears the imprint of Sociography. Most of it remains primarily descriptive, depicting population composition, social life, institutions, historical backgrounds and church membership distributions of specific regions or communities. Until recently, relatively little of it has been oriented directly toward the testing of hypotheses related to sociological theories. The Netherlands Reformed Church was losing large numbers of members, especially among the laboring classes and most of its losses could be accounted for only by the increasing proportions of nonmembers in the population. In addition to quantitative losses, qualitative support of the church by its members was diminishing. Church workers were alarmed by this trend, which played a major role in establishment of the Sociological Institute of reformed Church.

This article suggests some practical and theoretical problems of churches pertinent to social class which ought to be the subjects of research and study. This article has grown out of a recent workshop conducted by members of the Religious Research Association. A sense of smugness about the status of their inter-group relations seems to characterize many churches since policies for integrating nonswhites into their congregations have been initiated or strengthened. Accepting racial integration on paper is not the end of such problems for the church, however; it often is but the beginning. others. The nature of the underlying attitudes of the social classes and their influences upon religious beliefs and behavior need study. It would be instructive to know whether or not the values of the various social classes are assimilated into the value systems of the churches in which the respective classes are the most strongly represented. New Testament teachings about the relationships of slaves and their masters, the bond and the free, and the rich and the poor are especially pertinent as a basis for establishing the ideal position of the contemporary Christian church on the subject of social-class distinctions.

The article presents summery to a paper that was delivered in the fifty-first and fifty-second annual meeting of the American Sociological Society. The paper is on the social sources of Dutch vertical pluralism as compared with selected contemporary American socio-religious conditions. Dutch society has four main subdivisions, the Roman Catholic, Protestant, humanistic and neutral. Each has a different religious-philosophical orientation, so that each maintains separate organizations in many areas of economic, political and social life. The pattern of vertical pluralism called the verzuiling effectively separates many of those who hold different religious and political views from one another and has many other latent and manifest consequences.