PROTESTANTISM, POLITICAL, PREFERENCE, AND THE NATURE OF RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE: COMMENT ON ANDERSON'S PAPER.

In a recent issue of the journal Review of Religious Research, sociologist Donald N. Anderson presented an attempted replication of a study one of the present authors published in 1962 on the relationship between laymen's participation in ascetic Protestant churches and their political preferences. The present article offers a testable resolution of the discrepancies between Anderson's findings and authors' findings. In addition, it attempts to clarify the distinction between the way Anderson prefers to study religion and the way most sociologists study it. In so doing, a social interaction model of religious influence is presented. This model is shown to afford a better interpretation of the political outlook of Protestants than do certain other models used by students of religious behavior. According to authors, the conclusion of Anderson's paper is devoted to a critique of the way most sociologists conceptualize and measure religion. He rejects what he thinks is their penchant for defining the religious factor as "the residue apparent when such factors as occupation, education, place of birth, etc., have been controlled." Anderson's approach to religion is quite different from the approach of most sociologists.