This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Jelen, T. G. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Research in Religion and Mass Political Behavior in the United States

Looking Both Ways After Two Decades of Scholarship

University of Nevada-Las Vegas

This article attempts to assess the extent of "scientific progress" in the study of religion and political behavior in the United States. Using three models of scientific enterprise, I find that the empirical study of religion and politics has been quite successful in an inductive, cumulative sense and has been moderately successful in providing interpretive, verstehen explanations as well. In general, research in religion and politics has not produced much in the way of "covering laws," "paradigms," or "research programs," in which religious variables are central theoretical concepts. Rather, explanations using religious phenomena are typically special cases of more general theoretical perspectives. I suggest that the last characterization does not reflect intellectual failure on the part of researchers; rather, the phenomena of religious politics appears essentially decentralized, and our best theories of religious behavior help account for the lack of parsimonious explanations in this area.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?