Gary J. Adler, Jr.

I first read this book twenty years ago. It changed the way I viewed religion as a sociologist: from a coherent body of “official” teachings to a collection of diverse behaviors; from “individual” beliefs to public patterns of practice. It’s an ideal model of sociological scholarship: creative empirical work, extensive theoretical discussion, and creative analysis about the “how” of a complex phenomenon. It reminded sociologists that religion hadn’t gone away. It still hasn’t.