In the Course of a Lifetime: Tracing Religious Belief, Practice, and Change - Hardcover

Dillon, Michele; Wink, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520249003 ISBN 13: 9780520249004

Publisher: University of California Press, 2007

Synopsis

In the Course of a Lifetime provides an unprecedented portrait of the dynamic role religion plays in the everyday experiences of Americans over the course of their lives. The book draws from a unique sixty-year-long study of close to two hundred mostly Protestant and Catholic men and women who were born in the 1920s and interviewed in adolescence, and again in the 1950s, 1970s, 1980s, and late 1990s. Woven throughout with rich, intimate life stories, the book presents and analyzes a wide range of data from this study on the participants' religious and spiritual journeys. A testament to the vibrancy of religion in the United States, In the Course of a Lifetime provides an illuminating and sometimes surprising perspective on how individual lives have intersected with cultural change throughout the decades of the twentieth century.

About this title

About the Author

Michele Dillon, Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire, is author of Catholic Identity: Balancing Reason, Faith and Power and Debating Divorce: Moral Conflict in Ireland. She edited Handbook of the Sociology of Religion. Paul Wink, Professor of Psychology at Wellesley College, has written extensively on adult development and is coeditor, with J. James, of The Crown of Life: Dynamics of the Early Post-Retirement Period.

From the Back Cover

"Dillon and Wink bring their combination of sociological and psychological perspectives to this landmark study, making possible a fascinating series of individual portraits―and a fresh new window on how life and faith have changed over the last century."―Nancy T. Ammerman, author of Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and their Partners, Building Traditions, Building Communities

"The rich findings in this landmark volume challenge many assumptions about religion and the life course while documenting the multiple ways, both direct and subtle, that faith relates to personality, social attitudes, community involvement, psychological well-being, and health. This is social science at its best - empirically rigorous and theoretically sophisticated for sure, but also deeply humane in its ability to convey so clearly the individual voices of the research participants, as they struggle to make sense of their lives in a rapidly changing world."―Dan P. McAdams, author of The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By

From the Inside Flap

"Dillon and Wink bring their combination of sociological and psychological perspectives to this landmark study, making possible a fascinating series of individual portraits—and a fresh new window on how life and faith have changed over the last century."—Nancy T. Ammerman, author of Pillars of Faith: American Congregations and their Partners, Building Traditions, Building Communities

"The rich findings in this landmark volume challenge many assumptions about religion and the life course while documenting the multiple ways, both direct and subtle, that faith relates to personality, social attitudes, community involvement, psychological well-being, and health. This is social science at its best - empirically rigorous and theoretically sophisticated for sure, but also deeply humane in its ability to convey so clearly the individual voices of the research participants, as they struggle to make sense of their lives in a rapidly changing world."—Dan P. McAdams, author of The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In the Course of a Lifetime

Tracing Religious Belief, Practice, and Change By Michele Dillon Paul Wink

University of California Press

Copyright © 2007 The Regents of the University of California
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-24900-4

Contents

List of Illustrations |..........................................................................................................ixPreface |........................................................................................................................xi1 The Vibrancy of American Religion..............................................................................................12 Meet the Parents: The Family Context Shaping Religious Socialization in the 1930s and 1940s....................................223 Adolescent Religion in the 1930s and 1940s.....................................................................................404 The Imprint of Individual Autonomy on Everyday Religion in the 1950s...........................................................605 The Ebb and Flow of Religiousness across the Life Course.......................................................................806 Individual Transformation in Religious Commitment and Meaning..................................................................1007 Spiritual Seeking..............................................................................................................1198 The Activities, Personality, and Social Attitudes of Religious and Spiritual Individuals in Late Adulthood.....................1379 Spiritual Seeking, Therapeutic Culture, and Concern for Others.................................................................15810 The Buffering Role of Religion in Late Adulthood..............................................................................18011 American Lived Religion.......................................................................................................205Methodological Appendix: Measuring Religiousness and Spiritual Seeking in the IHD Longitudinal Study.............................219Notes............................................................................................................................231Bibliography.....................................................................................................................259Index............................................................................................................................275

Chapter One

The Vibrancy of American Religion

"If I had had the sense then that I have now, I'd refuse to live in Texas." So declared Barbara Shaw when interviewed in 1958, at age thirty, five years after she had left Berkeley, California, with her young husband, an engineer who was returning to west Texas to work in his father's prosperous ranching business. Becoming part of a well-established Texas family with a beautiful home might have struck those who knew Barbara as a perfect match for what researchers described as her "flamboyant and exuberant" personality. In adolescence, Barbara was socially ambitious and self-confident, a disposition encouraged by her mother, who believed "there was no reason [Barbara] couldn't be a member of Congress" and who repeatedly reminded Barbara to "always better" herself. Barbara's marriage certainly landed her in a well-to-do and socially prominent family. Unfortunately, Barbara's mother did not get to witness her daughter's accomplishment: she died, much to Barbara's sorrow, when Barbara was just twenty-three.

Barbara's passions for socializing, politics, and public speaking found no shortage of opportunities in Texas. The girl who as a high school senior in Berkeley was president of the Associated Women Students and who in college had enjoyed an exciting social life was easily drawn into the civic and social activities of her husband's family. But Texas was a very different place from California. And Barbara had very little sense of what to expect, though her father had grown up in Texas before moving to the Bay Area to work in a successful law practice. The difference of place was crystallized especially in the religious atmosphere that dominated everyday life in west Texas. "It's a Baptist town," Barbara explained, "where you can't smoke, drink, or tell an off-color story."

It wasn't that Barbara was not herself religious. While growing up in Berkeley, she had in fact been very active in the Congregational Church's Winthrop Club and Pilgrim Fellowship, and had "thoroughly enjoyed" the church's local activities and regional conferences during high school and college. Indeed, in 1944, when she was sixteen, she told the interviewer from the Institute of Human Development that the man she would marry "must be religious and ambitious," characteristics that mirrored her own sense of self. But she was keenly aware in her 1958 interview that being a Congregationalist was very different from being a Southern Baptist, and especially so in the 1950s, when Baptists were renowned for their separateness from other denominations (see Marty 1996: 448-49). Barbara pointed to the very different hold exercised by the two churches over their members: "Church didn't have the same meaning to my family. You went to church and then you came home, or you were active in the various groups. But these people live their religion. Every member of the family is a good Baptist and lives it. They are self-disciplined, they give 10 percent of their income-every member does-to the church each year. I've learned to give my tithe too, out of my allowance. My husband's whole family is involved heavily and lives by all its Christian tenets."

Barbara's husband and father-in-law were deacons, her mother-in-law was the church organist and music director for local religious radio and television programs, and her children, according to Barbara, had been "going to Sunday school since they were a month old." With all the time and energy that Barbara's family were contributing to the church, it is not surprising that Barbara too became highly involved. She longed for California but embraced the social and cultural demands of her new environs. She and her husband were members of a religious film discussion group and, to her surprise, "Even I teach Sunday school classes" (emphasis hers). For her Texas Baptist family, "religion is their life," and Barbara was making it her life too. Yet she envisaged a future life outside Texas and back in California.

Interviewed twelve years later, in 1970, Barbara was still living in Texas, now in Dallas, and was enjoying her marriage and five growing children. Her husband continued to be a "devoted Baptist" and highly involved in church affairs, taking the lead, for example, in planning the building of a new church. But Barbara, though still attending weekly church services, was significantly less involved in the congregation's other activities. Throughout the interview she spoke a great deal about personal change and her growing maturity and independence. She had gained much of this newfound autonomy by carving out greater independence from her husband's and the community's straight-laced Baptist values. The change in Barbara's attitude may have been influenced by the increased media visibility of the women's movement and the do-your-own-thing cultural mantra of the 1960s. In any case, one of her rebellious joys was driving around her affluent neighborhood loudly playing Janis Joplin in her open-roof car. She was also somewhat resistant to the extensive demands of her church, commenting: "I used to do everything at church.... I was [a devoted Baptist] for fifteen years, and now I'm sort of out of the stage of `living for' anyone else. I kind of do my own thing. And now I've all but given up. I just go to services and get my kids there. I go every Sunday, but I'm not real involved [in the church's other programs]. I might be again, one day. But I'm not real involved right now" (age forty-two, 1970).

Although now doing more of her "own thing," Barbara had not become socially withdrawn. She was still entertaining a lot, and among her diverse activities she organized programs for various women's groups, such as lawyers' wives, and she did some substitute teaching. Barbara had also resumed one of her earlier avocations-journalistic writing-and had started doing book reviews for reading groups. Her busyness now, however, seemed motivated more by her own interests than by her obligations as the wife of a socially prominent man in a culturally conservative city. Consequently, Barbara seemed more at ease and accepting of herself: "I guess I was concerned about the impression I made on others at one time. But now it's really glorious. There's no one I want to impress. I have a few, intimate good friends that I like.... I no longer try and impress anybody. I'm me."

When interviewed in 1982, Barbara, now in her midfifties, spoke with a "noticeable Texas accent," betraying her tacit acknowledgment that she would, of course, never leave Texas. But she still longed to return to California and buy a house so that she could spend an extended time there every year. Although fulfilled in her marriage and content in her Texas life, she confided, "I always wanted to live in California. That's been a big shadow." Despite this disappointment, Barbara led a full life, continuing to be involved in women's groups and in reading projects, and she had also become an avid gardener like her father, who had tended a beautiful garden at their Berkeley home when she was growing up.

Barbara's husband's extensive religious and civic commitments continued, and they frequently used their spacious home and grounds to host Baptist events. All their five children-with the youngest now seventeen-were active in the church, and indeed Barbara herself was much more comfortable with the current religious services than with those she had first encountered in west Texas in the mid-1950s. As she recalled of that time, "People there wanted to know `if I'd been saved in the Baptist Church.' And the biggest thing in town was the church. And dancing was sin. Cards were sin. And it still is dry. No liquor stores. No bars.... And the little rural Baptist churches, I don't think I could sit through so many of their tough sermons any more."

Barbara's experience of church in the 1980s was very different-the result not only of the fact that she had moved from rural west Texas to Dallas but also because the particular Baptist congregation she was attending was a more welcoming place: "We're in a beautiful big cathedral-type Baptist church, with a very enlightened preacher who is a good friend of mine with a good sense of humor. It's a warm, loving, wonderful church. And I'm very grateful for it." Barbara's sense of gratitude and affection for the church continued to grow, such that when interviewed sixteen years later (in 1998), she was highly involved in church and church-related activities. Turning seventy and enjoying excellent health, Barbara was attending services every Sunday and Bible study every Thursday, and some weeks she participated in additional church discussion groups and committee meetings. Summarizing the gradual evolution of her sincere commitment to the Baptists, she stated: "We are dedicated. That is something we do and we love. It is a part of our life and it is just great." Barbara acknowledged that she had not always felt so close to the Baptists. Recalling her adolescent involvement in the Congregational Church, she commented, "I loved my church; and my preacher, when I told him I was marrying a Southern Baptist-that was considered unusual-he said, `I hope we have raised you to be of service to any church you join.' It took me a while, but it is a very good religion, and I have loved the people I have met in it." Although Barbara had journeyed far, from Berkeley to Texas, she was sufficiently grounded in church and in religion that, as so presciently predicted by her Congregational pastor, she was able not only to adapt but to become genuinely committed to the Southern Baptist culture in which she was destined to live her adult life.

Barbara's accommodation of the Baptists and Texas culture did not, however, come at the price of self-denial. She continued to be the socially outgoing person that she had been in adolescence, and she managed to use her skills in an entrepreneurial way that allowed her to flourish in her new family and social context. In late adulthood, one of Barbara's main church-related activities was organizing fifty chapters of Mothers-of-Preschoolers that were funded by, and which met at, local churches. Barbara was very proud of her volunteer work with this nondenominational organization, and she said the idea behind the project was for older women to play a central role in helping and supporting young mothers. An accomplished public speaker, Barbara regularly addressed different chapters of the group, visiting Baptist, Catholic, Assemblies of God, Nazarene, Methodist, Presbyterian, and other churches all around Texas to talk about parenting and marriage. She was thus at the forefront of a local program that contributed to the nationwide interdenominational ties that have been forged among conservative Protestants and Catholics since the 1980s as they have tried to steer America toward more steadfastly moral "family values" (cf. Dillon 1995).

As might be expected, given Christian teaching on the sanctity of marriage and the renewed attention paid to family values in political activism, Barbara's speeches concentrated on strategies to maintain an intact and fulfilling marriage. One of the values she emphasized was the importance of young mothers staying at home when their children were very young. She also exhorted the young mothers to "honor and respect" their husbands, to "know their needs," and to tell them how grateful they were for all the material and emotional things their husbands contributed to the marriage. Barbara's message may seem jarring in a society where the equality of men and women is taken for granted though not always evident. But she insisted that what she was "trying to do is make the women stronger and more loving, because I think that-especially in a city like Dallas, where men go to work-there is always someone [else] looking good." Just as Barbara had managed to bend to a cultural environment that was alien to her cosmopolitan background, she wanted the young women she counseled to be pragmatic in adjusting to marriage and motherhood and to the competitive demands of the local culture.

AMERICAN RELIGION

We open our book with Barbara because her life illuminates the strong social presence of religion in America and its vibrancy in anchoring individuals and families over time as they encounter life course and cultural change. This is a narrative of American lived religion that is captured in our study's longitudinal data, gathered from Barbara and close to two hundred other women and men in interviews from adolescence through late adulthood. At one level, Barbara's religious behavior is straightforward. If we were to apply any of the standardized self-report scales that characterize much of the research on religion, assessing either frequency of church attendance or the importance of religion in everyday life, Barbara would get a consistently high rating on both scales during adolescence and throughout adulthood. Since her teens she had attended church services every week and had consistently devoted a considerable amount of time and energy to church-related activities. Yet we can see from her interview material that Barbara did not exhibit the sort of piousness, certainty of doctrinal belief, and unreflective conformity that some readers might associate with highly religious individuals.

In fact, Barbara's high rating on a religiousness scale, though an accurate indicator of her frequency of church attendance and of the important place religion held in her life, is at the same time deceptively superficial. It would give us no hint of the dynamism surrounding her lifelong religious involvement. It would give no clue that Barbara switched religions, moving from the Congregational to the Baptist tradition; it would give no hint that how religion is lived varies from one community and time to another; it would provide no suggestion that the meaning of religion changed for Barbara over time, from being primarily a social outlet in adolescence right through middle adulthood to being a more fully internalized attachment in late-middle and late adulthood; and it would tell us nothing of the fact that, over her lifetime of weekly church attendance, religion itself changed in tandem with other social, demographic, economic, and cultural changes.

The extensive interview data we have documenting Barbara's life show four relatively distinct phases in her religious commitment and in the place of church in her life. Her adolescence was a formative time of extensive socialization, and church activities gave her a religious identity while simultaneously providing an outlet for other social activities with her peers. We can think of Barbara's early adulthood-when she moved to west Texas and started a family-as a phase of social compliance. Her forties, in contrast, were a time of rebellion-she was still attending church every week but was openly challenging its behavioral strictures and focusing on her own needs rather than conforming to social expectations. Finally, in the fourth phase, in late adulthood, we see a more integrated melding of Barbara's inner religious feelings with her everyday social activities.

Each of these phases underscores the fact that religion-what it is, how it is expressed, and what it means-cannot be abstracted from other aspects of an individual's everyday life and the broader culture. Rather, religious involvement intertwines with personality, family, work (whether paid or unpaid), and other everyday commitments, as well as with social and institutional change. It is more than just a coincidence that Barbara was socially compliant in the 1950s, that she was rebellious in the late 1960s, and that she was at ease with herself and her pro-family activism during the post-Reagan era of political attention to traditional family values. Because religion interpenetrates everyday life, its obligations and rhythms invariably mesh with the cultural mood and with the individual's routines. On the one hand, the cultural demands of religion can be such that daily habits have to be stretched, as understood by Barbara, who worked to allow the church to blend into her life as intensely as it had for her Baptist husband and in-laws. On the other hand, for some in our study, family transitions and cultural shifts nudged them to diminish their commitment to the church.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from In the Course of a Lifetimeby Michele Dillon Paul Wink Copyright © 2007 by The Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520249003
• ISBN 13: 9780520249004
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 295