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116 REVIEW OF RELIGIOUS RESEARCHMan in Community. Edited by Egbert de Vries.New York: Association Press, 1966, 382 pp.,$5.50; LondcMi: SCM Press, 45s net.

This is the fourth of four books preparatoryto the 1966 Conference of the World Councilof Churches on "Christians in the Technicaland Social Revolutions of Our Time." There isan impTessive array of twenty-one authorseconomists, sociologists, anthropologists, psy-chologists, natural scientists, students of cultureand theologians from varied geographic andcultural regions of the world.The declared intent is to reach beyond tra-ditional and unrealistic Christian approachesto science, culture, and history and to technicaland social revolutions of our time. It is alsohoped that chureh lay groups will use thiswork as study material. The first intent is ad-mirably met in the case of the majority ofauthors. However, while this is without doubta very useful book to the more sophisticatedlayman, its professional terminologies andcomplex concepts would not recmnmend itas a study book for the average church layman.The work is divided into five parts. Part Itraces the development of society "from tradi-tion to modernity" with Egbert de Vries (Hol-land) and with Masao Takenaka's (Japan)"Between the Old and the New Worlds."

Part n, the largest secticm of the book,analyzes "society and tension" including acommendable work on "Ideological Factors inthe West" by Andre Dumas (France). DavidW. Barry (U.S.A.) has a useful treatment of'XJrban Revolution in the U.S.A.," as doesMonica Wilson (South Africa) on "UrbanRevoluticHi in South Africa." Helmut Begemann(Germany) has a discerning essay on the"Changing Family in the West."Daisuke Kitagawa (U.S.A.) discusses "racialman," the most urgent domestic issue. Unfor-tunately this essay is limited by the apparenttime gap between composition and publication.It becomes a reflection of the false securitymost white Americans have felt in a patientnonviolent Negro, who has now becmne anangry and determined black man pressed be-yond patience by the institutionalized and overtviolence all around him. The essay oSers nocriticism of the lack of substantial support bythe white churches to what was a few years

Part m , "Christian Bases of Man in Community," contains a work of DKtrich VoOppen (Ml the "Era of the Pers(mal" in whiche ably discusses "the organization," and iplace in the secular and the religious realms.Part IV c

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BOOK REVIEWS 117passive acceptance ("nulist"), positive accept-ance ("converts"), or compliance which freedthe person from anxiety ("lib erate d") . T hedirection was determined by the extent towhich the individual was integrated into in-formal groups of officials in which feelingscould be discussed without public exposure,the degree to which they identified with theschool system and its leadership, the ability ofthe person to rationalize the change to hispublic, and the perceptions of the role of lawin society. Muir concludes that, in situationswhere pro and con forces are about evenlymatched and where ambivalence is strong,law can change attitudes.

While his case study approach gives agood insight into the situation of each official(rather vivid to this reviewer who was a schoolofficial at the time), he does not attemptstatistically to support his conclusions, pre-ferring to concentrate on the conceptualizationof the variables. His conclusions can be sup-ported by research findings from rural sociologyand other innovation studies.The implications of the study for those whoare interested in attitude change would seemto lie in the necessity for people to be in con-tact with groups which can support them while

they work through the change and for thesupport of the legal and power structures inthe community for the change. His study wouldbe of interest to those concerned with theeffect of innovations or changes in large organ-izations upon those who represent the organi-zation to the public and to those coocemedwith social change,James S. SwiftMICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

American Piety: The Nature of Religious Com-mitment. By Rodney Stark and Charles Y.dock, Berkeley and Los Angeles: Universityof California Press, 1968, 230 pp., $6.75."The shameful ignorance, the Pharisaicalpiety, the illogical and unjustified argu ments,and the absurd and obsolete classifications. . . .by Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark arematched only by their excellent academiccredentials. . ," (L. Farrant in Trans-action,p. 54, September, 1968).

of misrepresentations, errors of facts, andfalse analysis of the current religious situationthat it is entirely ridiculous." (S, I. Stuber inTrans-action, p. 54, September, 1968),These ungentle refiections on the final chap-

ter of American Piety, which was published asa sei>arate article in the Jime issue of Trans-action, suggest that Stark, a research sociolo-gist at the Berkeley Survey Research Center,and Glock, Chairman of the Berkeley So-ciology Department, have written either ahighly significant and hence controversial book,or else an exceedingly bad one.What did they do? In 1963 three thousandpersons randcmily selected from the churchmember population of four northern Califor-

nia counties completed a questionnaire, whichcontained nearly 500 items concerning (inpart) religious beliefs and practices, politicalattitudes and behavior, prejudice, and use ofleisure time. In 1964, the National OpinionResearch Center sampled and interviewed1, 976 people. The information from these twosurveys has provided Glock and Stark withthe material for four books, cme of which hasalready been published. The present book isthe first of a trilogy in which the nature,sources, and consequences of religious com-mitment are examined. This first volume looksat the nature of religious commitment, theways in which commitment may be and isexpressed, and finally "ponders the significanceof what has been learned about Americanreligion for the future of the church" (p, 10),

The authors begin by describing again theirfive dimensions of religiousness: belief, prac-tice, knowledge, experience, and consequences(the effect of religious belief in everyday life).Then, they consider those portions of theirdata that bear on each dimension of religiouscommitment and devise scales (based on thequestionnaire items) to measure these dimen-sions. In the course of this task, they presenta myriad of statistical findings, showing, forexample, that "virtually everyone has a de-nomination but few know even trivial factsabout their faith" (p, 112), On many items re-lated to aU five dimensions, they found extreme-ly wide variations between church members ofthe various denominations (e.g., only 41%of the Congregationalists, but 81% of theRoman Catholics and 99% of the Southern

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