A Theory of Religion

This text won the 1993 Distinguished Book Award of the Pacific Sociological Association.

This work on the sociology of religion begins with basic statements about human nature, and then, employing principles of logic and philosophy, builds towards complex pronouncements on societies and their religious institutions.In this unique text, Stark and Bainbridge begin with basic statements about human nature and, employing the principles of logic and philosophy, build toward increasingly complex propositions about societies and their religious institutions. They provide a rigorous yet flexible sociological theory of religion as well as a general sociological model for deriving macrolevel theory from microlevel evidence.