Analyzing the “Religious Capital ” Approach to Religious Participation

The sociology of religion is something that is at its core, messy. Those who study the subject must attempt to make sense of something that is inherently not supposed to make sense, religion. How does one begin to place value on concepts such as faith, grace, love, and belief, amongst others? Within the past few decades there has been the push to place numerical values on religious participation. Borrowing from fundamental economic thinkers and theories, such as Adam Smith (the father of modern economics), exchange theory, game theory, and rational choice models, there has arisen a new perspective on religious participation and involvement, the spiritual/religious capital approach. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “Cultural Capital ” (Bourdieu 1984) has, essentially, been used to start a new subfield of the Sociology of Religion. This paper will explore three competing conceptions of religious capital and suggest a competing theory of religious participation. Laurence Innaccone was the first to articulate the notion of religious capital by building on concepts of human and cultural capital. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke further developed the concept and have written extensively on the subject, amongst other well-known sociologists of religion such a