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The Consequential Dimension of Mormon Religiosity
By Stan L. Albrecht

Often as I have walked past the east wall of the general reference section of the Lee Library during my years as an undergraduate student and then, later, as a member of the faculty, I have glanced up at the photos of members of the Brigham Young University community who have been selected to give prior Distinguished Faculty Lectures. I have always felt a deep sense of admiration for the contribution each has made to the university and a great personal appreciation for the impact that several have had on my own life. Tonight, I acknowledge again that impact as well as the sense of honor I feel to be included among them.

I will direct my remarks this evening to the general topic of the sociology of religion and, more particularly, the sociology of Mormon life. I begin with the guiding assumption that causal explanation is a hallmark of religion, whether the event to be explained is, in Paul Davies's words, one of the "deep questions of existence" or something that is more mundane. I quickly acknowledge that Davies's deep questions of existence, such as life and its purposes and the origin and destiny of the universe, are addressed by religion primarily through revelation and received wisdom. At the same time, I will attempt to point out that many of the effects of religion on the more mundane questions of life can be addressed empirically through the collection and analysis of social-science data.

In sharing with you a body of such social-science data, my focus will be primarily on what I will call the consequential dimension of religion. I will set aside many of the important personal and spiritual aspects of religious belief and ask, more simply, what difference religious affiliation and practice make in other dimensions of our lives. At the same time, I will treat the consequences of religion a bit more broadly than is often done in that I will consider other religiously-related behaviors as relevant outcomes of religious identification and practice. In other words, in what follows, I will treat religion as both a dependent and an independent variable. My approach will clearly imply an important value decision on my part: I begin with the conviction that religious belief and practice can and should be positive forces in our own lives and desirable ends or outcomes for society more generally.

While beginning with the question, "Does religion make any difference?" I will further focus most of my remarks on the more specific, "Does being a Latter-day Saint make any difference?" Are we different because of our religious heritage and practice, or have we become, as someone suggested many years ago, not so much a peculiar people as a rather common people characterized by a peculiar history? One who has studied Mormonism over the last three decades has observed that "with worldly opportunity has come worldly achievement, which has in turn brought worldly respectability; and respectability is always a problem for a 'peculiar people.'" To address this broad issue, I will focus on three areas: religious disengagement and disaffiliation; religion and family life; and religion and education.