Is religious involvement positively associated with having influential friends or is religious involvement unrelated to this kind of social capital? Building on the distinction between the "bonding" and "bridging" aspects of social capital, I distinguish two kinds of bridging social capital-identity-bridging and status-bridging-that have been a source of terminological confusion. I examine the relationship between religious involvement and status-bridging social capital by analyzing data from a large nationally representative survey of the U.S. adult population that included questions about friendships with elected public officials, corporation executives, scientists, and persons of wealth. The data show that membership in a religious congregation and holding a congregational leadership position are most consistently associated with greater likelihood of having these kinds of friendships. The data also show that frequency of religious attendance is largely unrelated to these measures of social capital and that there are some significant variations among religious traditions and size of congregation.

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A nationally representative survey was conducted of adult Americans who were currently involved in prayer groups, Bible studies, or other religiously oriented small groups. The purpose of the study was to determine if these respondents had engaged in forgiving behavior as a result of being in their group and, if so, to ascertain which group activities were most likely to facilitate this behavior. Of the 1,379 respondents, 61 percent said their group had helped them to forgive someone, 71 percent said they had experienced healings of relationships as a result of their group, and 43 percent said they had worked on improving a broken relationship in recent months. Group activities generating "social capital" or "cultural capital" were mostly unrelated to these responses, while activities involving "emotional capital" and "spiritual capital" showed strong positive relationships. Further analysis suggests that forgiving behavior is especially facilitated by groups that emphasize prayer, sharing, and learning about forgiveness. The study also suggests that forgiving behavior may have such consequences as encouraging prosocial involvement, helping to overcome addictions, and promoting emotional well-being.

Talk is easily regarded as having lesser value in studies of social phenomena than action, interaction, and organization. Yet talk is an important way in which humans act, interact, and organize themselves. In this article, I examine how talk has been used in recent decades in the study of religion and in related work on culture and institutions. I argue that careful empirical examination of talk has already significantly increased our understanding of both the micro and macro processes involved in the construction of social life. I discuss four objections to taking talk seriously and show that these objections should not deter investigations in which talk plays a central role. I offer examples of recent work that poses new conceptual and theoretical questions, complements quantitative studies, and provides insights about changing historical and contemporary social conditions.A close reading of the social science literature prior to the 1980s would suggest that religious people rarely spoke and probably were completely mute. Standard social psychological investigations asked subjects to fill out questionnaires composed of check-the-box items designed to capture underlying predispositions that people themselves could presumably not otherwise articulate. The best polls and surveys-ironically claiming to be how "America speaks"-used hand cards so that the religiously mute could point to an appropriate answer. If a respondent somehow was able to speak, the preferred answer was to be signaled by a brief grunt indicating agree or disagree.Not surprisingly, scholars in religious studies departments found this approach in the social sciences unsatisfactory and thus focused much of their work on texts composed by religious virtuosi-who had been able to speak when they were alive, but unfortunately were now dead. Ethnographers knew best that people-even religious ones-do talk, but what people said was more interesting if it symbolized deep cultural mentalities or was ritually enacted than if it consisted of ordinary words (Tedlock 1995).Obviously, what I have suggested here is an exaggeration, but it points to a history that merits consideration. A brief stroll past the landmark studies of that era demonstrates why an observer might conclude that religion was practiced by people who could not speak. No better place to begin can be found than the Harvard Department of Social Relations, which flourished in the early 1950s under the direction of sociologist Talcott Parsons and such influential collaborators as psychologist Gordon Allport and anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn. As the leading sociological theorist of his day, Parsons reinforced American scholars' interest in the important Acknowledgments: I wish to thank

Data are analyzed from three national surveys conducted in 1984, 1989, and 1992, supplemented by other data from a 1991 and a 1992 survey, to examine the distribution of religious conservatives, moderates, and liberals, and to consider the social and ideological correlates of these religious orientations. The results suggest overall stability in the distribution of these orientations and offer modest support for status group, religious socialization, and religious organization interpretations of their sources. The results also indicate that religious views correspond with positions on a number of contested social policy issues, but cast doubt on arguments about deeper differences in worldview and moral perspectives. The ways in which the data support and help to refine arguments presented in The Restrucruring of American Religion are discussed.