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We propose a theory of religious mobilization that accounts for variations in religious participation on the basis of variations in the degrw of regulation of religious economies and consequent variationa in their levels of religious competition. To account for the apparent 'secularization" of many Eurupesn nations, we stress supply-side weaknesees-inefficient religious organizations within highly regulated religious economies-rather than a lack of individual religious demand. We test the theory with both quantitative and historical data and. based on the results, suggest that the concept of secularization be dropped for lack of case8 to which it could apply. For years everyone has agreed that many nations in Europe are extremely secularizedthat few attend church services, that belief is on the wane, and that the power and presence of religion in public life has faded to a shadow of past glories. Or, to quote the most inIluential definition of secularization, Europe's "religious institutions, actions, and consciousness, [have lost] their social significance" (Wilson 1982:149). There also has been nearly universal agreement that Europe's secularization represented the future of all societies-that the spread of science and modernity doomed religion. As Anthony F. C. Wallace (1966:265) explained: The evolutionary future of religion is extinction. Belief in supernatural beings and supernatural forces that affect nature without obeying nature's laws will erode and become only an interesting historical memory.. Belief in aupematural powers is doomed to die out, all over the world, as the result of the increae ing adequacy and diffusion of scientific knowledge. I! Not only has secularization been regarded as inevitable, the dominant view has been that secularization is an absorbing state-that once achieved it is irreversible, instilling mystical immunity. Frank Lechner (1991:llll) put it this way: Once progress has disconfirmed most general religious explanations, once alternative social and cultural systems are firmly inetitutionalized, once a pattern of h-ee and frequent disafiliation by individuals has be come accepted, it is hard to see how the process can be reversed. Low church attendance rates in many European nations are interpreted as supporting these views, but the enormous vigor of religion in the United States causes great difficulty for the secularization thesis. Despite the immense popularity of science and the prevalence of higher education here, religion shows no signs of decline (Greeley 1989). In fact, church membership rates are at an all-time high in the United States (Finke and Stark 1992). l We wish to thank Eua M. Hambeg of Lund University for her many important suggesttons about the section on religion in Sweden. We also thank Andrew M. Cm&y.

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That men are less religious than women is a generalization that holds around the world and across the centuries. However, there has been virtually no study of this phenomenon because it has seemed so obvious that it is the result of differential sex role socialization. Unfortunately, actual attempts to isolate socialization effects on gender differences in religiousness have failed, as have far more frequent and careful efforts to explain gender differences in crime. There is a growing body of plausible evidence in support of physiological bases for gender differences in crime. Making the assumption that, like crime, irreligiousness is an aspect of a general syndrome of short-sighted, risky behaviors leads to the conclusion that male irreligiousness may also have a physiological basis. If nothing else, this article may prompt creative efforts to salvage the socialization explanation.So far as is known, throughout recorded history religious movements have recruited women far more successfully than men, except for those that excluded women from membership. For example, Greek and Roman writers routinely "portrayed women as particularly liable to succumb to the charms of" new religions (Beard, North, and Price 1998:297). Thus, as the cult of Isis spread west from Egypt it attracted a mainly female following, as did the cult of Dionysus (ibid.; Burkert 1987). Early Christianity was far more appealing to women than to men (Stark 1996). The same gender difference marked the heretical movements of medieval times. The eighthcentury self-styled saint Aldebert gathered huge throngs in northern France and founded many new congregations as "great numbers of women flocked to him and formed the nucleus of his cult" (Russell 1965:103). Although men dominated the positions of leadership, women dominated the rank and file among the Cathars and the Waldensians, while among "free spirit" groups, the female Beguines greatly outnumbered their Beghard male counterparts (

Materials derived from observation of a West Coast millenarian cult are employed to develop a "value-addedJ' model of the conditions under which conversion occztrs. For conversion a person must experience, within a religious problem-solving perspective, enduring, acutely-felt tensions that lead him to define himself as a religious seeker; he must encounter the cult at a turning point in his life; within the cult an affective bond must be formed (or $re-exist) and any extra-cult attachments, neutralized; and there he must be exposed to intensive interaction if he is to become a "deployable agent!' A LL men and all human groups have of the Southwest Indians to Christianity. ultimate values, a world view, or a The continual emergence of tiny cults and perspective furnishing them a more sects in western industrial nations makes it or less orderly and comprehensible picture clear, however, that sometimes persons reof the world. Clyde Kluckhohn remarked linquish a more widely held perspective for that no matter how primitive and crude it an unknown, obscure and often, socially demay be, there is a "philosophy behind the valued one. way of life of every individual and of every In this paper we shall outline a model of relatively homogeneous group at any given the conversion process througl~ which a point in their histories." l When a person group of people came to see the world in gives up one such perspective or ordered terms set by the doctrines of one such obview of the world for another we refer to scure and devalued perspective-a small this Drocess as con~ersion.~ millenarian religious cult. Although it is Frequently such conversions are between based on only a single group, we think the popular and widely held perspectives-from model suggests some rudiments of a general Catholicism to Communism, or from the account of conversion to deviant perspecworld view of an underdeveloped or primitives. But the degree to which this scheme tive culture to that of a technically more applies to shifts between widely held peradvanced society, as from the Peyote Cult spectives must, for now, remain problematic.

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