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International surveys have documented wide variation in religious beliefs and practices across nations, but does this variation in the national religious context make a difference? Building on existing theory we explain why religion should have both micro and macro-level effects on morality not sanctioned by the state and why the effects of religion differ from other forms of culture. Using two international surveys and Hierarchical Linear Modeling Techniques (HLM) we sort out the effects of national context and personal beliefs on morality with and without legal underpinnings. We find that national religious context, the respondent’s age, and religious beliefs and practices are the most consistent predictors of the sexual morality index. For morality sanctioned by the state, however, the effects for personal beliefs and practices are attenuated and the effects of the national religious context are no longer significant.

Despite the high visibility of religiously charged international social conflicts, the unique role of religion often is overlooked in social science research and theory. Some studies ignore religion, others conflate religion with other identities. Virtually all lack adequate data. We respond to these deficiencies by testing a theory-driven model of a particular form of social conflict, religious persecution. We investigate the proposition that religious regulation leads to religious persecution. Using measures coded from the 2003 International Religious Freedom Reports, we consider how both social regulation and government regulation of religion in 143 countries affect the level of religious persecution. We also consider and test competing hypotheses, particularly Huntington's clash-of-civilizations thesis. We find strong support for the religious economies arguments and only limited support for the clash-of-civilizations thesis and other competing arguments.

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.Recent theoretical arguments contend that when the state permits a religious free market, pluralism and competition will emerge and overall levels of religious participation will increase. We return to nineteenth-century America, when the emergence of a religious free market was in progress, to examine whether pluralism generated higher levels of religious participation. We use data from the New York State censuses of 1855 and 1865 to explore religious participation in 942 towns and cities in the state. Our results strongly support the pluralism thesis, highlight demographic effects on religious participation, and help explain conflicting research findings on pluralism and religious participation. or more than two centuries the fundamental feature of American religion has been growth. In 1776 only about 17 percent of Americans were affiliated with a church. By the end of the nineteenth century slightly more than half of the population belonged, and today nearly two-thirds of Americans are members of a specific, local congregation (Finke and Stark 1992).The continuing growth of religion in America, as well as the fact that it always has been the "otherworldly" denominations that do best, has long confronted the traditional sociological model of secularization with an unwelcome anomaly-one that has prompted many attempts to explain American religious "exceptionalism" (Tiryakian 1993). For, harbored within the broad theoretical framework of modernization, the secularization model has long proposed that as industrialization, urbanization, and rationalization increase, religion will recede (Hadden 1987). Thus, because the United States is among the most modern and urban of nations, by now it ought to display advanced symptoms of

Traditional scholarship approaches religious history from the demand side, attributing developments to the shifting desires, perceptions, and circumstances of religious consumers. This article advocates an alternative, supply-side approach that emphasizes the opportunities and restrictions confronting religious organizations and their leaders. Supply shifts lie at the root of major religious changes in America. Colonial revivalists, Asian cult leaders, and contemporary televangelists all prospered when regulatory changes gave them freer access to America's religious marketplace. The article concludes with a discussion of recent judicial decisions that threaten to restrict the future supply of religious innovation in America.

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