Year: 1982 Source: Annual Review of the Social Sciences of Religion, v.5, (1982), p.33-56 SIEC No: 19841488

Data on church membership, suicide, & homicide from larger American cities for the early years of the twentieth century are used to test Durkheim’s theories of religion & social integration. Contrary to his prediction (& to nineteenth-century European data) no Protestant-Catholic differences were discovered on either suicide or homicide. The data reveal a very potent religious effect on suicide, but not on homicide, & the religious effect on suicide is independent of the effects of social integration. (37 refs)