Examining the Relationship between Religiosity, Moral Community, and Deviance in Iran

Author

Associate Professor of Sociology, Imam Khomeini and Islamic Revolution Research Institute, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Objectives: By linking the subdisciplines of the sociology of religion and the sociology of deviance, this study examines whether the religious characteristics of communities or social contexts influence the relationship between individual religiosity and deviance. In fact, the present research, relying on Rodney Stark's moral community thesis, empirically examines this issue among a national sample of Iranian Muslims to see whether religion, when understood as a collective characteristic or asset, is significantly associated with a reduction in deviance among individuals living in cities with high collective religiosity. It also empirically examines whether the effectiveness of individual religiosity increases in social environments where religiosity is more prominent. Methods: In this regard, data from a national survey of 82,500 Iranian Muslims in 426 cities were used to assess the extent to which the main claim of the moral community thesis is consistent with empirical evidence. Results: Overall, the results of this study showed that the effect of individual religiosity on deviance among Iranian Muslims is not strengthened by increasing integration into a more moral community, and the empirical evidence related to the Iranian Muslim population was completely inconsistent with the moral community thesis, which had a refuting effect on the main claim of this thesis. Conclusion: The observation of a small difference in the effect of religiosity on deviance at three completely different levels of moral community in the present study supports the claim that religiosity at the collective or systemic level, especially when moral community is measured at the city level, does not affect the relationship between individual religiosity and deviance, which certainly questions the adequacy of the moral community thesis in the sociology of religion.

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References

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Sociology of Social Institutions
Volume 13, Issue 27
August 2026
Pages 69-88

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