A Multilevel Approach to Religion: Individual, Interactional, and Institutional

This article presents a multilevel framework for understanding religion as operating simultaneously at individual, interactional, and institutional levels. Drawing on the multilevel theory of gender as a conceptual parallel, it synthesizes existing perspectives in the sociology of religion into a coherent analytical framework. While many sociological theories implicitly recognize multiple levels, empirical research has typically focused on individual religiosity, treating religion primarily through measures of personal belief, behavior, and belonging. The 3I framework—individual, interactional, and institutional—makes this implicit multilevel thinking explicit, providing conceptual scaffolding for both theoretical development and empirical practice. The framework is illustrated through application to contemporary American religious change, revealing how apparently contradictory patterns of religious decline and spiritual persistence reflect differential change across levels.