Bio: (1919-2018) American sociologist. Charles Glock received his Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University. He worked with Paul Lazarsfeld at the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia, and, after that, in 1958, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where he stayed until his retirement. At Berkeley, Glock was Director of the Survey Research Center and also Director of the Program in Religion and Society at that center.

Glock is best known for his work in the sociology of religion, but he also made significant contributions to the methodology of survey research and racial prejudice. In the book Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism (1966), which Glock co-wrote with his longterm colaboorator Rodney Stark, the authors analyzed data from surveys of Protestants and Catholics to test the theory that ties anti-Semitism to some elements in Christian indoctrination. In Religion and Society in Tension (1965), also co-authored with Stark, the authors critique the functionalist theory of religion, noting that religious divisions and conflicts can be a major threat to social integration.

Glock proposed that there are three main aspects of religious commitment (or "religiosity"): nature, sources, and consequences. In To Comfort and to Challenge (1967), Glock found the sources of religiosity partly in the deprivation that was caused by demographic traits such as gender, age, and family status. Glock, in Religion in Sociological Perspective (1973), contends that there are five forms of deprivation that are central to the origin and etiology of religious and secular movements and institutions. Stark and Glock introduced a five-dimensional scheme of the nature of religious commitment in American Piety (1968): belief, knowledge, experience, practices, and consequences.

Main works

"On the Study of Religious Commitment", in Review of Recent Research on Religion and Character Formation (1962);

Religion and Society in Tension (1965);

Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism (1966); 

Survey research in the social sciences (1967); 

To Comfort and to Challenge (1967);

American Piety (1968);

Patterns of religious commitment (1968);

Prejudice, U.S.A. (1969);

Wayward Shepherds (1971);

Religion in Sociological Perspective (1973);

Beyond the classics? Essays in the scientific study of religion (1973); 

Adolescent Prejudice (1975);

The New Religious Consciousness (1976);

Anti-Semitism in America (1979);

The northern California church member study (1979); 

The Anatomy of Racial Attitudes (1983);