ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the concepts discussed in part 3 of this book. The part investigates the role of various social institutions as agents of primarily religious socialization and then focuses on selected social institutions to elucidate their particular role in both Christian and public life in selected regions of the world. The part examines recent theory and research published in two traditional sociology of religion journals on religion as a primary agent of socialization, focusing on the role of families, schools, and peers in children's acceptance or rejection of religious beliefs and practices. It integrates a particular Christian theology with a sample of family science theories to understand better the way belief systems may inform the predictive and explanatory value of family theories from a positivistic approach. The part describes how minority Christians in southern India have been adopting dominant Hindu practices of marriage payments.
