Gerhard Emmanuel "Gerry" Lenski, Jr. was an American sociologist known for contributions to the sociology of religion, social inequality, and introducing the ecological-evolutionary theory. Gerhard Lenski spent much of his career as a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he served as chair of the Department of Sociology, 1969–72, and as chair of the Division of Social Sciences, 1976-78. Gerhard Lenski was also President of the Southern Sociological Society, 1977–78 and elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1976. In 2002, he was awarded the Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award by the American Sociological Association. Gerhard Lenski defined religion as "a system of beliefs about the nature of force(s) ultimately shaping man's destiny and the practices associated therewith, shared by the members of a group.
Gerhard Lenski's findings supported basic
hypotheses of Max Weber's work Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism. A former
president of the American Political Science Association, Heinz Eulau, described
Power and Privilege as a "masterpiece of comparative social analysis" and Ralf
Dahrendorf referred to it as "an imaginative and substantial work, and an
indispensable guide." Gerhard Lenski figures among
eminent sociologists of the world.
According to Lenski, "the contributions of Protestantism to material progress
have been largely unintended by-products of certain distinctive Protestant
traits. This was a central point in Max Weber's theory." Lenski noted that more
than a hundred years prior to Weber, John Wesley, one of the founders of the
Methodist Church, had observed that "diligence and frugality" made Methodists
wealthy. Lenski's earliest work dealt with the sociology of religion and
culminated in the publication of The Religious Factor. - Lenski, Gerhard (1961).
The Religious Factor : A Sociological Study of Religion's Impact on Politics,
Economics, and Family Life. Doubleday U.S. Robert Wuthnow has referred to this
volume as "arguably one of a handful of 'classics' among contributions by
American sociologists to the social scientific study of religion." Lenski's
empirical inquiry into "religion's impact on politics, economics, and family
life" in the Detroit area revealed, among other insights, that there were
significant differences between Catholics on the one hand and Protestants and
Jews on the other hand with regard to economics and the sciences.
One
feature of Lenski's work that has won fairly wide acceptance among sociologists,
as reflected in its incorporation into leading introductory textbooks in the
discipline, is his ecological and evolutionary typology of human societies first
proposed in Power and Privilege and enhanced later in Human Societies and other
publications. - Gerhard Lenski (1966). Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social
Stratification. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0807841198. Gerhard Lenski; Patrick Nolan;
Jean Lenski (1970). Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology.
McGraw-Hill, Paradigm Press, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199382453.