Intro-to-Soc-Andersen-9th-E

Essay 1 (500words)
Sociologists have typically been concerned with the status of religion and religious belief in American society. That concern may be rooted in their understanding of religion as being both a source of cohesion and division. So they seek to measure the extent to which Americans are religious while at the same time affected by an increasingly secularized society.What exactly is “secularization” and how do sociologists try to measure it? How might the term “religiosity” help explain the process of secularization, if it does? How might sociologists “measure” religiosity?
Essay 2 (500words)
In the account offer to you by the authors of your textbook, what are the possible types of relations that sociologists have found to exist between the two concepts, secularization and religiosity? For example as one increases does the other decline, stay the same, or also increase, or what? Or perhaps no relation can be discerned from the available data. In any case, what exactly would count for evidence one way or the other? How do sociologists measure the strength of either concept?