The theme of religious affiliation as a choice of the individual fits into a present that emphasizes personal responsibility, autonomy, and freedom of choice. However, religion is a phenomenon that significantly eludes individual choice. Augustine stated that one can only believe what is credible. What is credible, however, emerges far from any individual decision within a network of historically and discursively shaped certainties. Michael Dellwing engages with the vitality of religion and the phenomena that religious sociology seeks to explain (conversion, religious participation, and the public influence of religion). He illustrates the penetration of religious sociology by the paradigm of individual choice and shows how the idea of a communal religion necessarily unfolds.