Replication and reanalysis of Offenbacher's school enrollment study: Implications for the Weber and Merton theses

Martin Offenbacher's statistical study comparing the school enrollment of German Protestants to Catholics plays a significant role in the articulation of the Weber and Merton theses. The current study provides an overdue correction of obvious flaws in Offenbacher's data. There follows a subsequent reassessment of that recalculated data indicating a now diminished difference between Catholic and Protestant school 'preference.' Any remaining disparity between the denominations' school 'choice' is seen here as attributable to operative practical factors as opposed to Weber's and Merton's long-standing attribution to differing religious values. The paper argues more generally that the theoretical appeal enjoyed by the conceptually linked Weber and Merton theses in sociology may have invited the all too facile acceptance of idealist interpretation at the expense of practical factors in explanations for discrete denominational behaviors.