Wuthnow was born in
Kansas in 1946. His father was a farmer and his mother was a teacher. He earned his
Bachelor of Arts degree at the
University of Kansas in 1968 and his
Doctor of Philosophy degree in sociology at the
University of California at Berkeley in 1975. His dissertation was
Consciousness and the Transformation of Society. While at Berkeley, Wuthnow worked closely with
Charles Glock,
Neil Smelser,
Robert Bellah, Guy Swanson, and Gertrude Selznick. Wuthnow's first years at Berkeley were during the widespread protests on campus around the US, which ultimately inspired his dissertation. Glock and Bellah received a grant to study the symbolic—especially the religious—dimensions of the counter-culture movement from the Institute for Religion and Social Change. This four-year project resulted in the edited volume
The New Religious Consciousness in 1976. Wuthnow realized that the counter-culture movements were just the most prominent evidence of deeper changes in American culture and used data from the project to argue this in his dissertation, eventually published as
The Consciousness Reformation in 1976. After teaching at the University of Arizona from 1974 to 1976, he took a position in sociology at Princeton University where he continued until his retirement in 2021. Wuthnow has published widely in the sociology of religion, culture, and civil society. His research and teaching has included work in the areas of social change, the sociology of belonging, community, rural sociology, religion and politics, and sociological theory. At Princeton, Wuthnow supervised numerous graduate students' dissertations, directed numerous foundation grants on various aspects of American religion and philanthropy, was the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship for his research on religion and diversity, served as president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Eastern Sociological Society, and was general editor of
The Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his research and publications, including the Distinguished Book Award for
Communities of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the
Tufts University Civic Engagement Prize, the
Warren J. Mitofsky Award for Excellence in Public Opinion Research from the board of directors of the
Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at
Cornell University, the Martin E. Marty Award for Public Understanding of Religion from the American Academy of Religion, the Mirra Kamarosky Best Book Award for
America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity from the Eastern Sociological Society, the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for ''Rough Country: How Texas Became America's Most Powerful Bible-Belt State'' from the Texas State Historical Association, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for the Sociology of Religion. He is an elected fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the
American Philosophical Society. == Books ==