Sociology of religion

Sociology of religion. The study of religion in its social aspects and consequences, undertaken in all parts of the world. Emerging as part of the 19th-cent. nomothetic ambition sociologists of religion have in general been committed to a would-be scientific analysis of the role played by religion in the emergence, persistence, and evolution of social and cultural systems. In the main, they subscribe to two fundamental propositions: (i) that the study of religion is absolutely essential to the understanding of society and (ii) that the investigation of society is an indispensable prerequisite to the comprehension of religion.

The sociology of religion reflects the main theoretical and methodological divisions among professional sociologists, including functionalism, Marxism, Freudianism, symbolic-interactionism, phenomenology, structuralism, and post-modernism, together with rational-choice, market, world-systems, and globalization theories, all coexisting more or less peacefully. As a creation of the Enlightenment, sociology has characteristically conceptualized religion in Judaeo-Christian terms, and has largely restricted its investigations to a Christian (mostly Protestant) context despite the monumental comparative initiative of Max Weber.

Although usage of the term tends to follow a number of basic formulae, there is no explicit or universal consensus among sociologists of religion regarding what ‘religion’ is. The problem of defining religion (see further, Introduction), and of doing so in a manner which adequately addresses its profoundly social character, is one which still periodically surfaces to challenge scholars anew regarding the fundamentals of their enterprise.

Durkheim and Weber may justifiably be regarded as the founding fathers whose divergent approaches still supply the main axes of intellectual tension within subdisciplinary theoretical discourse. Durkheim's primary concern with religion's role in social cohesion, group stability, and the reproduction of socio-cultural forms is strategically complemented by Weber's preoccupation with its part in radical, large-scale social and cultural transformation. Thus, for a broad range of current research topics (including sectarianism, millennialism/millenarianism, civil religion, invisible religion, new religious movements, and secularization), they remain influential.

The issue of whether modern religious (or irreligious) reality can still be analysed within a classic framework or whether, on the contrary, it requires radical reconceptualization is nowhere more pertinent than in the perennial ‘secularization debate’, for which see SECULARIZATION. Whatever the ultimate fate of the concept of secularization, the richness of current research cannot be denied. A new generation of sociologists of religion is profitably engaged in a wide variety of investigations into topics as diverse as Latin American Pentecostalism, New Age ideology, early Christianity, spiritual healing practices, Islamic fundamentalism, and the prospects of religion in former iron-curtain countries. For more than twenty years, considerable empirical and theoretical attention has been devoted to the beliefs, practices, composition, organization, and influence of so-called new religious movements (NRMs), more popularly known to the mass media as ‘cults’ (obvious examples are the Moonies (Moon), Rajneeshis, Scientologists, Transcendental-Meditationists, Hare Krishnas (see INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR KRISHNA CONSCIOUSNESS), and Wiccans (see WITCHCRAFT)). Despite their own exaggerations and the moral panic on the part of outsiders which so often accompanies their activities, such groups represent a minuscule proportion of religious believers in their host societies. Sociological rationales for their study thus tend to stress their embryonic character, evolutionary potential, and capacity for revealing, in microcosm, wider truths about religion and society.

Continuing their examination of religion's myriad mutual relationships with other social institutions (e.g. the family, the economy, the polity, and the law), sociologists of religion are increasingly alert to its elusive, problematic, and precarious contemporary character. In circumstances where commitment appears to have acquired the fragmentary, syncretic, consumerist qualities of bricolage, belief is increasingly divorced from belonging and religion becomes less a social institution than a broad, pliant cultural resource at the disposal of autonomized individuals. Whether religion's heightened privatization or individualization will continue or whether its old capacity as a source of authoritative meaning will inspire new, lasting, and significant forms of collective and public spiritual expression remains to be seen.