Anv study of the sociology of contemporary religion needs to address two basic questions. First, is religion worth studying’? Second, can sociology add to our knowledge about religion? This book is geared to answering those two questions. It does not assume, hut aims to show, that religion is important and that sociology enhances our understanding of it.
Religion – worth our continued attention?
One reason why the study of religion in the modern world is a problem for sociologists is that the sociology of religion has been dominated by a debate about the secularization thesis. Although, as with any key term, there are deep disagreements about the meaning of secularization, for the momeni we may adopt Wilson’s (1966: xiv) concise definition: ‘the process by which religious thinking, practice and institutions lose social significance’.
This definition, and the theories of secularization which lie behind it, are profoundly challenging to the status of religion as an object of study. First, if we accept that religious thinking, practice and institutions have been in decline for centuries, is there anything left? Surely religion is simply withering away, as the Bolshevik revolutionaries, inspired by the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, believed to be inevitable? Second, the process is often presented as irreversible. Hopes for an uplift in religion’s fortunes are said to be misplaced, and the facts are correctly labelled ‘statistics of decline’. Third, secularization is seen as a universal phenomenon affecting all advanced societies. Countries of the Third World will find, whether they wish it or not, that modernization will inevitably bring secularization.