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Sociology of religion is the study of the beliefs, practices and organizational forms of religion using the tools and methods of the discipline of sociology.This objective investigation may include the use both of quantitative methods (surveys, polls, demographic and census analysis) and of qualitative approaches (such as participant observation, interviewing, and analysis of archival ...
Notwithstanding the long interest in the study of religion, the academic discipline Religious Studies is relatively new. Christopher Partridge notes that the "first professorships were established as recently as the final quarter of the nineteenth century." [20] In the nineteenth century, the study of religion was done through the eyes of science.
The sociology of religion is distinguished from the philosophy of religion in that sociologists do not set out to assess the validity of religious truth-claims, instead assuming what Peter L. Berger has described as a position of "methodological atheism". [161]
Various sociological classifications of religious movements have been proposed by scholars. In the sociology of religion , the most widely used classification is the church-sect typology . The typology is differently construed by different sociologists, and various distinctive features have been proposed to characterise churches and sects.
Christian Stephen Smith (born 1960) is an American sociologist, currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame.Smith's research focuses primarily on religion in modernity, adolescents and emerging adults, sociological theory, philosophy of science, the science of generosity, American evangelicalism, and culture. [2]
Max Müller (1823–1900) has the reputation of having founded the scientific study of religion; he advocated a comparative method that developed into comparative religion. [ 4 ] Subsequently, Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) and others questioned the validity of abstracting a general theory of all religions.
Pacifism: A Historical and Sociological Study (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965). A Sociology of English Religion, (SCM, 1967) "Towards a General Theory of Secularization", European Journal of Sociology, vol. 10 (December 1969). The Religious and the Secular, (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969) Tracts against the Times, (Lutterworth, 1973)
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (French: Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse), published by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in 1912, is a book that analyzes religion as a social phenomenon. Durkheim attributes the development of religion to the emotional security attained through communal living.