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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 ...
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.
Sociologists of religion have observed that an individual's experience, beliefs, sense of belonging, and general behavior often are not congruent with their religious behavior, since there is much diversity in how one can be religious or not. [6]
The sociologist Émile Durkheim, in his seminal book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things". [32] By sacred things he meant things "set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those ...
The sociology of religion also deals with how religion impacts society regarding the positive and negatives of what happens when religion is mixed with society. Theorist such as Marx states that "religion is the opium of the people" - the idea that religion has become a way for people to deal with their problems.
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]
Sociological, psychological, and anthropological theories about religion generally attempt to explain the origin and function of religion. [1] These theories define what they present as universal characteristics of religious belief and practice .
Nancy T. Ammerman is Professor Emerita of Sociology of Religion at Boston University.Her edited anthology Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives [2] was a significant advance in the study of everyday religion—the term she tends to prefer—by bringing together work by scholars such as Courtney Bender [4] and Meredith McGuire [5] who have shaped the study of living religion ...