Sociopedia.isa© 2013 The Author(s)

© 2013 ISA (Editorial Arrangement of Sociopedia.isa)Bryan S Turner, 2011, ‘Religion and contemporary sociological theories’, Sociopedia.isa,

DOI: 10.1177/205684601431

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The importance of religion and the general scepticismabout the secularization thesis has been accompaniedby important theoretical developments. One impor-tant development has been the market or economicmodel of religion which stresses the supply rather thandemand side of religion. However, it is not self-evi-dent that the demand for religion is constant in timeand space. The model, if it has any validity, appears toexplain the vitality of religion in the American contextwhere there is significant competition for religiousservices. Other developments include the post-secu-larization thesis of Jürgen Habermas which demandsthat secular and religious citizens engage in dialoguewithin the public sphere.Criticism of the secularization thesis has seen

increasing research emphasis on popular religion, spir-ituality and implicit religion. This research traditionhas been characteristic of the sociology of religion inthe United States and more recently in Europe whereorganized religion has been weak or declining. Theresult of contemporary research is that rigid conceptu-al dichotomies between religious and secular groupsfail to capture the empirical diversity within these cat-egories.

Other new areas have included the sociology of thebody. This focus on embodiment is important becauseit is a corrective to the excessive concentration on reli-gious belief and knowledge in much mainstream soci-ology of religion. Religion is not simply an assemblyof beliefs and values, but obviously includes ritualpractices, the use of material objects and respect forplace. Finally, there is increasing awareness of the limita-

tions of western definitions of religion for compara-tive study and at the same time growing researchendeavour to capture the nature and consequences ofglobalization for religious life. As a result the sociolo-gy of religion is a flourishing and diverse feature ofmodern scholarship.

Introduction: classical sociology andits legacy

The study of religion played a major role in classicalsociology from Karl Marx’s theory of alienation andfetishism of commodities, to Max Weber’s work onthe Protestant sects and the rise of capitalism, to

abstract In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the sociology of religion enjoyed aremarkable growth in both theory and empirical research. The scholarly consensus argues that the earlysecularization thesis associated with modernization theory was misleading and simplistic, or that it wasprimarily relevant to northern Europe. Beyond the European framework, there is ample evidence that reli-gion plays a major role in society, culture and politics. With urbanization in the developing world, therehas been increasing piety and religious revivalism. Religion will be a major factor in political and ideolog-ical struggles across the globe in this century. One negative aspect of this focus however has been over-concentration on radical Islam and other manifestations of religious violence.

keywords consumerism ◆ globalization ◆ materiality ◆ post-secularization ◆ public religions ◆secularization ◆ spirituality

Religion and contemporarysociological theories Bryan S Turner City University of New York, USA and the University of Western Sydney, Australia

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William James’s study of religious experience, toÉmile Durkheim’s work on the sacred and profanedichotomy and finally to Georg Simmel’s view ofreligion as the creativity of life. This classical tradi-tion was sustained in the sociology of TalcottParsons, who refined the theory of secularization bynoting the resilience of American denominational-ism (Parsons, 1974). Large-scale comparative sociol-ogy of religion was taken up by his student Robert NBellah (1957), for example in his Tokugawa Religion,which considered the evolution of this-worldly ascet-icism in Japan. This classical tradition continues toinfluence contemporary sociological theories of reli-gion. One can illustrate this legacy by reference totwo debates. The first issue, which preoccupiedDurkheim, was the quest for a valid definition ofreligion that would permit sociological comparisonsover time and space. Recent debates about spiritual-ity, popular religion and official religion have keptalive issues that confronted both Weber andDurkheim. The second and related issue concernsthe vexed issue about secularization, ‘re-sacralization’and ‘public religions’ and the question of ‘Americanexceptionalism’ (Torpey, 2010). Jürgen Habermashas more recently given a new turn to this ongoingdebate in the notion of ‘post-secular society’; namelya society in which both secular and religious citizensare obliged to give a public defence of their beliefs(Habermas, 2006).Despite the scholarly depth of this legacy, the

sociology of religion has had a chequered career. Inmid-century it flourished in the United States butaround a more narrow set of issues. The main issueswere migration and denominationalism but thestudy of religion was no longer central to main-stream sociology. Will Herberg’s Protestant, Catholic,Jew described how religion had become part ofAmerican identity provided that identity fell underProtestantism, Catholicism and Judaism. The otherclassic was Richard H Niebuhr’s study of Americandenominationalism, which was designed to replacethe church-sect typology of Ernst Troeltsch (1931).The revival of the sociology of religion as part of thecore curriculum of the sociological discipline wasassociated with the work of Peter L Berger andThomas Luckmann, for whom the study of religionwas an inseparable component of the sociology ofknowledge in their The Social Construction of Reality(1967). Berger went on to develop his own sophisti-cated version of secularization, arguing in The SacredCanopy (Berger, 1967) that the plausibility structuresbehind religious belief were seriously compromisedin modern societies. A similar line of argumentemerged in Luckmann’s The Invisible Religion(1967). Contributions to the sociological theory ofreligion were made for example by Roland

Robertson (1970) in The Sociological Interpretation ofReligion. The mainstream sociological tradition inAmerica has been to recognize that much of what wecall ‘religion’ takes place outside the institutionalframework of the churches and hence research hasoften looked at religion and youth culture, genera-tional change and spirituality. This tradition can beillustrated by reference to the work of Wade C Roof,among which A Generation of Seekers (1993) andSpiritual Marketplace (1999). Alongside thisresearch, there have been important contributions inqualitative ethnographic studies such as CourtneyBender’s Heaven’s Kitchen (2003) and The NewMetaphysicals (2010).In the United Kingdom, Bryan Wilson at the

University of Oxford and David Martin at theLondon School of Economics dominated the studyof secularization. Wilson (1966), noting the institu-tional decline of religion in northern Europe, arguedthat the Christian Churches survived in America atthe cost of their theological contents; that is by sub-ordinating their beliefs and practices to the logic ofcommercial culture. He also took the view that theinspirational religion of the Christian sects evolvedover time into the conventional religion of thedenominations. Perhaps the classic example of thisprocess can be found in the history of Methodism.John Wesley (1703–1791), in developing his preach-ing circuits and establishing independent chapels,created a religious movement that had a strongappeal to the urban poor and the dispossessed.Wesley’s field preaching was a challenge to the parishstructure of Anglicanism and to the hierarchicalauthority of the local priesthood. At the same timeCharles Wesley’s hymns were popular alternatives tothe formal worship of the Anglican liturgy. In TheMaking of the English Working Class, Edward PThompson (1963) examined Methodism as anoppositional, working-class and dissenting tradition,which by the middle of the nineteenth century hadbecome a middle-class and mainstream denomina-tion. The enthusiasm of the evangelical sects exposesthem to a more rapid pathway towards denomina-tional status. In these research contributions,Wilson’s model of sectarian religion was highly influ-ential (Wilson, 1967). Martin (1969) had taken acomparative perspective on secularization in his TheReligious and the Secular and in recent years his workon global Pentecostalism has contributed to the crit-icisms of earlier theories of secularization in whichsecularism was treated as an inevitable companion ofmodernity (Martin, 2002). Under the umbrella of the British Sociological

Association, there have more recently been impor-tant contributions from James Beckford, GraceDavie and Linda Woodhead. These authors have also

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expanded the framework of sociological research tolook, for instance, at religious life inside prisons(Beckford and Gilliat, 1998). Another developmentin British sociology was around the idea of ‘implicitreligion’ (Bailey, 1990). Recent work has also exam-ined the important differences between religious lifein the United Kingdom where the Church ofEngland has been in long-term decline and theUnited States where religion in its various manifesta-tions has been far more prominent in the publicdomain (Berger et al., 2008). In France, where secularism or laïcité as the dom-

inant tradition has been enforced by the state, thesociology of religion has not thrived. Major Frenchsociologists (Raymond Aron, Raymond Boudon orLuc Boltanski) and French Marxists (Louis Althusserand Jean-Claude Passeron) have not made any signif-icant contribution to the study of religion. The sep-aration of church and state in France goes very deepinto French culture. One illustration of the conflictsbetween secular republicanism and the RomanCatholic Church can be taken from the personal his-tory of Althusser, who in the 1940s was both a mem-ber of the Jeunesse de l’Eglise and the CommunistParty. The Jeunesse de l’Eglise supported the worker-priest movement and believed that communism andChristianity were compatible. When in July 1949the Vatican excommunicated all Catholics who weremembers of the Communist Party, Althusser brokewith orthodox Catholicism (Robbins, 2012: 46).Pierre Bourdieu, one of the most influential Frenchsociologists, had only a limited interest in the sociol-ogy of religion (Rey, 2007). Bourdieu (1962) hadstudied Islam in his work on Algeria, but in his sub-sequent research religion played almost no part.While Luc Boltanski is profoundly concerned withmoral issues, he too has paid scant attention to for-mal religion. The principal contemporary exceptionis the work of Daniele Hervieu-Leger (2000) in hernotion of religion as a ‘chain of memory’ connectinggenerations across time.More broadly, the revival of the sociology of reli-

gion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first cen-tury was associated with growing recognition of theimportance of religion in public life in terms ofSolidarity in Poland, the Moral Majority in theUnited States, the vitality of charismatic churchesand Pentecostalism in South America and Africa, therise of Hindu nationalism and the revival of main-stream religions in Russia, China and Vietnam withthe transformation of communist states in the1990s. These developments were described as ‘publicreligions’ by José Casanova (1994). The idea thatreligion was only a matter of individual belief andpractice, and that the church and state were separatein modern constitutions began to evaporate. With

growing awareness of the vitality of religion globally,sociologists such as Peter Berger (1999) began seri-ously to question the conventional assumptionsabout secularization. What do I mean by ‘contemporary’ when refer-

ring to ‘sociological theories’? By contemporary wemight mean, not just chronologically contemporary,but sociological theories that attempt to understandhow modern societies have radically changed – forexample as a result of the social impact of theInternet and cultural globalization – and how reli-gion is changing as a consequence. Sociologists havegrappled with religion on-line, new religious move-ments that promote self-care and empowerment, theglobalization of religious traditions from Asia, theworldwide impact of Pentecostalism and so forth.These new approaches in the sociology of religionattempt to address both the ‘decentering and center-ing’ of religion in modernity (Cage et al., 2011). Buthow might we conceptualize the underlying socialchanges that are reshaping the world? One approachsuggests that we have moved away from societies thatare ‘sticky’ (placing high demands and costs on entry,membership and departure) to ones that are ‘elastic’(in which the costs of membership and exit can beslight) (Elliott and Turner, 2012). An elastic societyis one in which ‘seekers’ can explore and combinevarious religious traditions in the quest for an iden-tity that will sit outside the formal structures of offi-cial religions.

Political Islam

One significant change in the sociology of religionhas been an eruption of interest in Islam, especiallyan interest in the Muslim communities of the West.While the development of the sociology of Islam isin part a response to the growth of the Muslim dias-pora in the West, it is also regrettably a reaction tothe West’s investment in security after 9/11 andbombings in London, Madrid and Bali.Consequently the study of Islam appears to beinevitably controversial, being associated with thespread of urban terrorism (Jurgensmeyer, 2003). TheTwin Towers attack in New York in September 2002not only changed the face of modern politics, it jet-tisoned the sociology of religion in radically newdirections. George W Bush’s ‘war on terror’ rein-forced ideas about ‘political Islam’ and ‘fundamental-ism’ which came to dominate academic research. Ofcourse the idea of a radical clash between Islam andthe West started much earlier with the Gulf War of1991, with the bombing of New York’s World TradeCenter in March 1993 and the hijacking of an Air France plane in December 1994. Samuel

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Huntington published his famous article on ‘Theclash of civilizations’ in Foreign Affairs in 1993 andIslam remained at the centre of debates about reli-gion, democracy, nationalism and violence for twodecades. There is a considerable body of research on Islam

looking at the debates about veiling and genderequality. This empirical research provides a detailedpicture of Islam in Europe and North Americawhere, despite public anxiety about multiculturalismand the place of Muslims in secular democracies,Muslim communities have been relatively successfulin adjusting to life in the West (Cesari, 2010; Fetzerand Soper, 2005). The veiling of Muslim women wasa political problem in Europe but not in the UnitedStates. By contrast, the debate about the Shari’a inAmerica has emerged as a political and legal issuethat is increasingly divisive, partly because it hasbecome (unofficially) part of the agenda of theRepublican Party and the Tea Party. Several states(Arizona and Oklahoma) have already pre-emptivelybanned references to the Shari’a in American courts.However the nature of the Shari’a as such is littleunderstood. Debates about the Shari’a raise impor-tant problems about legal pluralism and equality,and even more problematic issues about rights topractise religion without excessive interference fromthe state. Academic research has done much to demon-

strate that the popular notion of an integrated glob-al Islam is erroneous and that Islam is diverse andcomplex. Anthropological and sociological studieshave also dispelled the widespread view that womenare everywhere and always subordinated in Islam assecond class citizens (Hafez, 2011; Joseph, 2000;Robinson, 2009). Despite the widespread presenceof Islamophobia, research has also shown that thereis no common pattern to the experience of Muslimsas recent migrants to the United States, Europe andAustralia. After all this negative attention, the sociology of

Islam has advanced conceptually and intellectually.Talal Asad’s The Genealogies of Religion (1993) andFormations of the Secular (2003) have been importantin developing sophisticated approaches to Islam thatdo not concentrate on security issues. SabaMahmood’s Politics of Piety (2005) has presented analternative feminist view of the religious practices ofwomen in Cairo. In summary, too much research onIslam is now either engulfed in political interests oris driven by overtly normative concerns. The sociol-ogy of Islam has made important contributions toour understanding of Muslim communities outsidethe terrorism framework (Keskin, 2011).

Civil religion

Is modern society secular? Despite the academicenthusiasm for ‘desecularization’, there are strongarguments that suggest that religion in Europe hascontinued to decline and that religious growth inChina and elsewhere is exaggerated (Bruce, 2002).Academic debate has continued to focus on theexceptional character of religion in America. Theargument goes back to Alexis de Tocqueville’s greatwork of historical sociology on Democracy in America(1968) that was published in two volumes in 1835and 1840. Religion operated for de Tocqueville inthe form of the local and autonomous congregation,and the separation of religion and politics protectedthe emerging democracy from the control of anEstablished Church. He recognized the importanceof churches as voluntary associations to Americandemocratic institutions and values, but he also sawdangers in the excessive individualism of the earlyAmerican frontier. There is a wealth of research on the issue of

American religion, both historical and sociological.Robert Putnam and David Campbell (2010) arguein American Grace that religion has remained impor-tant in the public domain but Americans are nolonger divided along denominational lines. Otherauthors have noted the strength and influence ofProtestant evangelism and the success of the so-called ‘mega-churches’ (Thumma and Travis, 2007).But these studies do not answer the more problem-atic question about the actual character of religion inAmerica. There is so to speak no doubt about thequantity of religion in America, but what about thequality?It is often claimed that in a plural, diverse and

multicultural society, social diversity could be con-tained under the broad umbrella of a ‘civil religion’.This notion had its origin in Rousseau’s political andeducational theories. In the Social Contract of 1762he argued that Christian belief in a supernaturalworld was inimical to social and political life on thisearth (Rousseau, 1973). In ‘The creed of a priest ofSavoy’ Rousseau (1956), rejecting the Christian viewof the sinful nature of humankind, insisted that weneed religion as a bulwark against existential despair.Deism gave full recognition to the emotions and thesocial role of religion in sustaining civil society.However, deistic religion was to be fabricated by alawgiver operating in defence of a republic. Duringthe French Revolution, Rousseau’s Social Contractwas translated into the ‘administrative reality’ of thestate, and provided intellectuals with a ‘new perspec-tive of redemption through political power’ (Nisbet,1990: 141). Robespierre in 1794 drew up the doc-trine of the Religion of the Supreme Being, and the

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idea of France as a singular and undivided state cor-responded perfectly with the organization of theTerror, and with Rousseau’s understanding of thesubmersion of the individual in the state.The modern debate about religion in America is

associated with Robert Bellah’s famous Daedalus arti-cle (1967) on ‘civil religion in America’. Against thenotion of secularization, he argued that there is anAmerican religious tradition that is separate from butconnected to mainstream Christianity. This civil reli-gion celebrated the historical sense of America as theFirst New Nation, the City on a Hill and the Israelof the New World. American history is one of sacri-fice, tragedy and suffering but eventually of redemp-tion. Starting with the Civil War, the tragedyextended to the war in Vietnam, and it containedsymbols of national injury and deliverance. It wasreinforced and revivified by periodic festivals such asThanksgiving and marked by the architecture of theArlington Memorial. Bellah insisted that civil reli-gion was not a second class or corrupted version ofofficial Christianity, but it was the natural compan-ion to a republican form of government. In a laterversion of the original argument, Bellah adopted alanguage that sounds in some respects like a versionof Rousseau’s republicanism. He concluded that ‘arepublic will have republican customs – public par-ticipation in the exercise of power, political equalityof citizens, a wide distribution of small and mediumproperty with few very rich or very poor – customsthat will lead to a public spiritedness, a willingness ofthe citizen to sacrifice his own interests for the com-mon good, in a word a citizen motivated by republi-can virtue’ (Bellah, 1978: 18). Bellah concluded his article on the legitimacy of

the republic with recognition that consumerism and‘naked self interest’ had undermined the institutionsthat are the vehicles of the civil religion. He asked,‘Have not the churches along with the schools andthe family – what I have called the soft structuresthat deal primarily with human motivation – suf-fered more in the great upheavals through which oursociety has recently gone than any other of our insti-tutions, suffered so much that their capacity to trans-mit patterns of conscience and ethical values hasbeen seriously impaired?’ (Bellah, 1978: 23). Bellahhas perceptively argued that from GeorgeWashington to more recent American presidentsthere is an acknowledgement of God as the SupremeBeing who stands over the nation, but in official dis-course there is rarely any reference to Jesus Christ,precisely because in a multi-faith society anyacknowledgement of Jesus as Saviour would be divi-sive. The idea that the nation is guided by a SupremeBeing is in fact very close to Rousseau’s idea that in a republic religion needs such a Being, but it does

not need the theological baggage of a religion of salvation.

Secularization and the economicmodel

One of the dominant theoretical approaches to reli-gion in contemporary sociology is the so-called ‘eco-nomic model’ of religion which was originallyassociated with Rodney Stark and William SBainbridge in their A Theory of Religion (1987) andStark and Finke’s (2000) Acts of Faith. It has beenvariously described as the economic, the market andthe rational choice model. Developed originally as acriticism of the secularization thesis, it was advancedto explain the vitality of religion in America. Thework of Bainbridge, Stark, Warner and othersemerged out of a desire to create a more comprehen-sive and effective general theory of religion in thesocial sciences. A key assumption of the theory isthat the demand for religion is more or less constant,and therefore fluctuations in the level of religiousactivity are to be explained by variations in supply.Open religious markets in which religious groups orreligious ‘firms’ are free to compete for followers orcustomers provide a more dynamic environment inwhich religious institutions can prosper.Competition produces a more diverse and attractivereligious product and hence there is a more dynamicdemand for religious services. The overall outcome isa religious economy that remains buoyant. By con-trast, restricted markets in which there is a monop-oly of supply with an established church or where thestate seeks to regulate religion, are inefficient. Wherethere is regulation and restriction, there will be blackor grey markets in which illegal or semi-legal groupsattempt to provide religious ‘products’. The morerestricted the market, the more we can expect a size-able grey market to evolve. The theory also assumesthat individuals in restricted markets, for example inauthoritarian societies where church and state coop-erate to regulate supply, will face high costs, such asostracism or imprisonment, in ‘buying’ and ‘con-suming’ religious goods and services. The marketmodel has given rise to much critical discussion(Lehmann, 2010). Perhaps the most successful criti-cisms of the approach have come from Steve Bruce(1999), who, among other objections, points to thesuccess of religion in societies with an establishedchurch tradition at various points in their historysuch as Poland, Russia and Serbia.The model has some obvious relevance when

making comparisons between the restricted marketin China and the free and competitive market in theUnited States. Whereas America has had, in the

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absence of an established church, a robust religiousmarket producing a diversity of providers of religiousservices, China is the classic example of the ‘shortageeconomy of religion’ (Yang, 2012: 123–58). InChina the CCP, while still embracing radical atheismas its preferred ideology, set out to eliminate religionfrom Chinese society, and during the CulturalRevolution this atheist push against all forms of reli-gion was further intensified. However following thedeath of Mao Zedong in 1976, Deng Xiaoping,admitting past policy mistakes towards religion,adopted a more pragmatic policy in 1982 in thefamous Document No. 19. It recognized the socialcomplexity of religion and the fact that in Chinaespecially religion is interwoven seamlessly with cul-ture, ethnicity and national traditions. The newapproach also allowed academic study of religionunder the umbrella of cultural practices. While west-ern observers have often seen this development as amomentous change in policy, Fenggang Yang (2012)in Religion in China draws attention to the fact thatthere are still significant restrictions remaining onthe practice of religion, including activities thatclaim to be purely cultural. His economic or marketmodel of Chinese religion provides importantinsights into contemporary developments and care-fully analyses the contradictions and complexities ofofficial policies in which continuing restrictions onreligious practice inevitably fuel a large grey marketof religious services. The economic model does not provide much

guidance as to the actual character of religion inChina, because it is essentially an account of the effi-ciency of a religious market in quantitative terms.The model does not look at demand-side issues suchas the meaning of religion to participants, because ittakes demand as a constant. The economic modellooks only at ‘the process of exchange, not the natureof the religious “products” ’ (Yang, 2012: 21). Themodel does not attempt to distinguish between reli-gious products and it does not attend systematicallyto the consequences of this religious revival forChinese civil society.

Religions of the Axial Age

There has been a more or less continuous debateabout relevance of western or Abrahamic models ofreligion to Asian traditions. There is some generalagreement among scholars that the idea of ‘worldreligions’ was a nineteenth-century invention andthat ‘Hinduism’ for example was the product ofBritish administrative needs. Contemporary sociolo-gy of religion has largely abandoned the historicaland comparative approach to religion that was char-

acteristic of earlier scholarship. Here one may refer toMax Weber’s comparative study of world religions,especially The Religion of China (1951) and TheReligion of India (1958), or the work of MirceaEliade or Benjamin Nelson, or Shmuel Eisenstadt(1986) on The Origins and Diversity of Axial AgeCivilizations or his work on Japanese Civilization(1996). Other comparisons might include referenceto Arnaldo Momigliano’s On Pagans, Jews, andChristians (1997). Perhaps the most striking recentexample is Robert Bellah’s Religion in HumanEvolution (2011), which combines evolutionary psy-chology and sociology to explore the religions of theAxial Age. Karl Jaspers’ (1953) The Origin and Goalof History described a formative period before theCommon Era in which religious prophets createduniversal ethical codes that shaped the rise of civiliza-tions. In Jaspers’ controversial analysis, the Axial Agewas completed before the rise of Christianity andIslam, and hence the implication of the thesis is thatthey are merely variations on a theme that hadalready been established. This view contrasts sharplywith recent interpretations of Pauline Christianity asthe origin of modern ethical universalism. Thisdebate about universalism often comes back there-fore to the career and conversion of Saint Paul andhis struggle with the Christian doctrine of grace andthe relevance of the Jewish law. Two remarkablebooks have explored these issues at some length,namely Alain Badiou’s Saint Paul (2003) and JacobTaubes’ The Political Theology of Paul (2004)Bellah’s magnum opus has many dimensions, but

one persistent theme is the role of ‘acosmistic world-denying love’ in recognizing the humanity of everyperson regardless of their ethnicity, race and culture.Following Weber’s distinction between asceticismand mysticism, Bellah presents a tragic view of reli-gious history. He seeks to analyse the world religionsas universalistic ethical systems that can break out ofthe narrow confines of family, kinship and locality.Religious universalism has to recognize that, forexample, a disciple of Jesus must abandon family andkinship in order to devote themselves wholly to JesusChrist as Lord. Kinship was fundamental to the reli-gious traditions of China, where ancestor worshiphas been constitutive of Chinese traditions. Theseissues relating to kinship and ancestors provide a sig-nificant constraint on any universalistic impulse inConfucian values. In the case of Confucianism,Bellah does not adequately recognize the traditionalrole of filial piety as the basis of Confucian conser-vatism. By contrast, Weber was far more explicitlycritical of the consequences of filial piety. He claimedthat ‘Confucianism placed a tremendous stress onfamilial piety, a stress which was motivated by beliefin magic, in view of the importance of the family

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spirits. This familial piety was cultivated in practiceby a patriarchal and patrimonial-bureaucratic politi-cal organization’ (Weber, 1978, Vol. 1: 579). It is pri-marily within congregational religions thatco-religionists could replace kinfolk, because thenotion of brotherly love could not breathe within theconfines of an exclusive kinship network. Jaspers’legacy has given rise to a lively and productive debate(Bellah and Joas, 2012).However, there is widespread scepticism about

any claims to universality in the study of religion. Inrecent decades, the study of religions in Asia hasflourished in Asian universities and research centresand this development has also underpinned theemergence of postcolonial studies, which have hadthe effect of ‘provincializing Europe’. The outcome isthat Asian scholars are developing independent tra-ditions that better reflect local circumstances andhistories. Sensitivity to these contextual and culturalconcerns is well illustrated in Tomoko Masuzawa’sThe Invention of World Religions (2005). Theseresponses to the hegemonic status of western schol-arship can be regarded as an outcome of Edward Said(1978) and the early criticisms of Orientalism. Itmay also be connected with the quest among histo-rians to develop the idea of ‘world history’ that is nei-ther parochial nor narrow. Perhaps the mostimportant example is Marshal GS Hodgson (1993)in Rethinking World History.

Popular religion

There has been much attention given to the idea ofspirituality, which we can define simply as post-insti-tutional, post-orthodox, individualized religiositythat is typically not connected to any congregationalreligion (Wood, 2010). It typically draws freely fromvarious religious traditions, and can be regarded as a‘do-it-yourself religiosity’. While we might think thatthis development is an example of ‘mysticism’ fromTroeltsch’s typology of religion (Troeltsch, 1931), itis probably more accurate to think of spiritualityunder the umbrella of ‘popular religion’. In his con-tribution to The Religious Significance of Atheism(Ricoeur and MacIntyre, 1969), Alasdair MacIntyremade the point that atheism is only a serious optionin a society that has a dominant tradition of theism.A similar argument might be made about ‘popularreligion’. Taking popular religion seriously is proba-bly only a real intellectual option in a society whereinfluential theologians, powerful churches and a for-mal orthodoxy are still visible in the public domain.In short, the idea of something being ‘popular’ inreligious terms implies that there is a hegemonic andcomprehensive alternative to which the popular

manifestations of religious life are subordinated andtypically oppositional. But in a modern society whatis that alternative? To achieve some conceptual clari-ty, we may have to invent a contrast case to distin-guish between the popular and its opposite. Ofcourse, the churches play an important role in wel-fare provision and the Roman Catholic Churchremains influential in education through schools anduniversities. Where there is an Established Church –such as the Anglican Church in the United Kingdom– organized religion enjoys certain benefits and priv-ileges. One might conclude that in modern demo-cratic societies all religions are popular.While ‘popular religion’ was not an important

topic in classical sociology, it has become a majorissue in the contemporary sociology of religion.Wade Clark Roof has made an important contribu-tion to the empirical study and theoretical under-standing of the spirituality of so-called ‘seekers’ inthe Baby Boomer generation such as A Generation ofSeekers (1993) and Spiritual Marketplace (1999).These research findings suggest that the postwar gen-eration in America flows in and out of different reli-gious groups and traditions in search of meaning.Similar results have been reported in Europe byGrace Davie (1994), who coined the phrase thatdescribes religious seeking as ‘believing withoutbelonging’. The study of popular religion has beenan obvious area for qualitative ethnographic researchand in this respect the research of Courtney Bender’sHeaven’s Kitchen (2003) has been exemplary. Popular religions are enjoying a mushroom

growth while the traditional churches are declining.The new generation of seekers find their inspirationin JRR Tolkein’s mythological world, from sciencefiction and from Star Wars. They are also drawn toSatanism, witchcraft and neo-paganism. This ensem-ble has been referred to as ‘hyper-real religions’(Possamai, 2012). These are worldwide develop-ments, but are they socially or politically important?Whereas the prophetic religions of the Axial Age andthe Protestant sects of the Reformation had a pro-found effect on culture and social structure, it is notself-evident that spirituality, which is by definition asomewhat private practice, will have any long-termsignificant consequences. The analysis of popular religion has also typically

taken notice of the various ways in which contempo-rary religious movements have been closely integrat-ed into the global flow of modern commercializationof goods and services. Modern piety can thereforeoften be combined with commercial values and prac-tices. Examples of this research with special referenceto Asia include Pattana Kitiarsa’s (2007) ReligiousCommodification in Asia, Vineeta Sinha’s (2010)Religion and Commodification and Kajri Jain’s (2006)

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Gods in the Bazaar. These new developments alsohave important methodological and theoretical con-sequences. They suggest for example that sociologyand anthropology should spend less time addressingreligious beliefs and pay more attention to religiouspractices, places and objects. This development lookstherefore towards the materiality of religion and iswell illustrated by Julius Buatista’s edited collectionon The Spirit of Things (2012)

Globalization

Another important development in the sociology ofreligion is concerned with globalization. RolandRobertson and William Garrett (Robertson, 1992;Robertson and Garrett, 1991) led the field in thestudy of religion and globalization, but academicinterest has intensified in the last decade. The topichas received considerable theoretical attention fromPeter Beyer (1994, 2006), but it is obviously moredifficult to conduct empirical research on globalizedreligions than it is to conduct research within a localor national context. Unfortunately, much of theresearch on the globalization of religion has beenconducted in relation to terrorism, security andpolitical Islam. These topics can be seen as a contin-uation of Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’, inwhich the future of political globalization willrevolve around further conflicts over the sacred andpolitical sovereignty. The growth of religious funda-mentalism and revivalism has been an important ifunanticipated aspect of cultural globalization. Oneconsequence as we have seen it has been the disap-pearance of the secularization thesis. We have aresearch agenda in which globalization and the studyof popular religion combine. Global, hybrid religios-ity is a form of religious popular culture. In theUnited States, sociologists have identified the emer-gence of a ‘quest culture’ that attempts to find mean-ing in various and diverse traditions. The result isreligious hybridity. New Age communities have beena popular topic of sociological research for some time(Heelas, 1996), but we need to understand moreprecisely how these spiritual marketplaces functionglobally and how are they connected electronicallythrough the Internet. One can predict a growingsophistication in the use of Internet as a researchtechnology in the immediate future.

Conclusion: new trends and the future of the sociology of religion

There is now a widely held view that, after severaldecades of inactivity and marginalization, the sociol-ogy of religion has made a remarkable recovery. Theacademic consensus suggests that the secularizationthesis was just wrong all along, or that it was prima-rily relevant to northern Europe. Beyond theEuropean secular framework, there is ample evidencethat religion plays a major role in society, culture andpolitics. In 2012 the National Intelligence Councilin the United States published Global Trends 2030:Alternative Worlds, in which it anticipates that reli-gion will play a large role in state and internationalpolitics. Observing that urbanization in the develop-ing world is associated with increases in piety, thereport suggested that religion would be a major fac-tor in political and ideological struggles across theglobe. The importance of religion and the general scep-

ticism about the secularization thesis has beenaccompanied by important theoretical develop-ments. One important contender in explaining thevitality of religion is the market or economic modelof religion. It has certain obvious merits. It is parsi-monious; it has a clear ambition to be a general the-ory; it explains certain phenomena effectively such asderegulation in China. However, it is not clear thatthere is overwhelming evidence to suggest that thedemand for religion is constant in time and space.Many object to the assumption that selling corn-flakes has the same characteristics as selling religion.The model, if it has any validity, appears to fit theAmerican context where there is significant competi-tion but not other ‘markets’. There has also beenconsiderable interest in and research of the globalcommodification of religion in terms of, for exam-ple, religious tourism.While the critical theory of the Frankfurt School

had not paid any significant attention to religion, thesituation has changed recently with JürgenHabermas’s promotion of the idea of post-secular-ism. His argument has however often been misun-derstood. He is not saying that there has been aresurgence of religion, but merely that for a commu-nicative dialogue to function both secular and reli-gious spokespeople need to give rational, publicaccounts of their beliefs. This argument, while obvi-ously justifiable, is not especially persuasive sociolog-ically. Why would fundamentalists need to give anaccount of their position? The recent presidentialelection in the United States showed no evidencethat religious fundamentalists in the Tea Party want-ed to hold a dialogue with secular liberals in theDemocratic Party or that anarchists in the Occupy

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Wall Street movement had much sympathy with orneed to communicate with religious conservatives(Gitlin, 2012). Criticism of the secularization thesis has seen

increasing research emphasis on popular religion,spirituality and implicit religion. This research tradi-tion has been characteristic of the sociology of reli-gion in the United States and more recently inEurope where organized religion has been weak ordeclining. While there is ample evidence of robustreligious vitality, especially among youth, there isalso evidence for example in the United States ofmore people declaring that they have no religion(Lin et al., 2010). Debates about the actual characterof the secular have also led to interest in the study ofatheism in modernity (Bullivant, 2012). The result isthat rigid conceptual dichotomies between religiousand secular groups and practices fail to capture theempirical diversity within these categories.What are the new areas? Over the last two or

three decades, the sociology of the body has grown toprominence and it has had some impact on the soci-ology of religion, primarily in the work of PhilipMellor and Chris Shilling (1997). Further aspects ofthis influence are evident in The Routledge Handbookof Body Studies (Turner, 2012). This focus on embod-iment is important because it is a corrective to theexcessive concentration on belief and knowledge inmuch mainstream sociology of religion. Religion isnot simply an assembly of beliefs and values.Religion as belief has become dominant because sur-vey techniques lend themselves to enquiries into atti-tudes and opinions. This development towardsreligion and embodiment is also a useful warningthat much of our understanding of religion is in factseen through the lens of Protestantism. For example,William James’s influential approach to religiousconversion in his Varieties of Religious Experience(1929) is wholly founded on the Protestant tradi-tion. One can anticipate that the study of the bodyand body practice would offer a platform for furtherstudy of religion and emotions, religion and gender,and material religions. A development in this direc-tion would be a foil to the over-concentration onviolence, terrorism and Islam.

Annotated further reading

In the last decade there have been a number of majorhandbooks and companions that provide acomprehensive overview of developments in thesociology of religion:Beckford JA and Demerath NJ III (eds) (2007) The Sage

Handbook of the Sociology of Religion. London: Sage.Clarke PB (ed.) (2009) The Oxford Handbook of the

Sociology of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dillon M (ed.) (2003) Handbook of the Sociology ofReligion. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Turner BS (ed.) (2010) The New Blackwell Companion tothe Sociology of Religion. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Bryan S Turner is the Presidential Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center, the CityUniversity of New York and concomitantly the Director of the Centre for Religion and Societyat the University of Western Sydney Australia. He was the Alona Evans Distinguished Professorof Sociology at Wellesley College (2009–10) and a professor in the Asia Research Institute atthe National University of Singapore (2005–9). He has published Weber and Islam (1974),Religion and Social Theory (1991), Religion and Modern Society (2011) and The Religious and thePolitical (forthcoming 2013). [email: bryansturner@yahoo.com.sg]

résumé Pendant le fin du XXème siècle et au début du XIème siècle, la sociologie de religion expéri-mentait un développement notable dans le domaine théorique ainsi que dans la recherche empirique. Leconsensus érudit soutient que la thèse des débuts de sécularisation, qui est associée à la théorie de mod-ernisation, était trompeuse et simpliste ou était principalement pertinent à l’Europe du Nord. Au dehorsdu cadre européen, il y a beaucoup d’évidence que la religion joue un rôle considérable dans la société, laculture et la politique. Parallèlement à cette urbanisation dans le monde en voie de développement, il yavait une augmentation de piété et de revivalisme religieux. Au siècle actuel, la religion sera un élémentprincipal dans les luttes politiques et idéologiques sur Terre. Néanmoins, un aspect négatif de ce foyer esttrop concentration sur l’Islam radical et des autres manifestations de violence religieux.

mots-clés consumérisme ◆ globalisation ◆ matérialité ◆ postsecularisation ◆ religions publiques ◆

sécularisation ◆ spiritualité

resumen Hacia finales del s. XX y comienzos del s. XXI, la sociología de la religión experimentó unnotable crecimiento tanto a nivel teórico como empírico. El consenso académico sostiene que los iniciosde la tesis de la secularización, asociados con la teoría de la modernización, eran engañosos y simplistas,o eran principalmente relevantes sólo para el norte de Europa. Más allá del marco europeo, existe una

amplia evidencia de que la religión juega un papel importante en la sociedad, la cultura y la política.Paralelo a la urbanización del mundo en vías de desarrollo, ha habido un crecimiento de la piedad y elevangelismo religioso. Durante este siglo, la religión será un elemento principal en las luchas políticas eideológicas en el mundo. Sin embargo, un aspecto negativo de este enfoque ha sido la excesiva concen-tración en el Islam radical y otras manifestaciones de violencia religiosa.

palabras clave consumismo ◆ espiritualidad ◆ globalización ◆ materialidad ◆ post-secularización ◆religiones públicas ◆ secularización

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