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Bryan S Turner
Religion and contemporary sociological theories

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DOI: 10.1177/0011392114533214
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Religion and contemporary
sociological theories
Bryan S Turner
City University of New York, USA; Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the sociology of religion enjoyed a remarkable
growth in both theory and empirical research. The scholarly consensus argues that the
early secularization thesis associated with modernization theory was misleading and
simplistic, or that it was primarily relevant to northern Europe. Beyond the European
framework, there is ample evidence that religion continues to play a major role in
society, culture and politics. With urbanization in the developing world, there has come
increasing piety and religious revivalism. Religion will be a major factor in political and
ideological struggles across the globe in this century. One negative aspect of this focus
on political conflict, however, has been an over-concentration on radical Islam and
other manifestations of religious violence.
Keywords
Consumerism, globalization, materiality, post-secularization, public religions,
secularization, spirituality
The importance of religion and the general skepticism about the secularization thesis have
been accompanied by important theoretical developments. One significant development
has been the market or economic model of religion, which stresses the supply rather than
demand side of religion, and treats religious membership as the outcome of rational
choices about interests. However, it is not self-evident that the demand for religion is
constant in time and space. The model, if it has any validity, appears to explain the vitality
of religion in the American context where there is significant competition for religious
services within a religious market. Other developments include the post-secularization
Corresponding author:
Bryan S Turner, CUNY, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA.
Email: [email protected]
533214CSI0010.1177/0011392114533214Current Sociology ReviewTurner
research-article2014
Article
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2 Current Sociology Review
thesis of Jrgen Habermas, which argues that secular and religious citizens have a duty to
engage in dialogue within the public sphere in the interests of a liberal consensus.
Criticism of the conventional secularization thesis has seen increasing research
emphasis on popular religion, spirituality and implicit religion. This emerging research
focus on post-institutional spirituality has been characteristic of the sociology of religion
in the United States and more recently in Europe where organized religion has been weak
or declining. The result of contemporary research is that rigid conceptual dichotomies
between religious and secular groups fail to capture the empirical diversity within these
categories. It is also the case that the religious and the political even in allegedly
a-political religions such as Buddhism are never far apart (Turner, 2013).
Other new areas have included the sociology of the body. This focus on embodiment
is important because it is a corrective to the excessive concentration on religious belief
and knowledge in much mainstream sociology of religion. Religion is not simply an
assembly of beliefs and values, but obviously includes ritual practices, the use of mate-
rial objects and respect for place. This interest on practice, the body and religion has been
influenced by the work of Pierre Bourdieu (Rey, 2007).
Finally there is increasing awareness of the limitations of western definitions of reli-
gion for comparative study and at the same time growing research endeavor to capture
the nature and consequences of globalization for religious life. In his Holy Ignorance,
Olivier Roy (2010) provides a comprehensive but controversial overview of the impact
of globalization on religion in the concept of de-territorialization of religions that are
torn from their local contexts with the result that religions become increasingly standard-
ized. As religion becomes a lifestyle choice, commitment to orthodox doctrine becomes
less important and the laity are ignorant about the truth claims of orthodoxy hence the
title of the book. As a result of these new developments, the sociology of religion is a
flourishing and diverse feature of modern scholarship.
Introduction: Classical sociology and its legacy
The study of religion played a major role in classical sociology from Karl Marxs theory
of alienation and fetishism of commodities, to Max Webers work on the Protestant sects
and the rise of capitalism, to William Jamess study of religious experience, to Emile
Durkheims work on the sacred and profane dichotomy and finally to Georg Simmels
view of religion as the creativity of life. This classical tradition was sustained in the soci-
ology of Talcott Parsons, who refined the theory of secularization by noting the resilience
of American denominationalism and the continuing importance of religion in American
public life (Parsons, 1974). Large-scale comparative sociology of religion was taken up
by his student Robert N Bellah (1957), for example in his Tokugawa Religion, which
considered the evolution of this-worldly asceticism in Japan. This classical tradition con-
tinues to influence contemporary sociological theories of religion. One can illustrate this
legacy by reference to two debates. The first issue, which preoccupied Durkheim, was the
quest for a generic definition of religion that would permit sociological comparisons over
time and space. There have been major developments in the attempt to understand
religion from a comparative perspective, especially with regard to so-called Asian reli-
gions. Two works of outstanding scholarship are Anna Suns (2013) Confucianism as a
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Turner 3
World Religion and Jason Ananda Josephsons (2012) The Invention of Religion in Japan.
Contemporary debates about spirituality, popular religion and official religion have kept
alive issues that confronted both Weber and Durkheim, namely the problem of meaning in
human life when confronted by suffering and death. The second and related issue con-
cerns the vexed question about secularization, re-sacralization, public religions and the
question of American exceptionalism (Torpey, 2010). Jrgen Habermas (2006) has more
recently given a new turn to this ongoing debate in the notion of post-secular society,
namely a society in which both secular and religious citizens are obliged to give a public
defense of their beliefs (Calhoun et al., 2013).
Despite the scholarly depth of this legacy, the sociology of religion has had a check-
ered career. In mid-century it flourished in the United States but around a more narrow
set of issues. The main concerns were about migration and denominationalism, but the
study of religion was no longer central to mainstream sociology. Will Herbergs
Protestant, Catholic Jew (1955) described how religion had become part of American
identity, provided that identity fell under three headings, namely Protestantism,
Catholicism or Judaism. The other classic was Richard H Niebuhrs (1929) study of
American denominationalism, which was designed to supplement the church-sect typol-
ogy of Ernst Troeltsch (1931). The revival of the sociology of religion as part of the core
curriculum of the sociological discipline was subsequently associated with the work of
Peter L Berger and Thomas Luckmann, for whom the study of religion was an insepara-
ble component of the sociology of knowledge in their The Social Construction of Reality
(1967). Berger went on to develop his own sophisticated version of secularization, argu-
ing in The Sacred Canopy (Berger, 1967) that the plausibility structures behind religious
belief were seriously compromised in modern societies. A similar line of argument
emerged in Luckmanns The Invisible Religion (1967). Contributions to the sociological
theory of religion were also made by Roland Robertson (1970) in The Sociological
Interpretation of Religion. Robertson (1992) subsequently came to play a major role in
the debate about religion and globalization.
The modern sociological tradition in America recognized that much of what we call
religion takes place outside the institutional framework of the churches and hence
research has often looked at religion and youth culture, generational change and spiritu-
ality. This tradition can be illustrated by reference to the work of Wade C Roof in various
publications, such as his A Generation of Seekers (1993) and Spiritual Marketplace
(1999). Alongside this research, there have been important contributions in qualitative
ethnographic studies such as Courtney Benders Heavens Kitchen (2003) and The New
Metaphysicals (2010). These new interests and approaches were promoted in Religion
on the Edge (Bender et al., 2013).
In the United Kingdom, Bryan Wilson at the University of Oxford and David Martin
at the London School of Economics dominated the study of secularization. Wilson
(1966), noting the institutional decline of religion in northern Europe, argued that the
Christian Churches survived in America at the cost of their theological content, that is by
subordinating their beliefs and practices to the logic of commercial culture. He also took
the view that the inspirational religion of the Christian sects evolved over time into the
conventional religion of the denominations. Perhaps the classic example of this process
can be found in the history of Methodism. John Wesley (17031791) in developing his
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4 Current Sociology Review
preaching circuits and establishing independent chapels, created a religious movement
that had a strong appeal to the urban poor and the disposed. Wesleys field preaching was
a challenge to the parish structure of Anglicanism and to the hierarchical authority of the
local priesthood. At the same time Charles Wesleys hymns were popular alternatives to
the formal worship of the Anglican liturgy. In The Making of the English Working Class,
Edward P Thompson (1963) examined Methodism as an oppositional, working-class and
dissenting tradition, which by the middle of the 19th century had become a middle-class
mainstream denomination. The enthusiasm of the evangelical sects exposes them to a
more rapid pathway towards denominational status. In these research contributions,
Wilsons model of sectarian religion was highly influential (Wilson, 1967). Martin
(1969) took a comparative perspective on secularization in his The Religious and the
Secular and in recent years his work on global Pentecostalism has contributed to the
criticism of earlier theories of secularization in which secularism was treated as an inevi-
table companion of modernity (Martin, 2002).
Under the umbrella of the British Sociological Association, there have more recently
been important contributions from James Beckford, Grace Davie and Linda Woodhead.
These authors have also expanded the framework of sociological research to look, for
instance, at religious life inside prisons (Beckford and Gilliat, 1998). Another develop-
ment in British sociology was around the idea of implicit religion (Bailey, 1990).
Recent work has also examined the important differences between religious life in the
United Kingdom where the Church of England has been in long-term decline and the
United States where religion in its various manifestations has been far more prominent
in the public domain (Berger et al., 2008).
In France, secularism or lacit as the dominant tradition has been enforced by the
state, and the sociology of religion has not thrived, partly because of the strength of
Marxist philosophy in France. Major French sociologists (Raymond Aron, Raymond
Boudon or Luc Boltanski) and French Marxists (Louis Althusser and Jean-Claude
Passeron) have not made any significant contribution to the study of religion. The sepa-
ration of church and state in France goes very deep into French culture and there is a
War on Sects (Palmer, 2011). One illustration of the conflicts between secular republi-
canism and the Roman Catholic Church can be taken from the personal history of
Althusser, who in the 1940s was both a member of the Jeunesse de lEglise and the
Communist Party. The Jeunesse de lEglise supported the worker-priest movement and
believed that communism and Christianity were compatible. When in July 1949 the
Vatican excommunicated all Catholics who were members of the Communist Party,
Althusser broke with orthodox Catholicism (Robbins, 2012: 46). Pierre Bourdieu, one of
the most influential French sociologists, had only a limited interest in the sociology of
religion (Susen and Turner, 2011). Bourdieu (1962) had studied Islam in his work on
Algeria, but in his subsequent research religion played almost no part. While Luc
Boltanski is profoundly concerned with moral issues, he too has paid scant attention to
formal religion. The principal contemporary exception is the work of Danile Hervieu-
Leger (2000) in her notion of religion as a chain of memory connecting generations
across time.
More broadly, the revival of the sociology of religion in the late 20th and early 21st
century was associated with growing recognition of the importance of religion in public
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Turner 5
life in terms of Solidarity in Poland, the Moral Majority in the United States, the vitality
of charismatic churches and Pentecostalism in South America and Africa, the rise of
Hindu nationalism and the revival of mainstream religions in Russia, China and Vietnam
with the transformation of communist states in the 1990s. These developments were
described as public religions by Jos Casanova (1994). The idea that religion was only
a matter of individual belief and practice, and that the church and state were separate in
modern constitutions began to evaporate. With growing awareness of the vitality of reli-
gion globally, sociologists such as Peter Berger (1999) began seriously to question the
conventional assumptions about secularization. Sociologists also became more aware of
the fact that the separation of church and state across Europe was far more variable. For
example in the Lutheran tradition of Scandinavia church and state are intertwined rather
than separated (Van den Breemer et al., 2014).
What do I mean by contemporary when referring to sociological theories? By con-
temporary we might mean, not just chronologically contemporary, but sociological theo-
ries that attempt to understand how modern societies have radically changed for
example as a result of the social impact of the Internet and cultural globalization and
how religion is changing as a consequence. Sociologists have grappled with religion
online, new religious movements that promote self-care and empowerment, the globali-
zation of religious traditions from Asia, the worldwide impact of Pentecostalism and so
forth. But how might we conceptualize the underlying social changes that are reshaping
the world? One approach suggests that we have moved away from societies that are
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 be slight) (Elliott and
Turner, 2012). An elastic society is one in which seekers (Roof, 1993) can explore and
combine various religious traditions in the quest for an identity that will sit outside the
formal structures of official religions.
Political Islam
One significant change in the sociology of religion has been an eruption of interest in
Islam, especially an interest in the Muslim communities of the West (Keskin, 2011).
While the development of the sociology of Islam is in part a response to the growth of
the Muslim diaspora in the West, it is also regrettably a reaction to the Wests investment
in security after 9/11 and bombings in London, Madrid and Bali. Consequently the study
of Islam appears to be inevitably controversial, being associated with the spread of urban
terrorism (Juergensmeyer, 2003). The Twin Towers attack in New York in September
2001 not only changed the face of modern politics; it propelled the sociology of religion
in radically new directions. George W Bushs war on terror reinforced ideas about
political Islam and fundamentalism which came to dominate academic research. Of
course the idea of a radical clash between Islam and the West started much earlier with
the Gulf War of 1991, with the bombing of New Yorks World Trade Center in March
1993 and the hijacking of an Air France plane in December 1994. Samuel Huntington
published his famous article on The clash of civilizations in Foreign Affairs in 1993 and
Islam has remained at the center of debates about religion, democracy, nationalism and
violence for two decades.
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6 Current Sociology Review
There is a considerable body of research on Islam looking at the debates about veiling
and gender equality. This empirical research provides a detailed picture of Islam in
Europe and North America, where, despite public anxiety about multiculturalism and the
place of Muslims in secular democracies, Muslim communities have been relatively suc-
cessful in adjusting to life in the West (Cesari, 2010; Fetzer and Soper, 2005). The veiling
of Muslim women was a political problem in Europe but not in the United States. By
contrast, the debate about the Sharia in America has emerged as a political and legal
issue that is increasingly divisive, partly because it has become (unofficially) part of the
agenda of the Republican Party and the Tea Party. Several states (Arizona and Oklahoma)
have already pre-emptively banned references to the Sharia in American courts.
However the nature of the Sharia as such is little understood. Debates about the Sharia
raise important problems about legal pluralism and equality, and even more problematic
issues about rights to practice religion without excessive interference from the state.
Apart from hostile media interest in Islam, sociological studies of the Sharia suggest
that in practice it is being incorporated into western legal systems, especially with respect
to the settlement of domestic issues around marriage, divorce and inheritance (Joppke
and Torpey, 2013).
Academic research has done much to demonstrate that the popular notion of an inte-
grated global Islam is erroneous and that Islam is diverse and complex. Anthropological
and sociological studies have also dispelled the widespread view that women are every-
where and always subordinated in Islam as second class citizens (Hafez, 2011; Joseph,
2000; Robinson, 2009). Despite the widespread presence of Islamophobia, research has
also shown that there is no common pattern to the experience of Muslims as recent
migrants to the United States, Europe and Australia.
After all this negative attention, the sociology of Islam has advanced conceptually
and intellectually. Talal Asads The Genealogies of Religion (1993) and Formations
of the Secular (2003) have been important in developing sophisticated approaches to
Islam that do not concentrate on security issues. Saba Mahmoods Politics of Piety
(2005) has presented an alternative feminist view of the religious practices of women
in Cairo. In summary, too much research on Islam is now either engulfed in political
interests or driven by overtly normative concerns. Despite these difficulties, the soci-
ology of Islam has made important contributions to our understanding of Muslim
communities outside the terrorism framework. Regardless of the legacy of 9/11,
Muslim communities have been relatively successful in integrating into plural
America (Haddad, 2011).
Civil religion
Is modern society secular? Despite the academic enthusiasm for de-secularization, there
are strong arguments that suggest that religion in Europe has continued to decline and that
religious growth in China and elsewhere is exaggerated (Bruce, 2002). Academic debate
has continued to focus on the exceptional character of religion in America. The argument
goes back to Alexis de Tocquevilles great work of historical sociology on Democracy in
America (1968), which was published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840. Religion oper-
ated for de Tocqueville in the form of the local and autonomous congregation, and the
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Turner 7
separation of religion and politics protected the emerging democracy from the control of
an Established Church. He recognized the importance of churches as voluntary associa-
tions to American democratic institutions and values, but he also saw dangers in the
excessive individualism of the early American frontier.
There is a wealth of research on the issue of American religion, both historical and
sociological (Chaves, 2011). Robert Putnam and David Campbell (2010) argue in
American Grace that religion has remained important in the public domain but Americans
are no longer divided along denominational lines. Other authors have noted the strength
and influence of Protestant evangelism and the success of the so-called mega-churches
(Thumma and Travis, 2007). But these studies do not answer the more problematic ques-
tion about the actual character of religion in America. There is so to speak no doubt about
the quantity of religion in America, but what about the quality?
It is often claimed that in a plural, diverse and multicultural society, social diversity
can be contained under the broad umbrella of a civil religion. This notion had its origin
in Rousseaus political and educational theories. In the Social Contract of 1762 he argued
that Christian belief in a supernatural world was inimical to social and political life on
this earth (Rousseau, 1973) . In The creed of a priest of Savoy Rousseau (1956), reject-
ing the Christian view of the sinful nature of humankind, insisted that we need religion
as a bulwark against existential despair. Deism gave full recognition to the emotions and
the social role of religion in sustaining civil society. However deistic religion was to be
fabricated by a lawgiver operating in defense of a republic. During the French Revolution,
Rousseaus Social Contract was translated into the administrative reality of the state,
and provided intellectuals with a new perspective of redemption through political
power (Nisbet, 1990: 141). Robespierre in 1794 drew up the doctrine of the Religion of
the Supreme Being, and the idea of France as a singular and undivided state corresponded
perfectly with the organization of the Terror, and with Rousseaus understanding of the
submersion of the individual in the state.
The modern debate about religion in America is associated with Robert Bellahs
famous Daedalus article (1967) on civil religion in America. Against the notion of
secularization, he argued that there is an American religious tradition that is separate
from but connected to mainstream Christianity. This civil religion celebrated the histori-
cal sense of America as the First New Nation, the City on a Hill and the Israel of the New
World. American history is one of sacrifice, tragedy and suffering but eventually of
redemption. Starting with the Civil War, the tragedy extended to the war in Vietnam, and
it contained symbols of national injury and deliverance. It was reinforced and revivified
by periodic festivals such as Thanksgiving and marked by the architecture of the
Arlington Memorial. Bellah insisted that civil religion was not a second-class or cor-
rupted version of official Christianity, but it was the natural companion to a republican
form of government. In a later version of the original argument, Bellah adopted a lan-
guage that sounds in some respects like a version of Rousseaus republicanism. He con-
cluded that a republic will have republican customs public participation in the exercise
of power, political equality of citizens, a wide distribution of small and medium property
with few very rich or very poor customs that will lead to a public spiritedness, a will-
ingness of the citizen to sacrifice his own interests for the common good, in a word a citi-
zen motivated by republican virtue (Bellah, 1978: 18).
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8 Current Sociology Review
Bellah concluded his article on the legitimacy of the republic with recognition that
consumerism and naked self interest had undermined the institutions that are the
vehicles of the civil religion. He asked, Have not the churches along with the schools
and the family what I have called the soft structures that deal primarily with human
motivation suffered more in the great upheavals through which our society has
recently gone than any other of our institutions, suffered so much that their capacity to
transmit patterns of conscience and ethical values has been seriously impaired?
(Bellah, 1978: 23). Bellah has perceptively argued that from George Washington to
more recent American presidents there is an acknowledgment of God as the Supreme
Being who stands over the nation, but in official discourse there is rarely any reference
to Jesus Christ, precisely because in a multi-faith society any acknowledgment of Jesus
as Saviour would be divisive. The idea that the nation is guided by a Supreme Being is
in fact close to Rousseaus idea that a republic religion needs such a Being, but it does
not need the theological baggage of a religion of salvation.
An alternative approach is to examine how religion works in American society within
institutions where its presence may be less obvious. Sociologists have examined how
chaplains offer services in hospitals (Cadge, 2012) and in the military (Hansen, 2012).
Secularization and the economic model
One of the dominant theoretical approaches to religion in contemporary sociology is the
so-called economic model of religion which was originally associated with Rodney
Stark and William S Bainbridge in their A Theory of Religion (1987) and Rodney Stark
and R Finkes (2000) Acts of Faith. It has been variously described as the economic, the
market and the rational choice model. Developed originally as a criticism of the seculari-
zation thesis, it was advanced to explain the vitality of religion in America. The work of
Bainbridge, Stark, Warner and others emerged out of a desire to create a more compre-
hensive and effective general theory of religion in the social sciences. A key assumption
of the theory is that the demand for religion is more or less constant, and therefore fluc-
tuations in the level of religious activity are to be explained by variations in supply. Open
religious markets in which religious groups or religious firms are free to compete for
followers or customers provide a more dynamic environment in which religious institu-
tions can prosper. Competition produces a more diverse and attractive religious product
and hence there is a more dynamic demand for religious services. The overall outcome
is a religious economy that remains buoyant. By contrast, restricted markets in which
there is a monopoly of supply with an Established Church or where the state seeks to
regulate religion, are inefficient. Where there is a regulation and restriction, there will be
black or grey markets in which illegal or semi-legal groups attempt to provide religious
products. The more restricted the market, the more we can expect a sizeable grey mar-
ket to evolve. The theory also assumes that individuals in restricted markets, for example
in authoritarian societies where church and state cooperate to regulate supply, will face
high costs, such as ostracism or imprisonment, in buying and consuming religious
goods and services. The market model has given rise to much critical discussion
(Lehmann, 2010). Perhaps the most successful criticisms of the approach have come
from Steve Bruce (1999), who, among other objections, points to the success of religion
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Turner 9
in societies with an established church tradition at various points in their history such as
Poland, Russia and Serbia.
The model has some obvious relevance when making comparisons between the
restricted market in China and the free and competitive market in the US. Whereas
America has had, in the absence of an Established Church, a robust religious market
producing a diversity of providers of religious services, China is the classic example of
the shortage economy of religion (Yang, 2012: 123158). In China the Chinese
Communist Party, while still embracing radical atheism as its preferred ideology, set out
to eliminate religion from Chinese society, and during the Cultural Revolution this athe-
ist push against all forms of religion was further intensified. However following the
death of Mao Zedong in 1976, Deng Xiaoping, admitting past policy mistakes towards
religion, adopted a more pragmatic policy in 1982 in the famous Document No. 19. It
recognized the social complexity of religion and the fact that in China religion especially
is interwoven seamlessly with culture, ethnicity and national traditions. The new
approach also allowed academics to study religion under the umbrella of cultural prac-
tices. While western observers have often seen this development as a momentous change
in policy, Fenggang Yang (2012) in Religion in China draws attention to the fact that
there are still significant restrictions remaining on the practice of religion, including
activities that claim to be purely cultural. His economic or market model of Chinese
religion provides important insights into contemporary developments and carefully ana-
lyzes the contradictions and complexities of official policies in which continuing restric-
tions on religious practice inevitably fuel a large grey market of religious services.
The economic model does not provide much guidance as to the actual character of
religion in China, because it is essentially an account of the efficiency of a religious
market in quantitative terms. The model does not look at demand-side issues such as the
meaning of religion to participants, because it takes demand as a constant. The economic
model looks only at the process of exchange, not the nature of the religious products
(Yang, 2012: 21). The model does not attempt to distinguish between religious products
and it does not attend systematically to the consequences of this religious revival for
Chinese civil society.
Religions of the axial age
There has been a more or less continuous debate about relevance of western or Abrahamic
models of religion to Asian traditions. There is some general agreement among scholars
that the idea of world religions was a 19th-century invention and that Hinduism for
example was the product of British administrative needs. Contemporary sociology of
religion has largely abandoned the historical and comparative approach to religion that
was characteristic of earlier scholarship. Here one may refer to Max Webers compara-
tive study of world religions, especially The Religion of China (1951) and The Religion
of India (1958), or the work of Mircea Eliade such as The Sacred and the Profane (1961)
or Shmuel Eisenstadt (1986) on The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations or
his work on Japanese Civilization (1996). Other comparisons might include reference to
the publications of Analdo Momigliano, such as On Pagans, Jews, and Christians
(1997). Perhaps the most striking recent example is Robert Bellahs Religion in Human
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10 Current Sociology Review
Evolution (2011), which combines evolutionary psychology and sociology to explore the
religions of the axial age. Karl Jaspers (1953) The Origin and Goal of History described
a formative period before the Common Era in which religious prophets created universal
ethical codes that shaped the rise of civilizations. In Jaspers controversial analysis, the
axial age was completed before the rise of Christianity and Islam, and hence the implica-
tion of the thesis is that they are merely variations on a theme that had already been
established. This view contrasts sharply with recent interpretations of Pauline Christianity
as the origin of modern ethical universalism. This debate about universalism often comes
back therefore to the career and conversion of Saint Paul and his struggle with the
Christian doctrine of grace and the relevance of the Jewish law. Two remarkable books
have explored these issues at some length, namely Alain Badious Saint Paul (2003) and
Jacob Taubes The Political Theology of Paul (2004)
Bellahs magnum opus has many dimensions, but one persistent theme is the role
of acosmitic world-denying love in recognizing the humanity of every person
regardless of their ethnicity, race and culture. Following Webers distinction between
asceticism and mysticism, Bellah presents a tragic view of religious history. He seeks
to analyze the world religions as universalistic ethical systems that can break out of
the narrow confines of family, kinship and locality. Religious universalism has to
recognize that a disciple of Jesus must abandon family and kinship in order to devote
themselves wholly to Jesus Christ as Lord. Kinship was fundamental to the religious
traditions of China, where ancestor worship has been constitutive of Chinese tradi-
tions. These issues relating to kinship and ancestors provide a significant constraint
on any universalistic impulse in Confucian values. In the case of Confucianism,
Bellah failed adequately to recognize the traditional role of filial piety as the basis of
Confucian conservatism. By contrast, Weber was far more explicitly critical of the
consequences of filial piety. He claimed that Confucianism placed a tremendous
stress on familial piety, a stress which was motivated by belief in magic, in view of
the importance of the family spirits. This familial piety was cultivated in practice by
a patriarchal and patrimonial-bureaucratic political organization (Weber, 1978: Vol.
1: 579). It was primarily within congregational religions that co-religionists could
replace kinfolk, because the notion of brotherly love could not breathe within the
confines of an exclusive kinship network.
Jaspers legacy has given rise to a lively and productive debate (Bellah and Joas,
2012). However, there is widespread skepticism about any claims to universality in the
study of religion. In recent decades, the study of religions in Asia has flourished in Asian
universities and research centers and these developments have also underpinned the
emergence of postcolonial studies, which have had the effect of provincializing Europe.
The outcome is that Asian scholars are developing independent traditions that better
reflect local circumstances and histories. Sensitivity to these contextual and cultural con-
cerns is well illustrated in Tomoko Masuzawas The Invention of World Religions (2005).
These responses to the hegemonic status of western scholarship can be regarded as an
outcome of Edward Said (1978) and the early criticisms of Orientalism. It may also be
connected with the quest among historians to develop the idea of world history that is
neither parochial nor narrow. Perhaps the most important example is Marshal GS
Hodgson (1993) in Rethinking World History.
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Turner 11
Popular religion
There has been much attention given to the idea of spirituality which we can define simply
as post-institutional, post-orthodox, individualized religiosity that is typically not con-
nected to any congregational religion (Wood, 2010). It typically draws freely from various
religious traditions, and can be regarded as a do-it-yourself religiosity. While we might
think that this development is an example of mysticism from Troeltschs typology of
religion (Troeltsch, 1931), it is probably more accurate to think of spirituality under the
umbrella of popular religion. In his contribution to The Religious Significance of Atheism
(Ricoeur and MacIntyre, 1969), Alasdair MacIntyre made the point that atheism is only a
serious option in a society that has a dominant tradition of theism. A similar argument
might be made about popular religion. Taking popular religion seriously is probably
only a real option in a society where influential theologians, powerful churches and a
formal orthodoxy are still visible in the public domain. In short, the idea of something
being popular in religious terms implies that there is a hegemonic and comprehensive
alternative to which the popular manifestations of religious life are subordinated and typi-
cally oppositional. But in a modern society what is that alternative? To achieve some
conceptual clarity, we may have to invent a contrast case to distinguish between the popu-
lar and its opposite. Of course, the churches play an important role in welfare provision
and the Roman Catholic Church remains influential in education through schools and
universities. Where there is an Established Church such as the Anglican Church in the
United Kingdom organized religion enjoys certain benefits and privileges. One might
conclude that in modern democratic societies all religions are popular.
While popular religion was not an important topic in classical sociology, it has
become a major issue in the contemporary sociology of religion. Wade Clark Roof has
made an important contribution to the empirical study and theoretical understanding of
the spirituality of so-called seekers in the Baby Boomer generation such as A Generation
of Seekers (1993) and Spiritual Marketplace (1999). These research findings suggest that
the postwar generation in America flows in and out of different religious groups and tradi-
tions in search of meaning. This type of religiosity may be an aspect of the lifestyle of the
Baby Boomers that involved experimentation with yoga, meditation, recreational drugs,
Zen Buddhism and psychotherapy (Goldman, 2012). Similar results have been reported in
Europe by Grace Davie (1994), who coined the phrase that describes religious seeking as
believing without belonging. The study of popular religion has been an obvious area for
qualitative ethnographic research and in this respect the research of Courtney Bender in
Heavens Kitchen (2003) has been exemplary. In concentrating on these post-institutional
and individualistic forms of religiosity there runs the danger of neglecting the continuing
strength and importance of evangelical Christianity in America (Smidt, 2013).
Popular religions are enjoying a mushroom growth while the traditional churches are
declining. The new generation of seekers find their inspiration in JRR Tolkeins mytho-
logical world, from science fiction and from Star Wars. They are also drawn to Satanism,
witchcraft and neo-paganism. This ensemble has been referred to as hyper-real reli-
gions (Possamai, 2012). These are worldwide developments, but are they socially or
politically important? Whereas the prophetic religions of the axial age and the Protestant
sects of the Reformation had a profound effect on culture and social structure, it is not
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12 Current Sociology Review
self-evident that spirituality, which is by definition a somewhat private practice, will
have any long-term significant consequences.
The analysis of popular religion has also typically taken notice of the various ways in
which contemporary religious movements have been closely integrated into the global
flow of modern commercialization of goods and services. Modern piety can therefore
often be combined with commercial values and practices. Examples of this research with
special reference to Asia include Pattana Kitiarsas (2007) Religious Commodification in
Asia, Vineeta Sinhas (2010) Religion and Commodification and Kajri Jains (2006)
Gods in the Bazaar. These new developments also have important methodological and
theoretical consequences. They suggest for example that sociology and anthropology
should spend less time addressing religious beliefs and pay more attention to religious
practices, places and objects. This development looks therefore towards the materiality
of religion and is well illustrated by Julius Buatistas edited collection on The Spirit of
Things (2012).
Globalization
Another important development in the sociology of religion is concerned with globaliza-
tion. Roland Robertson (1992) and Roland Robertson and William Garrett (1991) led the
field in the study of religion and globalization, but academic interest has intensified in
the last decade. The topic has received considerable theoretical attention from Peter
Beyer (1994, 2006), but it is obviously more difficult to conduct empirical research on
globalized religions than it is to conduct research within a local or national context.
Much of the research on the globalization of religion has been conducted in relation to
terrorism, security and political Islam. These topics can be seen as a continuation of
Huntingtons clash of civilizations, in which the future of political globalization will
revolve around further conflicts over the sacred and political sovereignty. The growth of
religious fundamentalism and revivalism has been an important if unanticipated aspect
of cultural globalization. One consequence we have seen has been the disappearance of
the secularization thesis. We have a research agenda in which globalization and the study
of popular religion combine. Global, hybrid religiosity is a form of religious popular
culture. In the United States, sociologists have identified the emergence of a quest cul-
ture that attempts to find meaning in various and diverse traditions. The result is reli-
gious hybridity. New age communities have been a popular topic of sociological research
for some time (Heelas, 1996), but we need to understand more precisely how these spir-
itual marketplaces function globally and how are they connected electronically through
the Internet. One can predict a growing sophistication in the use of the Internet as a
research technology in the immediate future.
Conclusion: New trends and the future of the sociology of
religion
There is now a widely held view that, after several decades of inactivity and marginaliza-
tion, the sociology of religion has made a remarkable recovery. The academic consensus
suggests that the secularization thesis was just wrong all along, or that it was primarily
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Turner 13
relevant to northern Europe. Beyond the European secular framework, there is ample
evidence that religion plays a major role in society, culture and politics. In 2012 the
National Intelligence Council in the United States published Global Trends 2030:
Alternative Worlds, in which it anticipates that religion will play a large role in state and
international politics. Observing that urbanization in the developing world is associated
with increases in piety, the report suggested that religion would be a major factor in
political and ideological struggles across the globe.
The importance of religion and the general skepticism about the secularization thesis
have been accompanied by important theoretical developments. One important con-
tender in explaining the vitality of religion is the market or economic model of religion.
It has certain obvious merits. It is parsimonious; it has a clear ambition to be a general
theory; it explains certain phenomena effectively such as deregulation in China. However,
it is not clear that there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that the demand for religion
is constant in time and space. Many object to the assumption that selling cornflakes has
the same characteristics as selling religion. The model, if it has any validity, appears to
fit the American context where there is significant competition but not other markets.
There has also been considerable interest in and research of the global commodification
of religion in terms of, for example, religious tourism.
While the critical theory of the Frankfurt School had not paid any significant attention
to religion, the situation has changed recently with Jrgen Habermass promotion of the
idea of post-secularism. His argument has, however, often been misunderstood. He is not
saying that there has been a resurgence of religion, but merely that for a communicative
dialogue to function both secular and religious spokespeople need to give rational, public
accounts of their beliefs. This argument, while obviously justifiable, is not especially
persuasive sociologically. Why would fundamentalists need to give an account of their
position? The recent presidential election in the United States showed no evidence that
religious fundamentalists in the Tea Party wanted to hold a dialogue with secular liberals
in the Democratic Party or that anarchists in the Occupy Wall Street movement had much
sympathy with or need to communicate with religious conservatives (Gitlin, 2012).
Criticism of the secularization thesis has seen increasing research emphasis on popu-
lar religion, spirituality and implicit religion. This research tradition has been character-
istic of the sociology of religion in the United States and more recently in Europe, where
organized religion has been weak or declining. While there is ample evidence of robust
religious vitality, especially among youth, there is also evidence for example in the
United States of more people declaring that they have no religion (Lin et al., 2010).
Debates about the actual character of the secular have also led to interest in the study of
atheism in modernity (Bullivant, 2012). The result is that rigid conceptual dichotomies
between religious and secular groups and practices fail to capture the empirical diversity
within these categories.
What are the new areas? Over the last two or three decades, the sociology of the body
has grown to prominence and it has had some impact on the sociology of religion, pri-
marily in the work of Philip Mellor and Chris Shilling (1997). Further aspects of this
influence are evident in The Routledge Handbook of Body Studies (Turner, 2012). This
focus on embodiment is important because it is a corrective to the excessive concentra-
tion on belief and knowledge in much mainstream sociology of religion. Religion is not
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14 Current Sociology Review
simply an assembly of beliefs and values. Religion as belief has become dominant
because survey techniques lend themselves to inquiries into attitudes and opinions. This
development towards religion and embodiment is also a useful warning that much of our
understanding of religion is in fact seen through the lens of Protestantism. For example
William Jamess influential approach to religious conversion in his Varieties of Religious
Experience (1929) is wholly founded on the Protestant tradition. One can anticipate that
the study of the body and body practice would offer a platform for further study of reli-
gion and emotions, religion and gender, and material religions. A development in this
direction would be a foil to the over-concentration on violence, terrorism and Islam.
Annotated further reading
There have been a number of major handbooks, companions and textbooks that provide a compre-
hensive overview of developments in the sociology of religion:
Beckford JA and Demerath III NJ (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 of Religion. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Roberts KA and Yamane D (2011) Religion in Sociological Perspective, 5th edn. Los Angeles:
Sage.
Turner BS (ed.) (2010) The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion. Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.
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Author biography
Bryan S Turner is the Presidential Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center at the City University
of New York and concomitantly Professor of the Sociology of Religion at the Australian Catholic
University, Melbourne, Australia. He was the Alona Evans Distinguished Professor of Sociology at
Wellesley College (20092010) and a professor in the Asia Research Institute at the National University
of Singapore (20052009). He has published Weber and Islam (1974), Religion and Social Theory
(1991), Religion and Modern Society (2011) and The Religious and the Political (2013).
Rsum
Pendant le fin du XXme sicle et au dbut du XIme sicle, la sociologie de religion
exprimentait un dveloppement notable dans le domaine thorique ainsi que dans
la recherche empirique. Le consensus rudit soutient que la thse des dbuts de
scularisation, qui est associe la thorie de modernisation, tait trompeuse et
simpliste ou tait principalement relevante lEurope du Nord. Au dehors du cadre
europen, il y a beaucoup dvidence que la religion joue un rle considrable dans la
socit, la culture et la politique. Paralllement cette urbanisation dans le monde en
voie de dveloppement, il y avait une augmentation de pit et de revivalisme religieux.
Au sicle actuel, la religion sera un lment principal dans les luttes politiques et
idologiques sur Terre. Nanmoins, un aspect ngatif de ce foyer est trop concentration
sur lIslam radical et des autres manifestations de violence religieux.
Mots-cls
Consumrisme, globalisation, matrialit, postsecularisation, religions publiques,
scularisation, spiritualit
Resumen
Hacia finales del s. XX y comienzos del s. XXI, la sociologa de la religin experiment un
notable crecimiento tanto a nivel terico como emprico. El consenso acadmico sostiene
que los inicios de la tesis de la secularizacin, asociados con la teora de la modernizacin,
eran engaosos y simplistas, o eran principalmente relevantes slo para el norte de
Europa. Ms all del marco europeo, existe una amplia evidencia de que la religin juega
un papel importante en la sociedad, la cultura y la poltica. Paralelo a la urbanizacin del
mundo en vas de desarrollo, ha habido un crecimiento de la piedad y el evangelismo
religioso. Durante este siglo, la religin ser un elemento principal en las luchas polticas
e ideolgicas en el mundo. Sin embargo, un aspecto negativo de este enfoque ha sido la
excesiva concentracin en el Islam radical y otras manifestaciones de violencia religiosa.
Palabras clave
Consumismo, globalizacin, materialidad, post-secularizacin, religiones pblicas,
secularizacin, espiritualidad
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