【作者】克里斯丁,S.
【内容提要】
The past 20 years have seen major developments in theoretical and empirical scholarship in the sociological study of religion. Most of the European founders of sociology, of course, engaged religion as an important dimension of understanding social order and transformation. The 20th century saw the production of many significant works in the sociology of religion in the United States. Yet the mostly taken-for-granted nature of the larger secularization theory that overshadowed a lot of social scientific thinking about religion during much of the past century tended to undermine the taking too seriously of religious institutions, cultures and movements. Old-timers today often report that when they were in graduate school they were actively discouraged by mentors from studying religion. Why invest in studying something that was destined to wither and die? They had to swim against the current to study religion. As a result, in some decades, the sociology of religion languished.