Creating an Agenda in the Sociology of Religion: Common Sources/Different Pathways

Abstract

This article has three sections. The first sets out the theme: that is the task or tasks of the sociology of religion. The variations on this theme follow, for it becomes immediately clear that not all sociologists of religion either identify or set about their assignments in the same way. The second section tackles similar issues but from a different perspective: it is concerned with the evolution of the sub-discipline in different parts of the world and in different language communities. We share common sources in the sociological classics; in later generations, however, distinctive discourses have emerged in different global regions. The final section offers a worked example of one particular debate: that which relates to new religious movements in different parts of the world. This article, and to a considerable extent my idea for the conference from which it emerged, has two points of departure. The first lies in the evolution of my own work since the mid 1980s; the second in a specific invitation to think more about the current agenda in the sociology of religion. Both points need further elaboration. Since the mid-1980s I have been concerned with the connections between religion and modernity. The canvass on which I have worked, however, has widened steadily. I started my thinking with reference to the urban areas of Britain and, more specifically, with reference to the religious situation in Liverpool in the North West of England (Ahern and Davie 1987). I then worked in more detail on the religious life of modern Britain (Davie 1994), a book that contains an important theoretical chapter concerning the connections between religion and modernity. In 2000, I published Religion in Modern Europe, which placed the British material within the European context where it rightly belongs.