Sociology of Religion

Sociology of Religion

The substantive importance of the area. Sociologists of religion seek to explain and understand how religion shapes and informs social institutions, relations, and change, and how it is shaped and influenced by the latter. From Weber and Durkheim to Sorokin, and from Berger to Smith and Stark, the sociology of religion has been vitally important to our discipline. In recent decades, global religious trends, growing domestic religious diversity, and international conflicts have generated an increased interest in the studies of religion in sociology and other social sciences. The sociology of religion is well represented in the ASA annual meetings. The Association for the Sociology of Religion and the Society of the Scientific Study of Religion hold annual meeting attracting numerous sociologists from the US and around the world. Additionally, the International Sociological Association holds regular conferences dedicated to the sociology of religion. Such journals as Sociology of Religion and Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion are among leading peer-reviewed journals in the discipline.

Sociology of religion at WMU. Despite the importance of the sociology of religion for the discipline, Western Michigan University is among not so many programs in the country and the only university in Michigan to offer a doctoral specialization in the sociology of religion. Furthermore, our program is unique in its emphases on comparative and international studies of religion, on the interplay between secularizing and desecularizing forces and trends across societies and cultures, and on the relationships between religious and social diversity worldwide.

The area exam procedure and structure. Prior to taking the sociology of religion area exam, students are expected to fulfill the doctoral core requirement and take three graduate courses relevant to the area, of which at least two must be Sociology courses. Any courses from outside of the Department as well as the ones taken in the format of individual studies need to be approved by the exam committee chair.

The exam structure is tripartite. Part one focuses on classical and contemporary theoretical developments and debates in the sociology of religion. Part two concentrates on major empirical themes within the sociology of religion and emphasizes the issues of research methodology, methods, and techniques. Finally, part three focuses on a substantive subfield of the sociology of religion. The subfield is selected by the examinee in consultation with the exam committee. Students often select subfields that match and advance their doctoral dissertation research. Examples of recently selected subfields include (but are not limited to) such areas as religious diversity and tolerance; religion and gender; religion and education; religion, ethnicity, and national identity; religion and sexuality; religion and race relations, and others.

Once the structure and topics are defined, the committee chair and members prepare the exam questions. As explained above, students’ research interests are taken into consideration when the questions are defined. However, the questions’ specific content is fully the committee’s prerogative. Each examinee is expected to answer three questions pertaining to the three parts of the area exam (see above). Thus, question one focuses on theoretical issues, question two concentrates on empirical and methodological questions, and question three addresses a substantive specific subfield of the sociology of religion.

Typically, the exam is given in a take-home format. Our committee seeks to make the sociology of religion exam a valuable educational experience for the students, and an important step in their professional development rather than a painful rite of passage. Therefore, we give our students ten work days (not including weekends) to complete the writing part. Written answers are expected to be within the 13 to 15 page (typed, double spaced) limit per question, and thus within 39-45 page limit total. (In rare cases, students choose to write their answer in class. This involves three eight-hour work days of writing (one day per question) in a closed room inside the department without an access to the literature or any other data or reference sources. In this case, the length of written answers must be sufficient to address the questions).

Area exam committee. Students select three members of their exam committee from the following list of the sociology of religion area faculty: David Hartmann, Vyacheslav Karpov (Chair), Elena Lisovskaya, and Yuan-kang Wang. The faculty listed re the permanent mebers of the sociology of religion committee, In exceptional cases, one of the three committee members can be a sociologist of religion from outside of the Department (however, the committee’s approval is necessary in this case).

Research specialization and expertise of the sociology of religion faculty:  David Hartmann: Research methodology, methods, and techniques in the sociological studies of religion. Religion and research ethics;  Vyacheslav Karpov: Theories of religion; secularization and desecularization; religion, diversity, and tolerance; religion in Eastern Europe and Eurasia; Orthodoxy;  Elena Lisovskaya: comparative research methodology and methods in the sociology of religion; religion and education; religion and tolerance; religion and art; religion in Eastern Europe and Eurasia; Orthodoxy;  Yuan-kang Wang: comparative-historical studies of religion; religion, politics, and international relations; religion in Asia; Confucianism; research methods.

Sociology of Religion Area Exam Reading List (Updated February 2013)

*Additional readings to be added by the student and the committee

Core reading list:

Allport, Gordon, & Ross, J. Michael. (1967). Personal Religious Orientation and Prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5, p.432-443.

Ammerman, Nancy. (1997). Golden Rule of Christianity. In David Hall (Ed.), Lived Religion in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (p. 196-216).

Beckford, James. (2003). Social Theory and Religion. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Bell, Daniel. (1980). The Winding Passage: Essays and Sociological Journeys. Cambridge, MA: Abt Books. (Chapter 17).

Bellah, Robert. (1967). Civil Religion in America. Daedalus, 96(Winter), p. 1-21.

Bellah, Robert N., Madsen, Richard, Sullivan, William M., Swindler, Ann, & Tipton, Steven M. (1996). Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (Chapters 1-6, 9-10).

Berger, Peter L. (1967). The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books.

Berger, Peter. (Winter, 2001). Reflections on the Sociology of Religion Today. Sociology of Religion, Vol. 62, No. 4, Special Issue: Religion and Globalization at the Turn of the Millenium, pp. 443- 454.

Berger, Peter (ed). (1999). The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Berger, Peter, Davie, Grace, and Fokas, Effie. (2008). Religious America, Secular Europe?: A Theme and Variations. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing.

Berger, Peter (ed). (2010). Between Relativism and Fundamentalism: Religious Resources for a Middle Position. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Bruce, Steve. (2011). Secularization: In Defense of an Unfashionable Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Calhoun, Craig, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan Van Antwerpen (eds.). (2011). Rethinking Secularism. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.

Casanova, Jose. (1994). Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Casanova, Jose (2001). Religion, the New Millennium, and Globalization. Sociology of Religion, Special Issue: Religion and Globalization at the Turn of the Millennium, 62(4), p. 415-441.

Chaves, Mark. (2004). Congregations in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chaves, Mark. (2011). American Religion: Contemporary Trends. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Davie, Grace. (2007). The Sociology of Religion. London, England: Sage Publications Ltd.

Davie, Grace. (2000). Religion in Modern Europe: A Memory Mutates. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Durkheim, Emile. (1995). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Trans. Karen E. Fields. NY: The Free Press.

Eisenstadt, Shmuel. E. (2000). Multiple Modernities. Daedalus. Winter, 129(1), p.1-29.

Finke, Roger & Stark, Rodney. (2005). The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in our Religious Economy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. (Chapters 1,2, and 7).

Fox, Jonathan. (2006). World Separation of Religion and State Into the 21st Century. Comparative Political Studies, 39, 537.

Habermas, Jurgen (2004). Religious Tolerance – The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights. Philosophy, 79, p.5-18.

Habermas, Jurgen (2005). Pre-Political foundations of the democratic constitutional state. In Jurgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, The Dialectics of Secularization: On reason and religion (pp. 29-52). San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press.

Hadaway, Kirk C. & Marler, Penny L. (2005). How Many Americans Attend Worship Each Week? An Alternative Approach to Measurement. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44(3), p.307– 322.

Hamilton, Richard F. (1996). The Social Misconstruction of Reality: Validity and Verification in the Scholarly Community. New Haven: Yale University Press. (Chapter 3).

Hervieu-Leger, Daniele. (2000). Religion as a chain of memory. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Press.

Hout, Michael & Fischer, Claude S. (2002). Why More Americans have no Religious Preference: Politics and Generations. American Sociological Review, 67(2).

Hunter, James Davison. (2010). To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the late modern world (pp. 6-78). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Iannaccone, Laurence. (1994). Why Strict Churches are Strong. American Journal of Sociology, 99(5), p.1180-1211.

Karpov, Vyacheslav. (2010). “Desecularization: A Conceptual Framework.” Journal of Church and State. 52(2): 232-270.

Kaufmann, Eric. (2010). Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-first Century. London: Profile Books LTD..

Marx, Karl. “Theses on Feuerbach.” “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction.” “The German Ideology: Part I” (up to A2). In Robert Tucker (ed.). 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader. Norton.

Norris, Pippa. & Inglehart, Ronald. (2004). Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Putnam, Robert D., & Campbell, David L. (2010). American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Rieff, Philip. (2006). “The Present World Fight” and “Theory of culture and Origins of the Kulturkampf (pp. 1-83).” My Life among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Roof, Wade Clark. (1999). Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Smith, Christian. (2003). Moral, Believing Animal: Human Personhood and Culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Smith, Christian & Emerson, Michael. (1998). American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

Smith, Christian (Ed.). (2003). The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests, and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Live. Berkley, CA: University of California Press. (Introduction).

Smith, Jonathan. (1998). Religion, Religions, Religious. In Mark C. Taylor (Ed.), Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. (p. 269-284).

Sorokin, Pitirim. (2006[1957]). “Part Once: Introductory,” “The Crisis of Our Age,” “The Reason for the Super-Rhythm of Ideational-Idealistic-Sensate Phases in the Graeco-Roman and Western Super-systems of Culture,” and “The Twilight of Our Sensate Culture and Beyond.” Social and Cultural Dynamics: A Study of Change in Major Systems of Art, Truth, Law, and Social Relationships (revised and abridged) (pp. 2-52, 607-628, 666-704). New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Stark, Rodney. (1997). The Rise of Christianity. Princeton, NJ: Harper Collings Publishers Inc. (Chapters 1, 3, and 7).

Stark, Rodney. (2001). One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Stark, Rodney. (2004). SSSR Presidential Address, 2004: Putting an End to Ancestor Worship. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 43(4), p. 465-475.

Stark, Rodney & Finke, Roger. (2000). Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.

Steensland ,Brian, Park, Jerry Z., Regnerus, Mark D., Robinson, Lynn D., Wilcox, Bradford W., & Woodberry, Robert D. (2000). The Measure of American Religion: Toward Improving the State of the Art. Social Forces, 79(1), p. 291-318.

Taylor, Charles. (2007). “Part IV: Narratives of Secularization (pp. 423-535).” A Secular Age. Cambridge: The Belknap Press.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. (2004) Trans. by Arthur Goldhammer. Democracy in America. New York, NY: Library of America. (p. 277-301, 441-454).

Weber, Max. (2002). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Third Roxbury Edition. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury Publishing Company.

Weber, Max. (1922). Sociology of Religion. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Wuthnow, Robert. (2005). America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Yamane, David. (1997). Secularization on Trial: In Defense of a Neosecularization Paradigm. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 36(1), p. 109-122.

Supplemental readings:

Alwin, Duane F., Felson, Jacob L., Walker, Edward T., & Tufis, Paula A. (2006). Measuring Religious Identities in Surveys. Public Opinion Quarterly, 70(4).

Berger, Peter & Luckmann, Thomas. (1967). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday.

Berger, Peter. (2002). “Whatever Happened to Sociology?” First Things. 126: 27-29.

Buss, Andreas. (1999). The Concept of Adequate Causation and Max Weber’s Comparative Sociology of Religion. British Journal of Sociology, 50(2). p. 317–329.

Christiano, Kevin J. (2008). Clio Goes to Church: Revisiting and Revitalizing Historical Thinking in the Sociology of Religion. Sociology of Religion, 69(1), p. 1-28.

Cimino, Richard & Smith, Christopher. (2007). Secular Humanism and Atheism beyond Progressive Secularism. Sociology of Religion, 68(4), p.407-424.

Davie, Grace (2004). Creating an Agenda in the Sociology of Religion: Common Sources/Different Pathways. Sociology of Religion, Special Issue: Culture and Constraint in the Sociology of Religion, 65(4), p. 323-340.

Edgell, Penny; Joseph Gerteis, and Douglas Hartmann (2006). Atheists as “Other”: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society. American Sociological Review, 71(2), pp. 211- 234.

Froese, Paul & Pfaff, Steven (2001). Replete and desolate markets: Poland, East Germany, and the new religious paradigm. Social Forces, 80(2).

Geertz, Clifford. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York, NY: Basic Books. (Chapter 4).

Glock, Charles Y. & Stark, Rodney. (1973). Do Christian Beliefs Cause Anti-Semitism? A Comment. American Sociological Review, 38, p.53-59.

Greeley, Andrew. (1972). Unsecular Man: The Persistence of Religion. New York: NY: Schocken Books. (p. 17-83).

Hill, Peter C. (2005). Measurement in the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality: Current Status and Evaluation. In: Paloutzian, Raymond F. and Park, Crystal L. Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. N.Y.: Guilford Press, (p.43-61).

Hill, Peter C. & Pargament, Kenneth I. (2003). Advances in the Conceptualization and Measurement of Religion and Spirituality. American Psychologist, 58(1), p.64–74.

Hoge, Dean R., & De Zulueta, Ernesto. (1985). Salience as a Condition for Various Social Consequences of Religious Commitment. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 24(1), p. 21-38.

Huntington, Samuel. (1997). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Simon & Schuster.

Karpov, Vyacheslav & Lisovskaya, Elena. (2008). Religious Intolerance among Orthodox Christians and Muslims in Russia. Religion, State, and Society, 36(4).

Kellstedt, Lyman & Smidt, Corwin. (1991). Measuring Fundamentalism: An Analysis of Different Operational Strategies. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 30(3), p.259-278.

Marsh, Christopher. (2011). Religion and the State in Russia and China: Suppression, Survival, and Revival. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.

Martin, David. (2002). Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Moberg, David O. (1984). Subjective Measures of Spiritual Well-Being. Review of Religious Research, 25(4), p.351-364.

Pyle, Ralph E.; & James D. Davidson. (2003). The Origins of Religious Stratification in Colonial America. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 42(1), p. 57-76.

Regnerus, Mark D. & Smith, Christian. (2005). Selection Effects in Studies of Religious Influence. Review of Religious Research, 47(1), p. 23-50.

Roof, Wade Clark; & Perkins, Richard. (1975). On Conceptualizing Salience in Religious Commitment. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 14(2), p. 111-128.

Sorokin, Pitirim. (1941). The Crisis of Our Age. Oxford, England: Oneworld Publications Ltd.

Sorokin, Pitirim. (1957). Socio-Cultural Dynamics: A Study of Change in Major Systems of Art, Truth, Ethics, Law, and Social Relationships. Boston, MA: Extending Horizon Books.

Stark, Rodney, Byron Johnson, and Carson Mencken. “Counting China’s Christians.” First Things. 213: 14-16.

Sutton, Philip W. and Stephen Vertigans. (2005). Resurgent Islam: A Sociological Approach. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Traphagan, John W. (2005). Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness/Spirituality for Use in Health Research in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Research on Aging, 27, (4), p.387-419.

Weigel, George. (2011). “All War, All the Time.” First Things. 212: 29-36.

Woodberry, Robert D. & Smith, Christian S. (1998). Fundamentalism et al.: Conservative Protestants in America. Annual Review of Sociology, 24, p. 25-56.

Wuthnow, Robert. (2009). Boundless Faith: The Global Outreach of American Churches. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.

Zagorin, Perez. (2003). How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.