Robert Putnam and David E. Campbell’s American Grace follows up on these Tocquevillean themes, exploring the contemporary American religious landscape to understand,…
American Grace and public sociology
Max Weber
On reductionism
There’s something attractive about a neat typology, and also something we seem to loathe about the compartmentalization entailed. So what…
When strong is weak
It is a testament to the power of the “strong program” image that most commentators on our working paper read…
Quantum sociology and The New Metaphysicals
At first glance, Courtney Bender’s The New Metaphysicals might appear narrow and idiosyncratic. After all, it's an ethnography of spiritual practitioners in…
New answers to old questions
David Smilde and Matthew May’s finding that there is an “emerging strong program” in the sociology of religion is a…
The (really) strong program
Whenever there is talk about an ‘emerging strong program’ and ‘a new sociology of religion,’ we need to keep in…
A Neo-Weberian theory of American civil religion
The American civil religion, Robert Bellah argued, was derived from two sources, one religious and the other secular: the covenant…
The magic ballot
I regret that we are forced to catch the special aura of this election without a deep and serious space…