Three of Insider Higher Ed's most recent dispatches focus on a trifecta of problems in the academic study of religion.
A trifecta of problems
sociology
Toward a new sociology of religion
Many sociologists of religion have voiced the concern that the sub-discipline is "in crisis." Others bemoan what they view as…
Religion’s reputation
In 2008, roughly 15 percent of Americans told telephone surveyors with the American Religious Identification Survey that they had no…
The emerging strong program in the sociology of religion
Most sociologists of religion seem to agree on two things. First, that the growth of interest in religion---in academia, the…
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…
Akbar Ganji in conversation with Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor: If the human relation to religion and to God is not as shallow as the mainstream theory thinks,…
Who’s afraid of sociology?
Attempts to define "evangelical" often hover between theological definitions from those who self-identify as evangelicals and so-called sociological definitions from…
Varieties of anti-religious imagination
The publication of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age has fostered an exceptionally vibrant intellectual debate on secularism and on the…
Obama’s reductionist moment
In his ill-chosen remarks to an April 6, 2008 San Francisco fundraiser, Barack Obama showed the danger bad social science…