A sociologist learns to study religion

It took a very long time before I encountered the systematic study of religious processes and dynamics as a distinctive and expansive area of scholarship. Using an autobiographical account, I trace the development of my scholarship in the social scientific study of religion. I have now experienced a great diversity of approaches to the study of religion. Driven by insatiable curiosity and knowing that no one can capture religion comprehensively, I now am committed to stimulating imaginative, rigorous, and wide-ranging developments in religious scholarship. We require new, inventive, and even incompatible approaches to our study of religion if we ever hope to try adequately grasping the richness of religion.

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Contemporary Spirituality and the Making of Religious Experience

Fieldwork in Religion ◽

10.1558/firn.v6i2.120 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 120-133 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Peter Versteeg ◽

Johan Roeland

Keyword(s):

Social Construction ◽

Religious Experience ◽

Scientific Discourse ◽

Scientific Study ◽

Social Scientific Study ◽

Starting Point ◽

The Social ◽

Long Time ◽

Contemporary Religion ◽

Social Scientific

The ‘turn to experience’ has been described as one of the most defining characteristics of contemporary religion. Research on religion, and in particular on spirituality, therefore increasingly concentrates on the description of its experiential dimensions. The turn to experience, however, asks for something more than just the observation that a particular dimension (experience) has become of greater value for practitioners of religion. Dimensions which have for a long time been central to the social-scientific study of religion, but are avoided in the practitioners’ discourse and, surprisingly, in the social-scientific discourse as well, such as authority and power, turn out to be of lasting significance in the mediation and construction of religious experience. In this contribution, the authors take the social construction of religious experience in contemporary spirituality as a starting point for a reflection and discussion on the methodological challenges of experiential religion for those engaged in the study of religion.

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Bringing Moral Culture into the Fray

10.23943/princeton/9780691164342.003.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Justin Farrell

Keyword(s):

Environmental Conflict ◽

Scientific Study ◽

Theoretical Argument ◽

Moral Culture ◽

Social Scientific Study ◽

The Social ◽

Social Scientific ◽

Basic Level

This introductory chapter briefly presents the conflict in Yellowstone, elaborates on the book's theoretical argument, and specifies its substantive and theoretical contributions to the social scientific study of environment, culture, religion, and morality. The chapter argues that the environmental conflict in Yellowstone is not—as it would appear on the surface—ultimately all about scientific, economic, legal, or other technical evidence and arguments, but an underlying struggle over deeply held “faith” commitments, feelings, and desires that define what people find sacred, good, and meaningful in life at a most basic level. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

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