Foundation of sociology of religion (Reflections on P. Berger’s book “The Sacred Canopy”)

Author(s):  
A. Teslia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-25
Author(s):  
Isaac Nizigama

Peter L. Berger’s sociology of religion is one of the most studied and quoted in the contemporary social science of religions. Nevertheless, it is also one of the most discussed, notably because of the changes of position by the author with regard to his thought on the secularization of the modern world, and on the relationship between his theses of a sociological nature and his reflections on Protestant theology. The present article questions his global epistemological framework by placing that problematic within the framework of the criticisms which have been directed at ‘absolute functionalism,’ notably by the structuralists or moderate functionalists. By linking it with the prospect of going beyond the opposition between methodological holism and methodological individualism and between substantivism and functionalism, we propose a multidimensional approach to the religious, which seems to lead to a better understanding of the latter in its transformations and metamorphoses into modernity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Titus Hjelm

Peter L. Berger (1929–2017) was one of the most influential sociologists of the last century. In the sociology of religion, his classic status is uncontested. This article examines Berger’s original application of a constructionist sociology of knowledge perspective to the sociology of religion and its application to the theory of secularisation. The article assesses the influence of this work – The Sacred Canopy in particular – through an analysis of publication data and a typification of types of reference. Although the metaphor of the ‘sacred canopy’ and Berger’s ideas regarding secularisation have been undoubtedly influential, his work never engendered a genuinely constructionist sociology of religion. The reason for this, the article argues, is Berger’s inconsistent application of his own constructionist ideas to his work on religion.


1997 ◽  
pp. 51-58
Author(s):  
O. Karagodina

Psychology of religion as a branch of religious studies, in contrast to the philosophy and sociology of religion, focuses attention mainly on the problems of individual religiosity - the phenomena of religious experience, religious beliefs, mechanisms of the emergence and development of religious experience. The psychology of religion studies the experience of the supernatural person, the psychological roots of this experience and its significance for the subjective. Since a person is formed and operates in a society, the study of religious experience must include its social sources.


2002 ◽  
pp. 106-110
Author(s):  
Liudmyla O. Fylypovych

Sociology of religion in the West is a field of knowledge with at least 100 years of history. As a science and as a discipline, the sociology of religion has been developing in most Western universities since the late nineteenth century, having established traditions, forming well-known schools, areas related to the names of famous scholars. The total number of researchers of religion abroad has never been counted, but there are more than a thousand different centers, universities, colleges where religion is taught and studied. If we assume that each of them has an average of 10 religious scholars, theologians, then the army of scholars of religion is amazing. Most of them are united in representative associations of researchers of religion, which have a clear sociological color. Among them are the most famous International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR) and the Society for Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR).


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