What is Happening to Religion? Six Sociological Narratives

This article sorts recent approaches in the sociology of religion into six groups, each of which tells a different story about what his happening to religion in the late-modern world. One, the secularization narrative, sees religion in decline. A second narrative tracks a rise of “fundamentalisms” worldwide. A third notes that religion is becoming local, especially in the United States. A fourth argues that religion is becoming individualized, both in Europe and worldwide. A fifth narrative claims that religion is alive and well, but only in competitive religious “markets”. And a sixth explores the changes religion undergoes in the process of globalization. Each of these narratives reads evidence through different lenses. * Nordic Journal of Religion and Society, 2006/1: 13-28 The sociology of religion has lately become a complicated discipline— especially when scholars try to describe the present and predict the future. Where sociologists’ reflections on European and American developments once led them to see religion as a declining force , they now lack consensus. Some continue to highlight religion’s wane—or at least its loss of influence in one social sphere after another. Others celebrate what they call a new paradigm, arguing that religion’s institutional strength depends on the structure of religious “markets”. Still others claim that religion is alive and well, but has left the churches for private life. A fourth set claims that religion has changed its institutional shape, particularly in the United States, where national denominations have weakened but local churches are still strong. A fifth group charts the rise of “fundamentalisms” in America, Europe, and beyond, from the Christian Right to militant Islam and the Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (India’s main ethnic nationalist political force). Finally, several scholars have recently focused on religious globalization—the process by which religious values, ideas, and institutions change their shape in tune with an increasingly interconnected world. I have written this article to describe these sociological approaches. I shall not judge between them, nor shall I try to merge them into a single story—a tempting response to a situation that exhibits some distinct blindmen-and-the-elephant qualities. Instead, I shall relate six sociological narratives, stories that sociologists tell their readers (and each other) about what is happening to religion in the contemporary world. My core claim is that the sociologists of religion are no longer arguing over a single account of religion’s place in the contemporary world. Instead, we can best comprehend our current disciplinary conflict as a clash between six distinct stories about “What is happening to religion?” today and in the years to come. I use the words “story”, “account”, and “narrative” deliberately here, instead of “paradigm,” “theory,” or any other scientific-sounding word. I do so because scholars, like other people, are led by their imaginations. They do not ignore data, but isolated data do not make sense all by themselves. Facts only make sense when imbedded in a story that gives them meaning. The membership declines of American mainline Protestant denominations, for example, can be interpreted as the result of growing secularization or as the result of increased sectarianism. They can be seen as a shift in the relative strength of denominations and congregations, or as a sign of growing religious individualism, or as the result of these denominations’ failure to deliver 1 The humor of this famous joke depends on our being able to see the whole elephant, which the blind men cannot. Scholarly conflicts are rarely settled by appeal to superior vision, because there is no guarantee that any viewpoint—even a supposedly synthetic one—can see the whole.