In 2014, I published a proposal for a definition of “religion”. My goal was to offer a definition of this contentious term that would include Buddhism, Daoism, and other non-theistic forms of life widely considered religions in the contemporary world. That proposal suggested necessary and sufficient conditions for treating a form of life as a religious one. It was critiqued as too broad, however, on the grounds that it would include the study of math as a religion. How can one (...) include forms of life based on non-theistic realities without including math? In this paper, I show the flaw in the previous definition and the weaknesses of two attempts to evade that flaw, before recommending a shift, first, to a Wittgenstein-inspired polythetic definition of “religion” and, second, to a certain kind of polythetic definition that I call “anchored”. (shrink)

Religious naturalism is distinct from supernatural religion largely because of metaphysical minimalism. Certain varieties of religious naturalism are more minimalist than others, however, and some even eschew metaphysics altogether. But is anything lost in that process? To determine metaphysics’ degree of relevance to religious function, I compare the soteriology of the “ontologically reticent” Minimalist Vision of Jerome Stone to that of the ontologically rich Religion of Nature of Donald Crosby. I demonstrate that for these varieties of religious naturalism: (1) metaphysics (...) influences soteriology; (2) metaphysical minimalism limits soteriological potential; and (3) metaphysics enhances soteriological potential. These conclusions lead me to assert the relevance of metaphysics to religious function, specifically for these varieties of religious naturalism, as well as to urge investigation into religious experience and quality as they may relate to metaphysics. (shrink)

Recent years have seen numerous sociological disagreements devolve into heated debates, with scholars openly accusing their peers of being both empirically wrong and morally misguided. While social scientists routinely reflect on the ethical implications of certain research assumptions and data collection methods, the sociology of knowledge production has said little about how moral debates over scholarship shape subsequent research trajectories. Drawing on the new French pragmatic sociology, this article examines how sociologists respond to criticisms of the moral worth of their (...) research. The article outlines three typical responses: (1) accepting the criticism and changing direction completely; (2) accepting the criticism but changing discursive framing to incorporate existing research without being subject to critique; and (3) navigating through the debate by devising new research directions that do not trigger such criticism. To demonstrate, the article looks at how sociologists of religion responded, in their published scholarship, to criticisms of secularization theory as depreciating religious people and spiritual experience. Across the responses, we show that sociologists have included moral considerations in their empirical investigations, and have switched among several diverse moral justifications to address—and also avoid—criticism. We conclude by demonstrating that this model can be extended to other domains of sociological inquiry, including the study of gender-based wage inequality and methodological nationalism. The article highlights the importance of mapping the moral frameworks sociologists use for the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of morality. (shrink)

For Max Weber, modernity is characterized by a tragic conflict among value spheres, each claiming to possess the ‘true meaning’ of human life. In particular, Weber argues that while the political sphere is dominated by the unifying, exclusionary, power-driven, and war-prone nation state, the ethical sphere is characterized by the universalization of individually based, deontological norms. For Weber, I argue, the modern separation between the ethical and political spheres originates in ancient Judaism. His work on Judaism, mostly neglected by political (...) theorists, describes the emergence of politics as an autonomous, naturalistic sphere with the establishment of kingship. Biblical prophets, simultaneously, were the inventors of an idealistic, mulish, universal ethics Weber termed the ‘ethics of ultimate ends’. Thus, against the Greek model harmonizing ethics and politics, Judaism invented an antagonistic model of the two. This Jewish imagination lay dormant for almost two millennia but returned to the stage in secularized modernity. (shrink)

Those of us who study the history and politics of the concept of religion and its related terms often find that our peers in adjacent disciplines or subdisciplines do not take into account our findings and continue to use the terms naively and unreflexively. Perhaps this is because they are unaware of the problematic norms knotted into the history of the concept or the contested political stakes involved in its use. Or, perhaps they are engaged in just the very sort (...) of politics our subdiscipline documents. When discussing this with one of the editors of CRR, he asked me to outline why those not engaged in the historicization of the concept of religion should take our work into account. How or why would a contemporary sociologist of religion benefit from reading, for example, a discourse analysis of Reformation-era theologico-political rhetoric? To that end, here I put forward the following theses on the critique of the concept of religion, making the case, as boldly and as succinctly as I can, why our work is relevant to all who write on “religion,” and provide references to the essential literature on the subject for those who wish to pursue further reading on the matter. (shrink)

Much social theory tends to emphasize the external goods of social practices, often neglecting the internal goods of those practices. For example, many analyses of religious rituals over-emphasize the instrumental and individualistic ends of prayer and liturgy by describing such religious practices as effective means for achieving external ends like positive emotions, psychological benefits, social status, or social capital. By contrast, we use a neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics perspective to analyze the relational goods, such as trust and intimacy, which are expressed (...) and sustained through ritualized social practices. Using ethnographies of Haitian and Ghanaian Christians in the U.S., we demonstrate that prayer and liturgy can also be understood as constitutive-ends practices, practices in which human persons engage to sustain relations with others because there are goods inherent to those relationships. We further argue that in many religious practices, the end goals and the means—i.e. specific aspects of the practice—are inseparable. Our approach to developing theory combines critical engagement with numerous other theorists and also exploring how well various theories can explain the motivations and experiences of participants in the religious rituals where we conducted our ethnographies. (shrink)

For sociologist Emile Durkheim, the “sacred” constitutes all those things “set apart and forbidden.” Within Evangelical Christianity, and to a lesser degree Protestantism in general, the sacred has arguably centered on the individual believer and her/his personal relationship with God and scripture. Recently, however, a growing movement within Evangelical Christianity has emphasized the sacred nature of relationships and community, culminating in the mantra “God is love.” This shift has set community above the personal in the hierarchy of sacred Evangelical things, (...) and is reminiscent of earlier progressive forms of Evangelicalism, such as Social Gospel Christianity. Rob Bell, an Evangelical author, pastor, and Oprah Network star, possibly best exemplifies this change and its ramifications, which extend from a postcolonial critique of mission work and evangelism to a move to more inclusive and even Universalist soteriology. Such efforts that have left Bell labeled as a heretic in some Evangelical circles. (shrink)

This article argues for a rethinking of Jürgen Habermas's understanding of religion. Taking into consideration some of Habermas’s recent writings on the topic, it is argued that his conception of religion is untenable. Recent critical studies on the discourse of religion and its historical context have rendered the classic conception of religion suspect. Instead of describing a unique sphere of life, religion can and should be redescribed as something ordinary, embedded, and conceptually inseparable from a larger array of social imaginary (...) institutions and networks. (shrink)