Religion in a Changing World

Twenty-eight scholars, many of them well known in the sociology of religion, examine a variety of faith traditions and sociological topics that illustrate the connection between religion and society in many different countries at the dawn of the 21st century. The faith traditions include Judaism, Roman Catholicism, evangelical and mainstream Protestantism, Islam, Hinduism, Yuruba religion, Chinese religion, and several new religious movements, including a UFO cult in Quebec.

The book will be of interest to scholars in the sociology of religion, but a special feature is its utility as a reader in undergraduate and graduate courses. The topics represent the range usually presented in a course in the sociology of religion: individual religiosity, religious identity, conversion, plausibility structure, community, church and sect, religious leadership, organizational analysis, new religious movements, race, gender, religion and politics, and the relationship of religion to social order and social change.

MADELEINE COUSINEAU is Professor of Sociology at Mount Ida College and a lecturer at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her research has focused mainly on religion and social change in Latin America. She is the author of Promised Land: Base Christian Communities and the Struggle for the Amazon and Opting for the Poor: Brazilian Catholicism in Transition as well as articles and book chapters. She has served on the executive councils of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the Religion Section of the American Sociological Association.