What Is Happening to Religion?

Analyzes six major sociological approaches to religion's role in contemporary society

Sociologists have spent considerable effort analyzing religion's place in today's world, yet they have come to no consensus on what is happening to it. Depending on whom you consult, religion is either declining or becoming militantly conservative, is increasingly a matter of individual choice or is one of the few remaining sources of local community, is shaped by market forces or is increasingly international in scope. While there is evidence for each of these trends, no single story explains everything that is going on. Each presents a partial picture of an extremely complex reality. Rather than just presenting raw facts, What is Happening to Religion? shows how each of these stories involves a leap of imagination that shapes sociologists' interpretations of those facts and thus shapes their theories about religions' future.

The volume explores the six major stories that sociologists tell about religion's role in our contemporary world. It provides an overview of each story, considers what makes it plausible, reviews its major flaws, and introduces recent promising work that addresses those flaws. Moreover, the volume offers key insights to help readers to make sense of how these stories, and ones like them, emerge. And it explains how to critically assess new theories that may arise in the future.

What is Happening to Religion? provides expert guidance about how to see what our stories about religion are not telling us, and how to expand our vision.

James V. Spickard is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Redlands and author of Alternative Sociologies of Religion, among other books.