Search

Over the past half century, northern Europe has seen a striking decline of belief in God and the supernatural. Yet the churches there have not died, and in some cases they remain strong and active. Whence does the vitality of these churches derive, if belief has eroded? This paper examines one such church, an independent Lutheran congregation in northwestern Denmark. It suggests that the church's importance stems from its "span of ambiguity," the broad range of meanings which it expresses in its local context. Its ability to integrate meanings from a variety of social arenas gives it a powerful role in a rapidly changing society. The paper argues that religious systems generally have an unusual capacity for such expression and integration, It is the extent to which they can maintain their spans of ambiguity, rather than the extent to which they can maintain belief, which accounts for their persistence or decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the current religious mood in the tinned States and reflects upon its manifestations in the mid-1990s. It is argued that the religious mood has shifted -- away from the cognitive and fixed beliefs and toward the experiential arid expressive. It is further argued that given this change it is difficult to assess the current religious situation, especially given sociology-of-religion's reliance upon institutional categories and empirical indicators. Religious capital, like social capital, is not easily gauged without attention to new forms of community allowing individuals opportunity to express themselves as whole persons. A plea is made for a sociology of religion more attuned to body, mind, and self and thus to the dynamic and experiential qualities of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of government grow more luxuriantly, perhaps, than any other species of scientific flora, certainly more prolifically than theories in the more exact physical sciences. Those who specialize in the social sciences seem almost bankrupt of practical ideas about government. That is why there are so many and such conflicting theories as to the cause of cancer and the cure of souls, for instance. But profound philosophers and browfurrowed savants often sit down and elaborate schemes of ideal government for ideal, and non-existent, commonwealths. Of course such rule must be quite distant in the future. The correlation between social and ideological phenomena often seems as low as Adoiphe Cone insisted. Christianity, Buddhism and Mohammedanism all appeared among peoples far from powerful or advanced. Little Greece produced marvels of art and mind yet her social life was but slightly influenced thereby. The Romans were far more ignorant and less cultured than either the Egyptians or the Greeks, but they achieved governmental, military, juridical and social machinery of a remarkable character. There is, it is true, a sort of metaphysical ecstasy particularly prevalent among individuals of much more than average intelligence who have turned their backs upon organized religion and mystical theology to believe piously in the soterial and regenerative efficacy of science and present-day scientists.

Why do Israeli social scientists treat religion primarily through theoretical frameworks developed in other areas of sociology or the social sciences, but rarely draw on insights from the sociology of religion, and even more rarely make a theoretical contribution to the development of the sub-discipline? And, why are Israeli social scientists who do contribute to the sociology of religion primarily Orthodox and foreign-born Jews, while most sociologists in Israel are secular Jews and born in the country? To answer these questions we focus on the fact that the questions asked and theories developed by sociologists of religion tend to treat religion as a phenomenon that is primarily limited to the private sphere. By private, we mean religion as a voluntary activity that is the result of choices made by individuals in their everyday lives. This contrasts to religious practices in the public sphere that are shaped by state legislation or by involuntary interactions with others. The focus of sociologists of religion on the private, voluntary realm means that the theoretical insights offered by the discipline are deemed irrelevant by secular Jewish Israeli social scientists, who tend to conceptualize religion as a state driven and/or public phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]