Abstract
This introduction briefly surveys the history and current state of the sociology of religion, and highlights the contributions of the chapters of the Springer Handbook of Religion and Society to the field. Beginning with the classical theories of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber and continuing through the secularization paradigm and its challengers (Warner’s new paradigm, rational choice theory, the strong program identified by Smilde and May), this introduction arrives at sociology of religion’s current stage of post-paradigmatic growth. Facing scholarly pressure toward recognizing the diversity and complexity of religion in the contemporary world, contributors to this handbook push the field beyond the limitations of all existing approaches: beyond Christianity, beyond congregations, beyond beliefs, beyond borders, beyond modernity, and even beyond religion. Collectively, these chapters represent the best thinking in the field across a broad range of topics and offer numerous suggestions for future research in the sociology of religion.
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Acknowledgement
I am grateful to all of the contributors to this volume, who produced amazing chapters on a very tight timeline. I am proud to have my name associated with their collective work. Thanks to John DeLamater for inviting me to join the project and for his close reading of the entire manuscript, and to the staff at Springer for facilitating the work. Thanks also to my colleague Lynn Neal, who has read and improved nearly everything I have written for as long as I can remember, and to my wife Sandy, who continues to support my scholarly efforts both directly and indirectly, with love and good humor, always.
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Yamane, D. (2016). Introduction. In: Yamane, D. (eds) Handbook of Religion and Society. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31395-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31395-5_1
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