Defining the field

In this Introduction, I outline some of the major issues in the contemporary sociology of religion and in the process offer a short overview of recent developments in the sub-field. Within this framework, I provide an interpretation of various key issues, such as secularisation, the state and the regulation of religious life, youth cultures and spirituality, the complex relationships between the sacred and the profane, and the nature of religion itself. However, the major issues confronting any understanding of religion in modern societies are all related to globalisation. Two obvious examples are fundamentalism and religious violence. Perhaps the dominant interpretation of these phenomena is that, with the massive disruption to traditional societies and economies, religious cultures provide the raw ideological material of violent protest. The violent secular groups of the 1960s and 1970s – the Red Brigade and the Baader-Meinhof – have simply been replaced by the jihardists of this century. However, my approach in this volume is to downplay the themes of religious violence and radicalism, looking instead at the development of religious revivalism and piety among diverse urban communities and the consequences of these pious practices for secular societies.