Religion in Sociological Perspective.

Outline: In this book, based on lectures that the author was invited to deliver in Japan, the author traces the dominant contours of religion as perceived by the sociologist. His themes range from the study of sectarianism, on which he is one of the world's leading authorities, to the subtleties of the relationship between religion and culture in modern societies of the West and the East. Although firmly committed to a comparative perspective, these essays are more than another exercise in comparative religion, and bring to that somewhat amorphous discipline the rigour of the unifying perspectives of sociology, lending to what the author has to say on such subjects as monotheisn, religious exclusivity, exciting possibilities for new lines of enquiry and research. Taking up well-established themes, such as the social functions of religion, the author indicates the weakness of much of the conventional sociological (and theological) wisdom, and suggests new ways of interpreting the role of religion in contemporary, technically-advanced and bureaucratically controlled societies. In this context, he locates the significance of the new religions, taking into account the new movements that are arising in the Orient, as well as those recruiting in the West, thereby adding new and perhaps controversial twists to his analysis. His final essay, on secularization, draws together some of the dominant threads that are now being woven into the new configuration of religion in a world that is increasingly dominated by the technological imperative.