The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion

Abstract

Bryan Turner's new Companion to the Sociology of Religion is a wide-ranging work of comparative sociology that explores the significant new sociological forces at work in the work that are both shaping and are shaped by religious groups and their beliefs and practices. As Turner notes in his opening essay, to examine the topics covered in this volume, globalization, resacralization, religious violence, and postmodernity, is to recognize “just how radically the world has changed in such a short period of time” since the publishing of the original Companion (2). Turner's contributors address these processes in a refreshingly global context. The essays themselves and the way in which Turner organizes them in the text effectively develop from the core theoretical foundations on which contemporary sociology of religion has developed to more recent theoretical frameworks for understanding the future of religion around the world. The theoretical grounding of all of these essays is one of the work's chief strengths. I found myself especially engaged with the opening essays that address the contributions and continued relevance of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim to the sociology of religion today. Later essays by Steve Bruce and Grace Davie, showcasing the respective, but not mutually exclusive, processes of secularization and resacralization were equally strong and help the reader understand the complexities and the vitality of these ongoing debates over the “status” of religion in the postmodern world.