Atheism Stack Exchange Archive

Studies on Religion from the social point of view

• posted by: CC01 on 2011-01-27
• tagged: cultural-identity, resources-references, society, history
• score: 4

Are there any interesting books or websites analyzing religious behaviors from the social point of view and that reference atheism or secularism as a baseline? I am interested in a comparison of social acceptance of religious behavior as compared to non-religious.

Let me give a few examples of topics I expect to see in those books:

• Consequences of religious rules on participants’ life
• Religious rules and integration
• Rules, which cause success of religion
• Identification of patterns in religous myths from the social point of view

Other examples:

• Have the Shabbath rules made the Jews more isolated compared to other believers?
• What leads to the success of Christians in Roman empire?

Answer 2461

• posted by: Lausten on 2011-01-27
• score: 2

Peter Berger sounds like a match. I have read “Religious America, Secular Europe?” which looks at why Europe secularized and asks if America is really an outlier in the modernization/secularization trend. I just ordered “The Social Construction of Reality”, the basis for some of his other work. “The Sacred Canopy” might also be a fit.

Answer 2635

• posted by: aesthetic priest on 2011-02-05
• score: 1

Nietzsche has fascinating things to say of this nature on Jews and Christians. He covers it in Genealogy of Ethics and The Antichrist.

Answer 2512

• posted by: CesarGon on 2011-01-29
• score: 0

My coworker Cristina Sánchez-Carretero has published extensively on this topic, especially in relation to Afro-Dominican religious practices and the relationship between religious practices and migration. You can have a look at some of her publications here and here.

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