As my students know, Durkheim, the “father of sociology”, had a great deal to say about religion. Some of it, from my point of view, helpful.
Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, no longer has to worry about arguing for the key role of religion as a social force. As a new study has found, there has been a significant increase over the last 25 or so years not only in the quantity of work done by sociologists on religion, but also in how religion is treated in those studies. No longer is it assumed to be only a reflection of some other socioeconomic trend, but increasingly it is treated as the factor that may be central to understanding a given group of people.
When Sherkat published a paper in the 1990′s this was the response he received:
He remembers one telling him “this is garbage” for citing Weber’s views on the significance of religious values. “It can’t be religion” driving human behavior, the scholar told the then un-tenured Sherkat. “It’s got to be something else that caused the religion.”
Big change! Read the article from Inside Higher Ed here.