Presidential Address: Religion and Power—A Return to the Roots of Social Scientific Scholarship

Abstract

Early social scientists, including Karl Marx, Max Weber, and W. E. B. DuBois, recognized the importance of religion for power systems. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, there has been a decline in scholars examining how religion matters for power. This address proposes that scholars bring religion back to the center of understanding the production, deconstruction, and distribution of power as religion is critical to the flows of power in the social world. I propose that furthering an agenda that interrogates the role of religion for power means we emphasize that (i) religion is an institution; (ii) religious ideas motivate action; (iii) our epistemology sources theories of power rather than those that invalidate the centrality of religion in societies; and (iv) ground‐breaking theoretical and empirical contributions to the social scientific study of religion and power demand that we broaden and diversify the standpoints from which this knowledge is produced.

Gender, Sexuality, and Religion: A Critical Integrative Review and Agenda for Future Research

“…We agree with Avishai and Irby that these topics that cross subfields are an opportunity for cross‐fertilization and integration and hope future work will draw more broadly on a wider range of theories, methods, approaches, and samples. We also agree with Edwards (2019) on the importance of recognizing and examining power as a central factor and we suggested three frameworks–the gender lens perspective promoted by Avishai and others (Avishai, Jafar, and Rinaldo 2015), the cultural analysis frame set forth by Edgell and others (Edgell 2012), and the intersectional or complex religion approach advanced by Wilde and others (Wilde and Glassman 2016)–that we believe can and should be integrated for the examination of power in relation to gender, sexuality, and religion. Intersectionality is in some ways a particularly timely approach and scholars working on gender, sexuality, and religion have an opportunity to bring religion into broader conversations, highlighting how religion–and perhaps especially ethnoreligious identity and other entanglements between religion and ethnicity, nationality, and culture–intersects with other identities in the matrix of domination (Collins 2000).…”

“…We agree with Avishai and Irby that these topics that cross subfields are an opportunity for cross-fertilization and integration and hope future work will draw more broadly on a wider range of theories, methods, approaches, and samples. We also agree with Edwards (2019) on the importance of recognizing and examining power as a central factor and we suggested three frameworks-the gender lens perspective promoted by Avishai and others (Avishai, Jafar, and Rinaldo 2015), the cultural analysis frame set forth by Edgell and others (Edgell 2012), and the intersectional or complex religion approach advanced by Wilde and others (Wilde and Glassman 2016)-that we believe can and should be integrated for the examination of power in relation to gender, sexuality, and religion.…”

“…Although limited as a social commentary–for example, its handling of race is limited at best–the history of the way U.S. society has received The Handmaid's Tale highlights the intersection of gender, sexuality, and religion as a cultural cornerstone and key site where power, which is receiving renewed attention in the social science of religion (Edwards 2019), plays out. The book was written during the Reagan years, which saw an uptick in intense religion and the “emergence of the Religious Right as a force in Republican Party politics” (Hout and Fischer 2002, 168; Schnabel and Bock 2018).…”

Studying Religiosity and Spirituality: A Review of Macro, Micro, and Meso-Level Approaches

“…Third, attending to race and ethnicity is another important area within congregational studies (Edwards 2019). For example, Emerson and Smith (2001) noted the racial and ethnic homogeneity and boundedness of most congregations, and thus the ways congregations can divide by races and ethnicities.…”

Science, religion, and nonreligion: Engaging subdisciplines to move further beyond mythbusting

“…As church-based religion declined in Europe, the numbers choosing the option “no religion” in surveys increased, with a similar trend also observed in the United States (Cragun et al, 2017). This phenomenon, alongside the rise at the turn of the Millennium of a publicly prominent and vocal group of “New Atheists” (Kettell, 2013), prompted the growth of sociological research on nonreligion and the secular both sides of the Atlantic. Such research has demonstrated that nonreligion constitutes much more than just an absence of religion.…”