Syncretic Sociology: Towards a Cross-Disciplinary Sociology of Religion
Author(s)
Stevens-Arroyo, Anthony M.
Abstract
The crisis in academia’s analysis of religion is very real. I believe it affects anyone who would study religion, including sociologists. In less dramatic language, I would state the problem as follows: Epistemological challenges to objectivity in the study of religion have made more important sociology’s focus on empirical and statistical data, but paradoxically this focus makes sociology more inaccessible to the other fields of religious analysis . Although I am a theologian by training and a faculty member in a religious studies program, I believe that only by adopting a sociological approach has my academic production been rescued from trends that are both current and destructive (if not also deconstructive). But if I urge theology and religious studies to make proper use of empirical data, I also want to oblige sociology to become more “user friendly” to scholars of religion in other disciplines.
