The article ‘De-centering and Re-centering: Rethinking Concepts and Methods published in the Sociological study of Religion published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion focuses on the American sociology of religion. The article is mainly a review of already existing research. It incorporates a variety of research findings from scholars of the religion discipline. Throughout the article, continuous reference is made to journal articles published in the 20th century and the early 21st century and their findings.
In the article, four conceptual edges of the sociology of religion are outlined. According to the authors, the four edges form the boundary or intersection where the sociology of religion meets other disciplines. By re-exploring these edges, the authors believe that it will enable religious scholars to re-center religion debates on new cores and this will accompanied by the broadening of the existing knowledge on religion.
The first edge is titled “Provincialising the United States”, and here the authors use journal articles published in the early 21st century to show how research study on religion has mainly been within the United States ignoring other geographical regions. This according to the authors is an area that needs serious re-evaluation because focus on the US alone has limited the ability of researchers to engage in meaningful conversations on religious issues with their counterparts from other countries ( 438). The authors suggest the incorporation of the European continent into the discussion since this is the cradle of religion.
In the second component titled “Beyond Christocentrism” the authors’ show how scientific research on religion has mainly been centered on Christianity. This has inadvertently resulted in a situation where Christian principles, specifically those of the Protestant denomination have been used to generalize the context of religion in the society. The authors conclude that trying to fit the different religion’s expressions into the Christian context is ultimately dangerous and dishonest (441).
The third component explored is “religion outside of congregations”. According to the authors, the exploration of the religion aspect outside the conventional congregation realm has a huge potential to bring new insight into the religion sociological studies. Once again, the authors use the findings of a researcher (Cadge) which show that most of the research studies on religion have generally assumed that the congregation is the natural habitat of religious expressions failing to realize that religion extends beyond the realms of the congregation (441).
The fourth component that the article explores is the critical consideration of religion’s role in the society. From time immemorial, researchers have generally assumed that the impact of religion in the society is always a positive one but according to the authors of this article, this is an ungenuine assumption. The authors uses examples of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Yugoslavian civil wars, sexual scandals in the Catholic church which are all negative aspects of religion ( 442).
In addition to the four components, the authors present two case studies that prove that religion goes beyond the previously discussed conventional realms. The first case study shows the presence of religious aspects in the field of medicine while the other case study shows that the one’s religion orientation is actually influenced by a variety of elements from across the world, not just in the United States (445).
The importance of this article to the subject of sociology cannot be overemphasized. Religion is one of the most critical sub-disciplines of sociology and by seeking to widen the understanding scope of religion; the article is directly seeking to widen the understanding of general sociology.
Unlike other religion articles on periodicals and magazines, this article uses solid research findings established over the years and every single element in the article is backed by these findings.
References
Cadge, W., Levitt, P., and Smilde, D. (2011) “De-centering and Re-centering: Rethinking Concepts and Methods in the Sociological study of Religion,” Journal for the Scientific study of Religion, 50:437-44.
