Religious freedom: thinking sociologically

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sociology’s engagement with the religious freedom agenda is a comparatively new enterprise compared to legal and political science scholarship. The five contributions included in this collection continue the debate about the role of sociological theory and methods in defining, interpreting, and implementing religious freedom in modern societies. By articulating sociological sensitivity and readiness to address existing lacunae in the social-scientific study of religious freedom, we argue that research attention has to be focused equally on the historical contexts and structural conditions in which religious freedom is implemented, as well as on the multiple stakeholders and socio-religious dynamics of the societies involved. A brief description of five contributions that bring data and cases from Italy and Russia, Iran, Israel, South Korea, and the United States is presented, indicating how they highlight the importance of scholarly attempts to theorise and measure religious freedom sociologically.