Fashioning a Post-Colonial Sociology of Religion (original) (raw)

This article describes two alternatives to standard approaches to the sociology of religion, both based on non-Western ideas. The first stems from Confucian approaches to the sacred, which emphasize the maintenance of holy relationships instead of beliefs or church organizations. The second is based on the writings of Ibn Khaldun, a 14th-century Arab scholar who used the same concepts to understand ethic and religious solidarities. Standard sociologies of religion, in contrast, grow directly out of the core concerns of Western Christianity. In a post-colonial era, every intellectual discipline needs to expand its concepts beyond the West. This article begins a practical conversation about how to do so.