How the Studying of Film Can Aid the Understanding of Religion – The Case of Evangelical Rapture Films (original) (raw)

Sociologists understand religion through developments in "the relation of religion to social systems". 1 What developments or sources provide reliable knowledge about religion? Secularization theory persists in Sociology, along with its subsequent distinction between 'sacred' and 'secular' developments. Cross cutting this distinction is a second assumption; that the progress insinuated by our presumed 'modernity', an intellectual and historical category, is counter to the mores of the 'backward' religious believer. 5 D. Bebbington, The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody (Inter-Varsity Press, 2005), p21 6 Bebbington, The Dominance of Evangelicalism, p21 7 Brown, The Word in the World, p14