About This Course

Religion as a social institution. The nature of inter-group conflict. Patterns of belief, ritual, organization, and experience. Religion and urban culture. Religion and politics, family, gender, race, and social class. Religion and social change.

3 hours; 3 credits

Prerequisite: Sociology *1101 [5] or permission of the chairperson.

Spring 2018
We will focus on religion in urban contexts and explore the ways that religion shapes urban life and culture, and more broadly, creates social identities that intersect with other significant dimensions, including race, ethnicity, class, and gender. Religion is one of the most significant institutions in the modern world, despite the common expectation that people are not as religious as they used to be (the secularization hypothesis). Religion is a source of culture, and those artifacts and practices are embedded in social networks that span every other significant institution: media, economy, politics, family, etc. Our guiding question this semester will be: how does religion, as something that people experience and as an institution, shape life in contemporary American society?