The Public Value of the Sociology of Religion
Professor John D Brewer
Queen’s University Belfast
Plenary Address to the ESA’s Sociology of Religion Network Conference
‘Religion in the Public Domain’
Belfast City Hall, 3 September 2014
First let me thank the organisers of the ESA’s Sociology of Religion Network for the privilege
of speaking to you this evening. Secondly, I would like to add my welcome to Belfast and to
our impressive City Hall. I have been at many of these sorts of events and know that my
purpose is to give you something provocative to think about after the wine to ward off its
effects, but to do so briefly in case these effects are temporarily irreparable. So in the spirit
of the occasion I want to suggest an alternative meaning to the theme of the conference and
to challenge you into reconsidering your role as sociologists of religion.
At the outset I have to admit to not being a sociologist of religion. I am a post-disciplinary
social scientist, but one who takes religion seriously and who sees religion as an important
process in explaining and understanding some key aspects of social life. The sociology of
religion, of course, is already an inherently interdisciplinary space, much more so than many
other subfields of social science, and I know my professional identity is probably shared by
many of you at this conference.
But years of association with people in the sub-field have taught me that the sociology of
religion is also a tightly bounded sub-discipline, with a limited range of concerns. My identity
is thus a disadvantage in that I might be said to lack the scholarly credentials and insider
knowledge that defines the field. But it is also an advantage in that I can see beyond those
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boundaries and envisage a potential for the sociology of religion that those closer to it might
not.
Let me sketch my argument in brief outline.
The sociology of religion enfeebled itself for a very long time with its obsession with
secularisation to the point where to outsiders it seemed it was really the sociology of
secularisation. In the last fifteen to twenty years, though, religion has reoccupied the public
sphere. There are many reasons for this, which you are fully aware of as specialists. And
religion has done so irrespective of the real decline in religious practice in many parts of the
world. Sociologists of religion therefore now have vibrant – although still highly brusque –
arguments about the meaning of post-secularity, and hold conferences and debates like this
about the role of religion in the public sphere.
It is ironic that Queen’s University Belfast used to be one of the central intellectual spaces for
the sociology of secularisation and here am I from Queen’s applauding its end.
In this respect, the sociology of religion has benefited from the emergence of what social
scientists outside the sub-field call individualisation. Individualisation results in people in late
modernity being able to construct the meaning of their own lives as a reflexive project within
loosened structural constraints, giving them a new sense of how to live – and write – the
‘self’. This means the collapse of the public-private distinction, the domestication of the
public sphere with a whole series of behaviours formerly reserved for the private sphere, and
the deconstruction and fragmentation of the social structure.
Individualisation has impacted on religion in two ways that once marked the distinctiveness
of the sociology of secularisation: a decline in religious observance and identification; and
the importance of choice for those remaining believers when determining their preferred form
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of religiosity. Religiosity gets turned into a preference not a duty. This is what secularisation
theorists had in mind when they argued modernity would undermine religion. God isn’t so
much dead as turned into shopping.
But late modernity has paradoxically undermined the sociology of secularisation. In now
constructing the meaning of their own lives reflexively, some individuals, groups,
communities and, indeed, whole societies have brought religion back into the public square,
although, again, for many different reasons. This has enabled sociologists of religion to also
see that in some special cases religion never really left the public domain – whether these
instances are countries like Northern Ireland, where religion was wrapped up in conflict, or
specific ethnic groups, who in migrating took their religion with them, or resurgent world
religions, like Islam, or enduring forms of religiosity, like the many fundamentalisms.
Incidentally, this is why the idea of ‘collective religion’ still has currency in the sociology of
religion in restricted spaces despite the idea of the open religious market place. ‘Collective
religion’ co-exists happily as a concept alongside, for example, that of the ‘deconstructed
church’.
Most sociologists of religion therefore now give witness both to the growth of secularisation
and to a growing public role for religion. What Grace Davie refers to as ‘soft’ secularisation
theorists see no incompatibility between these processes; it is the ‘hard’ secularisation
theorists who continue to denude religion of public significance.
Many social scientists who work outside the sociology of religion have mapped the changes
in late modernity that have combined to give a public face to religion. Like ‘soft’
secularisation theorists, they take religion seriously, they specify the analytical conditions
and strategic social spaces under which it comes to play an important role in the public
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domain, and they identify the various religious forms that are more or less public in their
salience, and why.
Luminaries like Habermas, Beck and Calhoun are not sociologists of religion and while they
are quarrelsomely dismissed by ‘hard’ adherents to the sociology of secularisation, other
sociologists of religion have moved the boundaries of the sub-field to join in their celebration
of the public role of religion. This, after all, is what has brought you together in Belfast for the
next few days.
I take this shift for granted and do not wish to speak tonight to sociologists of secularisation
justifying the public role of religion. Instead, I want to pose a challenge to those sociologists
of religion who accept religion’s public face concerning one implication that follows from
religion’s re-entry into the public domain.
Namely, sociologists of religion now need to gain a publicly recognised voice and begin to
articulate the public value of the sociology of religion. I have taken some time to document
the return of religion to the public square because this needs to shadow another revival: reoccupancy of the public sphere by sociologists of religion. I say re-occupancy because in the
early days of the sociology of religion adherents were engaged in the public sphere.
Some of you may know that I have long championed a campaign, both when I was President
of the British Sociological Association and since, to press forward the public value of social
science against its detractors in government, neo-liberal universities and in the public. This
involved representing what this public value is; and articulating a new form of public social
science that implemented it. What follows are a few ideas on how this might translate to the
sociology of religion.
Let me briefly explain how I characterise the public value of the social sciences.
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I argue that social science is a public good in its own right because it cultivates through its
subject matter, teaching, research and its civic engagements a moral sentiment and
sympathetic imagination toward each other, including toward the distant and ‘strange’ other.
This moral sentiment enables us to see each other as social beings, capable of living only in
groups as social animals, with a shared responsibility for the future of humankind.
In the past, some forms of social science – dare I say it, in particular the sociology of
secularisation – approached human nature in ways that distanced, destabilised, or disabled
people as voluntaristic agents. Literally, it enervated and ‘dehumanised’ them. This is ironic
in the case of the sociology of secularisation given that human dignity is such a central
emotion and one directly relevant to the ‘emotional regimes’ or ‘feeling rules’ garnered by
religious practice.
However, practising the kind of public social science I envisage here is itself a moral
commitment that ‘re-humanises’ social science. In particular it helps in recognising human
dignity as one of the key religious emotions.
Social science has public value because it makes people aware of themselves as
comprising a society, helping in the development and dissemination of key social values that
make society possible – social sensibilities like trust, empathy, altruism, tolerance,
compromise, compassion, and senses of belonging – as well as by assisting in society’s
ongoing betterment and improvement. The social sciences help us understand the
conditions which promote and undermine these sensibilities and identify the sorts of
structural conditions, public policies, behaviours and relationships that are needed in culture,
the market and the state to ameliorate their absence and restore and repair them.
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Public social science therefore not only generates information about society, it is the medium
for society’s future reproduction and sustainability. Put another way, it is the way in which
society can find out about itself and in so doing regenerate the idea of society itself for the
21st century.
In my view, the sociology of religion is a key sub-discipline in public social science. This is
because when no longer neutered by the obsession with secularisation, we can see the
growing significance of religion to the ‘big issues’ that affect our humanitarian future. Let me
throw out a few examples of ‘big issues’, many of which are addressed in this conference:

The link between religion, conflict and organised violence;

The role of religion in transitional justice, statecraft, diplomacy and international
affairs, and with it the growth of my own field, that of religious peace-building;

The centrality of religion to the ethical issues surrounding various medical practices
and advances, concerning birth, life and death, and with it religion’s incursion into
intimate decisions around gender, sexuality and the body; and finally

The role of religion in responding to the global democratic deficit.
What I mean by the global democratic deficit is the involvement of faith based NGOs in filling
the void left by the withdrawal, unwillingness or inability of governments to provide state
services, such as welfare, education, medical care, emergency and disaster aid, ethical
trading, legal and social justice and the like. This democratic deficit ought to be expected in
non-democratic states but could hardly have been anticipated now also in some democratic
ones. Religion has almost returned to its medieval form as hospitality for the poor and sick.
It is necessary to point out that in dealing with these and other global concerns, public
religion has returned with a vengeance. The ‘big issues’ that have provoked its return are
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‘public’ mostly because they are controversial, contested, unpredictable, and problematic.
Ironically, they are often referred to as ‘wicked problems’.
There is another dimension to the controversial nature of 21st century religion. The paradox
of late modernity’s secularity, of course, is that when religion does penetrate into these and
other ‘big issues’, the reaction is contradictory. Some people object to the involvement of
faith communities, the comments of religious leaders or to the public presence of religion.
Religious spokespeople are therefore in a bind: the public voice of religious practitioners is
silenced while the public presence of religion is amplified. Individualisation is undermining
the bearers or carriers of faith at the very time when faith is becoming more publicly
significant.
We are thus at a paradoxical moment in public religion. Secularisation is proceeding apace
while religion is becoming ever more socially significant, but this public role provokes
ambivalence at least, controversy at worst. This is a huge problem for faith leaders and faith
communities alike, in knowing what to say publicly about which ‘big issue’, precisely when to
say it and how, without heaping abuse on their own heads from a public that has in the main
rejected institutional religion.
But we are also at a paradoxical moment in the sociology of religion.
I believe this current moment offers a huge opportunity for sociologists of religion, for
sociologists of religion are not subject to the same constraints on exercising a public voice
as faith practitioners. This moment throws out a challenge to how sociologists of religion see
their role within public social science, and proffers the prospect of a re-invigorated sociology
of religion. Let me list the various opportunities as I see them, a few of which are more
challenging than others.
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
To engage in teaching and research that results in better understanding of the social
significance of religion, its opportunities and constraints, and its strengths and
weaknesses;

To engage in teaching and research that deals with the ‘big’ global issues threatening
our humanitarian future in the 21st century as they involve religion and faith;

To disseminate research findings to the public as much as to academic audiences;

To develop a public voice that places sociologists of religion in the public sphere,
speaking about the key global issues to which religion and faith pertain;

To engage in and help to shape public debate about these ‘big issues’;

To develop strategies of civic engagement, locally, nationally and globally, in which
sociologists of religion, collaborate with all the stakeholders in their research, in
developing co-produced knowledge that speaks into real life situations of ordinary
people;

To engage in teaching and research that seeks to improve the lives of ordinary
people regardless of whether they are faith carriers or not.

To continue to articulate the public relevance of religion and faith, and thus also the
sociology of religion, to the inter-personal and public policy problems of the 21stcentury world.
I know that there are several sociologists of religion – some in this room – who are seizing
these opportunities, and there are a number of important initiatives in which sociologists of
religion are involved that reflect on aspects of public debate. An example from Great Britain,
of course, is Linda Woodhead’s wonderful initiative, organised with others, known as the
Westminster Faith Debates, which addresses a whole series of global issues; or her public
pronouncements on issues of gender and sexuality in the Church. Here in Northern Ireland it
is tempting to illustrate my point by referencing the public profile of Gladys Ganiel with
respect to the Hope and History campaign in dealing with the legacy of the conflict and in
informing public debate about how Northern Ireland might become reconciled to its past.
From the USA one thinks of Nick Wolterstorff, more properly considered I suppose a
philosopher-theologian of public religion, on issues of justice in the Global South or on the
rights to human dignity of dementia sufferers. In my own field of post-conflict studies, there is
a strong vocal presence in the public square from several of your peers on issues such as
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political forgiveness and the meaning of reconciliation, and on urging on the churches’ their
responsibility to engage with spirituality and post-traumatic growth.
Examples like this can be found aplenty. I believe, however, that with the return of religion to
the public sphere, mostly with a vengeance, exercising this public voice ought to become the
default position of the sub-discipline as a whole.
This does not impugn the secular nature of the sociology of religion; these precepts are
ethical but not religious, although the ethical pluralism that undergirds them can include
religious frameworks. In this respect, interestingly, it seems to me that many of the most
publicly vocal sociologists of religion are also people with personal faith. These precepts,
though, do not require faith for them to be implemented. They are imbued with scientific and
professional rigour. What they permit, however, is for sociologists of religion as social
scientists to think ethically and act politically in the 21st century when analysing the public
face of religion and its impact on our humanitarian future.
This, I believe, is what can be achieved in this conference. I wish it success. Thank you very
much.
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