Research Center by Warren S Goldstein
Journal by Warren S Goldstein
Book Series by Warren S Goldstein
Books by Warren S Goldstein
Religion in Rebellions, Revolutions, and Social Movements demonstrates that, while religion is of... more Religion in Rebellions, Revolutions, and Social Movements demonstrates that, while religion is often a social force that maintains, if not legitimates, the sociopolitical order, it is also a decisive factor in economic, social, and political conflict.
The book explores how and under what conditions religion functions as a progressive and/or reactionary force that compels people to challenge or protect social orders. The authors focus on the role that religion has played in peasant, slave, and plebeian rebellions; revolutions, including the Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Iranian; and modern social movements. In addition to these case studies, the book also contains theoretical chapters that explore the relationship religious thought has with the politics of liberation and oppression. It examines the institutional, organizational, ritualistic, discursive, ideological, and/or framing mechanisms that give religion its oppressive and liberating structures. Many scholars of religion continue very conventional modes of thinking, ignoring how religion has been—and continues to be—both a hegemonic and counterhegemonic force in conflict. This book looks at both sides of the equation.
This international and interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of politics of religion, sociology of religion, religious studies, gender studies, and history.
Journal Articles by Warren S Goldstein
Religion and Theology, 2020
This article explores how the Jewish Question went from being a question of whether to give Jews,... more This article explores how the Jewish Question went from being a question of whether to give Jews, as a religious minority, citizenship, to a racial theory of a conflict between the Aryan and Semitic races. It explores the origins of Christian anti-Judaism in Europe and describes how it flared up during the Crusades, Inquisition, and Pogroms. It then describes how and explains why the Jewish Question became pseudo-secularized into a pseudo-scientific racial anti-Semitism, which culminated in the Final Solution.
Journal of Religious and Political Practice , 2017
Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, there has been a resurgence of religion in China. Mains... more Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, there has been a resurgence of religion in China. Mainstream sociologists of religion have used this as evidence to refute the theory of secularization. Rather than having a longer historical overview, their refutation of the theory of secularization is based on a linear conception of it and they use 1979 as their baseline. While secularization has occurred in China, the pattern that it has followed has not been linear. To see this, this article goes back further and examines the historical reference points: the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion, the Chinese Revolution/Civil War of 1911–1949 and the Cultural Revolution. In China, when secularization occurred, it was forced; it resulted not only in religious revival (the House Church Movement and Falun Gong) but also in the establishment of a secular religion (the Cult of Mao). This pattern of secularization is dialectical; it resembles a spiral and is the consequence of an ongoing conflict between secular movement and religious countermovement.
Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Dec 2014
Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch constructed their theoretical frameworks in debate with historical ... more Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch constructed their theoretical frameworks in debate with historical materialism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels provided Weber and Troeltsch with the tools of base/superstructure and class analysis that they employed in their analysis of religion. The article places Weber and Troeltsch in the historical context of the rise of the Social Democratic Party and its splintering during World War I. It compares the writing on religion by Engels, Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky with those of Weber and Troeltsch. It focuses on Ancient Judaism, the origins of Christianity, Christian heretical sects, the Reformation, the German Peasant Wars, and the Puritan Revolution. Some points in common are the origins of communism in Judaism and Christianity and the association between Protestantism and capitalism. This article shows how Weber and Troeltsch critically appropriated from historical materialism and uses this with the intent of constructing a critical sociology of religion.
Culture and Religion, 2011
In this article, I trace the shifting theorisation of religious conflict to argue that religious ... more In this article, I trace the shifting theorisation of religious conflict to argue that religious conflict in the USA is shaped by a dialectic of religious and secular movements. Church-sect theory, which was originally a class-based theoretical framework, was appropriated by the rational choice approach in the sociology of religion, which instead privileged competition in a religious marketplace. Ernst Troeltsch described divisions between church and sect, but H. Richard Niebuhr demarcated a denominational divide in the USA based on class, region, ethnicity and race. In the 1980s, Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney, Robert Wuthnow and James Davison Hunter observed that the differences in the US were no longer necessarily between denominations but could occur within denominations. For them, what had become known as the Culture Wars were based on a conflict between religious liberals/progressives and religious conservatives/orthodox. This conflict is shaped by a dialectic of secular and religious movements and counter-movements.
Islamic Perspective, 2010
Sociology of Religion, 2009
Organization and Environment, 2006
Humanity and Society, 2009
Review Essays by Warren S Goldstein
Religion Compass, 2012
This article provides an overview of the sociological theory of religion- that is, the sociologic... more This article provides an overview of the sociological theory of religion- that is, the sociological theory that is used to guide the empirical research in the sociology of religion. Mainstream sociological theory of religion went through four distinct phases: 1) classical (Emile Durkheim and Max Weber) 2) the old paradigm 3) the new paradigm 4) the neo-secularization paradigm. The article concludes by calling for a critical perspective, which while prevalent in religious studies and the other subfields of sociology is absent from the sociological study of religion.
Book Chapters by Warren S Goldstein
The Routledge Handbook of Postsecularity, 2019
Crisis, Politics and Critical Sociology edited by Graham Cassano and Richard dello Buono
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Research Center by Warren S Goldstein
Journal by Warren S Goldstein
Book Series by Warren S Goldstein
Books by Warren S Goldstein
The book explores how and under what conditions religion functions as a progressive and/or reactionary force that compels people to challenge or protect social orders. The authors focus on the role that religion has played in peasant, slave, and plebeian rebellions; revolutions, including the Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Iranian; and modern social movements. In addition to these case studies, the book also contains theoretical chapters that explore the relationship religious thought has with the politics of liberation and oppression. It examines the institutional, organizational, ritualistic, discursive, ideological, and/or framing mechanisms that give religion its oppressive and liberating structures. Many scholars of religion continue very conventional modes of thinking, ignoring how religion has been—and continues to be—both a hegemonic and counterhegemonic force in conflict. This book looks at both sides of the equation.
This international and interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of politics of religion, sociology of religion, religious studies, gender studies, and history.
Journal Articles by Warren S Goldstein
Review Essays by Warren S Goldstein
Book Chapters by Warren S Goldstein
The book explores how and under what conditions religion functions as a progressive and/or reactionary force that compels people to challenge or protect social orders. The authors focus on the role that religion has played in peasant, slave, and plebeian rebellions; revolutions, including the Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Iranian; and modern social movements. In addition to these case studies, the book also contains theoretical chapters that explore the relationship religious thought has with the politics of liberation and oppression. It examines the institutional, organizational, ritualistic, discursive, ideological, and/or framing mechanisms that give religion its oppressive and liberating structures. Many scholars of religion continue very conventional modes of thinking, ignoring how religion has been—and continues to be—both a hegemonic and counterhegemonic force in conflict. This book looks at both sides of the equation.
This international and interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of politics of religion, sociology of religion, religious studies, gender studies, and history.