Sociology, as this book argues, is modernity struggling to come to self-understanding. Beyond a doubt our modern social world is profoundly different from any other. What accounts for its emergence? What are its most fundamental traits? What sustains it in existence? What are the characteristic sorrows of those who live in this world; what, their characteristic joys? Is there any way to diminish the sorrows without eliminating the joys? These are sociology’s questions. And as the authors remark, “Sociology both cries with those who lament the loss of the old and rejoices with those who celibrate the new. It is an ambivalent discipline which, given the paradoxes of modernity, has every right both to rejoice and to weep.”
Whereas sociology is thus a perspective on modernity, this book is in turn a perspective on sociology. When one looks at sociology through the eyes of faith, what does one see? What is the aim of the sociologist? Is that aim important? What are the characteristic assumptions of sociologists? Are those assumptions correct? What are the achievements? What, the failures?
To fully describe the genius of this book we must use a second metaphor as well. Not only do the authors look at sociology through the eyes of faith and tell us what they have seen. They also listen to sociology with the ears of faith—listen to what sociology has to say to and about Christianity—and tell us what they have heard.
The book is thus more a conversation than a perspective. Two authors, both deeply embedded in the Christian faith, richly acquainted with its theological history, both skilled professional sociologists, obviously in love with their field, bring these two sides of themselves into a fascinating and illuminating conversation with each other. Questions that we had already been asking get discussed; most if not all Christians have questions about sociology and most if not all sociologists have questions about Christianity. But from the authors’ deft use of examples new and probing questions emerge that most of us had never thought of. They don’t all get answered; but the asking itself is illuminating.
Nicholas Wolterstorff
Yale University