If this book accomplishes nothing else, I hope it shows that context matters. The social world in which we live shapes us, including scholars, no matter how much we wish this were not the case. Sociology was shaped by the context of its birth, especially by its self-image as a progressive science set against what it saw as its chief opponent: reactionary, authoritarian religion. It also developed in a colonial age, one whose self-justificatory ideology arrayed societies along a continuum from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’. Europe and America were (supposedly) at the progressive end of the scale, while the colonies and neo-colonies were (supposedly) stuck in backwardness. Euro-Americans thought that the colonized had much to learn from us but that we had next to nothing to learn from them. The sociology of religion was typical in failing to see that its core concepts grew out of the peculiarities of the Euro-American experience. Its concepts illuminated much but they hid much as well. I have written this book to show what we might be able to understand better, were we to see things from other societies’ points of view.
I have focused on the sociology of religion because that is the field I know best. Having spent much of my adult life studying religions, I can command more striking examples and more detailed analyses on this topic than on any other. This helps me communicate my points more effectively. Other scholars are welcome to produce their own analyses in their own areas. The point is the same: sociology (and other social sciences) have assumed that Euro-American concepts can show us everything we need to know about the social world. This is simply not true.
The time has come, however, to imagine what a more equal world might look like. Despite its continued inequities, our global world demands nothing less. In my experience, three things are crucial if we are to transcend the long colonial era.
All three steps are important: we have to realize that we are not doing things right, we have to see that things could be different, and we have to unite to create the world we hope to become. We are all in this together. No group can do it alone.
Feminist scholars have long noted that you cannot “just add women and stir” when your previous ideas have been constructed from a male point of view.2 Stirring does not free you from the same old concepts that failed you before. Real inclusion goes farther than that. Treating women as people changes everything; so does seeing our own social world through other societies’ eyes. Both force us to recognize new possibilities. Even if we do not embrace everything that other traditions might want to teach us, taking them seriously will move scholarship forward.
This book is one step in this process of reconceptualization. It is not a sufficient step, but I hope that it has accomplished two tasks. Its narrower task has been to expand the sociology of religion’s conceptual toolkit, so that we can understand more aspects of religious life. What can the sociology of religion better understand, when it abandons its default view and treats the insights of all peoples as potential resources? I have noted this aim repeatedly, so I shall say no more about it here.
The second task is an outgrowth of the first. What happens to us, as scholars, when we expand our ways of thinking? Specifically, what happens when we realize that our previous ways of thinking have limited our vision? The sociology of religion has for too long seen the world through Western Christian lenses. Realizing the worth of other conceptual starting points has both intellectual and psychological consequences. In the scheme of things, the latter are perhaps as important as the intellectual realizations on which I have focused so far.
To reprise the litany at the end of the last chapter: male, White, heterosexual, Euro-American—and Christian-descended—sociologists have for a long time thought that their ways of seeing religions were accurate, objective, and true. Now we know they are partial and that there are other ideas that illuminate aspects of religious life that the established ideas do not. Might this not recommend some humility? Might such sociologists now decide to seek out other unaccustomed ideas, so as to avoid repeating past mistakes? I hope so.
Although less personally intense, this parallels the aftermath of successful psychotherapy. Once someone has become aware of her or his previously unconscious patterns, and has brought them into the daylight, two things happen. First, one becomes humbler, more aware of the need to remove the beam from one’s own eye than the mote from someone else’s. Second, one tries not to repeat the patterns that caused trouble in the first place. One learns to check oneself, to make sure that one has listened well, that one is not belittling others, that one is not reacting automatically. Patterns are hard to break and breaking them is especially hard for those of us who are used to having social power.
For us, developing a world-conscious sociology of religion will take considerable care. bell hooks was right that living on the edge reminds one constantly that there are many different ways of seeing the world.3 We who are used to living at the center can more easily forget that those at the margins can see things that we miss.
Now, however, we can choose to embrace our global world’s intellectual opportunities. We can ask whether everyone with insights is at the table. We can ask if we are listening carefully to others and treating them as equals, so their wisdom can advance the world’s knowledge. If these happen, then our fields will progress. If not, we will continue to impose our own historical-cultural visions on others and fail to learn what others’ visions might teach us. We will miss a major part of the whole.
They say that raising a child takes a village. Doing good scholarship takes an entire world.
I can make this a bit more concrete by borrowing a story from Paul Lichterman, who wrote an award-winning book about what it takes for churches to reach across racial divides and work with people unlike themselves.4
In Elusive Togetherness, Lichterman recounted the efforts of White churches in a Wisconsin city to partner with African American churches to improve their community. Many churches tried doing so, but those few who succeeded had to confront their own failings and had to learn to treat their desired conversation partners as equals. The White church members had to recognize their racism and classism. Only after they had acknowledged their ‘sinfulness’ were they able to interact with the members of the Black churches with whom they wished to connect.
The successful churches were mostly Christian Evangelical. Part of their success stemmed from the fact that the Black Protestants with whom they wished to partner were similarly Evangelical in their theology. More important, in Lichterman’s view, was the White Evangelicals’ willingness to engage in serious self-reflection. When pushed to it, they examined their own motives for seeking to work with others and found that they had seen themselves as givers rather than as partners. They had been practicing noblesse oblige. They rethought, prayed, and realized that they needed the partnership for themselves, not just for the good of those whom they had thought of as less fortunate. They wanted to be “brothers and sisters in Christ.” This is a different task than being charitable donors. They decided that being brothers and sisters was far more important than mere giving.
Absorbing this message reinvigorated the White churches. It let them became real partners with the African Americans. Both sides began to listen to each other and to treat each other as equals; they gradually learned how to be parts of the same community.
Though this example comes from religion, not scholarship, it exactly exemplifies my point. Privileged people can progress only after they have realized, then overcome, their own unacknowledged sense of superiority. To overcome the scars of colonialism and shape a truly global world, those of us who are used to having social and intellectual advantage need to take off our unconscious blinders. We need to be vigilant, lest those blinders return. Only then can we work together with those who have other insights that we need.
We sociologists of religion need to be open to the insights of other peoples who have different ways of understanding religious life. We need to listen to the early Confucians, whose sense of the sacred importance of relationships opens our eyes to those who maintain those relationships in our own churches, mosques, and synagogues. We need to seek out the insights of other civilizational geniuses, such as Ibn Khaldūn, who teaches us that race and religion have a lot in common; we need to examine how they operate in particular cases. We also need to listen carefully to the insights of people whom we have been taught to regard as ‘primitive’; in the case of the Navajo, their understanding of ritual is superior to our own.
These are just three of many possibilities. As we become committed to overcoming sociology’s dependence on the Euro-American ways of seeing, I hope we will explore many more. In doing so, we will shift the world’s intellectual power relations. Euro-American sociology will become an equal partner to others.
This will take time and considerable effort. In the present world, the old ways of thinking still dominate intellectually. Sociology is still largely trying to impose Western ideas on others. We have, however, come far enough that we can begin to imagine what a more inclusive world would be like. I hope that others will do for their fields what I have tried to do for the sociology of religion. I will be fascinated to see what they find.