Beyond belief

Religion is still something of a stepchild in the American University. In some major universities there is no department devoted to this aspect of human experience. In others the department is only uncertainty institutionalized and deals with but a fraction of man's religiousness. In a few places excellent programs exist that point the way to what can be done more generally. Like so many others I have come to the field of religion from a particular discipline, in my case, sociology. But I have in recent year become increasingly impatient with the sociology of religion as an isolated perspective. To be genuinely fruitful, it seems to me, the sociology of religion must join other approaches to the actual phenomena of religion. The study of religion seems at the moment to attract a number of mavericks and wanderers in the academy and I am grateful for the opportunities I have had in pursuing it to move outside the established structures and across the usual divisions of the university.