De-Centering and Re-Centering: Rethinking
Concepts and Methods in the Sociological Study
of Religion
WENDY CADGE
Department of Sociology
Brandeis University
PEGGY LEVITT
Sociology Department
Wellesley College and Harvard University
DAVID SMILDE
Sociology Department
University of Georgia
Four conceptual and methodological edges or areas of study are outlined. They are located near what have
been the boundaries between the sociology of religion and other subfields, where we believe a potential exists
to encourage a wide range of scholars to revisit some central concepts. Paying attention to these edges—as a
means to de-center to re-center our debates in new ways—not only broadens and deepens our knowledge of
the “religious,” it encourages us to reexamine long-standing conceptual tools, unquestioned assumptions, and
accepted methods in the sociology of religion. We illustrate these edges through a review of recent literature and
examples drawn from our current empirical projects.
Keywords: sociocultural contexts, Christocentrism, everyday religion, critical analysis.
INTRODUCTION
It is fair to say that the sociology of religion is going through a period of self-reflection
(Poulson and Campbell 2010; Smilde and May 2010; Smith 2008). In the last 50 years, sociological
studies of religion have shifted from their focus on secularization to the widespread
influence of “the new paradigm” and rational choice—to what Smilde and May (2010) call
“paradigmatic reflection.” Although debates about these interpretive frames, especially rational
choice, are far from over, many scholars are questioning the basic state of the field. Riesebrodt
(2008:25) claims the sociology of religion is in “crisis” as scholars work with “diverse concepts
of religion that are basically incompatible with each other and with our theories” and that fail
to explain world events. Smith (2008:1563) describes the field as in “an ill-defined transition
stage” in which “many scholars are moving beyond some of the field’s burning concerns of recent
years but have not yet clearly redefined the major issues, challenges and goals for the future.”1
There is also a sense that the social sciences have paid insufficient attention to religion, especially
Note: This article reflects an equal collaboration between these authors. Names are listed alphabetically. Much of the
article also draws on collaborative work conducted with Courtney Bender. Financial support from the Center for the Study
of Religion at Princeton University made possible a conference based on these ideas in October 2008 at which we invited
scholars working at “the edges” of the sociology of religion to think collectively about these issues. The first half of this
article draws heavily on the introductory chapter from the edited volume that resulted from that conference, Religion on
the Edge: De-Centering and Re-Centering the Sociology of Religion, currently under review.
Correspondence should be addressed to Wendy Cadge, Department of Sociology, Brandeis University, MS 071, 415 South
Street, Waltham, MA 02454. E-mail: wcadge@brandeis.edu
1 Several recent handbooks and articles provide an overview of these debates, including Beckford and Demerath (2007),
Clarke (2009), Dillon (2003), Smith (2008), Smilde and May (2010), and Poulson and Campbell (2010). For earlier
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (2011) 50(3):437–449
C 2011 The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
438 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION
given its prominent role in world affairs, and that, perhaps as a result, many current debates in
the sociology of religion take place in isolation from the rest of the discipline.
By outlining four edges or intersections where the sociology of religion meets other disciplines
and debates, we hope to ease this marginality and emphasize the connections between
sociologists of religion proper and those investigating religion from other starting points. We also
want to bring into focus how the conversations and modes of inquiry taking place at these borders
de-center many taken-for-granted ways of thinking about religion. Taking a fresh look at these
concepts allows us to rethink what counts as religion and to expand both the range of questions
we ask and the theories and methods we use to answer them. When we unpack the assumptions
about religion and social life that many of these theories, categories, and methods are based on,
we bring new insights to our debates, thereby re-centering them in new and exciting ways.
In the first section, we draw on the collaborative work we are doing with Courtney Bender
to define these generative intellectual edges and move beyond them (Bender et al. 2011). They
include: (1) provincializing the United States, or understanding how U.S. history and sociocultural
contexts create a particular type of religious life; (2) moving beyond Christocentrism;
(3) considering religion outside of congregations; and (4) encouraging scholars to critically
consider the role of religion in society rather than simply assuming it to be positive.
We seek to show how work on non-Christian religions, on religion in non-U.S. contexts, on
religion outside of congregational settings, and/or work that questions the social role of religion
challenges us to reconsider current and long-standing ideas and to connect with debates in other
social sciences. What is revealed about the self, pluralism, or modernity when we look outside the
United States or outside Christian settings? What do we learn about how and where the religious
is actually at work and what its role is when we unpack the assumptions embedded in these overly
familiar categories? What kinds of methods help expose our blind spots and how do the insights
they yield help us re-center the sociology of religion?
Our goal is to establish a space for vibrant scholarship about religion that is broadly
and creatively conceived and firmly integrated into other debates. We then illustrate, through
case studies, how new insights can be gained by pushing beyond our edges, thereby broadening
our understanding of the multiple ways religion is present and constructed around the
world.
DE-CENTERING AND RE-CENTERING: FOUR EDGES
Provincializing the United States
In their recent review of 30 years of sociological scholarship on religion, Smilde and May
(2010) found that over 70 percent of all journal articles focused on religious dynamics in the
United States. Similarly, Poulson and Campbell (2010), reviewing articles published in the Journal
for the Scientific Study of Religion and Sociology of Religion between 2001 and 2008, reported
that less than 20 percent showcased research on a non-Western geographic region. Although
this is somewhat understandable—these are U.S.-based journals—we need to reflect on how this
parochial focus shapes our understandings of what “religion” is. We also need to recognize in
what ways it limits our ability to engage in scholarly as well as policy conversations outside the
country (Smilde and May 2010).
Postcolonial scholars such as Chakrabarty (2000) call for scholars to “provincialize Europe”
as a way of understanding non-Western religious practices on their own terms. We make a similar
call to U.S.-based sociologists of religion by asking them to consider how history, nationalism,
assessments of the state of the field and its history, see Beckford (2000). He cites overviews by Demerath and Roof
(1976), Wuthnow (1988), Sherkat and Ellison (1999), and Willaime (1999).
DE-CENTERING AND RE-CENTERING 439
and approaches to management of ethnic and religious diversity influence how we understand
religion in the United States and its connections to religions around the world.
This is not just a matter of increasing the number of studies on Islam or Hinduism but of
studying religious phenomena beyond U.S. borders and their relationships with each other. It is
about being willing to take a hard look at how U.S. history and cultural structures influence the
kinds of religious expressions scholars have traditionally paid attention to and how they have
interpreted them.
The Christian (read Protestant) values and organizational forms that pervade many aspects
of U.S. political and civic life provide one example of this hidden provincial bias. According to
historian Peter Dobkin Hall (1998:101), “far from being a ‘second-order phenomenon,’ religion,
in particular liberal Protestant values, were integral in the development of American corporate
technology. The rationales and methods of bureaucratic and corporate organization actually
emerged from the domain of religion and spread from there to the economic, political and
social institutions.”2
These Protestant Christian templates profoundly shape religious and secular
organization and practice, the role of religion in public life, and research about it. They narrow
the range of scholarly focus and filter the analysis through American narratives and frames.
The first assumption to be exposed, then, relates to how Christian (read Protestant) templates
influence how we think about what constitutes religion. A second deeply held assumption is
our national self-image as a country of immigrants founded on principles of religious pluralism.
According to Ammerman (2009), the United States is relatively unique in that it is a highly
religious country, with a high degree of religious pluralism, yet with little religious conflict.
Although this characteristic may on the whole be positive, accepting the status quo uncritically
sidesteps the question of who defines pluralism and which groups benefit the most from particular
definitions. According to Bender (2011), although sociologists of religion are fluent in various
narratives about religious pluralism, each shares a basic epistemological position, from which
American public and civic life are seen as providing “open” and “free” ground to all religious
groups. Religious groups are mistakenly understood to be inherently bounded and packageable so
it is possible to have pluralistic relations between them. De-provincializing U.S. religion requires
confronting how U.S. religious and secular structures and norms make some forms of religion
appear natural and normal and others “deviant.”
The idea of American exceptionalism also affects how researchers compare religious life
in the United States to other nations. The notion that the United States was an experiment,
a light unto the nations, populated by independent, rugged individuals also feeds a belief in
America’s religious uniqueness. America’s desire to fulfill its “manifest destiny” by exercising
moral leadership, argues Ignatieff (2005:25), “is something more than the ordinary narcissism and
nationalism that all powerful states display. It is rooted in the belief that the liberty exercised in
the United States was of universal significance, even the work of Providential design.” Our point
here is not to deny the benefits of religious freedom. It is to underline the historical particularity
of liberal values, to raise for consideration how ideas about American exceptionalism have
influenced religious scholarship, and to question the exportability of these narratives and frames
to analyses of non-U.S. contexts.
In the same way, assumptions regarding the proper content of religion—as values, beliefs,
and practices having to do with morality, identity, and the afterlife—must be challenged by
comparative research. Asad (1993) did this in his social history of the concept of religion as an
2 Norris and Inglehart (2004:17) also make this argument with respect to Europe. They say that even though less than
5 percent of the Swedish public attends church weekly, there is “a distinctive Protestant value system that they hold in
common with the citizens of other historically Protestant societies such as Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Germany
and the Netherlands . . . . Even in highly secular societies, the historical legacy of given religions continues to shape
worldviews and to define cultural zones.”
440 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION
autonomous cultural sphere in Europe (see also Hall 2009). Studies of religion in the global South
where many people struggle to make ends meet also reveal, in the case of certain evangelical and
Pentecostal Christian sects currently flourishing there, how religion is employed in projects of
everyday survival and to improve self and family (Brusco 1995; Burdick 1993; Smilde 2007). We
need to understand these forms of religiosity on their own terms, however, rather than assuming
they are instrumental, cynical, and unstable. Doing so also brings into focus aspects of religious
practice that have always been present in the industrialized West but were hidden or obscured
because we viewed them through a filtered lens.
Finally, revising our conceptions about the geographies of religious experience can also
move scholarship forward, although U.S. sociologists of religion are hardly the only ones guilty
of this blind spot. Much research erroneously assumes that forces at work inside U.S. borders
are the primary drivers of U.S. religion (Levitt 2007). However, religious bodies, objects, and
ideas are often and unabashedly on the move, skillfully ignoring and circumventing national
boundaries. Rather than assuming that religious life stays primarily within contained spaces (be
they religious traditions, congregations, or nations), we might gain analytic purchase by starting
from the assumption of circulation and connection. We could see religion not as a cohesive,
rooted whole but as a loosely constructed assemblage of actors, objects, and ideas traveling at
different rates and rhythms in to-be-determined geographies (Levitt, Lucken, and Barnett 2011).
Studies by various scholars reveal dense social and organizational webs of connection, power, and
influence that directly challenge the national boundaries of religious life and show that religious
identities are not constructed using only national repertoires (Chen 2008; Hagan 2008; Kurien
2007; Levitt 2007; Mooney 2009; Stepick, Rey, and Mahler 2009; V´asquez and Marquardt 2003;
Wuthnow 2010; Yang and Ebaugh 2001). This approach also demonstrates how similar religious
terms and practices assume very different meanings in different contexts (Chong 2008).
Beyond Christocentrism
Christocentrism is foreshadowed in the previous section but we emphasize and expand upon
it here as a second edge because it is so omnipresent. In sociological studies, past and present,
religion most often refers to Christianity and, more specifically, to a narrow range of Christian
forms practiced in the United States over the last few centuries. Smilde and May (2010:14)
report that between 1978 and 2007 just over 50 percent of the articles about religion published
in sociology of religion journals dealt with Christianity. Poulson and Campbell (2010:38) also
found that 82 percent of the articles published between 2001 and 2008 in the Journal for the
Scientific Study of Religion and Sociology of Religion dealt with Christian communities (see also
Beyer 2000). As scholars turn to religious phenomena in other parts of the world and as their
work becomes more historically grounded, the limits of this Christocentrism become increasingly
clear.
Research on Islam, for example, shows how politics can be a central religious interest and
issue, not an unnatural intrusion as suggested by some Christian teaching (Arjomand 1993; Asad
2003; Moaddel 2005). Research on Hinduism reveals not a consistent, coherent set of beliefs
but a way of life in which the sacred and the profane, the religious and the cultural are often
difficult to distinguish (Kurien 2007; Levitt 2007). Research on Buddhism reveals that networks of
reciprocity and commitment can often be more important than ethical discourse (Friedrich-Silber
1995). Smith’s (1982) research on Judaism emphasizes the importance of sacred places and rituals
and calls into question how much Judaism can be understood as a “cultural” tradition modeled
along Christian lines (see also Goldschmidt 2006). The foregoing examples demonstrate how
uncritically using a Christian frame to understand non-Christian religious forms is not always
a good fit. Even recent research on Christianity drives home the internal diversity of practice
and meaning within the category of “Christianity”—particularly among Catholics (Carroll 2007;
Orsi 2005).
DE-CENTERING AND RE-CENTERING 441
Despite these acknowledged variations, Christian templates still strongly influence sociology
in general and the sociology of religion in particular. For example, there is a paradigmatic pattern
of individual Christian conversion at adolescence, based on St. Augustine’s confessions, that has
been replicated everywhere and in all ages (Casanova 1994). However, how do the coming-of-age
ceremonies in other religious traditions actually compare to this Christian model? Or we might
ask how the reformist projects of the Tablighi Dawa or of Neo-Hindus compare to those of the
Christian entrepreneurial-evangelizer who also strives to spread a purified, reformed version of
faith? Can we identify paradigmatic patterns within the discursive traditions of Islam, Hinduism,
and Buddhism to see if these or similar patterns have perhaps shaped hegemonic Christian models
and discourses? The results of such thought exercises might drive home just how analytically
dangerous and ultimately dishonest it is to try to fit all religious expressions into Christian boxes.
They might also reveal how much the interaction and mutual influence has been a two-way
street.
Religion Outside of Congregations
Looking at religious practices outside of congregations is a third area of inquiry or “edge” with
clear potential to bring new insights and energy into sociological studies of religion. Many studies,
like those focused on post-1965 immigrants to the United States, assume that congregations are
the natural home for religious expressions with their leaders, administrative structures, and
organization (Cadge 2008). This assumption not only fails to capture a whole range of nonChristian
collective religious forms, it also overlooks many religious expressions that manifest
themselves in informal and allegedly secular contexts.
As an increasing number of scholars note, religious life takes place not only inside the walls
of the mosque or the church but in so-called secular venues as well, such as the workplace,
the schoolyard, on the bus, and in the hospital. Cadge (2009, forthcoming; see also Cadge,
Ecklund, and Short 2009) argues that religion is alive and well in the allegedly secular, scientific
halls of research hospitals and among pediatric physicians. Michael Lindsay (2007) has shown
that evangelical networks permeate the upper reaches of the American political, educational,
and media elite. Other scholars highlight how progressive activists use religious discourses and
practices as important resources in their work (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2008; Nepstad 2008; Smith
1996; Wood 2002).
In all of these cases, neither the congregation, nor any other religious organization, is the
primary location where religious practice occurs. Many of these studies also illustrate how courts
or legislative bodies not only “create” religion but how these institutions construct and regulate
religion in a variety of large and small ways (Sullivan 2009). Immigration issues, diplomacy, tax
codes, land-use and zoning regulations, and state licensing boards are just some of the arenas
where the scope of the religious and its proper place are determined.
Some of this work goes even farther by reconceptualizing the religious groups that have
been treated as the logical and natural actors in American sociology and political theory. Most
studies of pluralism, for example, have taken the stated distinctions between religious traditions
for granted and also assumed these boundaries to be salient for people “on the ground” in their
religious lives and practice. A promising step forward is research that brings to light the internal
incoherence of religious groups, the unusual cross-religious coalitions and partnerships that arise
between allegedly strange bedfellows, and the ways in which governments and history shape the
management of religious difference among various self-evident and supposedly natural groups.
A recent volume edited by Bender and Klassen (2010) takes as its point of departure that the
organization and boundaries of religions are neither normal nor natural and that their relation
to each other within various state formations are produced rather than given. They also show
how various public groups, scholars, politicians, and commentators use scholarly narratives of
442 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION
religious pluralism and the “new religious diversity” to focus and dramatize their anxieties about
the future of modern democratic engagements, personal liberties, and minority rights.
Critical Engagements
Finally, we stress the need to question the social role of religion rather than simply assuming
it contributes positively to believers’ autonomy and agency or to general social well-being.
Smilde and May’s (2010) analysis also revealed that between the 1970s and 1990s, positive
sociological portrayals of religion rose whereas negative depictions declined. Since 2000, both
positive and negative portrayals have increased. The terrorist bombings of September 11, civil
wars in Yugoslavia, ethnic tensions in South and Southeast Asia, sex scandals in the Catholic
Church, and the high profile of evangelical Protestantism during the second Bush administration
probably refocused scholarly interest on religion and created a context that tolerated its critique.
We see these developments as positive. Contemporary treatments of religion as empowering
or socially beneficial were an important counterpoint to the excesses of old-fashioned Marxist
portraits of religion as an opiate of the masses and to the knee-jerk modernist predictions and
portrayals of inevitable religious decline. However, in what some have called a postsecular world,
in which there is less doubt that religion remains a vital social force, does it still make sense
to see it as generally positive? Religious studies scholar Orsi (2005) has challenged scholars to
round out their portraits by using a “tragic” register that recognizes the often limited and limiting
effects of religions on people, as well as their capacity to empower.
Overstating religion’s positive impact steers us away from confronting how religious practices
contribute to patriarchy, racism, nationalism, militarism, and a host of other social and
political ills. Recent studies have made some headway by showing how religion simultaneously
enables and disempowers. Emerson and Smith (2000), for example, argue that evangelical Protestantism
is an important site for interracial encounters, although they also discuss its limits and
counterproductive effects (see also Marti 2005). Moon’s (2004) work on religion and sexuality
also teases out how Christianity both encourages and inhibits acceptance of homosexuality. The
more nuanced, measured work reflected in these studies more accurately captures religion’s role
and, by so doing, opens the way for more meaningful conversations within and between social
science disciplines.
CASE STUDIES
Evidence of how these four edges demand a rethinking of central concepts in sociological
studies of religion are best illustrated through examples. In addition to the many studies cited
above, in this section we provide two more fully developed examples from our own work
that reveal how religion insinuates itself into unexpected places and how unpacking well-worn
sociological categories allows us to see the religious in new ways.
Religion in the Halls of Medicine
Paying attention to religion outside of congregations opens up a range of questions about how,
where, and in what forms religion is present in other areas of American life and what implications
that presence might have for society as a whole. Although scholars have certainly considered
the role and significance of religion in First Amendment jurisprudence, voting behaviors (Manza
and Brooks 1999), public conflicts over controversial moral issues (Adamczyk 2009; Froese,
Bader, and Smith 2008), and social movement activism (Casanova 1994; Oberschall and Kim
1996), they have been more hesitant to investigate how religion is present and constructed in
secular organizations. Perhaps, as Demerath and colleagues (1998) suggest, classic secularization
DE-CENTERING AND RE-CENTERING 443
arguments, positing that institutional differentiation would lead religion not to be present in secular
organizations, dissuaded scholars from looking for it. Bender and others, however, have pointed
to the fallacy in such arguments, showing that, in Bender’s (2010:182) words, the “binaries of
religious and secular institutional differentiation are inadequate to our analysis of religious life
in America.”
Wendy Cadge’s research has recently focused on the presence and construction of religion
and spirituality in large academic medical centers. She investigates where religion and spirituality
are present in these secular medical organizations, how they are constructed, how differences are
negotiated, and how staff members understand and respond to religion-related issues. Answering
such questions involved: tracing historical antecedents; analyzing national Joint Commission
policies; visiting chapels, meditation rooms, and other areas in hospitals specifically set aside
for religious or spiritual purposes; interviewing hospital chaplains, the professionals most often
responsible for religion and spirituality in healthcare settings; and talking with medical staff about
how they understand and respond to religion and spirituality both professionally and personally
(Cadge forthcoming).
Hospital chapels as well as prayer and meditation rooms are particularly rich sites for
observing how religious differences are negotiated inside of secular institutions. They are strategic
sites that capture what Levitt (2011) has referred to as religious ideas and practices “in motion,”
pointing to shifting notions of religion and spirituality, inclusivity, and diversity at play in the
minds of the people who design and regulate the spaces. Clearly, religion is not just a property of
individuals, nor of organizations and/or nation-states, but also of the public spaces where religious
ideas collide. Religious practices taking place outside of congregational settings in secular sites
such as hospitals must be negotiated not as secondary but as fundamental components of what
religion is.3
Cadge visited these spaces in all of the teaching hospitals in one state and was immediately
struck by the wide variation in how they were furnished, named, and used. A vice-president
at Simon Medical Center,4
for example, aptly described that hospital’s two chapels as “little
remnants of past worlds.” Built years ago to reflect two different religious traditions, the chapels
still retain their original appearances down to the cross, stained glass window, pews, and, in
what had been the Protestant chapel, denominational hymn books. At Overbrook Hospital, not
far away, the original chapel has been moved and renovated several times in recent years. It now
houses 20 movable chairs, artificial plants, a piano, and no fixed religious symbols. A sign on
one wall points toward Mecca for Muslims wishing to pray. Prayer rugs and texts from a range
of religious traditions are available on a shelf at the back of the room.
Taken as a group, most chapels Cadge visited had transitioned over time to be what chaplains
describe as more welcoming, flexible, and inclusive in terms of religious practices and objects.
Sometimes, as at Creek Hospital, religious symbols from various faiths diversify a chapel that
was originally designed as a Christian space and used primarily for Catholic services. When the
current director arrived, she prompted a redesign to, in her words, create a multi-faith “space
that’s accommodating [to] a variety of religious traditions” and furnished with symbolic objects
from a range of religious traditions. An ingenious system of curtains and pulleys was built at
the front of the chapel so that a large cross with images on it (for Catholics), or a plain wooden
cross (for Protestants), or the Star of David (for Jews) could be displayed at the front of the room
separately from the other two. A sign also points toward Mecca, and prayer rugs and prayer times
for Muslims are available on a shelf at the back, as well as prayer shawls and Sabbath candles
for Jews, cushions for Buddhists, and scriptures, including the Koran, Old Testament, and several
3 Aspects of this section appear in Cadge (2011).
4 All hospital names are pseudonyms.
444 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION
translations of the New Testament. The materials needed for Catholic and Episcopal communion
are also available in the chapel.5
Creek Hospital is far more diverse in its offerings than most. It is more common to find
chapels and prayer rooms in which fixed and denomination-specific religious objects have simply
been removed during renovations. New interfaith spaces have typically been built around what
directors of chaplaincy departments describe as more neutral and welcoming symbols of water,
light, and nature. At Central Hospital, a confessional booth, baptismal font, and organ were
pushed against back walls, indicative of their infrequent use. Stained-glass sun catchers with
images of flowers and insects were on windows at the front, the focal point of the room. At
Queen’s Hospital, a three-paneled, stained-glass screen in geometric patterns was the main image
in the chapel. The director explained the stained glass saying, “I like to think of it as a metaphor
for pastoral care at the hospital: a prism that serves people of many different faiths, a symbol
of peace and hope.” At Main Hospital, following directives from his supervisors, the chapel had
to be called a “meditation room” and could not “have any visible signs of any particular faith
or denomination,” explained the director. Devoid of religious symbols, the space was oriented
around a round, blue-and-yellow stained-glass art piece hanging prominently at the front of the
room.
As chapels have shifted over time from being mono-religious to either multi-religious or,
more commonly, interfaith (or what chaplaincy directors call neutral spaces), the ways hospital
chapels are used have also shifted. Although many chapels were initially built as places to hold
religious services within a particular religious (usually Christian) tradition, most are today used
primarily as places people can stop for a few minutes to rest, meditate, or offer a prayer. Religious
services that are now held, usually in a wider range of traditions or as interfaith services, are
sparsely attended. As patient stays have declined and the health conditions of those admitted to
hospitals become more acute, the patients are no longer the ones who use the chapels. “The nature
of healthcare has changed,” one director explained. “If patients are able to get down to a service
[in the chapel], they’re in a cab going home . . . . They’ll never see any other place in the hospital
but the OR and their bed.” Thus, it is primarily staff and family members who stop in chapels to
sit quietly, cry, sleep, or pray silently by themselves. In almost all of the chapels Cadge visited,
she also found communal prayer books that invited people to write and leave a prayer, worry, or
concern. These books were often a focus of activity as people entered, wrote a prayer, and then
sat for a few minutes before leaving (Cadge and Daglian 2008; O’Reilly 2000).
To summarize, the history and development of these hospital chapels suggests a very slow
process of institutional isomorphism as ideas about the appropriateness of “interfaith” or neutral
chapel spaces rather than tradition-specific chapels slowly circulated, probably more through the
networks of hospital chaplains, who tend to work together on their designs and renovations, than
through hospital administrators. Rather than multi-faith spaces with symbols from a range of
religious and spiritual traditions, hospitals have more often created what they call interfaith or
neutral spaces focused on new symbols, usually of nature and art, though sometimes continuing to
reflect underlying Christian templates and assumptions.6
These templates most likely reflect two
influences: first, the assumptions about religion held by the disproportionate number of (liberal)
Protestant chaplains who lead chaplaincy departments and make decisions about chapel spaces,
and second, what Wuthnow (1998) and Roof (1993) have described as Americans’ broader mixand-match
approach to spirituality and religion writ large. Perhaps this trend reflects Americans’
5 Pointing to the need for tradition-specific spaces, the director of chaplaincy at this hospital also spoke of how she and
her colleagues support the creation of such spaces. “For instance,” she explained, “we have the only succa [Jewish space
used during Sukkot] in the medical area, and we had a blast building it, and the doctors and families and patients come
from all over the medical area to eat and have text study.”
6 This is also the case in some U.K. prisons (Beckford and Gilliat 1998).
DE-CENTERING AND RE-CENTERING 445
increasing comfort with mixing different religious ideas outside the boxes of their religious
organizations, or perhaps it suggests an approach to religion that tries to emphasize similarities
across different traditions rather than pointing out differences in how meanings are assembled.
In either case, hospital chapels stand as one example of many spaces outside of congregations
where religion and spirituality are negotiated in so called secular American institutions. These
chapel space case studies show what is overlooked in approaches to religion that do not look
beyond congregations to understand the multiple ways religion is present and negotiated in
contemporary American life. Consider, then, other seemingly secular organizations—such as
universities, military bases, airports, and prisons—where chapel, prayer, or meditation space is
also set aside and must be designed and used. Cadge’s study raises questions about who makes
decisions concerning these spaces, how they are actually used, and how people from different
spiritual and religious backgrounds (including none) are (or are not) included. Beyond such
specifics, these spaces show that people think about and act on their spiritual and religious beliefs
outside of their religious congregations and that in the American context this often involves
negotiating differences with others in space as well as in other aspects of practice.
Religion in Rooted Motion
Our second case study addresses two of our other edges—Americanness and Christianity—
and develops analytic categories and methods for studying religion in motion. It shows how
circulating elements from outside the United States shape “American” religion and Christianity
but also how national narratives and institutional arrangements transform and constrain their
growth when these elements take root in U.S. soil.
Rather than assuming the geographies and boundaries within which religious life is enacted,
Peggy Levitt, Kristen Lucken, and Melissa Barnett conducted interviews of 60 18- to 29-year-old
second-generation Hindu and Muslim Gujarati-origin young women attending undergraduate and
graduate programs in the Boston area to investigate how the children of immigrants construct their
religious identities.7
They found that the young women created religious identities using elements
from across the world. They wove together what they imagined their parents’ religious upbringing
to be with their own real and imagined experiences of religious life in the United States, India,
or England. They also incorporated real and imagined understandings of U.S. religious traditions
other than their own, most notably white Christianity. They drew upon references from what
they thought of as global youth culture, global Indian culture, and Gujarati-ness in India and/or
in different parts of the United States, using materials from different sites (i.e., Gujarat State,
Boston, London, Syria) and layers (i.e., local, regional, national, and global) of the transnational
social milieus in which they resided.
Some of the young women were American centric, locating themselves primarily within
the context of the United States. American institutions, culture, diversity management regimes,
and history exerted the strongest influence over their religious identities. In contrast, the Indiancentric
group drew upon ideas, practices, and material objects from India to construct a religious
identity they wanted to espouse. A third group categorized as global secular felt part of a
worldwide community of secular, often upper-class individuals living around the world. A last
group, the diasporic-religious, embraced membership in a religious community spanning the
globe, including India and the United States as well as England, the Middle East, and South
Africa.
Although the young women in this study constructed religious identities in reference to
religious traditions from around the world, they did so from their rooted positions in the
7 An article based on this research, “Religion in Rooted Motion: Negotiating Religious Identity Across Time and Space
Through the Prism of the American Experience,” is currently under review.
446 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION
United States. American cultural frames and organizational arrangements strongly shaped their
religious constructions and their interpretations of them, both enabling and constraining religious
movement.
What expectations rooted in and shaped by American concepts of pluralism, diversity, and
what it means to be “religious” channeled the pace and direction of religion on the move among
these young women? How did American- and Christian-centric notions about religion affect how
religion “comes to ground?”
For one thing, many respondents not only felt they had permission to be religious, “racial,” or
“ethnic,” but also were encouraged or, in some cases, expected to be. According to Johnson (2007)
and Kurien (2007), to make a place for themselves in the United States, minorities have to embrace
the terms of abiding, unchanging cultural and racial notions University life is a microcosm of the
larger society in which resources and recognition are distributed to religious and ethnic groups
that are easily identifiable, bounded, and assumed to be internally cohesive. Diversity is managed
and controlled in a similar way on college campuses, and the study respondents became fluent in
its language and what was expected of them when they went away to school.
This was both a positive and negative experience. Some women felt that joining the
South Asian or Muslim Student Association put them in contact with students they had a lot
in common with, who often came from similar backgrounds. From those associations, they figured
out what they believed in and learned to practice it in more formal ways. What had been, for
many, private, infrequent religious expressions became regular, orchestrated group-based study
and prayers. This, they felt, was a logical part of taking responsibility for their own religious
lives away from their families. They felt proud that they had learned about the formal trappings
of their faith.
Other respondents felt trapped by the expectation of their ethnic peers and others that they
would know and care about their ancestral home and faith. Not infrequently they felt put in the
position of “spokesperson” for Hinduism or Islam. If they did not know enough, they felt pushed
to learn more. If they did not want to be part of an “identity-based” group, no clear alternative
door was available through which to become part of the larger community.
These respondents’ experiences also reflect the overwhelmingly Christian, if not Protestant,
bias of the U.S. religious context. Interfaith relations on campus are organized among groups
expected to fit easily categorized packages, similar to Christian denominations. Groups are
structured similarly and receive comparable sets of resources to make interfaith relations easier.
Most respondents felt that interfaith activities were, by and large, a good thing and represented
attempts by well-meaning people to accommodate religious differences. They recognized that
only a decade ago, there were probably only Christian or Jewish groups on campus at best. Yet,
some also remarked that other ways to be religious or practice religion are possible. They resented
being pushed into a particular style or form. “Does the price of admission, of being visible,” one
young woman asked, “mean that you always have to look and act like a Christian?”
In sum, these second-generation Gujarati-American young women attending school in the
United States drew upon cultural elements from around the world to construct religious selves,
accessing them through travel, technology, memory, imagination, or by participating in ethnic and
religious groups. The elements they used traveled through American-inflected cultural frames and
organizational forms. They took shape in social settings permeated by U.S. assumptions about
religious pluralism and ethnic and racial diversity. Thus, “religion on the move” has its limits.
Cultural structures strongly influence the pace and ease of travel, as well as how religious ideas
and practices ultimately land and take root.
CONCLUSION
In this article, we propose ways of de-centering U.S. sociology of religion by seeing how it
is being challenged at its edges. Our goal is not simply to diversify what we study. Rather, we
DE-CENTERING AND RE-CENTERING 447
hope that questioning conventional categories and wisdom will lead us to creatively rethink core
concepts and to engage more fully with sociology in general. This would, in essence, return us to
sociology’s roots when, over a century ago, seminal thinkers such as Marx, Weber, and Durkheim
addressed central sociological questions by studying religion.
Disciplines and subdisciplines are, of course, more than just malleable sets of ideas. Change
never comes easily. Poulson and Campbell (2010) argue that the “institutional parochialism”
characteristic of the sociology of religion also characterizes many other sociological subfields.
They suggest that processes of institutional isomorphism, plus the fact that it is easier to access
U.S.-based, already-existing data sets, impedes change. We agree and would add to this list the
continuing support of Christian denominations and foundations that, although much appreciated,
also contributes to a persistent overriding focus on Christianity and on congregations.
Nevertheless, as decades of social movements scholarship suggest, conservative isomorphic
pressures on institutions are powerful, but not insurmountable. Indeed, we see signs that hints
of the changes we call for here are already underway. More scholars are more willing to look
at religion critically—to talk openly about its positive and negative aspects, rather than simply
maintaining scientific neutrality or focusing exclusively on the positive. Smilde and May’s
(2010) data show an increase and diversification in socioevaluative engagements. Work on religious
phenomena outside of congregations and on religious life outside the United States also
seems to be on the rise. In addition, some graduate programs provide the resources needed for
students to study the languages and cultural contexts required for broader understandings of
religions outside of the United States (see also Poulson and Campbell 2010). Integrating scholars
from other disciplines working on religious dynamics is essential to diversifying our center. Some
of the ideas we put forward here are “models of” whereas others are “models for” what we hope
to see in scholarship moving forward.
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