With God on Our Side

Chapter 2 Studying Religion and Social Change

1 Introduction

This chapter and the next examine two theoretical literatures that I bring together in this book. Chapter Three looks at scholarship on social movements, with particular attention to the ways that the field has addressed religion, while the present chapter reflects on the ways that scholars of religion have interpreted the interactions between religion and processes of social change. This examination shows that religion has always been embedded in and entangled with power structures and often has explicitly political implications. As noted in the previous chapter, for example, religious institutions often echo and reinforce the hierarchies of the larger society, and broader social ...