Item Detail
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30924
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0
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0
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English
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The Emergence Of Mormon Studies In The Social Sciences
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American Sociology of Religion
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Leiden, Netherlands
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Brill
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121-150
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The study of Mormons as a separate academic subdiscipline developed gradually from the middle to the end of the twentieth century. In its chronology and trajectory, this development was not unlike that of the sociology of religion itself : At midcentury, the sociology of Mormons, like the sociology of religion more generally, had a very small literature base and was generally not recognized by scholars in either sociology or religion as an important subdiscipline. The dominant academic paradigm for the study of religion, including Mormonism, assumed that the secularization process, so inevitable in modern societies, would eventually transform all “sects” into “churches” and thence into societal irrelevance. The resurgence of the sociology of religion as a viable and indispensable subdiscipline was stimulated by the unexpected rise of new religious movements (NRMs) and by various expressions of religious fundamentalism starting in the late 1960s, which required, in turn, a serious reassessment, before the end of the century, of the time-honored “secularization” assumption, and a new agenda, guided by a new paradigm, for the sociological study of religion. [Author]