1. A Secular Age? The ‘Modern World’ and the Beginnings of the Sociology of Religion

Research output: Contributions to collected editions/worksChapter

Authors

  • Wolfgang Knöbl
A couple of years ago, Guy G. Stroumsa convincingly argued that the emergence of religious studies in seventeenth-century Europe could legitimately be interpreted as an intellectual revolution: the ‘discovery’ of the New World, the Renaissance with its interest in ancient Greece and Rome, and the so-called wars of religion, had created decisive structural conditions for new ways of thinking about religion.¹ From late antiquity up until that time, religion was usually interpreted as an internalized belief system, as something belonging to the inner life of the believer: ‘True religion … was … orthodox Christianity, while all other forms of religion...
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationNegotiating the Secular and the Religious in the German Empire : Transnational Approaches
EditorsRebekka Habermas
Number of pages25
PublisherBerghahn Books Inc.
Publication date2019
Pages31-55
ISBN (electronic)978-1-78920-152-9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019