In his historical sociology of religion Wolfgang Eßbach focuses on a sociology of intellectuals, analyzing the experiences of intellectuals and their texts in order to observe the religious situation of the given time. We on the other hand turn our attention to the work of two thinkers who take a different methodological path: Michel de Certeau und Bruno Latour are not interested in intellectuals and their texts but in religious practices and religious speech. Both highlight the practical and performative aspect of religion. Concentrating on two writers who in their works explicitly argue as catholics is not accidental but evidently intended. Finally, we want to examine the question of whether it is heuristically possible to distinguish between a protestant strand of thinking that focuses more on intellectual and intentional modes of signification and a catholic strand of thinking that accentuates the production of meaning through practices and rituals. If so, religion not only appears as a specific object of research but also as part of ones own set of categories, terms, and methods.