Three Aims of Sociology of Religious Freedom: Toward a New Paradigm of Religious Change
Giuseppe Giordan is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology at University of Padua (Italy).
This post is a part of a series on the sociology of religious freedom.
The book A Sociology of Religious Freedom coauthored by Olga Breskaya, Giuseppe Giordan, and James T. Richardson invites readers to explore how individuals understand and practice their personal freedom of choice in matters of religion or belief. At its core, the volume looks at how social institutions either create or fail to create the conditions that allow individuals and groups to exercise religious freedom, and what kind of conditions make this freedom easier or harder to realize. For instance, can greater religious pluralism lead to more equitable ways for individuals to perceive and exercise their religious freedom? What roles do religious and judicial institutions play in shaping individuals’ perception and religious exercise, and how do relationships between religion and the state influence them? And perhaps the most complex question of all: how can we measure religious freedom across societies, when it means such different things to different people and groups?
