The purpose of the Sociology of Religion Unit of the American Academy of Religion is to generate cross-fertilization between the Sociology of Religion and Religious Studies. We are open to papers in all areas and therefore encourage submissions of any topic relevant to the sociology of religion. This year, we are particularly interested in the following topics:

Topics related to the AAR presidential theme of “Religion and Catastrophe.”

• Including religion and climate change, religion and the environment, inequality and climate change, migration and the environment, migration and violence, racial violence, religion, and economic inequality, apocalypticism, etc.

Religion, race, and ethnicity.

• Including biracial or multiracial people and spaces, intersectional identities, religio-racial identifications, and related themes.

Sociology of Science, Technology, and Religion (Co-sponsored with the Science, Technology, and Religion Unit)

• Including vaccines (and vaccine skepticism), virology, climate science, surveillance, virtual ritual/worship, social/digital media, big data, etc.  

Invited roundtable on applied sociology of religion.

• Its history and its prospects for the future.
• How will applied sociology of religion look like in the next twenty years considering the ongoing processes of secularization, individualization, pluralization, diversification, polarization, as well as the decline of mainline and evangelical denominations and recurring financial and sexual abuse scandals?

Invited roundtable on Joseph Blankholm’s The Secular Paradox (2022) (Co-sponsored with the Secularism and Secularity Unit).

Asian American Religions and New Works in the Sociology of Religion (Co-sponsored with the Asian North American Religion, Culture, and Society Unit)

Invited roundtable on recent books in the sociology of religion, with particular attention to works exploring Asian American religions and communities.