Toward a Comparative-Historical Sociology of Religious Politics: The Case for Cross-Religious and Cross-Regional Comparisons

Abstract

This chapter argues that comparative-historical approaches to sociology promise to make distinctive contributions to the project of de-centering and re-centering the sociology of religion presented in the introduction to this volume. Through a detailed review of some recent studies, this chapter argues that an innovative strand of cross-religious and cross-regional comparative work is especially conducive to the furthering of this agenda. The chapter is organized as follows. It begins with a discussion of the past and potential future contributions of comparative-historical research. The second section briefly takes stock of some of the recent literature at the intersection of comparative-historical sociology and the sociology of religion and discusses how "the religious factor" is pinned down in these works. The third and final section highlight cross-religious and cross-regional historical comparisons as a promising avenue of research for the new sociology of religion, and discusses in detail three cross-religious comparative studies on religious parties to demonstrate the advantages of this research agenda.