Speaker(s): Professor Eileen Barker, Professor Conor Gearty | Thirty years after founding INFORM, the information network on religious movements, Eileen Barker argues that the sociology of religion still has an important role in “knowing the causes of things”. Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have remarked, “I don’t like that man; I must get to know him better”. Today the world is populated by religions that most of us do not like. Throughout most of the 20th century, there was a rumour that secularisation was a worldwide phenomenon; by the 21st century, however, diversification was emerging as a more prominent theme. But by then, many of the social sciences had abandoned the study of religion, being either blind to, or uninterested in, the ways in which religious, spiritual and fundamentally atheistic beliefs were affecting not only lives at the individual level, but also the political, economic and cultural institutions of society. This talk will argue, with a variety of illustrations,
