Afterword: Approaching Religions - Some Reflections on Meaning, Identity, and Power

This is a primarily theoretical meditation on the key findings and arguments put forth in the chapters in this volume. Approaching these representations as the current “state of religion,” it situates them in light of the prognoses from classical thinkers, including Freud, Durkheim, and Weber. Building a conversation among the chapters, it seeks to outline the consequences of these exercises for broader debates in the sociology of religion. The chapter reflects on the divergent, often contradictory meanings (existential, systemic) and meaning-making that the “religious” enables in the range of empirical settings discussed in this volume. It highlights the many forms and disguises “religion” takes depending on the vicissitudes of history and power. While attending to the often-profound subjective significances of religion, this concluding chapter highlights how religious identifications are often complicit with and products of ideological and material domination.