ABSTRACT
Max Weber’s lifework, canonical in sociology, contains a tension between his comparative-historical approach and his claims about long-term historical change in the direction of disenchantment and rationalization. David Martin is methodologically more Weberian than Weber because he turns the empirical comparative-historical work against the assumption of such long-term trends. In this introductory chapter, this tension is used as a guiding thread to discuss the achievements and weaknesses of Martin’s contributions, particularly with regard to his understanding of the causes and dynamics of secularization processes, the connections between religion and violence and the relation between theology and sociology in the study of religion. As appropriate in an introduction, the individual chapters of the volume are also briefly presented here.
