ABSTRACT
This chapter is proposed as a contribution to the literature on the relationship between religion and globalisation. The sociological literature on globalisation has always been closely interwoven with the sociology of religion. The chapter aims to speculate on some of the cultural-political intersections and to suggest how each might relate to a different form of the broader globalising process. The centrality of religion within any sociological understanding of globalisation is evident, not only in respect of the universal-particular issue, but in respect of the changing public role and private practice of religion associated with modernising processes during the twentieth century. Modernisation and universalisation are undoubtedly precursors to the modern globalising process, but not synonymous with it, just as vernacularisation, indigenisation, and nationalisation provide the historical foundations for the transnationalisation of religious identities within a broader process of glocalisation.
