ABSTRACT
It can hardly be said that the putatively relevant academic disciplines were ready for the encounters involving agencies of the state or of secular political actors, on the one side, and religious organizations or movements, on the other, that we have witnessed in many parts of the world in recent years. Those specializing in the empirically focused study of religion had concerned themselves with religion in its more peripheral manifestations—with quite a few sociologists maintaining that what is most characteristic of religion in the modern world is, indeed, its peripheral status—while those studying the “harsh” realities of modern life, particularly those of politics and economics, were seemingly disdainful of the idea that religion had much to do, except in a few isolated cases, with the comprehension of the central issues of modern life.
