ABSTRACT
Though direct political colonialism no longer typifies the current era, intellectual colonialism is alive and well in the sociology of religion. The discipline’s dominant theories and concepts were born of scholars’ reflections on European and American religious developments. These fail to capture religious dynamics in other parts of the world, but they also remain blind to important features of Euro-American religions themselves. This chapter explores two aspects of this situation.
First, it explores the importance of generating concepts from non-Euro-American religious spaces. As an example, it shows how the Navajo concept of hózhǭ highlights the socially transformative role of experience in religious settings—something that Euro-American sociologies typically fail to grasp. Second, it argues that such insights are of universal rather than of parochial importance. A truly post-colonial sociology needs to treat insights from all societies, cultures, and civilizations as potential sources of understanding.
