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A shift is taking place in the religious field from collective, institutional, and tradition-hound religion to increasingly individual, non-institutional, and post-traditional religious forms. This article examines how the sociology of religion has responded to this empirical development, paying special attention to tino issues to which Meerten Ter Borg has contributed, namely the typologization of the various modes of non-institutional religion and the foundation of non-institutional religion in human nature. I suggest that the sociology of noninstitutional religion can advance, particularly if it adopts a substantial definition of religion, opens up for co-operation with cognitive scholars, and turns its attention to religious bricolage, the modes of belief, and the effect of the internet on non-institutional religion.

AbstractThis review essay takes a critical look at the new field of “pagan studies” by examining theHandbook of Contemporary Paganism. It demonstrates that pagan studies is dominated by the methodological principles of essentialism, exclusivism, loyalism and supernaturalism, and shows how these principles promote normative constructions of ‘pure’ paganism, insider interpretations of the data, and theological speculations about gods, powers, and a special “magical consciousness.” It seems thus that the methodological discussions inMTSRhave little effect on pagan scholars. In the concluding discussion, I raise the questions why this is so, and how we might do better in promoting a naturalist and theoretically oriented approach to studying religion.

This article revisits Theo van Baaren’s (1912-1989) call for a ‘systematic science of religion’. With this call Van Baaren urged Dutch scholars of religion to do away with the religionist biases of the phenomenology of religion, while retaining comparison as a cornerstone of the discipline. Unfortunately, Van Baaren’s programme was never realized in the Netherlands, and Dutch study of religion became dominated instead by a particularist paradigm that, while producing eminent studies of individual religions, lacked an interest in theorizing religion in general. Deprived of a common object and aim, Dutch scholarship on religion has become fragmented, and Dutch scholars of religion have been in no good position to fend for themselves in face of institutional restructurings, budget cuts, and general hostility towards the humanities. With an eye to the Nordic countries I propose a reorientation towards a systematic science of religion à la Van Baaren as a way out of the academic and institutional crisis.