Rating: 
Summary: Insightful and Readable
Review: This book is a must for anyone interested in the study or experience of religion in the modern world. Part one highlights the human need for meaning and order that is rooted in something less transient than human existence, and the way religion functions as a "shield" against various existential terrors. Although somewhat dated, the analysis of modern religion presented in part two is valuable for its discussions of how secularization has roots within religion itself, and how the relationships between religious denominations and the rest of society can be profitably described in terms borrowed from market economics. The book is highly readable, frequently funny, and provides a lucid introduction to a particular sociology of knowledge as well as a useful perspective on religion.
Rating: 
Summary: Sociological Impression of Religion
Review: This work is mostly a protraction of the ideas expressed in Berger's previous co-written book THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY. Those who are familiar with that work will most likely not be surprised by the arguments put forward here. Much of the same methodology and argumentation are employed once again. As for those who are not familiar with the previous work, I believe they will find that this book stands well enough on its own merits.Berger's sociological approach to religion, although incomplete, is insightful. He attempts and, I believe, somewhat succeeds to find a middle ground between ideational and materialistic approaches to the sociology of religion. His focus remains consistently throughout the human agency in the construction of their social reality and how this reality becomes objectified and subsequently becomes reified as an immovable, impenetrable `thing' which is perceived as superhuman-and more specifically, the role of religion in facilitating and sustaining this very process. From here, he moves on to the nature of this dynamic in modern societies, secularism and pluralism being shorthand for this, and the problems of social legitimation this entails. Overall, this work is too cursory and pithy to be too satisfying for those who desire a robust sociology of religion. As Berger states, it was not his intention to provide this. Rather, one finds an exploration of how his prior work could be applied to the sociological study of religion.
Rating:
Summary: Sociological Impression of Religion
Review: This work is mostly a protraction of the ideas expressed in Berger's previous co-written book THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY. Those who are familiar with that work will most likely not be surprised by the arguments put forward here. Much of the same methodology and argumentation are employed once again. As for those who are not familiar with the previous work, I believe they will find that this book stands well enough on its own merits. Berger's sociological approach to religion, although incomplete, is insightful. He attempts and, I believe, somewhat succeeds to find a middle ground between ideational and materialistic approaches to the sociology of religion. His focus remains consistently throughout the human agency in the construction of their social reality and how this reality becomes objectified and subsequently becomes reified as an immovable, impenetrable 'thing' which is perceived as superhuman-and more specifically, the role of religion in facilitating and sustaining this very process. From here, he moves on to the nature of this dynamic in modern societies, secularism and pluralism being shorthand for this, and the problems of social legitimation this entails. Overall, this work is too cursory and pithy to be too satisfying for those who desire a robust sociology of religion. As Berger states, it was not his intention to provide this. Rather, one finds an exploration of how his prior work could be applied to the sociological study of religion.
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