A Sociology of Religious Emotion

This timely book aims to change the way we think about religion by putting emotion back onto the agenda. It challenges a tendency to over-emphasise rational aspects of religion, and rehabilitates its embodied, visceral and affective dimensions. Against the view that religious emotion is a purely private matter, it offers a new framework which shows how religious emotions arise in the varied interactions between human agents and religious communities, human agents and objects of devotion, and communities and sacred symbols. It presents parallels and contrasts between religious emotions in European and American history, in other cultures, and in contemporary western societies. By taking emotions seriously, A Sociology of Religious Emotion sheds new light on the power of religion to shape fundamental human orientations and motivations: hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, loves and hatreds.

Linda Woodhead is Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University, and Director of the Religion and Society Programme - a major national research council initiative which embraces 80 separate projects. Her books include Religions in the Modern World (with Koko Kawanami and Chris Partridge), An Introduction to Christianity, The Spiritual Revolution (with Paul Heelas), Peter Berger and the Study of Religion, and Congregational Studies in the UK (with Mathew Guest and Karin Tusting).


Ole Riis is Professor of Sociology of Religion at the University of Agder in Norway. His research includes sociology of religion, general sociology, methodology of social science, survey studies and public planning. His books, in Danish and English, include On Methods and Theories in the Sociology of Religion, Social Science in Practice, Religion in Secularizing Society, and Combined Methods in the Social Sciences.


Ole Riis is Professor of Sociology of Religion at the University of Agder in Norway. Over a generation he has taught general sociology, methodology, and sociology of religion at universities in Denmark. He is author of books on Social Research in Practice, Combined Methods, and Theories and Methods in the Sociology of Religion. He has served as a consultant, including for the Danish government. His research includes contributions to the European Values Study.
Linda Woodhead was educated at Cambridge, taught at Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford, and is now Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University, and Visiting Professor at Aarhus University. Her interest is religion and change in contemporary societies. She currently directs the £12m research programme `Religion and Society', consisting of 70 separate projects. Her publications include: The Spiritual Revolution (with Paul Heelas), Christianity: A Very Short Introduction, and Religions in the Modern World.