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date: 19 April 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This article examines politicized religion on institutional grounds, arguing that religious violence is both a corollary of attempted institutional transformation and, more specifically, of the institutional logic of religion itself. The institutionalism that this article proposes is a cultural sociological project; it seeks to encompass, not displace, prior institutional constitutions. The article contends that institutions are constituted by orderings of means-ends couplets, regimes of practice, the so-called “institutional logics.” It first considers religious violence as a political strategy and as a religious sentiment before discussing the institutional form of religious nationalism. It then explores institutional logic in relation to social movements, along with the political constitution of religious violence and the religious constitution of political violence. It also assesses the intersections of sex, violence, and divinity and concludes by explaining how institutional logic can help us better understand the violence of politicized religion.

Keywords: politicized religion, religious violence, institutional logic, institutionalism, institutions, religious nationalism, social movements, political violence, sex, divinity

Roger Friedland

Roger Friedland is Professor of Religious Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Friedland works on the question of institution as a religious phenomenon, and on politicized religions a case through which to explore this approach. He is also working with Paolo Gardinali and John Mohr on the relation between eroticism, love and religiosity among American university students. He is author of “Institution, Practice and Ontology: Towards A Religious Sociology,” in Ideology and Organizational Institutionalism, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, ed. By Renate Meyer, Kerstin Sahlin-Andersson, Marc Ventresca and Peter Walgenbach (2009).

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