RT Article
T1 Multiple Modernities: The Role of World Religions in an Emerging Paradigm
JF Journal of contemporary religion
VO 29
IS 3
SP 393
OP 409
A1 Offutt, Stephen
LA English
PB Carfax Publ.
YR 2014
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1690844981
AB This article contributes to the emerging multiple modernities thesis and its treatment of world religions. Using a cross-continent comparison of evangelical Pentecostalism, it argues that religion can have cross-cutting implications for modernity's extension in the Global South. The social patterns and networks of national evangelical Pentecostal communities in different contexts vary, allowing them to help modernizing societies pursue unique goals and identities. However, Pentecostalism also introduces remarkably similar sets of formal organizations to its host societies, which are maintained by isomorphic pressures operating in transnational organizational fields. Religion thus promotes heterogeneity and homogeneity in modernizing contexts. These findings further nuance the multiple modernities thesis and show the potential utility of the thesis for the sociology of religion.
DO 10.1080/13537903.2014.945723