Sociological Perspective Of Religion
small part of this complex phenomenon we call religion (Roberts, 1990). Sociology focuses on the social dimension of religion and on those aspects of religion affecting social behaviour (Roberts, 1990). Like the developmental psychologist who studies the child to discover the stages of personality development in all children, sociologist will be looking for the common patterns, the general rules, rather than for a unique characteristics of each religion, and looking at unique characteristics, it is to find how those characteristics affect behaviour in special ways (Roberts, 1990).
The Sociological perspective is characterised by two fundamental principles: reliance on empirical data and objectivity (Roberts, 1990). By reliance on empirical