Institute of Sociology
of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology
of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Prozorova Y. Civilizational Analysis in Historical Sociology: Christianity in World History. In: Hiebert D. (ed.) The Routledge International Handbook of Sociology and Christianity. London; New York: Routledge, 2023. P. 34–46.



Prozorova Y. Civilizational Analysis in Historical Sociology: Christianity in World History. In: Hiebert D. (ed.) The Routledge International Handbook of Sociology and Christianity. London; New York: Routledge, 2023. P. 34–46.
ISBN 978-1-032-23072-6
DOI 10.4324/9781003277743-5

Posted on site: 06.12.23

 


Abstract

This chapter discusses Christianity from a civilizational perspective in comparative historical sociology. It touches upon the classical sociological sources of civilizational scholarship and draws specifically on the relevant studies and theoretical reflections in contemporary civilizational analysis. The chapter considers Christianity in the context of the crucial theoretical problematics and thematic foci of civilizational analysis: the Axial Age breakthrough and its consequences, the civilizational dimension and religio-political nexus as a societal metainstitutional framework, and modernity (or modernities). Such a framework sheds new light on Christianity as a world-historical phenomenon that shapes civilizational complexes and engenders large-scale transformations and socio-cultural innovations of global significance. Christianity is intertwined with the institutionalization of distinct forms of power, state formation, and empire building. Being integral to the Western civilizational complex, Christianity contributed to the rise of modernity and its institutional forms. The divergence between Western and Eastern Christianity with concomitant imaginaries and patterns of relationship between sacral and secular power was conducive to different civilizational trajectories and paths to modernity.

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