Religion plays a vital role in geopolitics and in the course of student's lives even if they are not religious. Yet, students often lack a framework for understanding how current arrangements and situations came to be or for understanding why religion operates as such an important force. Featuring a unique approach, The Air We Breathe: A Sociology of Religion helps students learn sociology by studying religion. The book is situated around themes that apply across the field, not just to religion, and includes theories and ideas from outside of the subfield when appropriate (e.g., gender, organizational theory, group theory, etc.). The Air We Breathe: A Sociology of Religion by George Sanders and Josh Packard: Gets readers to apply the sociological perspective by drawing on the available research and theories in the sociology of religion and the larger discipline of sociology to answer overriding questions about how religion shapes and is shaped by larger social forces. Incorporates more recent empirical and theoretical developments that have taken place outside of the sociology of religion. Is organized around central, interesting questions that students find accessible. These questions are answered with current research that has been applied in order to highlight the pragmatism of sociology of religion research. Features an international, pragmatic, comparative approach that illustrates the unique role of religion in the modern world and highlights how it shapes and is shaped by other social forces and institutions.

If a church resists rules, rituals, and dogma, what holds it together? Josh Packard explores the inner workings of the Emerging Church, revealing how a movement that rejects organisational trappings and embraces a do-it-yourself ethic has managed to create a distinctive place for itself at the margins of mainstream Christianity. Packard demystifies the beliefs and operations of the loosely connected Emerging Church congregations that developed in direct response to the heavily bureaucratic megachurches. While acknowledging the challenges inherent in sustaining such a movement, he shows that the church succeeds not despite its anti-institutional approach, but because of it. His work offers new insights into the interplay of culture, organisations, and doctrine in today's religious landscape.