Abstract
This introductory chapter is structured as a discussion of four of the central empirical and analytic tendencies in the sociology of religion in the US, and as an account of what is going on at the edges where this core is being challenged. It poses a set of questions and provides a set of examples where the next generation of research might begin. What is revealed about the self, pluralism, or modernity when we look outside the United States or outside Christian settings where the center and the edges meet? What do we learn about how and where the religious is actually at work and what its role is when we unpack the assumptions about it embedded in these much used categories? What kinds of methods help bring to light these lacunae, and how do the insights they yield help us to re-center the sociology of religion? An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.