This course will engage these kinds of questions: What is religion? Why is religion so primordial and prevalent in human societies? What do different religions teach? Why are people religious or not religious? What causal role does religion play in human personal and social life? How does the sociological study of religion differ from a theological or psychological study of religion? Why and how do religious organizations grow and decline? Is modernity secularizing? Why has the Islamist movement become so powerful in recent decades? What is happening today at the global level when it comes to religious movements and their social, cultural, political, and economic impacts?