This article discusses the principal characteristics that typify the study of religion conducted within Slovenia's Centre for Research of Religion and Church, which was later renamed the Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies within the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana. The Centre was established in 1967 amidst a post-WWII discussion on the institutionalisation of the study of religion across Europe. Herein, the development of the Centre's theoretical and methodological approaches in the study of religion, together with the topics on which it focused, are presented within the socio-historical contexts of a socialist society and thence a postsocialist transitional society in which it operated, as well as contrasted with similar institutions in other European countries. In both of the mentioned eras - as is revealed herein - there existed a palpable tension between the Centre and its milieu. This paper also introduces the Centre's most important accomplishments together with its future prospects in an era of increasingly pervasive neoliberal policies and newly emerging competition with regard to research.
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