This master’s thesis aims to show how liberation theology can aid in formulating contemporary sociological theories of religion. The first part of the thesis demonstrates the crisis of religion as a concept, which was brought about by sociological and religious studies critics during the final quarter of the 20th century. In sum, these critics point to a protestant bias, because of which religion is understood as completely intellectualistic, thus labelling religion as primarily a matter of belief in a god, a phenomenon in fact limited to specialized social institutions. Having established that this conceptualization makes the category of religion analytically powerless, we turn to the Latin American liberation theology in order to demonstrate how the concept of religion may yet be useful. First, we analyse it as a coherent theological teaching, before examining liberation theology as a social movement. While socio-analytical, hermeneutical and practical mediations comprise the main elements of the teaching, we analyse the movement through the social conditions, institutional characteristics and collective habitus needed for its emergence. The second part of the thesis is rounded up by showcasing the crisis of the movement while he analysis itself is postponed until the closing sections of the third part. We begin the latter by presenting rational choice theory as a default contemporary sociological theory of religion, explaining its shortcomings, which primarily stem from the fact that it is a disembodied theory. Turning once again to liberation theology as an example of an embodied theology, we propose key analytical advantages of integrating the body into the analytical apparatus of the sociology of religion. Having done so, we return to analysing the crisis of liberation theology. We confront the analytically insufficient rational choice theory with the non-reductive materialist approach of Manuel Vásquez, one of the founders of the material turn in the study of religion. By doing so, we show how the crisis of liberation theology can only be properly understood from a materialist point of view, while also demonstrating how liberation theology forms one of the key intellectual currents in contemporary materialist theories of religion.
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