Description:
<jats:p> In the seventies a lot of studies dealt with religious pheno mena. They were initiated by remarkable changes of the relations people had to churches and to religion in general. In many cases the churches themselves searched for empirical data to recognize these processes more precisely. This is why most of these studies are not primarily oriented on progress of theoretical knowledge in the field of sociology of religion but on facts " relevant for practitioners' work." Although they start with theoretical reflections in one or another way they often do this with the help of other social science disciplines. Most of them borrow their theoretical bases from general sociology or social psychology. </jats:p>