This is a major new account of the nature of religion and its changing role in modern societies, by one of the most original French sociologists writing on religion today. In a stylish and accessible study, Hervieu-Leger addresses the problem of how to distinguish religion from other systems of meaning in modern Western society.

The crucial point, she argues, is the chain of memory and tradition which makes the individual believer a member of the community. From this point of view, religion is the ideological, symbolic and social device by which individual and collective...