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The introduction gives an overview of the structure of the book. In the first part, experienced scholars like James A. Beckford and Inger Furseth reflect on recent trends and challenges in the discipline. Concepts like religious diversity and religious complexity are presented and discussed. In the second part, the significance of sociological work for normative disciplines such as ethics and theology is discussed. Furthermore, in this section the implicit normativity of sociology of religion is analyzed, and the question is raised to what extent institutional affiliations and personal religious convictions color perspectives and interpretations in the sociology of religion. In the third part, many of the sociological approaches discussed earlier in the book are used in empirical sociological analyses from young scholars, mainly about lived religion and political religion in Northern Europe. This third part can be seen as an attempt to weaken the geographical limitations of international sociology of religion, still characterized by Anglo-American dominance.