About the Author

Karel Dobbelaere is an emeritus professor of sociology, Catholic University of Leuven and University of Antwerp, Belgium. He has been a Visiting Fellow at All Souls' College, Oxford University; at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture in Nagoya, Japan; at Sofia University in Tokyo; at the Institut de Recherche sur les Soci�t�s Contemporaines, Paris; and at Kent State University in Ohio. He is a former president of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion and is the author of some twenty books and nearly 200 articles published in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Polish.