Abstract
The widening and diversification of science's range has made the rationalization of the way work is done and researchers trained as essential to the sociology of religion as it is to other university disciplines. This rationalization, based on a model drawn from business and industry, focuses on the management of the details of a project, its division into sections, and the quantification used to measure the results. These points, among others, are in conflict with the artisan style of proceeding which is oriented toward the production of a personal, largely autonomous work that integrates whatever techniques are of help in its creation. The conflict between the personal emphasis and the programmed approach is just as evident in the training of researchers in the sociology of religion. University departments easily relegate this discipline to the rank of matters of secondary importance. However, when we look carefully at the study of sociology as it applies to religious phenomena, we see that it is far from ready to let itself be confined within the barriers controlled by the secular and ecclesiastical bureaucracies. In other words, the system spawns its own contradictions and setbacks.