How has religion evolved from its primitive and mystical forms to our current era of rationalism? Is there any way to assess the authenticity and legitimacy of religions, whether it be magical voodoo, tundra shamanism, civil religion, or even Marxist "Stalinism"?

Ken Wilber, an author famous for his works on consciousness and transpersonal psychology, elaborates in A Sociable God a hierarchical evolutionary model that will interest both psychologists and sociologists and scholars in general. It is a very interesting transition from transpersonal psychology to the sociology of religion: a framework that allows evaluating the different levels of social interaction.

A sociable God establishes the areas - and the evaluations - of the different epistemological modes: sensorial, intellectual, contemplative. He proposes methodologies, strategies, hypotheses and verifications to apply to the religious problems that sociology faces today.

A Sociable God applies directly to today's great social, psychological, and religious issues, including the new Western movements, the influx of mystical traditions, the bankruptcy of "civil religion," the psychology of religious experience, meditation, moral development. The seemingly irreducible domains of sociology and transcendence are finally connected.

This edition has been expanded by an extraordinary Introduction that Ken Wilber has made twenty years after its first publication.