ETSU associate sociology professor Dr. Joseph O. Baker will be the new editor of the peer-reviewed academic journal, Sociology of Religion. It is the official journal under the Association for the Sociology of Religion. He will serve a four-year term starting in January 2020.
This new leadership position will involve appointing new editors and people to serve on the board. All submissions to the journal will initially come to Baker. He decides which submissions, out of roughly 200 each year, are appropriate for the journal. Based off the reviews and revisions facilitated by his editorial board, Baker will make the final decision on whether a submission will be published in the journal or not.
“I think it’s a good place to find, I would say, objective, non-partisan information about religion and how religion affects politics or affects gender roles and family formations,” said Baker. “It’s the best research on religion. We don’t have a particular perspective we’re trying to advocate for like a specific religion or a particular political party. We have a lot of articles that are really interesting and pretty readable, even to people that aren’t in the field.”
Baker began teaching sociology classes at ETSU in 2010. He began writing in 2007, and he has been involved with publishing for 12 years now. He is a published author with many research publications and several books under his belt.
From getting his own research published to serving two, non-consecutive three-year terms on the journal’s editorial board, he has been heavily involved with the journal. Now he will take one step further as the new editor-in-chief.
Baker’s experience with the journal will come full circle as he will be the editor of a journal that he often used for research while in school.
“When I started doing my own research, I used things that were in the journal all the time,” said Baker. “There’s like three main journals for religion and sociology, but [Sociology of Religion is] the one that’s most focused on the sociology of religion. I used a lot of the research for my own thesis and things like that.”
Baker’s favorite parts of sociology are the diversity and range of topics and the ability to look at different things in different areas.
“I’ve always been interested in people,” said Baker. “I’m just really curious about the world and how things work, and sociology is the best fit for that. I like psychology too, but I really like the social aspect of relationships and how people form groups. It just kind of fit the things that I was most interested in.”
Time management will be a priority of Baker’s with this new position. He plans to set specific time aside each day for business related to the journal that will not interfere with his teaching schedule. He also plans to balance out his priorities by writing less, so he can shift his focus more toward editorial work.
He plans to write more after his term as editor.
Baker’s new position will provide benefits to his students at ETSU.
“For grad[uate] students, it’s a really unique opportunity to see how publishing works and to try to figure out if they want to do their own writing and kind of get a behind the scenes look at what the decision process is like, which is really valuable,” Baker said. “It’s good experience if you want to go into editorial work … anything you do with writing.”
Baker also plans to integrate the journal into his undergraduate sociology of religion classes.
“For actual students in class, I think it will be great because I have students do research papers, and we can sort of use what we know about what’s coming into the journal to kind of steer people to look at the interesting new areas of research,” Baker said.
Baker believes that not only will students will benefit from reading the journal, but that any person can benefit from reading it due to its non-partisan information.
“I think it serves as sort of a valuable outlet for that,” said Baker. “You think about things like religion and politics. They are so heated, and there’s sort of all this polarization around it. But a lot of times people haven’t taken the time to see what’s really going on. It’s kind of a neutral voice on what we know about religion in an era where it’s more heat than light.”
