The study of religion, power and social orders is central to social scientific inquiry. Social scientists like W.E.B. DuBois, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Clifford Geertz, Zora Neale Hurston and Gordon Allport recognized the critical role religion plays in the distribution of power and, consequently, the creation, reproduction and deconstruction of social orders. Historians too reveal how religion, across time and geographic space, is at the foundation of societies, both great and small, and the impetus behind social change. Repeatedly, religion is used by the powerful to sustain their power and social order, as well as by the less powerful to disrupt those same social orders and claim or reclaim more power. Upon surveying present-day religious, political, and economic realities, we once again see such processes unfolding. The time is ripe for social scientists to reinvest our energies in empirical and theoretical examinations of religion, power and social orders.