This summer Robert Townsend of the American Historical Association reported that religious history is now the largest single thematic subfield in the AHA membership.

The most notable change in the profile of our membership is the continuing rise of specialists in religious history. More members selected the history of religion as field of specialization (7.7 percent in all) than any other thematic category. Religion surpassed cultural history (selected by 7.5 percent of the membership), which has been the most popular subject category among members for more than 15 years. (Cultural history eclipsed social history as the field of choice in the mid-1990s.)

Members specializing in the history of religion were working in most of the geographic categories, but the highest proportions seemed to be studying early European or recent U.S. history.

According to an e-mail that I received, Townsend is doing a survey of AHA members who describes themselves as historians of religion to seek out the reasons for their growth. I look forward to the results of his study, which I think will do a great service in understanding this subfield.

Are we in the process of experiencing a religious history moment comparable to the cultural history moment of the 1990s and to the social history moment earlier? Is this a great time to be a historian of religion in graduate school?