Globalization is a defining feature of the modern world, both in terms of how practices are produced and enacted (culture) and how resources and power are allocated (politics). In the context of studies on religion, globalization offers a number of issues that scholars from different traditions ought to look more attentively. This paper offers an account of how globalization has conditioned profound changes in the ways by which individual and institutions have made sense of religious beliefs, experiences and practices. It highlights new ways by which scholars of religion from the social sciences and theology may appropriate transnational flows, pluralizing and fundamentalist responses to increasing diversity and the need for new approaches in fostering religious literacy. The paper concludes with a reflection on how the ‘new normal’ in religious living and believing may betaken as starting points for crafting more relevant approaches in social science and theological research.