Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- SACRED AND SECULAR
- PART I UNDERSTANDING SECULARIZATION
- 1 The Secularization Debate
- 2 Measuring Secularization
- 3 Comparing Secularization Worldwide
- PART II CASE STUDIES OF RELIGION AND POLITICS
- PART III THE CONSEQUENCES OF SECULARIZATION
- CONCLUSIONS
- Appendix A Classifications of Types of Society
- Appendix B Concepts and Measures
- Appendix C Technical Note on the Freedom of Religion Scale
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The Secularization Debate
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- SACRED AND SECULAR
- PART I UNDERSTANDING SECULARIZATION
- 1 The Secularization Debate
- 2 Measuring Secularization
- 3 Comparing Secularization Worldwide
- PART II CASE STUDIES OF RELIGION AND POLITICS
- PART III THE CONSEQUENCES OF SECULARIZATION
- CONCLUSIONS
- Appendix A Classifications of Types of Society
- Appendix B Concepts and Measures
- Appendix C Technical Note on the Freedom of Religion Scale
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
the seminal social thinkers of the nineteenth century – Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud – all believed that religion would gradually fade in importance and cease to be significant with the advent of industrial society. They were far from alone; ever since the Age of the Enlightenment, leading figures in philosophy, anthropology, and psychology have postulated that theological superstitions, symbolic liturgical rituals, and sacred practices are the product of the past that will be outgrown in the modern era. The death of religion was the conventional wisdom in the social sciences during most of the twentieth century; indeed it has been regarded as the master model of sociological inquiry, where secularization was ranked with bureaucratization, rationalization, and urbanization as the key historical revolutions transforming medieval agrarian societies into modern industrial nations. As C. Wright Mills summarized this process: “Once the world was filled with the sacred – in thought, practice, and institutional form. After the Reformation and the Renaissance, the forces of modernization swept across the globe and secularization, a corollary historical process, loosened the dominance of the sacred. In due course, the sacred shall disappear altogether except, possibly, in the private realm”.
During the last decade, however, this thesis of the slow and steady death of religion has come under growing criticism; indeed, secularization theory is currently experiencing the most sustained challenge in its long history.
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- Sacred and SecularReligion and Politics Worldwide, pp. 3 - 32Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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