Part I. Understanding Secularization: 1. The secularization debate 2. Measuring secularization 3. Comparing secularization worldwide Part II. Case Studies of Religion and Politics: 4. The puzzle of secularization in the United States and Western Europe 5. A religious revival in post-communist Europe? 6. Religion and politics in the Muslim world Part III. The Consequences of Secularization: 7. Religion, the Protestant ethic, and moral values 8. Religious organizations and social capital 9. Religious parties and electoral behavior Part IV. Conclusions: 10. Secularization and its consequences 11. Re-examining the theory of existential security 12. Re-examining evidence for the security thesis.

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Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

The central argument of network research is that actors are embedded in networks of interconnected social relationships that offer opportunities for and constraints on behavior. We review research on the antecedents and consequences of networks at the interpersonal, interunit, and interorganizational levels of analysis, evaluate recent theoretical and empirical trends, and give directions for future research, highlighting the importance of investigating cross-level network phenomena.

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Taking Stock of Networks and Organizations: A Multilevel Perspective

Peter Berger (1929) is an American sociologist best known for his collaboration with Thomas Luckman in writing The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. That book argues that human reality, and knowledge of it, is a social construct, emerging from the individual or group’s interaction with larger social structures (institutions). Social structures, once widely adopted, lose their history as social constructions (objectivation), and come over time, by the people who live within them, to be deemed natural realities independent of human construction (reification). Berger predicted, in his later book, The Sacred Canopy, near-term all-encompassing secularization of religion, which prediction has proved false, especially in the third world (as Berger himself has acknowledged in his later work, Desecularization).

神圣的帷幕 : 宗教社会学理论之要素 = The sacred canopy elements of a sociological theory of religion

After a very long hiatus, economists have begun again to study the relationship between economics and religion. This article seeks to summarize and evaluate the principal themes and empirical findings that have appeared in some 200 recent papers on the economics of religion. Although some of the research concerns the economic consequences of religiosity, most applies standard economic theory to the study of individual religious activity, the characteristics of religious groups, and the impact of regulation and competition on religious markets.

Introduction to the Economics of Religion

On entend generalement par secularisation, le declin de l'autorite religieuse. L'article propose de souligner trois points : l'autorite religieuse mise en rapport avec les recents developpements en theorie sociale, l'etat actuel de la litterature relatant la secularisation, et une approche Weberienne de l'analyse sociologique de la religion. De nouvelles hypotheses concernant les relations entre la religion et les mouvements sociaux sont a etablir, afin de mieux saisir de maniere conceptuelle et empirique la secularisation au sein de societes, d'organisations et d'individus

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Secularization as Declining Religious Authority

Aux Etats-Unis, les caracterisations de la vie religieuse font reference aux donnees de sondage sur la frequentation de l'eglise. Les hauts degres de participation rapportes par ces donnees suggerent que la population est exceptionnelement religieuse et tres peu affectee par les tendances a la secularisation. Cette image de vitalite contredit neanmoins d'autres evidences empiriques indiquant le declin de la force de nombreuses institutions religieuses. A partir de donnees issues de sources multiples et de procedure variees les AA. examinent les taux de frequentation de l'eglise chez les protestants et les catholiques, taux qui sont approximativement de moitie moins importants que les niveaux generalement acceptes.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2095948.pdf

What the polls don't show: A closer look at U.S. church attendance.

More Americans belong to religious congregations than to any other kind of voluntary association. What these vast numbers amount to - what people are doing in the over 300,000 churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples in the United States - is a question that resonates through every quarter of American society, particularly in these times of "faith-based initiatives," "moral majorities," and militant fundamentalism. And it is a question answered in depth and in detail in Congregations in America. Drawing on the 1998 National Congregations Study - the first systematic study of its kind - as well as a broad range of quantitative, qualitative, and historical evidence, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the most significant form of collective religious expression in American society: local congregations. Among its more surprising findings, Congregations in America reveals that, despite the media focus on the political and social activities of religious groups, the arts are actually far more central to the workings of congregations. Here we see how, far from emphasising the pursuit of charity or justice through social services or politics, congregations mainly traffic in ritual, knowledge, and beauty through the cultural activities of worship, religious education, and the arts. Along with clarifying - and debunking - arguments on both sides of the debate over faith-based initiatives, the information presented here comprises a unique and invaluable resource, answering previously unanswerable questions about the size, nature, makeup, finances, activities, and proclivities of these organisations at the very centre of American life.

Congregations in America

For more than a decade, sociologists of religion have been debating the answer to a basic question: What is the relationship between religious pluralism and religious vitality? The old wisdom was that the relationship was negative, that pluralism undermines vitality. This view has been challenged by advocates of a supply-side model of religious vitality. They argue that the relationship is positive—that pluralism increases vitality—and this empirical claim has become foundational to the larger project of applying economic theory to religion. We review the relevant evidence and reach a straightforward conclusion: The empirical evidence does not support the claim that religious pluralism is positively associated with religious participation in any general sense. We discuss this conclusion's theoretical implications, and we identify potentially productive directions for future research on religious pluralism, church-state relations, and religious competition. It appears that North Americans are religious in ...

Religious Pluralism and Religious Participation

At the macro level, the economics of religion implies that religion will be more vibrant where it is less regulated and hence more competitive. Recent attempts to support this hypothesis are weakened by the use of religious pluralism as a proxy measure for the extent to which the religious market is subsidized or regulated. This article extends the analysis of religious market structure by measuring directly the regulation of religious markets in 18 Western democracies. The analysis provides strong support for the hypothesized connection between religious competitiveness and vitality. The results show that (a) the relationship between subsidized religion and religious participation holds in both Protestant and Catholic countries and (b) its explanatory power is far superior to that of religious pluralism alone. However, certain features of the results suggest that the “economics of religion” should be supplemented with noneconomic variables to achieve adequate sociological explanation.

Mark Chaves

Papers

Secularization as Declining Religious Authority

What the polls don't show: A closer look at U.S. church attendance.

Congregations in America

Religious Pluralism and Religious Participation

Regulation, Pluralism, and Religious Market Structure Explaining Religion's Vitality