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.

/pdf/taking-stock-of-networks-and-organizations-a-multilevel-1td56u54yb.pdf

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

L'A. se propose de mettre en evidence l'echec des psychologues et specialistes du comportement humain dans leur effort a mettre en place un cadre qui rende compte des choix religieux par la description de modeles rationnels concernant le comportement. Il s'agit aussi de mettre en lumiere le point de reference qui permet a un sujet d'evaluer ses options et de se determiner entre deux options religieuses. C'est par la l'occasion d'expliquer les difficultes rencontrees face a la standardisation d'un modele de choix. L'A. presente alors les alternatives possibles

Rationality and the framing of religious choices

Les auteurs presentent une revue critique de la recherche sociologique sur les conflits intraconfessionnels en identifiant et decrivant cinq erreurs majeures. Ils suggerent que les analyses s'attachent aux organisations et aux evenements conflictuels en tant qu'unites; elles doivent examiner les relations entre les variables externes et internes, comparer les conflits sur une duree et sur une organisation. Ces recommendations methodologiques sont en relation avec trois nouveaux champs theoriques en sociologie: les niveaux intermediaires de la vie sociale, la reponse des acteurs a leur environnement, l'interaction entre modeles et acteurs dans les structures sociales

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1386763.pdf

Analyzing intradenominational conflict: new directions

Conflicts over women's ordination have occurred within U.S. religious denominations for over a century. The nature of those conflicts, however, has changed over time in very substantial ways. Using systematic data and illustrative material from 15 conflicts occurring since 1920, we argue that the most recent of several shifts in the nature of conflicts over women's ordination occurred circa 1970. We identify four ways in which post-1970 women's ordination conflicts differed from pre-1970 conflicts: (1) The frequency with which the conflicts occurred among denominations increased (2) The organizational location of those most prominently advocating women's ordination shifted from the organizational elite to the grass roots. (3) Women's ordination advocates more frequently used extrainstitutional tactics in pursuit of their goals. (4) Organized opposition to women's ordination became more common. We argue that these changes in women's ordination conflicts were largely produced by changes in the social and cultural context, especially the rise of second-wave feminism and the associated influx of women into divinity schools and seminaries.

Recent changes in women's ordination conflicts : The effect of a social movement on intraorganizational controversy

Worship is the core activity of American congregations and the primary way people experience religion collectively in the United States We use data from the National Congregations Study (NCS), notably including data from the fourth wave, collected in 2018?19, to examine two key trends in worship practices among American religious congregations First, the trend toward more informal and enthusiastic worship identified in earlier NCS surveys continues into 2019 Showing no signs of having reached a plateau, a more informal worship style has increased in prevalence across every major American religious tradition Second, recently developed communication technologies have permeated congregations? worship services in ways that change the collective experience Collected on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, NCS-IV data on worship and technology provide a baseline for future examinations of worship changes caused by the pandemic, and a window into congregations? technological preparedness for a world in which it is not safe to gather

Changing Worship Practices in American Congregations

In their 2017 article, “The Persistent and Exceptional Intensity of American Religion: A Response to Recent Research,” Schnabel and Bock claimed that “intense religion . . . is persistent and, in fact, only moderate religion is on the decline in the United States.” In this article, we show that even the intensely religious segment of the American population is indeed shrinking. Schnabel and Bock mistakenly concluded otherwise because their analytical strategy was not sufficiently sensitive to detect very slow change (leading them to miss signs of declining intense religion on the indicators they examined), they examined a limited set of indicators (missing still more signs of declining intense religion), and they paid insufficient attention to cohort differences. Overall, their empirical conclusion that “only moderate religion is on the decline in the United States” is simply false. And their interpretive conclusion that “intense religion in the United States is persistent and exceptional in ways that do not fit the secularization thesis” should be rejected.

https://www.sociologicalscience.com/download/vol-5/november/SocSci_v5_694to710.pdf

Mark Chaves

Papers

Rationality and the framing of religious choices

Analyzing intradenominational conflict: new directions

Recent changes in women's ordination conflicts : The effect of a social movement on intraorganizational controversy

Changing Worship Practices in American Congregations

Even intense religiosity is declining in the United States: Comment