Showing papers on "Secularization published in 2007"

A Secular Age

Abstract: Preface Introduction Part I: The Work of Reform 1. The Bulwarks of Belief 2. The Rise of the Disciplinary Society 3. The Great Disembedding 4. Modern Social Imaginaries 5. The Spectre of Idealism Part II: The Turning Point 6. Providential Deism 7. The Impersonal Order Part III: The Nova Effect 8. The Malaises of Modernity 9. The Dark Abyss of Time 10. The Expanding Universe of Unbelief 11. Nineteenth-Century Trajectories Part IV: Narratives of Secularization 12. The Age of Mobilization 13. The Age of Authenticity 14. Religion Today Part V: Conditions of Belief 15. The Immanent Frame 16. Cross Pressures 17. Dilemmas 1 18. Dilemmas 2 19. Unquiet Frontiers of Modernity 20. Conversions Epilogue: The Many Stories Notes Index

Rethinking secularization: A global comparative perspective

Abstract: This chapter suggests that in order to speak meaningfully of ‘secularization’ we needed to distinguish three different connotations: (i) Secularization, as decline of religious beliefs and practices in modern societies, often postulated as a human universal developmental process. (ii) Secularization, as privatization of religion, often understood both as a general modern historical trend and as a normative condition, indeed as a precondition for modern liberal democratic politics. (iii) Secularization, as differentiation of the secular spheres, usually understood as ‘emancipation,’ from religious institutions and norms. The chapter examines the validity of each of the three propositions independently of each other and thus to refocus the often fruitless secularization debate into comparative historical analysis that could account for different patterns of secularization, in all three meanings of the term, across societies and civilizations. Yet, the debate between the European and American sociologists of religion remains unabated. Keywords: American sociologists; democratic politics; European societies; privatization; religious institutions; secularization

Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion

Abstract: In 1979, an Islamic revolution in Iran confounded American foreign policy and inspired an Islamic resurgence in Afghanistan, Kashmir, the Middle East, and elsewhere. In Turkey, after over seven decades of rule by a secular nationalist military regime, an Islamic party won elections in 2002, deepening democracy and advocating Turkey’s entry into the European Union. In the 1990s, after four decades of rule, India’s secular Congress Party yielded power to a Hindu nationalist party that promoted religious laws and discourse and provoked Hindu-Muslim violence. The teachings of the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council of 1962 to 1965 encouraged subsequent democratization in the Philippines, Brazil, and Poland, but not in Rwanda, Argentina, or Hungary. In Sri Lanka, a lack of separation between sangha and state has fueled war between Buddhists and Hindu Tamils, whereas Buddhism in Taiwan and South Korea has promoted human rights and religious tolerance. Over the past generation, evangelical Protestants have become a powerful voting bloc in the United States, Brazil, Guatemala, and Kenya. Defying the erstwhile dominance of the secularization thesis among western intellectuals, religion has waxed in its political influence over the past generation in every region of the globe except perhaps Western Europe (see Berger 1999; Casanova 1994; Stark 1999).

Political Theologies : Public Religions in a Post-Secular World

Abstract: What has happened to religion in its present manifestations? In recent years, Enlightenment secularization, as it appeared in the global spread of political structures that relegate the sacred to a private sphere, seems suddenly to have foundered. Unexpectedly, it has discovered its own parochialism-has discovered, indeed, that secularization may never have taken place at all. With the "return of the religious," in all aspects of contemporary social, political, and religious life, the question of political theology-of the relation between "political" and "religious" domains-takes on new meaning and new urgency. In this groundbreaking book, distinguished scholars from many disciplines-philosophy, political theory, anthropology, classics, and religious studies-seek to take the full measure of this question in today's world. This book begins with the place of the gods in the Greek polis, then moves through Augustine's two cities and early modern religious debates, to classic statements about political theology by such thinkers as Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt. Essays also consider the centrality of tolerance to liberal democracy, the recent French controversy over wearing the Muslim headscarf, and "Bush's God talk." The volume includes a historic discussion between Jurgen Habermas and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, concerning the prepolitical moral foundations of a republic, and it concludes with explorations of new, more open ways of conceptualizing society.

The Political Origins of Religious Liberty

Abstract: The issue of religious liberty has gained ever-increasing attention among policy makers and the public. Whereas politicians have long championed the idea of religious freedom and tolerance, the actual achievement of these goals has been an arduous battle for religious minorities. What motivates political leaders to create laws providing for greater religious liberty? In contrast to scholars who argue that religious liberty results from the spread of secularization and modern ideas, Anthony Gill argues that religious liberty results from interest-based calculations of secular rulers. Using insights from political economists, Gill develops a theory of the origins of religious liberty based upon the political and economic interests of governing officials. Political leaders are most likely to permit religious freedom when it enhances their own political survival, tax revenue, and the economic welfare of their country. He explores his theory using cases from British America, Latin America, Russia, and the Baltic states.

The Sociology of Religion

Abstract: Introduction A Critical Agenda Part One: Theoretical Perspectives Common Sources/Different Pathways Secularization Process and Theory Rational Choice Theory Modernity a Single or Plural Construct? Methodological Challenges Part Two: Substantive Issues Mainstream Religions in the Western World Minorities and Margins Demanding Attention Fundamentalisms in the Modern World Globalization and the Study of Religion Religion and the Everyday Conclusion Revisiting the Agenda

Secularism Confronts Islam

Abstract: Preface Introduction: Laicite and the Identity of France 1 French Laicite and Islam: Which Is the Exception? 2 Islam and Secularization 3 The Crisis of the Secular State and the New Forms of Religiosity 4 De Facto Secularization Notes Index

Spirituality and secularization: nursing and the sociology of religion

Abstract: Aim The concept of spirituality is much discussed in the UK nursing literature, despite the fact that Britain is one of the most secular countries in the world, and steadily becoming more so Here, I pose the following question: given this increasing secularization, what accounts for the current interest in spirituality among UK nurses? Background The literature on spirituality in nursing has blossomed in the last 10 years, and various attempts have been made to define ‘spirituality’, ‘spiritual need’ and ‘spiritual care’ Most definitions distinguish between ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’, acknowledging that the latter is more institutional, and theologically more restrictive, than the former; and they suggest that spirituality is universal, something which (unlike religion) all human beings share Method I draw on the sociology of religion – neglected, for the most part, in the nursing literature – to establish two main points Firstly, that the UK and the USA are at opposite ends of the religion/secularity spectrum, implying that it is a mistake to assimilate USA and UK sources Secondly, that the concept of spirituality, as currently understood, is of very recent origin, and is still ‘under construction’, having become separated from its associations with Christian piety and mysticism only since the 1980s Conclusions The extension of spirituality into secular domains is part of a professionalization project in nursing, a claim to jurisdiction over a newly invented sphere of work For the time being, it remains an academic project (in the UK) as it is not one with which many clinicians identify Relevance to clinical practice What counts as ‘spiritual need’ or ‘spiritual care’ may not be the same in both countries, and UK clinicians are unlikely to welcome the role of surrogate chaplain, which their USA colleagues are apparently willing to embrace

Secular Humanism and Atheism beyond Progressive Secularism

Abstract: The organized atheist and secular humanist movements have long operated under the premis secularism progressing in American society. In the last two decades, however, progressive secular has come under increasing criticism. This article examines how atheists and secular humanists-lectively, "freethinkers"-have responded to the failure of secularism to become a dominant fore the United States and how they have rethought their role and strategy from that of acting as the se lar vanguard to assuming a subcultural identity and engaging in defensive competition in order to a place in American society. They have done so by adopting three strategies: (1) creating a niche secular humanism among the unchurched and "secular seekers"; (2) mimicking and adapting var aspects of evangelicalism, even as they target this movement as their main antagonist; and (3) n ing use of minority discourse and identity politics.

Religious individualization or secularization? Testing hypotheses of religious change--the case of Eastern and Western Germany.

Abstract: The individualization thesis advanced by sociologists of religion such as Grace Davie, Daniele Hervieu-Leger, Michael Kruggeler, Thomas Luckmann, Hubert Knoblauch, Wade Clark Roof, Wayne E. Baker, and others has become increasingly widespread especially in Europe within the sociology of religion. In contrast to the secularization theory it assumes that processes of modernization will not lead to a decline in the social significance of religion, but rather to a change in its social forms. According to the individualization theory, traditional and institutionalized forms of religiosity will be increasingly replaced by more subjective ones detached form church, individually chosen, and syncretistic in character. The article examines the empirical applicability of the individualization thesis on the basis of how religiosity and church affiliation have evolved in Germany over the past 50 years. It comes to the conclusion that the rise of individually determined non-church religiosity cannot compensate for the losses of institutionalized religiosity, since non-church religiosity remains rather marginal and is interwoven with traditional Christian religiosity. Religious individualization is only a component of the predominant secularization process.

Democracy and Religion: Theoretical and Empirical Observations on the Relationship between Christianity, Islam and Liberal Democracy

Abstract: This paper addresses the issue of the compatibility of Islam and democracy from the angle of empirical democratic theory and in a broad historical and comparative perspective. This includes the argument of, and evidence for, a Christian rooting of modern democracy. On the one hand, recent data and cross-time comparisons confirm that demo cracy's roots are in countries which are culturally shaped by Christianity. Religious traditions and institutions clearly provide constraints and opportunities for liberal democracies and processes of democratisation. Within the Christian tradition, distinctions between Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and Protestantism (also within Protestantism) matter, and so do different degrees of secularisation or specific patterns of Church–State relations. Religions that contain and prescribe an holistic view of society, especially Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Islam, tend to restrict the emergence and development of liberal democracies, and civil liberties in particular. On ...

Habermas and the `Post-Secular Society':

Abstract: The article appraises Habermas's recent writings on theology and social theory and their relevance to a new sociology of religion in the `post-secular society'. Beginning with Kant's Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Habermas revisits his earlier thesis of the `linguistification of the sacred', arguing for a `rescuing translation' of the traditional contents of religious language through pursuit of a via media between an overconfident project of modernizing secularization, on the one hand, and a fundamentalism of religious orthodoxies, on the other. Several questions, however, must be raised about this current project. How far can Habermas engage adequately with religious ideas of the absolute while still retaining certain broadly functionalist theoretical premises? Is the notion of an ongoing secularization process in the `post-secular society' a contradiction in terms? What appropriate `limits and boundaries' are to be accepted between the domains of knowledge and faith, and how strictly can t...

Technological Modernization, the Internet, and Religion in Singapore

Abstract: This study critically examines the ways in which technological modernization and religion co-exist and mutually reinforce one another within the Singaporean context. Interviews with religious leaders of a diverse set of faiths in Singapore about how they understand the role of information technology in religious practice reveal a broad-based acceptance of the Internet and other information technologies and little sense of a danger to religious faith. Contrary to the proposals of secularization theory, these findings suggest that various religious communities have adopted and in some cases embrace the Internet as part of their contemporary religious mission and strategy for growth. The findings further contribute to historical research on the social construction of technology and lend support to emergent research on the spiritual shaping of Internet technology by religious communities seeking to integrate the Internet into their everyday social and religious practices in wired contexts such as Singapore.

The Religious, the Secular, and Literary Studies: Rethinking the Secularization Narrative in Histories of the Profession

Abstract: istories of the profession of literary studies have long been underwritten by a narrative of secularization. It seems gener- ally accepted that while the discipline and its practitioners were once more religious, literary studies is now a decidedly secular enter- prise. The assumed fact of secularization thus serves as stable grounds for constructing our professional histories and identities. Recent work in a number of disciplines, however, has been challenging the general narrative of secularization, in large part by rethinking assumptions about both the religious and the secular. 1 As one of the leading voices in this effort has recently stated, "a straightforward narrative of progress from the religious to the secular is no longer acceptable." 2 If literary studies were to come to terms with such a claim, it would need to reexamine one of the major assumptions of its professional history. As a step toward making a case for that reexamination, this essay will survey some of the relevant theoretical reconsiderations of the religious and the secular. These insights will then serve as a basis for examining some aspects of current historical understandings of the profession and for speculating about some ways that this history could be reconceived. In some cases "secularization" refers specifically to the disestablishment of church affiliations with the state or the university. 3 The more general kind of secularization under consideration here is cogently summarized by Linell Cady: as part of the progress toward modernism and liberalism in the nineteenth century, the story of secularization narrates a triumph of empiricism over superstition, reason over faith, and the emancipation of all spheres—science, knowledge, the market, the state—from the oppressive and authoritarian "yoke of religion." 4 Secular thought and discourse do not so much replace religious thought and discourse as they displace them to the private domain of personal experience, belief, and practice. As a result, secular institutions—such as the emerging research university—become the place for a public discourse based on scientific evidence, objective reason, and disciplined methodology.

The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World and Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey

Abstract: The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. By Partha Chatterjee. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 173p. 20.00 paper. Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey. By Esra Ozyurek. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. 227p. 21.95 paper. Few leaders have been as lionized by their people decades after their deaths or have influenced their nation's political development as much as Turkey's Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. In the wake of World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Ataturk (an honorary title meaning “father of the Turks”) led a war of national independence, established the Turkish Republic, and introduced a series of modernizing/westernizing reforms that included secularization of the state, relative emancipation of women, and westernization of the alphabet, dress, and the legal code.

Rationalizing Religion: Religious Conversion, Revivalism and Competition in Singapore Society

Abstract: Examining modernity and religion this book disputes the widely-spread secularization hypothesis. Using the example of Singapore, as well as comparative data on religion in China, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia, it convincingly argues that rapid social change and modernity have not led here to the decline of religion but on the contrary, to a certain revivalism. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected over a period of twenty years, the author analyzes the nature of religious change in a society with a complex ethnic and religious composition. What happens when there are so many religions co-existing in such close proximity? Given the level of religious competition, there is a process of the intellectualization; individuals shift from an unthinking and passive acceptance of religion to one where there is a tendency to search for a religion regarded as systematic, logical and relevant.

Religions and education in England: social plurality, civil religion and religious education pedagogy

Abstract: In England, religious groups have been involved since the nineteenth century in partnership with the state in the provision of schools and the curriculum subject of religious education. Institutionally, the Church of England holds a privileged place as the established church. Changes in society have led to more equality within education between religious traditions, initially for the Roman Catholic and Jewish communities and more recently for other traditions. These changes included increasing secularisation in the 1960s and 1970s; and the pluralisation of society, mainly through migration. Britain has had long experience of migration and settlement of peoples, especially from former colonies in South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. In the light of the 2001 census data, considered together with figures on regular church attendance, Britain might be described as a society combining various kinds of Christian, secular and multifaith elements.

Religious trends and social integration: Muslim minorities in the Netherlands

Abstract: In this dissertation, I set out to describe religiosity and religious trends among the Dutch Muslim population, and to assess the influence of the social integration of Muslims in co-ethnic minority and majority social networks. Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands migrated from countries in which the vast majority of the population is Muslim (such as Turkey and Morocco), to a relatively secular context, in which Islam is truly a religion of immigrants. The second generation is currently growing up, and is caught between the religious world of their parents and the broader secular environment. In addition to being relatively secular, attitudes towards Muslims in the Netherlands have become quite negative in recent periods. Against this background, I asked what were the trends in religiosity of immigrants and their offspring and how these relate to their social integration. Contrary to expectations from a secularisation perspective, I did not find strong evidence of religious decline over time or generations. Rather, my analyses show relatively stable religious alignment of Turkish- and Moroccan-Dutch populations at a very high level over time. Being Muslim remains an important part of the social identities of many of the Turkish- and Moroccan-Dutch across both generations. Moreover, religious identification has clear behavioural implications so that most self-identified Muslims engage in some form of religious practice. Finally, religiosity is also consequential in terms of attitudes towards crucial life choices (such as partner choice) and towards religion in the public domain (such as the role of religion in politics). In line with the key role of embeddedness within the minority group in explaining high degrees of religious continuity, religion is successfully transmitted within immigrant families and further reinforced by co-ethnic friends, and to a lesser extent by the presence of co-ethnic neighbours. At the same time, I found that the more Dutch majority friends Muslims have, and the more they identify as Dutch, the less religious they are. The role of the majority however, is smaller than that of the minority in predicting religiosity, particularly religious practice. The fact that social integration in the majority group does not manifest itself in lower levels of religiosity among the second generation as compared to the first may be related to relatively high levels of ethnic segregation along with negative experiences of discrimination, which tend to reinforce religiosity. Previous expectations and findings in the Netherlands of religious decline across generations and over time are challenged by my research on most recent data. I even find some support for increased practice among the second generation in recent years, off-setting a downward trend among the first generation

Spiritual, But Religious

Abstract: Based on ethnographic research with feminist political activists who identify as Catholic, United Church Protestant, or Neo-Pagan, this article examines the familiar distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’. This contrast engages issues of secularization and the role of religions in the public sphere. In such a distinction, ‘religion’ is associated with institution and societal pressure, whereas ‘spirituality’ relates to personal experience, privacy, and individuality. I argue that, within social justice activist circles, the language of ‘spirituality’ becomes useful in talking across institutional and ideological boundaries. While ‘religion’ is considered too limited, linked to public behaviour and institutionalization, ‘spirituality’ becomes acceptable in public discourse. This usage completely reverses the distinctions that most scholars, popular culture in general, and my participants in particular, would make between ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’, as well as public and private. With this rev...

The Re-enchantment of the World: Art versus Religion

Abstract: Preface and acknowledgements I. Spheres of Meaning II. Secularization, secularism and disenchantment III. Seeing the sacred IV. Telling a different story V. Singing a new song VI. Replacing sacred space VII. The art of festival and the dance of life Conclusion Bibliography Index

Religion and culture in early modern Europe, 1500-1800

Abstract: In the pre-industrial societies of early modern Europe, religion was a vessel of fundamental importance in making sense of personal and collective social, cultural and spiritual exercises. Developments from this era had immediate impact on these societies, much of which resonates to the present day. Published in German seven years ago, Kaspar von Greyerz important overview and interpretation of the religions and cultures of Early Modern Europe now appears in the English language for the first time. He approaches his subject matter with the concerns of a social anthropologist, rejecting the conventional dichotomy between popular and elite religion to focus instead on religion in its everyday cultural contexts. Concentrating primarily on Central and Western Europe, von Greyerz analyzes the dynamic strengths of early modern religion in three parts. First, he identifies the changes in religious life resulting from the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. He then reveals how the dynamic religious climate triggered various radical and separatist movements, such as the Anabaptists, puritans, and Quakers, and how the newfound emphasis on collective religious identity contributed to the marginalization of non-Christians and outsiders. Last, von Greyerz investigates the broad and still much divided field of research on secularization during the period covered. While many large-scale historical approaches to early modern religion have concentrated on institutional aspects, this important study consciously neglects these elements to provide new and fascinating insights. The resulting work delves into the many distinguishing marks of the period: religious reform and renewal, the hotly debated issue of "confessionalism", social inclusion and exclusion, and the increasing fragmentation of early modern religiosity in the context of the Enlightenment. In a final chapter, von Greyerz addresses the question as to whether early modern religion carried in itself the seeds of its own relativization.

Outwitting the Developed Countries? Existential Insecurity and the Global Resurgence of Religion

Abstract: Underdevelopment is also a state of mind, and understanding it as a state of mind, or as a form of consciousness, is the critical problem. Understanding development as a state of mind occurs when mass needs are converted to the demand for new brands of packaged solutions which are forever beyond the reach of the majority. (1) --Ivan Illich We live in a world that is not supposed to exist. Religion was supposed to decline with modernization and economic development. (2) Depending on your preferred version of the end of history, Marxist or socialist ideology were supposed to mobilize the wretched of earth to overthrow capitalism and imperialism, or capitalism and liberal democracy were supposed to transform the world. Yet over the past thirty years, to the surprise of Western governments and social scientists, it has been religion rather than secular ideology that has increasingly mobilized people in developing countries. This global resurgence of religion is transforming foreign policy debates regarding diplomacy, national security, democracy promotion and development assistance. (3) Scholars of international relations have increasingly examined the global resurgence of religion over the past decade. Various concepts--religious radicalism, extremism, militancy, revivalism, resurgence and fundamentalism--have been used to label, define and describe the global religious phenomena. Scholars simply do not agree on what these concepts are supposed to convey about religion and politics, what social or political groups they refer toy--the BJP in India, the AKP in Turkey, Egypt's Muslim Brothers, the Christian Coalition in the United States--nor what they convey about religion and international relations. This disagreement is demonstrated in the Fundamentalism Project, the MacArthur Foundation's massively funded research on religion worldwide led by Martin E. Marty, a leading church historian at the University of Chicago and R. Scott Appleby, a leading scholar of Catholic studies at the University of Notre Dame. This analytical and conceptual problem is also seen more popularly in "God's Warriors," CNN's August 2007 documentary on religion and world politics. (4) Both studies equated serious religiosity with fundamental ism, which remains a popular interpretation of the role of religion in international relations. (5) However, the concept of a global resurgence of religion has been challenged by a revised version of the theory of secularization. The orthodox theory argued that secularization, a decline in the importance and influence of religion in public and personal life, is part of modernization and economic development. (6) Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart argue, in contrast to the orthodox theory, that the world is at least as religious as it was several decades ago. They even concede that religions around the world are becoming stronger. This does not lead them to discard the theory of secularization, but to revise it and to try to make it more relevant to the study of religion and politics in the 21st century. (7) In order to bring the theory of secularization up to date, Norris and Inglehart propose a thesis of existential security. They argue that in many parts of the world, in the North, or the developed countries, secularization continues to spread. They also argue that religion continues to lose its social and political significance as a consequence of modernization and human development, except in areas lacking existential security Existential insecurity is something broadly, but not exclusively experienced by people in developing countries; poor communities in developed countries also experience it. In other words, when people feel relatively secure and comfortable with their material surroundings--like most people in the developed world--then everything else being equal, there will be a decline in religion. This, according to the theory, has happened in all Western countries, except the United States. …

‘Disturbing the Complacency of Religion’? The Evangelical Crusades of Dr Billy Graham and Father Patrick Peyton in Britain, 1951–54

Abstract: This article explores some little-examined aspects of the widespread revival of religion in Britain in the 1950s through a close examination of the evangelistic crusades of the Baptist minister Dr Billy Graham and the Irish-American Roman Catholic priest, Fr Patrick Peyton. Against the backdrop of the ‘secularization debate’, which continues to dominate the existing historiography of the period, it suggests that a re-examination of the role of religion in English society might provide new and valuable insights into the broader social and cultural preoccupations of the post-war era. Employing a cross-denominational approach it argues that, much to the surprise of some contemporary commentators, the considerable appeal of these religious crusaders lay in their ability to articulate common fears and anxieties about the individual, the family, and Cold War society within a religious context. Moreover, from a contemporary historical perspective, it questions whether the appeal of Graham's and Peyton's evangelism is better viewed not as an instance of an ‘illusory’ religious revival of old-fashioned Christianity before a plunge into ‘secularism’, but rather as an illustration of a broader and hitherto unexplored shift in post-war England towards new configurations of religiosity.

The Gravestone Index: Tracking Personal Religiosity Across Nations, Regions, and Periods*

Abstract: One need only glance at our newspaper headlines to realize that religion has become an urgent factor in U.S. public life, to a degree seemingly without precedent in the nation's history. (1) Thus we can hardly ignore the lively current discourse involving matters of faith in U.S. foreign policy, in domestic political business from the federal level down to the most local, in medical research and practice, in school curricula, and questions of public prayer and religious displays. Such a situation prompts this geographer to pose three interrelated questions: Are we indeed witnessing a meaningful recent upsurge in religiosity in the United States? Whatever may have been happening of late, can we detect regional differences in the phenomenon? How exceptional is the U.S. experience when compared with that in other First World countries? AN AMBIGUOUS SCENE No clear-cut answers are forthcoming for the initial question, given the fact that both empirical evidence and expert opinions are so at odds. On one side of the debate we find worthy scholars maintaining that a new religious age dawned in the late-twentieth-century United States. Thus Harvey Cox asserted that "we are definitely in a period of renewed religious vitality, another 'great awakening' if you will" (1995, xvi). If mainline denominations have lost much ground in recent decades, Cox and others in his camp believe such attrition is more than made up by a sharp rise in Pentecostalism and other enthusiastic fundamentalist creeds as well as by nontraditional forms of spirituality. In the same vein, Donald Miller advanced the notion of a "Second Reformation among American Protestants" (1997), and Robert William Fogel writes exuberantly about a "Fourth Great Awakening" beginning in the late 1960s (2000, 25-28). (2) In more temperate language, Barry Kosmin and Seymour Lachman speculated that "our expectations are that religious interest will rise during the 1990s as we approach a new millennium with all its hopes and fears for the future" (1993, 283). And a Gallup Organization study found that The percentage of Americans who say they feel the need in their lives to experience spiritual growth has surged twenty-four points in just four years from 58% in 1994 to 82% in 1998. The percentage that say they have thought a lot about "the basic meaning and value of their lives" has swelled eleven points--from 58% in 1985 to 69% today. Clearly much is stirring in the spiritual life of the populace as we move into a new century. (Gallup and Lindsay 1999, 1-2) On the other hand, some observers remain unconvinced as to any general reinvigoration of religiosity, among them Roger Finke (2005) and Finke and Rodney Stark, who claim that an "Evangelical Eruption" has been going on steadily since colonial days (2005, 244-248) and that recent defections from mainline Protestantism and Roman Catholicism are roughly balanced by the folks recruited into fundamentalist and nontraditional congregations. Quite similar is the watchful skepticism of Ronald Johnstone (2004, 283-286) and Andrew Greeley (1991). Providing a nuanced perspective is the Religious-Market Model (Stark and Bainbridge 1987; Chaves and Cann 1992; Finke and Iannaccone 1993; Chaves 1994; Stark and Iannaccone 1994; Finke and Stark 2005), which holds that the demand for religion is essentially constant over time and that the key variable is the amount and variety of religious services being supplied. But, in strong opposition to the foregoing views, we have subscribers to the Secularization Thesis, the doctrine long dominant among social scientists that modernization automatically, inevitably brings about a falling away from inherited forms of faith and radical declines in church membership and attendance and in private religious practice. (3) Perhaps no one more ardently champions this paradigm than Steve Bruce. In His God Is Dead: Secularization in the West he devotes an entire chapter to the United States (2002, 204-228), where he argues that, despite the nation's apparent exceptionalism, secularization must eventually prevail. …

Universal history from counter-reformation to enlightenment

Abstract: Historical scholarship often relies on intermittent adjustments rather than radical innovation. Through a close reading of three different universal histories published between 1690 and 1760, this essay argues that the secularization of world history in the age of Enlightenment was an incomplete and often unintended process. Nonetheless, one of the most significant changes in this period was the centering of universal history in Europe, a process that accompanied the desacralization of the story of man. Once human progress was embraced as a universal process, the story of the development of the arts and sciences gradually eclipsed the non-European cultures that had formerly played a central role in the Christian narrative of human history.