Secularization, R.I.P - rest in peace

Sociology of Religion, Fall, 1999 by Rodney Stark

Fourth, secularization is regarded as an absorbing state - that once achieved it is irreversible, instilling mystical immunity. However, events and trends in eastern Europe and the nations of the former Soviet Union do not support these expectations. Instead, as Andrew Greeley (1994: 272) so aptly put it, after more than 70 years of militant efforts by the state to achieve secularization, "St. Vladimir has routed Karl Marx."

Fifth and finally, while most discussions of secularization focus on Christendom, all leading proponents of the thesis apply it globally. Thus, it is not merely belief in Christ that is "doomed to die out," but, as Wallace explained in the passage quoted above, "belief in supernatural powers," and this is going to happen "all over the world." Hence, Allah is fated to join Jehovah as only "an interesting historical memory." However, no one has bothered to explain this to Muslims, as will be seen.

Now for specifics.

THE MYTH OF RELIGIOUS DECLINE

Many scholars appear to believe that if rates of individual religious belief and participation for most nations of northern and western Europe were graphed, they would be reciprocal to the [middle dot]trends in modernization. Beginning with high levels of faith and practice at the end of the eighteenth century, the master trends are assumed to have been ever downward, culminating in very low current levels of religiousness. And the latter are regarded as but insignificant residuals, soon to disappear too (Wilson 1966, 1982; Bruce 1995; Lechner 1991, 1996). For evidence in support of these claims, we are directed to note a steep decline in church attendance in much of Europe and to infer from this an erosion of individual faith as well, on the grounds that participation is low because of a lack of the beliefs needed to motivate attendance. These views are wrong in all respects.

David Martin (1965) was the first contemporary sociologist to reject the secularization thesis outright, even proposing that the concept of secularization be eliminated from social scientific discourse on the grounds that it had served only ideological and polemical, rather than theoretical, functions and because there was no evidence in favor of any general or consistent "shift from a religious period in human affairs to a secular period" (Martin 1991: 465). And, astounding as it may seem, the secularization thesis has been inconsistent with plain facts from the very start. For example, having noted the popularity of the secularization doctrine among eighteenth-century philosophers, Alexis de Tocqueville then commented:

Unfortunately, the facts by no means accord with their theory. There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equalled by their ignorance and debasement; while in America, one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world, the people fulfill with fervor all the outward duties of religion ([1840] 1956: 319).

In the more than 150 years since Tocqueville made those observations, not only has American religiousness not gone into decline, the rate of church membership actually has more than trebled (Finke and Stark 1992), while other indices of commitment have held steady or have risen modestly (Greeley 1989). Moreover, although the American case continues to offer a devastating challenge to the secularization doctrine, it fails in Europe too. First, there has been no demonstrable long-term decline in European religious participation! Granted, participation probably has varied from tittle to time in response to profound social dislocations such as wars and revolutions, but the far more important point is that religious participation was very low in northern and western Europe many centuries before the onset of modernization.