The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

Secularizationâ 307â

statement is, deliberately, somewhat less than straightforward. For the reading I have just suggested to be the case, one would have to equate the proposition that ‘far fewer people were religious than before’ with the idea that ‘the world was becoming increasingly secular’. However, on closer inspection, I would like to suggest that these two phrases are not necessarily synonymous. And this is, in part, due to the disparity between the meanings attributed to the term ‘secular’ and its derivatives.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the term ‘secular’ is derived from the same etymological root (L. sæculum) as the French word siècle, meaning ‘century’, or ‘age’. Interestingly, this derivation is evident in the astronomical use of the word secular to talk about processes of change over long periods of time, such as changes in planetary orbits. However, most people are perhaps more familiar with the usage that originated in early ecclesiastical texts, in which the term ‘secular’ was commonly opposed to ‘regular’. ‘Regular’, in this context, was a term applied to those persons subject to the rule of a monastic order. Thus, its opposite – ‘secular’ – was used to denote worldly affairs. Today, this is the most commonly understood meaning of ‘secular’.

The principal entry for the term ‘secularization’ in the OED emphasizes its institutional character. There, secularization is described as: ‘the conversion of an ecclesiastical or religious institution or its property to secular possession and use’. In contrast ‘secularism’, some sociologists of religion have argued, has a more personal orientation. It is the belief that morality should only take into account human and visible considerations. Secularists do not consider that moral codes should take into account, for instance, the existence of God, or of an afterlife. Whereas secularization is supposed to take place in the ‘public’ arena, secularism is a ‘private’ affair. Secularization, they have said, refers only to the diminishing of the public significance of religion. It does not refer to private levels of religiosity. It is, therefore, not synonymous with secularism. In fact, they have argued that the withdrawal of religion from the public domain might well imply an increase in personal forms of religiosity.

But, to complicate matters, this distinction between private religiosity and public religion has not been held universally by sociologists of religion. Peter Berger made the suggestion early on that: ‘As there is a secularization of society and culture, so is there a secularization of consciousness’ (Berger 1969: 107–8). He felt that secularization could have a private as well as a public component. It should also be noted that some who have insisted on the existence of secularization have not defined it as an irrevocable and irreversible trend. Instead, they have asserted that secularization ebbs and flows. Old religious forms die out, but they are replaced. Yet others have used the term secularization to describe a shift from ‘other-worldly’ to ‘this-worldly’ concerns within religious organizations, rather than in society at large.

Secularization theory, in other words, is one of those topics where the same word has been used in various ways on different occasions. However, as already noted, this confusion over meaning has not been the only reason for the disagreements over secularization. So, to complete our preparations for an examination of these debates, we should become conversant with the ideological antecedents of the different views being argued. To do so, we shall look briefly at the work of the two men widely regarded as the founding fathers of the sociology of religion, Max Weber (1864–1920) and Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), and at the goals of ‘the Enlightenment project’.

308â Key topics in the study of religions

The antecedents of contemporary secularization theories

The Enlightenment project that matured in the eighteenth century represented a revolutionary intellectual movement. Enlightenment thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, Voltaire and Thomas Paine believed that there was an underlying order to the world that could be progressively understood through the use of the rational faculties of men. Intellectual progress would be achieved by abandoning articles of faith, by rising above instinctual drives, and by renouncing irrationality. They assumed that men could lift themselves out of the mire of received wisdom and become autonomous human subjects. Men were capable of discovering foundational truths about the nature of reality by relying on intelligence rather than on divine revelation. These discoveries would come about by focusing on the objective facts of the world, and so discerning the laws governing life. Everything could ultimately be understood through science and rational thought. Then, once this understanding had been achieved, humanity would be able to control both Nature and its own destiny.

These assumptions permeated the intellectual milieu in which Max Weber lived, and the works of Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) also represented major influences. Weber did not uncritically accept all of the tenets of Enlightenment thinking. He believed, for example, that there are some spheres in which science has no role to play. Nevertheless, Enlightenment assumptions are clearly visible in a number of his key ideas. Weber assumed that the foremost trend in Western society was towards increasing rationalization. He felt that social progress involved a move away from traditional, localized and sentimental ways of life and towards ordered bureaucracies and centralized control. Weber found this modern trend profoundly disturbing, but also inevitable. He saw it as the logical outcome of the rise of the nation state, and of capitalism. In particular, he believed, modernizing forces such as urbanization, the specialization of labour, and industrialization would have a profound impact on religion.

Weber argued – nostalgically, it has been said – that traditional life was permeated with a magical enchantment. Rationalization, he predicted, would lead to a progressive ‘disenchantment’ and, ultimately, to a world in which religion would no longer play a role in public life. This was not to say that religion would necessarily disappear altogether. However, it would increasingly become a matter of private choice. Weber believed this secularization would gradually occur because religion would no longer be able to exist in a state of unquestioned authority. Weber also suggested that Protestantism carried within itself the seeds of secularization. First, this was because it encouraged the idea that brotherly love could be manifested through ‘a peculiarly objective and impersonal character, that of service in the interest of the rational organization of our social environment’ (Weber 1930: 109). Thus, it promoted rationalization and, therefore, disenchantment. Second, he argued, Protestantism encouraged scientists to reflect upon the natural laws of divine creation as a way of knowing God. Since it allowed scientific explanations to undermine religious ones, its own internal logic would eventually undercut itself.

Weber has been described by a number of biographers as a brilliant scholar and a troubled soul. Unlike some contemporaries, he did not see the decline of religious influence as a liberating outcome of modernity. He simply saw it as unavoidable, given the social forces at play. Durkheim’s position was very different. He was an atheist, and as influenced by Enlightenment thinking as Weber. But his assessment of the future of religion was far more optimistic. His view was that religious sentiment was essential to society, whether traditional or modern. Religion, he argued, enhances feelings of social solidarity. He, therefore, did not

Secularizationâ 309â

see it as something that could ever be outgrown by mankind, or as something that could be fully separated from society.

So Durkheim believed that religion would never lose its social significance. Instead, he maintained that: ‘there is something eternal in religion that is destined to outlive the succession of particular symbols in which religious thought has clothed itself’(Durkheim1912: 429). Religion would persist, not because it was necessarily true but because it had a public function to perform. Society required religion in order to maintain social cohesion and to strengthen collective feelings and ideas. He believed that forms of religion could be expected to change as society changes. But, Durkheim concluded, religion itself could never be extinguished or pushed to the margins, even when disputed by science. Science had the capability to challenge outmoded religious dogmas. But new religious forms, more in keeping with the times, would inevitably arise to take their place. Durkheim acknowledged that religion was apparently in decline during his lifetime. But he felt that a resurrection was imminent: ‘In short, the former gods are growing old or dying, and others have not been born … [but] A day will come when our societies once again will know hours of creative effervescence during which new ideals will again spring forth and new formulas emerge to guide humanity’ (ibid.: 429).

The ideas of these two men have, at least implicitly, dominated more recent debates over secularization. Part of their legacy is evident in the type of grand theorizing involved. Weber explicitly rejected the notion that religion is generalizable in an ahistorical sense. But both men sought to understand the underlying laws governing religion, and offered large-scale explanatory models based on the trends they observed. Contemporary theories of secularization fit neatly into this genre. Their influence is also visible in the assumptions underpinning contemporary arguments. All presume that social conditions have an impact on religion. But some, including Bryan Wilson and Roy Wallis, are explicitly Weberian in orientation. Others, such as Rodney Stark, Grace Davie and Charles Taylor, exhibit elements of Durkheimian thought in their challenges to the views of the former. To review the later perpetuation of the ideas of Weber and Durkheim, I shall turn first to the classic secularization thesis outlined by the Oxford sociologist Bryan Wilson. I will then examine the reactions of other scholars, before making some more general observations on the debate.

The great secularization debate

Bryan Wilson was seen by many to be the foremost British sociologist of religion of his day. His book Religion in Secular Society, published in 1966, laid out the principles of his secularization thesis and became a founding document of the contemporary debate. Wilson defined secularization as ‘the process whereby religious thinking, practice and institutions lose social significance’ (Wilson 1966: 14). His argument was that religion had formerly occupied a central position in society but, by the twentieth century, this was no longer the case. Wilson largely confined his analysis to Western society and, especially, to the position of religion in Britain and the United States. He agreed with Weber’s view on the secularizing character of the Protestant ethos. He also maintained, like his august intellectual predecessor, that religion must be examined in terms of its historico-social context. Wilson allowed that in countries like Japan, concomitant with industrialization, secularizing processes were discernible. However, following Weber, he asserted that secularization was more markedly evident in Christianity than in other religions around the world. The effects of secularization were, therefore, also more in evidence in Christian, and especially Protestant, countries.

310â Key topics in the study of religions

Wilson’s adoption of a Weberian conceptual framework was unambiguously evident in his view that the onset of modernizing processes in the West were linked to the emergence of Protestantism. Before the advent of Protestantism, he believed, religious understandings were adopted as axiomatic. After it, they began to be seen as matters of faith rather than universals. The Church could no longer claim to hold sway over the hearts, minds and lives of the general populace, as it had in earlier times. Institutions that had previously been ecclesiastically governed, such as hospitals, schools and universities, began to be transferred to secular authorities. By the twentieth century, Western man was increasingly more rational than before:

It seems to me difficult to maintain that man in western society is not more rational than ever he was, within the normal usage of the term ‘rational’. So much more of his ordinary behaviour is controlled by cause-and-effect thinking, even if only because he knows more about the workings of the physical and social worlds … The dominance of economic costing over spiritual aspiration in modern society, is the evidence of the growth of rationality in our social affairs, and consequently, at least in some measure, in our own habits of thought.

(ibid.: 17)

Like Weber, Wilson regarded rationalizing processes as consequences of modernity that were both inevitable and inexorable. Due to their onslaught, religion would become increasingly marginalized and lacking in social significance. This had already happened in many parts of Europe, he said, where religion had been relegated from public life. It existed mainly on the periphery of society, where it continued to flourish in the form of socially insignificant sectarian religious organizations. Indeed, sects were evidence for secularization: ‘it is in conditions in which the sacred order has been suborned to the secular – usually the religious institution to the political – as in the Roman Empire or Europe from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, or in twentieth century Japan, that sectarianism becomes most manifest and institutionalized’ (ibid.: 207). Wilson conceded that religious organizations had managed to remain in mainstream public life in the United States. However, he believed they were doomed to become increasingly bureaucratic and rationalized.

In this early book, Wilson included empirical evidence of processes of secularization. Although these processes were present in both countries, he argued, they followed different paths in Britain and the United States. In Britain, he used statistics published by a range of Protestant churches in England. The figures appeared to support his theme of a decline in religious membership and ‘the general standing of the Church in society’. Wilson chose infant baptism, confirmation, church weddings, and attendance at Sunday school and Easter communion, as indices of levels of religious participation. His conclusion was that a decline was statistically evident. Turning his attention to America, he was not convinced that the statistics he was given were fully accurate. But he allowed that religion appeared far more resilient in the United States, and that the numbers indicated that religious membership was increasing rapidly. The main thrust of his argument for secularization taking place in America, therefore, differed from that which he used for Britain. Instead, he began by querying the authenticity and depth of religious commitment in America:

The travellers of the past who commented on the apparent extensiveness of Church membership, rarely omitted to say that they found religion in America to be very

Secularizationâ 311â

superficial. Sociologists generally hold that the dominant values of American society are not religious.

(ibid.: 112)

Religious affiliation in the United States, he argued, was part and parcel of ‘being an American’. Public American religiosity, therefore, signified a social commitment rather than a sacred one. He theorized that the United States had needed to forge a common identity during the formative years of the Union, despite the plurality of its religious organizations. This need had led to the downplaying of religious difference. Religious values had thereby been eroded. Wilson suggested: ‘though religious practice has increased, the vacuousness of popular religious ideas has also increased: the content and meaning of religious commitment has been acculturated’ (ibid.: 122).

Wilson did not see the secularization he observed in both countries as being entirely dissimilar in kind. He linked secularization, wherever it occurred, to the increasingly mobile, urban and impersonal society he associated with the modern world. Looking at Britain and the United States, he also identified two other secularizing tendencies they had in common: denominationalism and ecumenicalism. Each new denomination, he said, eroded the notion of a unitary religious authority and so fuelled further secularization. Increasing numbers of denominations meant more competing views and an increase in doctrinal tension that undermined the basis of religious control. Some scholars saw ecumenicalism as a sign of a vigorous Church ready to engage with the doctrines and practices of others. For Wilson, however, ecumenicalism was a symptom of weakness rather than a sign of strength. This was because, he argued, organizations are most likely to amalgamate when they are weak. The desire for alliance leads to compromise and the amendment of commitment.

Some scholars saw the new religious movements that appeared in the West in the 1970s and 1980s as heralding the kind of religious regeneration envisaged by Durkheim. During this period, however, Wilson continued to affirm the view that, in common with sects in general, these movements were of little social consequence. In the 1990s, in a more conciliatory tone, he commented that new religions might indeed have positive benefits for individuals, and had significance on that basis. However, he saw no indication that any of them would or could transform the structure of society. They were, therefore, private forms of religion, and not to be taken as signs of the revival of public religion.

Wilson did not particularly distinguish between religious thinking and religious institutional presence in his earlier work on secularization. He believed that both, at different rates and in different ways, were under attrition in Western society. In his later work, however, he consistently reaffirmed the public character of the religious decline he was describing. In response to reactions to his earlier work, he emphasized that his own model of secularization did not necessarily imply the growth of a secular consciousness. It did not even necessarily entail the idea that most individuals living in secular societies have relinquished their interest in religion. Secularization simply meant that religion had ceased to be significant in public life.

Responses to Bryan Wilson’s theory of secularization

Wilson was far from the first to argue that secularization was taking place in the modern world. But it is his work that was most often referred to by other sociologists as ‘the classic thesis’. And it is his writings that are seen to have initiated the contemporary debate. Before

312â Key topics in the study of religions

I turn to some alternative models that have been put forward in response, it is worth first reviewing briefly a few of the criticisms made about the specific content of his argument.

In an early rebuttal of the thesis, David Martin called for the concept of secularization to be abandoned, on the grounds that it was: ‘less a scientific concept than a tool of counterreligious ideologies’ (Martin 1969: 9). Martin went on to produce an important later comparative contribution to the debate, A General Theory of Secularization, but in this early work he objected to Wilson’s position on a number of counts. One was that the notion of secularization implied a definition of religion, but religion is notoriously difficult to define. Another was that the thesis appeared to suggest that there once existed a ‘Golden Age’ of religion from whose norms we have subsequently diverged. This ‘Golden Age’, in his view, was an ideal based on representations of eleventhto thirteenth-century Catholicism. However, said Martin, no such utopian period ever existed. A third objection he raised was that the view of ‘modern man’ put forward by Wilson was ‘over-secularized’. Instead, Martin argued that contemporary society ‘remains deeply imbued with every type of superstition and metaphysic’ (ibid.: 113).

Other commentators, including Andrew Greeley, questioned the validity of the empirical evidence Wilson had marshalled (Greeley 1972). Greeley, an American priest and scholar, argued that statistics about church membership were not necessarily accurate indicators of levels of religious practice. He pointed out that many parishes did not keep records, and noted that the concept of membership is open to a number of interpretations. Different figures can be arrived at depending upon which interpretation is used. Greeley was also one of the scholars who objected to Wilson’s view of ecumenicalism as a sign of weakness. He commented that engaging in dialogue with other Churches could equally well be seen as a response to plurality, and as a sign of strength. Generally, he rejected Wilson’s suggestion that America was increasingly secular, along with the notion that modernity has a deleterious effect on religion. Agreeing with the misgivings raised by Greeley, other scholars described Wilson’s attitude towards American religiosity and, indeed, towards sectarian religion, as unduly dismissive. They took exception to his assumption that a localized European model of religious ‘authenticity’ could be taken as a universal norm. It is worth noting, however, that in this, Wilson was not alone. A number of the early sociologists who supported his thesis assumed the European model of secularization as the norm, and evidence to the contrary as merely exceptions to the rule (Casanova 1994: 22).

The ‘religious economies’ model

It was two other American scholars, Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, who began the formulation of an alternative to Wilson’s thesis. Their model was predicated on the existence of ‘religious economies’. Notably, unlike Wilson, they defined secularization as both a public and private matter. For them, it was not only as a process affecting societies, but also one to which individual religious organizations were susceptible. Stark and Bainbridge suggested that religion arises through basic social exchanges. Within social exchanges, which are economic in nature, people attempt to gain rewards and avoid costs. Religion offers rewards in the form of ‘compensators’, these being rewards that are accepted as a matter of faith. Stark’s and Bainbridge’s view was that science alone does not offer sufficient rewards to individuals. This is because, they said, science is incapable of solving the central problems of human existence. For this reason, they argued, humans have continued to postulate supernatural entities able to meet their demands.

Secularizationâ 313â

Stark and Bainbridge believed that religious revival and innovation was stimulated by supply and demand. Because of secularizing forces within organizations, they argued, religious entities that can offer powerful enough compensators are sometimes in short supply. This is because, over time, religious organizations tend to become more rational and secular. In so doing, they lose supernatural credibility. Human beings, however, have a fairly constant need for powerful religious compensators. When these compensators are in short supply, new forms of religion emerge that can meet the demand by offering the rewards necessary. In other words, the two American scholars agreed with Wilson that there was evidence of secularization. But they suggested that the history of religion exhibited patterns of cyclic decline and regeneration rather than a linear decline:

Viewed in this way, secularization is not something new under the sun. It did not begin with the rise of science. . . . [and] secularization does not bring the end of religion. Rather, secularization is self-limiting in that it stimulates significant processes of reaction in other sectors of any religious economy.

(Stark 1985: 302; italics in original)

Stark and Bainbridge also challenged Wilson’s claim that new religious movements are proof of the withdrawal of religion from public life. The two pointed to European data that showed that cults – groups inspired from somewhere besides the primary religion of the culture in which they were located – were more numerous and stronger in those regions where conventional churches were weak. The data also indicated that sects – breakaway Christian groups – abounded in areas where the Church was stronger. In Stark’s and Bainbridge’s view, these facts undermined Wilson’s thesis that there was a declining interest in religion in Europe. In fact, Europe, according to them, was not secular at all in the way envisaged by Wilson.

Stark and Bainbridge, in other words, were following a far more Durkheimian theoretical trajectory. They assumed that religion had an enduring function and that it would therefore always be needed. Disagreeing with Wilson, they saw religion as a universal that was more or less constant, and rejected the notion that it would be inexorably removed from the public sphere over time. Instead, like Durkheim, they believed that religious innovation and renewal are inevitable. They parted company from Durkheim in that the latter held that society requires religion. For Stark and Bainbridge, religion was an enduring phenomenon because of individuals’ need for compensators. Nevertheless, they still clearly owed him a substantial intellectual debt.

Perhaps at least partly because of their theoretical divergence with Weber’s vision, their thesis met with friendly ridicule on the other side of the Atlantic. Their most vocal adversary was the sociologist Roy Wallis, a former student of Wilson’s. He accepted their premise that sectarian religious organizations become more rational with the passage of time. But Wallis argued that the figures offered by Stark to substantiate the view that revival and innovation was taking place in Europe were founded on too few cases. He also cast doubt on the accuracy of Stark’s statistics, and suggested they were skewed. Wallis said that Stark should not have used numbers of cult movements in Europe as a basis for his claims that the continent was still religious. His objection was that just because someone opens an office ‘does not mean that he has any customers’ (Wallis 1986: 497). In so doing, he managed to convey the impression that the Americans had no idea about the religious situation in Europe. Therefore, their views on secularization were not to be accorded any degree of seriousness.

314â Key topics in the study of religions

The ‘rational choice’ model

Stark, however, had only just begun his amicable assault on the bastions of European sociological expertise. Following other collaborative work, he reformulated his model along more sophisticated lines with Laurence Iannaccone (Stark and Iannaccone 1994). Like that of Stark and Bainbridge before, the framework of the revamped model was economic. It assumed a fairly constant need for religion since, they said, there is always human suffering that cannot be satisfactorily addressed by other means. It also assumed religious change to be a cyclic rather than a linear process. It differed from the earlier model, however, in that it focused on supply rather than demand.

Stark and Iannaccone attributed variations in devotion to discrepancies in the supply of religious services rather than to different levels of demand, or indeed to secularizing tendencies. In fact, the model dispensed with the need to posit processes of secularization entirely. Instead, it incorporated elements of rational choice theory. Consequently, it was predicated on the assumption that a free market is always more active and efficient than one dominated by a monopoly. The two presumed that this assumption holds good when applied to the religious as well as the commercial arena. Stark and Iannaccone predicted that in those countries where there is a monopoly on religion, there is little interest in religion on the part of its population, and demand is low. Conversely, in those countries where religious organizations must compete for members, such as America, a higher degree of religious enthusiasm could be expected.

Like David Martin before them, but for different reasons, Stark and Iannaccone disagreed with the notion that there had been ‘a golden age of faith’. They rejected the received wisdom that medieval Europe was an era in which religiosity was high, because it went against what their own model predicted should have been the case. As the Church had a monopoly during that period, their theory suggested that religious enthusiasm should have been correspondingly low. The two scholars also pressed the case, as Stark had before with Bainbridge, that modern Europe was more religious than British sociologists were prepared to admit. In other words, they turned the Wilsonian version of events on its head. Their view was that a more religious Europe had not given way to an increasingly secular one. Instead, they argued that Europeans had been less interested in religion in the past. This was because Europe had been dominated by a religious monopoly. More recently, they said, this situation had given way to a more devout contemporary Europe, as it was supplied by a plurality of religious organizations. And they presented historical as well as contemporary data to support their argument.

Their critics were not slow to respond. Some took exception to the model because of its economic orientation. It was suggested that models of behaviour linked to commercial monopolies and the free market could not, and should not, be unproblematically applied to religion. Others poured scorn on the idea that religious affiliation could ever be the result of ‘rational choice’. Seeing the two as a contradiction in terms was in part perhaps because of the way in which religion has been associated with irrationality in dominant European discourses. The most vociferous critic of the new model in Britain, however, was Steve Bruce, a former student of Roy Wallis. A Professor at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, he, too, presented historical and contemporary data in support of his argument. Describing their ‘iconoclasm’ as ‘misplaced’, he, in by now time-honoured tradition, suggested that it was unfortunate that Stark and Iannaccone ‘… are not better acquainted with the work of British historians or with recent survey data. Only by making unreasonably light of the many signs of religiosity in pre-modern British culture and making unreasonably much of

Secularizationâ 315â

the very slight evidence of religious sentiment beyond the churches in contemporary Britain are they able to claim that Britain’s religious climate has not changed drastically. Britain was once religious, it is now secular’ (Bruce 1995: 428). The dismissal, once more, conveyed the distinct impression that the Americans had got ‘the Brits’, and so by implication the whole of Europe, all wrong.

Secularization and confusion

A year later, Sharon Hanson, then engaged in postgraduate work at King’s College, London, conducted an examination of the arguments over secularization. Her analysis exposed weaknesses in both camps (Hanson 1996). First, she drew attention to the fact that Bruce, Stark and Iannaccone were often talking at cross-purposes, and for this reason were not always as opposed as they appeared. One camp, she said, would often critically evaluate the claims of the other without taking into account that they were using different definitions of both secularization and religion. The result was confusion. Second, she noted that at times they seemed to use evidence to support their own view that could be more readily used to support the opposing side.

Third, said Hanson, the work she examined often relied heavily on historical data to legitimate claims. However, the data tended to be used without much circumspection: ‘Historical data is presented as unproblematic, often juxtaposed to contemporary data, without any attempt to note the difficulty of comparing contemporary and historical data. Using historical data in this way lacks rigour, sources are not properly investigated and generalisations are hastily reached’ (ibid.: 164). Hanson, additionally, pointed out that data that appears to suggest religion has lost social significance does not tell us why this might be so. Nevertheless, she said: ‘Both Stark and Iannaccone (1994) and Bruce (1995, 1996) use their purported statistical proofs and historical narrative to speak of the why. They then use this rationale as proof that religion has, indeed, lost its significance or has not done so. Thus, a cyclical self-supporting argument is set up on weak proofs and propositions, gaining artificial credibility by mere repetition’(ibid.: 164).

Notwithstanding these observations, Hanson was by no means entirely condemnatory of the positions of Bruce, Stark and Iannaccone. And all three have maintained their original allegiances thereafter (Bruce 2002; Swatos and Olson 2000). However, during the course of her critique she made a further point deserving of mention. Hanson, as others have done, noted that both critics and proponents of secularization have had a markedly ‘christocentric’ understanding of ‘religion’. The equation of Christianity with religion means that if the former appears to be in decline then so does the latter. But religious affiliation has become increasingly plural throughout the world. In some areas, it might be the case that Christianity is undergoing a decline in influence in the public sphere. Given the multitude of faiths and beliefs, however, this fact does not necessarily signal the disappearance of religion altogether.

Religious pluralism

Pursuing this line of reasoning, a third group of scholars, albeit working independently of each other, have focused on the increasingly diverse religious ‘landscape’ rather than on processes of secularization. Advocates of this approach include Peter Berger and Grace Davie. Instead of continuing the debate in terms of decline or persistence, they have identified pluralism,