Global Secularization Paradigm

The concept of secularization is controversial. Though ideas of secularization dominated sociological studies of religion through the 1960s and 1970s, the meaning of the term broadened to the point where its utility in describing the relationship between religion and society had been compromised and scholars began to criticize it. Criticisms tend to converge on the observable fact that religion has not disappeared; it remains a force in the lives of people and proves its power politically and culturally through revolutions both peaceful and violent.

In 1993, R. Stephen Warner encapsulated these criticisms and described a developing paradigm in the sociological study of religion in the United States. The new approach shifts attention from declining religion to how the supply of and demand for religion vary according to whether and how much governments regulate the religious market and shift attention away from the European experience toward the U.S. experience of religion and society.

In response to this declaration of a new paradigm in the sociology of religion, other scholars pointed to several still fruitful strands of secularization. One of these paths, secularization as differentiation at the institutional level, has mounted the most promising defense of the old paradigm. These scholars point out that the new paradigm à la Warner does little to challenge the classical insight that religion as an institution in society is now one institution among others and that the relative strength of religion as an authoritative institution has declined over time.

Peter Beyer is one of the chief proponents of this approach to secularization, and his work documents how this manifests at a global level as a dilemma for religion. Religion is the only institution whose function is to speak about the whole of reality, while at the same time the language and logic of religion work best within the functional sphere of religion. Thus, the Islamic Revolution in Iran was successful in instituting a religious state structure more aligned with religious principles, but these very principles conflict with a global political institutional system that is highly secular and frowns on sectarian guided government.

Frank Lechner draws on David Martin's general model of secularization to sketch a larger point about globalization. Martin's general theory of secularization posits that the frame through which a society or nation enters the institutional differentiating process has lasting effects for how a society relates to religion. For Lechner, Martin's approach provides a distinctive frame for thinking about globalization: The notion that states enter the modern era with respect to religion and state also has consequences for how a state enters the global era.

Little empirical research has been conducted with respect to these two insights, but together they represent a potential research program for students of religion and globalization. Examining the relationship of religion and society at the global level explodes the focus on either European or North American exceptionalism and expands the classical secularization paradigm into a global era.