Secularization

Defining Secularization

The etymology of the term is worth considering. Secularization derives from the word saeculum, used in Latin Christendom to indicate profane time as opposed to eternal, “higher” time and synonymous with century or age—markers of time outside the sacred realm. In its earliest uses, secularization meant the transfer of certain functions from the church to the control of lay persons.

Sociologists of religion, however, are by no means bound by etymology. Some scholars define secularization as the institutional differentiation of church and state, others as the privatization of religious faith and practice, and yet others as the decline and eventual disappearance altogether of religious belief and practice. Notably, the related terms of secular, secularity, and secularism are likewise muddled and debated concepts.

It is useful to distinguish the multiple meanings of the term before addressing their potential [Page 1143]relevance to theories of secularization. Secularization is understood to mean any one, or a combination, of the following:

• A decline of religious practice (e.g., churchgoing)
• A decline of religious belief and practice
• A decline of church/religious authority over belief and practice
• Privatization, and perhaps marginalization or even complete absence, of religious belief and practice
• Division between the spheres of influence of religious institutions and the state (church-state separation)
• Absence or disappearance of religion from the public sphere

Theories of Secularization

The sociological study of religion features many shades of a general thesis or theory of secularization. That thesis assumes a decline of religion accompanying the spread of modernity. The founding fathers of sociology, including Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, and Sigmund Freud, all took for granted this inverted relationship between religion and modernity. In the 1960s, more empirically grounded studies were produced to support the secularization thesis. One of the most influential articulations came from Peter Berger in his 1967 book, The Sacred Canopy. Here, he describes religion's role as a kind of canopy, a social construction that projected a sacred cosmos and in so doing served to shelter individuals and society from a seemingly meaningless existence. This canopy began to fall apart with modernization, which brought secularization in a dialectical relationship with pluralism. Put simply, modernization led to the increased exposure to religious creeds different from one's own, which, in turn, undermined exclusive truth claims and, ultimately, faith itself. Other leading expressions of secularization theory in that period came from Brian Wilson and Thomas Luckmann.

David Martin was among the first to critique the secularization thesis by introducing critical nuance, first in 1969 with his The Sacred and the Secular and then in 1978 with his General Theory of Secularization. Martin focuses on the distinctions within Europe in terms of the pace and nature of secularization across different cultural contexts. He describes a set of “universal processes” of secularization that tend to occur, other things being equal. But given that things rarely are equal, Martin explores the various factors influencing different secularization patterns.

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