Secularization and Modernization: The Failure of a ‘Grand Narrative’

Abstract

<jats:title>ABSTRACT</jats:title><jats:p>This historiographical review offers a critical reconsideration of a central component of modernization theory: the model of secularization devised within the sociology of religion, and especially the version sustained by sociologists in the UK. It compares that model with the results of historical research in a range of themes and periods, and suggests that those results are now often radically inconsistent with this sociological orthodoxy. It concludes that an older historical scenario which located in the early modern period the beginnings of a ‘process’ of secularization that achieved its natural completion in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries is finally untenable, and it proposes a broader, more historical conception of ‘religion’ able to accommodate both persistent religiosity and undoubted changes in religious behaviour.</jats:p>

David Martin’s The Religious and the Secular (1969): an Underestimated Masterwork in the Study of Western Secularization

“…Clark announced that the "grand narrative" of "secularization" had straightforwardly "failed", and that "David Martin's challenge in 1965 to dispense with the category 'secularization' should now be re-examined". 79 Postsecular scholarship has repeatedly found itself returning to Martin's early work for inspiration. 80 In this exciting new intellectual context, it seems increasingly likely that Martin's early critiques may finally be restored to their rightfully central place in Western secularization theory.…”

Sovereignty and Martyrdom: A Sociological Sketch

“…This is particularly true of secularization and the development of the nation‐state; since the opening of the Global War on Terror, sociologists of religion and politics have begun to revisit those evolutionary models of modernization which prophesied the inevitable and universal rise of secularized nation‐states. A revisionist group of scholars now suggests that the role of religion from European politics has been misunderstood, rejecting the orthodox position that religion and politics have been distinguishable and antagonistic forces in European history (e.g., Clark, ; Gorski, ; Martin, ).…”

Małżeństwo z rozsądku: katolicyzm i nowoczesność w dziewiętnastowiecznej Europie

“…Jeden z badaczy zwrócił na przykład uwagę, że analizując spadek praktyk religijnych w XX w., trzeba zwrócić uwagę, iż wiek ten był w ogóle wiekiem spadku partycypacji we wszystkich instytucjach społecznych -partiach, klubach, stowarzyszeniach czy związkach. Spadek uczestnictwa w związkach wyznaniowych, tam, gdzie występował, jest więc częścią tego szerszego trendu, a nie odrębnym zjawiskiem 73 . Jeśli teoria sekularyzacji jest akceptowalna, to pod warunkiem, że sekularyzację będziemy rozumieć w sensie węższym, jako rozdzielenie sfery państwowej i religijnej.…”