Secularization Thesis Short version C Wright Mills Once

Secularization Thesis • Short version (C. Wright Mills): • Once the world was filled with the sacred-in thought, practice, and institutional form. After the Reformation and the Renaissance, the forces of modernization swept across the globe and secularization, a corollary historical process, loosened the dominance of the sacred. In due course, the sacred shall disappear altogether except, possibly, in the private realm.

Challenges to The Secularization Thesis • Iranian Revolution/Islamic movements • Liberation Theology/Nicaraguan Revolution • Rise of the Religious Right in the U. S. • Explosive Spread of Evangelicalism, particularly in Latin America/Africa

Strength of Religion by Level of Development

% Who Go to Church at Least Once a Week

% Who Believe in God

% Who Believe in Life After Death

• Features of “modernity” • Functional Rationality • Cultural Pluralism • Structural pluralism • Impacts on Religion • Isolation (Amish) • Decline/Death of Religion (Strong Secularization Hypothesis) • Adaptation • Resistance (Fundamentalisms, Barber’s “Jihad”? ) • Is resistance futile?

Functional Rationality • Impacts on Religion • "the infusion of rational controls through all spheres • Isolation (Amish) of human • Decline/Death of Religion (Strong experience. " Secularization Hypothesis) • Adaptation • Resistance (Is resistance futile? )

Cultural Pluralism • "the division of society into subsocieties with more or less distinct cultural traditions. " • Impacts on Religion • Isolation • Decline/Death of Religion (Strong Secularization Hypothesis) • Adaptation • Resistance

Structural Pluralism/Differentiation • "the historically unique dichotomization of life into public and private spheres. " • Impacts on Religion • Isolation • Decline/Death of Religion (Strong Secularization Hypothesis) • Adaptation • Resistance