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Essay on Religious Change
Pro-Secularization theory is always about, in one way or another, religion's change, then how religion is understood determines secularization theory's direction. Durkheimians, on the one hand, to whom religion refers to a set of collective representations providing moral unity to a society, either rule secularization out by definition or dread it as social disintegration. Weberians, on the other hand, to whom religion is more substantively conceptualized as bodies of beliefs and practices concerning salvation, see secularization in social change that renders these religious meanings less and less plausible. As these well-known examples illustrate, how we understand secularization's object -- religion -- has a dramatic effect on how we understand secularization. This article takes advantage of this fact in that it attempts to re-conceptualize secularization by re-conceptualizing its object.
As the United States is noteworthy not only for the variety of its religions, but also for its high level of religiosity, which challenges the sociological theory, based on European experience, that as a society becomes more advanced, more industrial, and more technological, it will become more secular. At the time of the American Revolution about 17 percent of Americans were churched. By the Civil War, the share had grown to 37 percent. Early in this century it was just over half, and in our own generation it is more than 60 percent--some portion of which consists of merely nominal members.
America does display a different sort of secularization, according to Finke and Stark, and others. Long-established Protestant denominations tend to become more liberal in doctrine. As they do, they give rise to splits by more sectarian followers of the older tradition, or they stagnate and leave more room for emerging sectarian competitors. Since the mid-1960s, something even more radical has happened. Rather than just slowing in growth or remaining flat, some of the major "Mainline" or "old-line" denominations have suffered new membership declines, year after year after year......
