Desecularization: A Conceptual Framework - Oxford Academic

Desecularization: A ConceptualFramework

Vyacheslav Karpov

It has been more than a decade since Peter Berger1 famously intro-duced the concept of desecularization to denote a variety of mani-festations of the worldwide resurgence of religion. He describeddesecularization as counter-secularization and offered an innova-tive view of the vitality of religion vis-a-vis global modernity. Study-ing the interplay of secularizing and counter-secularizing trendsand forces, Berger wrote, is a most important task of the sociologyof religion.2

Looking back at Berger’s energetic formulations, one could expectthat they would inspire an explosive growth of studies focusing oncounter-secularizing trends and attempting to uncover deseculari-zation patterns across cultures and societies. This would havemeant a massive shift of focus in research within the sociology ofreligion. The shift, however, has been slow to emerge. Recentstudies of the resurgence of religion and its influence on societiesworldwide3 have generated mounting evidence in support of

VYACHESLAV KARPOV (BA, St. Petersburg State University [Russia]; PhD, OhioState University) is a professor of sociology, Western Michigan University. He isthe co-author of Orthodoxy, Islam and Religious Tolerance in Post-AtheistRussia (forthcoming). His articles have appeared in Sociology of Religion,Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Religion, State and Society,Social Forces, and other journals. Special interests include: comparative sociologyof religion, social theory, and religious and political tolerance. The author isinfinitely grateful to professors Chris Marsh and Elena Lisovskaya. This articlewould not have been written without their encouragement, support, and advice.

Journal of Church and State vol. 52 no. 2, pages 232–270; doi:10.1093/jcs/csq058Advance Access publication July 21, 2010# The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the J. M. DawsonInstitute of Church-State Studies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:[email protected]

1. Peter L. Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview,” inThe Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, ed.Peter L. Berger (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999).2. Ibid., 7.3. See, for example, Gilles Kepel, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam,Christianity, and Judaism in the Modern World (University Park: PennsylvaniaState University Press, 1994); Robert Hefner, Civil Islam (Princeton: Princeton

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Berger’s desecularization thesis. Yet, there has been remarkablylittle effort to conceptualize desecularization and heuristicallyapply this theoretical notion to comparative studies of religions’resurgence around the world. Moreover, the very term “deseculari-zation” has been used rarely and mostly without clarification ofits meaning, as if the concept was self-explanatory.4 Existing litera-ture shows no attempts to define desecularization analytically,which would include specifying its component processes, levels,actors, social forces, patterns, and trajectories. The absence ofsuch a general conceptual framework impedes large-scale compar-isons of desecularization’s known cases. This, in turn, prevents the-oretical generalization and the development of a theory ofdesecularization.

This contrasts sharply with existing prolific work dedicated todefining, conceptualizing, and theorizing secularization (under-stood as a general decline of religion’s societal influence). Debatesand disagreements notwithstanding, secularization studies havedeveloped into a relatively coherent field that enables theoreticalgeneralization and hypotheses testing. Thus, the sociology of reli-gion today still appears much better equipped to study the secula-rizing trends and forces than the desecularizing ones.Consequently, the important goal of systematically exploring theforces and trends’ interplay remains elusive.

Why this has been so is a question that merits investigation, yet istoo big for a journal article. I will limit its discussion to suggestingthat the relative underdevelopment of desecularization theoryreflects a certain “cultural lag.”5 The intellectual culture of

University Press, 2000); Andrew Greeley, Religion in Europe at the End of theSecond Millennium (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2003); PhillipW. Sutton and Stephen Vertigans, Resurgent Islam: A Sociological Approach(Malden: Polity, 2005); Scott M. Thomas, The Global Resurgence of Religionand the Transformation of International Relations: The Struggle for the Soul ofthe Twenty-First Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); John Garrardand Carol Garrard, Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the NewRussia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Christopher Marsh, Man,the State and God (Continuum, 2010 [forthcoming]); David Martin, Pentecostal-ism: The World Their Parish (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Thomas Banchoff, ed.,Religious Pluralism, Globalization, and World Politics (New York: Oxford Univer-sity Press, 2008).4. The only paper that offers an analytical definition of desecularization isElena Lisovskaya and Vyacheslav Karpov, “Orthodoxy, Islam, and Deseculariza-tion of Russia’s State Schools,” Politics and Religion 3, no. 2 (2010), 276–302.5. The concept was originally introduced to denote nonmaterial culture’slagging reflection of changes in material environment (William F. Ogburn, “Cul-tural Lag as Theory,” Sociology and Social Research 41, no. 3 [1957]: 167–74).I apply it in a more general sense, meaning that the culturally shaped ideations

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sociology has been slow to reflect drastic changes in the world’s reli-gious scene. Debates still largely revolve around an eighteenth- andnineteenth-century agenda originally set to herald religion’s declinein the West. This applies to critics of the secularization thesis noless than to its proponents. After all, both still focus on if, where,and why religion and/or its societal role are in decline. It is stillabout proving Comte right or wrong. Meanwhile, the rise of Christi-anity in the “global South,” the worldwide Islamic resurgence, therevitalization of religion in Russia and China, and other cases ofdesecularization have become common knowledge. Yet, sociolo-gists are immersed in rearguard theoretical skirmishes and areinadequately prepared for conceptualizing and theoreticallyexplaining these new realities on the ground. Existing literaturesheds light on the origins of the “cultural lag.” According to Stark,the sociological canon was largely shaped by classical atheist pro-ponents of the idea of secularization.6 The canon’s lasting effectis reinforced by what Stark calls “ancestor worship,”7 i.e., “uncriticalreception of the classics’ ideas.” Phillip Rieff put it more bluntly:“sociology as we know it began as a deathwork against EuropeanCatholic social order. The deathwork is enacted everyday in thehalls of our institutions of higher illiteracy.”8 Furthermore, asBerger suggests, “academics” prevalent secularism and detachmentfrom the religious masses9 lead to a widespread view of any non-moribund religiosity as “fundamentalism,” which impedes objec-tive analyses of religious resurgence. As a result, sociology thatoften boastfully presents itself as critical thinking incarnate andas a reflexive force behind social change fails on both counts. What-ever its causes, as long as this situation persists, sociology willbecome increasingly irrelevant to understanding and predictingthe ongoing changes in religions’ societal roles.

This essay is written in an attempt to contribute to overcoming theaforesaid lag. It introduces a conceptual framework for deseculari-zation analysis based on contemporary and classical concepts of

we use to make sense of the world around us are inert and fail to reflect rapidlyoccurring social changes.6. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side ofReligion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 1–21.7. Rodney Stark, “SSSR Presidential Address, 2004: Putting an End to AncestorWorship,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43, no. 4 (2004): 465–75.8. Philip Rieff, My Life among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics ofAuthority (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006), 16.9. Berger wittily compares academic elites with secular “Swedes” living amidstthe masses of religious “Indians.” Peter Berger, Grace Davie, and Effie Fokas,Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations (Burlington:Ashgate, 2008), 12.

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the sociology of religion. Thus, it builds on the work of Peter Bergerand incorporates the ideas of Daniel Bell, Jose Casanova, GraceDavie, Emile Durkheim, Philip Rieff, Pitirim Sorokin, ChristianSmith, Rodney Stark, Charles Taylor, and other theorists. Whilethese scholars represent divergent and at times rivaling theoreticalorientations, the essay shows that their ideas shed light, albeit fromdifferent angles, on the nature and meaning of desecularization.

The essay begins by developing an analytical definition of desecu-larization as counter-secularization. The definition specifies desecu-larization’s constituent processes that include changes in collectiverepresentations and institutions (both formal and informal) and ulti-mately transform societies’ material substrata. It further discussesdesecularization’s unintegratedness and links it to the underlyingdynamics of sociocultural systemic transitions. Next, the analysisfocuses on the actors and activists of desecularization. This leadsme to specify patterns of desecularization “from below” and “fromabove” depending on what actors play a leading role in counter-secularization. Subsequently, I introduce the concept and typologyof “desecularizing regimes” reflecting the societal reach, institu-tional arrangements, ideologies, and degrees of pluralism and coer-cion involved in counter-secularization. A typology of massreactions to desecularizing regimes is offered in this context. Next,I consider analytical levels and time-scales involved in deseculariza-tion analyses. I further suggest that the time-scales we apply to dese-cularization studies are consequential for understanding its socialforces and foundations. In particular, a “mega-historical” perspec-tive may help us focus on the underlying cultural dynamics of secu-larization and desecularization and revise habitual ideas concerningtheir interplay with modernity. Finally, I introduce the notion of mul-tiple, overlapping, and clashing desecularizations and brieflyaddress globalization’s role in their development.

Desecularization as Counter-secularization: Towarda Definition

The Point of Departure

Although Peter Berger’s seminal essay10 does not contain a fullydeveloped definition of desecularization, it provides cruciallyimportant leads to constructing such a definition. In particular,pivotal to the discussion that follows is Berger’s notion of desecula-rization as counter-secularization. The latter is “at least as

10. Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview.”


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important a phenomenon in the contemporary world as seculariza-tion.”11 Moreover, counter-secularization reflects the presence ofsecularizing trends and forces, and develops as a reaction tothem.12 Thus, Berger envisions desecularization as the resurgenceof religion and its societal influences in reaction to secularization.13

What Desecularization Is and Is Not

Berger’s ideas help us distinguish between desecularization properand a much broader class of phenomena pertaining to religions’growth and expanding influence on societies. Evident as it mayseem, the distinction is still important to note if we are to arriveat a logically stricter definition of desecularization. In terms ofthe Aristotelian logic of definition, the presence of secularizationis the specific difference (differentia specifica) that sets deseculari-zation phenomena apart from a genus proximus of historicalcases of religions’ expansions. Hitherto known desecularizationcases involve religions’ growth and expanding social roles.However, escalation of religions’ societal influences can be termeddesecularization if and only if it develops in reaction to precedingand/or ongoing secularizing trends. Consider, for example, Finkeand Stark’s study of “the churching of America”14 that suggeststhat religious adherence in the United States in 1776–2000increased from 17 to 62 percent. This is a story of religion’sgrowth, but not of a desecularization of America, simply becausethe initially low adherence rate cannot be attributed to a precedingsecularization of the country.15 By contrast, the ongoing religiousresurgence in Russia is a clear-cut case of desecularization preciselybecause it has developed as a reaction to forced secularizationunder communism.

Similarly, Berger’s ideas imply a distinction between deseculariza-tion proper as religious resurgence and a wide array of manifesta-tions of religions’ vitality, resilience, and mutations16 in

11. Ibid., 6.12. Ibid., 7.13. Berger also considers desecularization as a response to the uncertainties ofmodernity. This idea, however, belongs to the discussion of the social founda-tions of desecularization, which will be addressed later in this paper.14. Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776–2005(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005).15. Finke and Stark do consider a secularization-revival cycle as an engine ofgrowth within specific churches and sects, but not at a national level. I returnto their cyclical model below.16. Forms of such a survival and adaptation to secular conditions are famouslycaptured by Grace Davie’s concepts of “believing without belonging” and “vicar-ious religion” (Grace Davie, Religion in Modern Europe. A Memory Mutates


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secularized settings, such as Western European societies. Religions’survival under secular regimes may translate into their subsequentresurgence. It is also a demonstration that even in emblematicallymodern Western settings secularization’s effects on society arelimited. Yet, survival and adaptation are clearly different fromresurgence and cannot be considered under the conceptual rubricof desecularization. I would not have addressed this obvious dis-tinction had it not been somewhat blurred in recent discussions.Even Peter Berger’s original collection The Desecularization of theWorld discusses religions’ resilience alongside major cases of theirresurgence.17

There is a reason why religions’ resilience under secular regimes isat times discussed side by side with counter-secular resurgences.Both classes of phenomena manifest the limits of secularizationand logically come up together when the shortcomings of religiousdecline theories are discussed.18 Yet, theorizing desecularizationdoes not involve an all-out refutation of the secularization thesis.Moreover, as was stated above, congruent with Berger’s originalidea, a valid conceptualization of desecularization as counter-secularization rests upon acknowledging the presence of seculariz-ing trends and forces. Only in such a manner will we be able toapproach the important task of studying the interplay between sec-ularizing and counter-secularizing trends. Therefore, the develop-ment of a theory of desecularization will, in my view, benefit oncethis issue is detached more clearly from the never-ending debateon whether or not and to what extent secularization is a reality.Some proponents and opponents of the secularization thesis maysee the debate as a zero-sum game. Yet, desecularization and secu-larization studies are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they tell mutu-ally complementary stories of the complex relationships betweenreligion and society; that is, to the extent that both theories are

[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000]). Equally important concepts reflectingreligions’ resilient functions are “public religions” (Jose Casanova, Public Reli-gions in the Modern World [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994])and “belonging without believing” (Daniele Hervieu-Leger, Religion as a Chainof Memory (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000 [1993])).17. Consider, for instance, Grace Davie’s contribution to that collection. SeeGrace Davie, “Europe: The Exception that Proves the Rule,” in The Deseculariza-tion of the World, ed. Peter Berger, 65–84. It convincingly shows that secularizedcountries of Western Europe are not irreligious but rather differently religious.Yet, this case is hardly of the same nature as the cases of Islamic, Evangelical,Catholic, and Judaist resurgences presented elsewhere in the book.18. For instance, critique of old secularization theories is an important part ofBerger’s essay “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview.”


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understood as scientific accounts rather than conflicting norma-tively prescriptive models of modern society.19

Desecularization as Social Change

Peter Berger’s original desecularization thesis20 focused more onthe nature and social origins of resurgent religions than on theirsocietal impact. The emphasis was justified against the backgroundof previous studies that had often ignored counter-secularizingmovements or construed them as “fundamentalist” aberrations inthe course of the presumably irreversible secularization. Thisessay, however, stresses another, no less important, aspect of dese-cularization that the original thesis has, to an extent, bypassed. Itapproaches desecularization as a process of social change associ-ated with religions’ resurgence and their expanding societal influen-ces. Such a perspective is consistent with the interpretation ofdesecularization as counter-secularization. Secularization is gener-ally considered as a multi-faceted social transformation in thecourse of which religion’s influences on society decline. It islogical, therefore, to consider counter-secularization as a processof social change that develops in the opposite direction. Such anapproach allows us to specify the component processes of the dese-cularizing social change.

Desecularization’s Component Processes

If desecularization is a counter-secularizing social change, then,logically, its component processes can be defined as opposites ofthe constituent tendencies of secularization. Thus, we can buildon existing conceptualizations of secularization to specify socialtransformations potentially involved in counter-secularization.

Existing conceptualizations reflect an evolving notion of seculari-zation. Initial formulas expressed a bold view of an overall generaldecline (or even extinction) of religion in modern society. However,reformulations of the last three decades have offered an increas-ingly complex, nuanced, and multifaceted vision.21 These evolving

19. I use terms from Casanova who notes that “theories of secularizationdouble as empirically descriptive theories of modern social processes and asnormatively prescriptive theories of modern societies, and thus serve to legiti-mize ideologically a particular historical form of institutionalization of modern-ity.” See Casanova, Public Religions in Modern World, 41.20. Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview.”21. For overviews of the evolution of the concept of secularization and the com-plexity of its contemporary interpretations, see (in a chronological order):Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 11–39; David Yamane, “In


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conceptualizations attempt to adapt secularization theory not onlyto the mounting evidence of religious vitality in modern times, butalso to pointed and harsh criticisms by the theory’s opponents.Recent reformulations portray secularization as a multifacetedprocess that involves potentially inconsistent and dissimilarlypaced transformations in various societal domains and at variouslevels of social organization, from individual-level beliefs to societalinstitutions and structures. Accommodating evidence of religions’resilience at some of these levels, the reformulations allow for dis-junctions and contradictions within the overall secularizingprocess. As a result, secularization increasingly looks like a combi-nation of relatively autonomous, loosely (if at all) interrelatedtrends in various societal domains.22

A First Approximation

Recent clear articulations of the relatively autonomous elements ofthe secularization process make it possible to equally distinctlyspecify the potential component processes of counter-secularization. As a first approximation, let us build on Casanova’sinfluential view of secularization as inclusive of three unintegrated(emphasis added) processes: differentiation of societal institutionsfrom religious norms, decline of religious beliefs and practices, andprivatization of religion (i.e., its marginalization form the publicsphere).23 Accordingly, desecularization can be symmetrically con-ceptualized as including three counter-secularizing processes.Thus, desecularization includes (a) a rapprochement between

Defense of a Neosecularization Paradigm,” Journal for the Scientific Study ofReligion 36, no. 1 (1997): 109–22; William H. Swatos and Kevin J. Christiano,“Secularization Theory: The Course of a Concept,” in The SecularizationDebate, ed. William H. Swatos and Daniel V. A. Olson (Oxford: Rowman & Little-field, 2000), 1–21; James A. Beckford, Social Theory and Religion (Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 30–72; David Martin, On Secularization:Towards a Revised General Theory (Burlington: Ashgate, 2005), 17–25; GraceDavie, The Sociology of Religion (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore:Sage Publications, 2007), 46–66; Detlef Pollack, “Introduction: Religious Changein Modern Societies—Perspectives Offered by the Sociology of Religion,” in TheRole of Religion in Modern Society, ed. Detlef Pollack and Daniel Olson (New Yorkand London: Routledge, 2008), 1–22.22. This is most clearly reflected in the influential conceptualizations of secu-larization by Bryan R. Wilson, Religion in Sociological Perspective (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1982), 149; Casanova, Public Religions in the ModernWorld, 211; and Steve Bruce, God Is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford:Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 3.23. Casanova, ibid.


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formerly secularized institutions and religious norms; (b) a resur-gence of religious beliefs and practices, and (c) a return of religionto the public sphere. An important consideration is that the counter-secularizing processes may be weakly or not at all integrated, just asare the aforesaid secularizing trends. For instance, a resurgence ofreligious beliefs may or may not translate into a greater role of reli-gion in public institutions. Or, conversely, a greater public role ofreligion does not necessarily imply a growing popular religiosity.The component processes of desecularization can develop incon-gruently and be differently paced. Theoretically, secularizingtrends in one sphere (e.g., individual-level religious commitments)can even coexist with desecularizing tendencies in other domains(e.g., public institutions). However, the issue of integration and non-integration among counter-secularizing trends is in fact morecomplex and will be addressed in greater detail later.

Missing Components: Toward a Fuller Definition

Insightful and succinct as it is, Casanova’s conceptualization bypassesimportant components of secularization, some of which were moreprominently included in earlier theories. As a result, the definition ofcounter-secularization and its components that I proposed above isalso incomplete. The discussion below leads to a more complete view.

Culture. A yawning hole in our first approximation deals withsecularizing and desecularizing trends in culture. The cultureaspect is missing from Casanova’s definition (although not fromhis work) yet is strongly emphasized in Berger’s classicalformulation:

[S]ecularization . . . affects the totality of cultural life and of ideation, andmay be observed in the decline of religious contents in the arts, in philos-ophy, in literature, and, most important of all, in the rise of science as anautonomous, thoroughly secular perspective of the world.24

Accordingly, I define counter-secularizing trends in culture asmanifesting themselves in a revival of religious content in avariety of its symbolic subsystems, including the arts, philosophy,and literature, and in a decline of the standing of science relativeto a resurgent role of religion in world-construction and world-maintenance.25 Some clarifications are due here. First, as with

24. Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Reli-gion (New York: Anchor Books (1990 [1967])), 107.25. I use the terms “world-construction” and “world-maintenance” in the sensethey are defined by Berger, ibid., 3–51.


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the overall process of desecularization, counter-secularizingtrends in culture may be inconsistent and affect some of its sub-systems more than others. Secondly, a counter-secularization ofsome cultural domains may, theoretically, co-occur with a con-tinuing secularization of others. Thirdly, note that the proposeddefinition includes a relative (in comparison with religion)decline of the standing of science. The science component ofculture can grow in absolute terms and yet play a lesser role asa frame of reference in world-maintenance. For instance, inclusionof creationist views in biology textbooks diminishes the monopolyof science as a decidedly secular cultural tool of world-construction, but it does not mean a decline of biologicalscience as such.

Finally, the proposed formulation involves a specific interpre-tation of culture. To use Lamont and Wuthnow’s26 terms, itbuilds on a “European” rather than “American” tradition ofculture studies. The former tends to view culture as comprisingsupra-individual symbolic systems and steers clear of methodo-logical individualism in its analysis. The latter more typicallyapproaches cultures as aggregates of beliefs, values, attitudes,and norms shared by society’s members and attributable tothe individuals’ locations in society. Berger’s view, cited above,is rooted in the “European” tradition, since he clearly distin-guishes cultural secularization from that of the individual-levelsubjective consciousness.27 Similarly, the proposed view of cul-tural counter-secularization analytically separates resurgentreligious trends in supra-individual symbolic systems fromgrowing religiosity of individual-level beliefs. The emphasishere is on Durkheim’s “collective representations” crystallizedinto lasting symbolic systems (e.g., mythologies, theologies,and ideologies) that shape individual-level beliefs yet are irredu-cible to them.

This aspect of culture has received scant attention in recentstudies of secularizing and desecularizing trends. Recent empiricalstudies of large-scale “culture shifts”28 mostly rely on surveyresearch. Thus, the shifts they report are aggregate trends inindividual-level subjective consciousness and self-reported behav-ior. Such studies are indispensable for tracking declines and

26. Michelle Lamont and Robert Wuthnow, “Betwixt and Between: Recent Cul-tural Sociology in Europe and the United States,” in Frontiers of Social Theory,ed. George Ritzer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 287–315.27. Berger, The Sacred Canopy, 107–8.28. The term introduced by Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Indus-trial Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).


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resurgences in mass beliefs and practices, yet they are poor substi-tutes for assessing trends in culture’s religious content.29

While survey-based assessments of religious trends have prolifer-ated in recent decades, large-scale content-analytical studies of thearts, literature, philosophy, and other cultural subsystems havebeen marginal if not altogether forsaken by social scientists.30

Recent scholarship has not produced or attempted anything closeto Sorokin’s31 massive study of trends in the “ideational” (inessence, religious) and “sensate” elements in the content of art, phi-losophy, and other cultural forms that spanned approximately2,500 years of history of Western civilization.

In the absence of long-term content-analytical studies of culture(including its contemporary audio-visual and digital manifesta-tions), research on current secularizing and counter-secularizingtrends produces an incomplete and potentially distorted portrayalof religion’s status in modern society. For instance, if we were topredict the trajectory of secularization in France based onindividual-level measures of eighteenth-century religiosity whilecompletely disregarding the content of the Enlightenment litera-ture, our prediction would most likely be erroneous. Similarly, theactual and potential influence of radical Islamism may appearvery small if we solely use survey data on Muslims’ opinions tomeasure it.32 Yet, a different assessment of radical Islamism’s

29. A case in point is Norris and Inglehart’s global study of religion and socialand political attitudes. See Pippa Norris and Inglehart Ronald, Sacred andSecular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2004). This informative study provides wealth of data on trends inindividual-level religiosity, values and attitudes across nations and civilizations.Yet, it offers an essentially reductionist view of culture when, for instance, itrelies on the individual-level variables to measure similarities and differencesbetween Western and Islamic civilizations (ibid., 133–55). The problem is thatcivilizations are cultural formations defined by religious traditions and com-prised of supra-individual elements (institutions, customs, mythologies, etc.)irreducible to individuals’ value orientations.30. A rare exception in sociology can be found in Philip Rieff, My Life among theDeathworks. Rieff’s insightful analyses of the meanings of specific works ofmodern art as “deathworks,” i.e., de-creations (or resolutions) of the symbolismof sacred orders is directly relevant for understanding secularizing influenceson culture. However, Rieff’s study focuses on a small number of selectedworks of arts and cannot be used to account for long-term trends.31. Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics: A Study of Change in MajorSystems of Art, Truth, Ethics, Law, and Social Relationships (New Brunswick andLondon: Transaction Publishers, 2006 [1957]). Overall, the study examinedaround 100,000 works of art and philosophy (see Michel P. Richard, “Introduc-tion to the Transaction edition,” ibid., ix).32. That is what Esposito and Mogahed do when, based on Gallup polls, theyreport that only 7 percent of the world’s Muslims consider the attacks ofSeptember 11 “completely” justified, and thus, only a small minority of


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influence could result from a study of religio-political ideas preva-lent in school textbooks, state-controlled TV broadcasts, andnumerous radical Internet sites.

Furthermore, the predominant reliance on the “American” tradi-tion of culture studies prevents incorporation of potentially impor-tant theoretical insights concerning the culture of late modernityinto empirical research on desecularization. The insights dealwith immanent limits and dead ends of secularized culture, theresilience of religious components, and the potential for a culturaldesecularization. In particular, thirty-four years ago, Daniel Bellpredicted a forthcoming religious answer to the “profanation” ofculture (i.e., to its secularization expressed in the elimination of cul-ture’s sacred element).33 Secularized culture’s overwhelmingemphasis on unlimited self-expression, on the transgression ofonce sacred boundaries, and on “release” at the expense of con-straint and incorporation, produces a powerful tendency towardnihilism, which ultimately renders human existence meaninglessand coexistence impossible. The forthcoming religious answer,Bell says, reflects a cultural pattern of “constant returning,” whichreestablishes the sacred. This provides people with answers to theultimate questions of their existence. Bell’s argument is congruentwith Rieff’s. In his view, the essence of modern secular culture (inhis terms, the “third,” or the “third world” culture) is in“de-creation,” or in resolution of sacred orders of the “second” (the-istic) culture. However, the latter is repressed by the secularizingonslaught but never eliminated, since transgressions andde-creations (“deathworks”) inevitably reference that which isde-created. Hence Rieff’s method of de-creation of the third-worldculture’s de-creating works (e.g., in the arts), which reveals the

Muslims is politically radicalized. See John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, WhoSpeaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think (New York: Gallup Press,2007), 97. Moreover, the authors do a poor job even with their survey data. Theaccuracy of this estimate is impossible to assess since no full distribution ofanswers to the radicalism question is provided (for instance, it remainsunknown what proportion of Muslims consider attacks “partly” justified). Nordoes the book provide a breakdown of answers by country, creating a potentiallywrong impression that radicalism levels do not differ cross-nationally. An inter-esting comparison comes to mind. A 1945 survey found that no Germans at all(0 percent) said Hitler was right in his treatment of the Jews, 19 percent thoughthe went too far, and 77 percent opined that Hitler’s actions were in no way jus-tified. See Sarah Ann Gordon, Hitler, Germans, and the “Jewish question” (Prince-ton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 198. Based on this post-factumconducted survey, the Holocaust becomes a fully incomprehensible event.33. Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: BasicBooks, 1996), 169.


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underlying, repressed sacred meanings. The resilience of sacredorders sets limits to cultural modernity, and the entire field ofculture becomes a battlefield between, in Berger’s terms, seculariz-ing and counter-secularizing forces.34 “The kulturkampf betweensecond world sacred orders and third world anti-sacred socialorders is now worldwide,” Rieff says.35 He also suggested that wemay be near the end of the period of modernist inversions ofsacred order.36

These ideas open up the possibility of looking at secularizationand desecularization as trends reflecting a broader pattern culturaldynamics, which oscillates between the predominantly religiousand secular poles, or, to use Sorokin’s terms, between the “idea-tional” and “sensate” systems. This theoretical turn will be dis-cussed below. At this point, let us note that the heuristic potentialof Bell, Berger, and Rieff’s ideas pertaining to the resilience andresurgence of the transcendental content of culture’s symbolicsystems remain underutilized in the mainstream of empiricalresearch on secularization and desecularization. As a result, ourempirical knowledge of relevant cultural trends remains incompleteand unreliable.

Substratum. There is yet another frequently overlooked side ofsecularizing and counter-secularizing social changes. It dealswith declining and resurging religious influences on society’smaterial substratum. If we applied Durkheim’s typology of socialphenomena37 to existing work on secularization andcounter-secularization, it would show that most discussions ofsecularization and counter-secularization focus on all of his typesof social facts except for the material substratum. Indeed, thesediscussions involve (moving from least to most crystallized socialfacts): (a) effervescent, emerging currents in collectiverepresentations and related behaviors (e.g., changes in religiousbeliefs and practices); (b) crystallized collective representations(such as culture’s symbolic systems of theology, ideologies,mythologies, science, etc.); and (c) institutional (normative)sphere, where we observe separation and/or reunification of

34. Some similarities between Rieff’s ideas and Berger’s desecularizationtheory are in passing discussed in Antonius A. W. Zondervan, Sociology andthe Sacred: An Introduction to Philip Rieff’s Theory of Culture (Toronto: Univer-sity of Toronto Press, 2005), 145–47.35. Rieff, My Life among the Deathworks, 2.36. Zondervan, Sociology and the Sacred, 160.37. A succinct presentation of Durkheim’s typology can be found in KennethThompson, Emile Durkheim (London and New York: Tavistock Publications,1982), 9.


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secular and religious norms and establishments. Glaringly missingremains what Durkheim called substratum, the most crystallizedand tangible type of social facts. By the virtue of its rigidity,substratum exerts powerful constraints on people’s behavior andperceptions,38 yet at the same time it can be seen as the ultimatecrystallization and materialization of collective representationsand institutions. Substrata comprise elements that are“anatomical” or “morphological” to societies: population size,distribution and territorial organization, material objects such asbuildings and communications, and others.39 Given a materialisticpenchant of much of modern sociology, it is somewhat surprisinghow rarely analyses of religion’s changing societal role havefocused on such material indicators. (Ironically, the origins of theterm “secularization” include a very material concern withconfiscation of church properties by the state.40)

Consider substratum’s demographic aspects, such as changes infertility and population size. Demographers take religion’s impacton birth rates and population growth seriously. However, demo-graphic dimensions remain largely peripheral to conceptualizationsand measurements of secularization and counter-secularization.There is, furthermore, a tendency to treat both high religiosityand high fertility rates as consequences of low levels of socioeco-nomic development. For instance, Norris and Inglehart suggestthat higher human development (and therefore, human security)leads to cultural changes reducing religiosity and fertility. Becauseless developed societies retain higher birth rates, the world doesnot become less religious despite secularization in more developednations41 (note that, phrased differently, the same argument readsas one of a desecularization of the world manifesting itself in thegrowth of its religious population). In this logic, religiosity is but aconnecting, mediating variable between socioeconomic securityand fertility. This is a materialistic argument: economic growthdiminishes religiousness and consequently reduces fertility.

Yet, there is massive evidence that, among groups in comparablesocioeconomic conditions, those with higher religiosity and/or

38. For a clarifying analysis of the evolution and meaning of Durkheim’sconcept of substratum, see Denes Nemedi, “Collective Consciousness, Morphol-ogy, and Collective Representations: Durkheim’s Sociology of Knowledge,1894–1900,” Sociological Perspectives 38, no. 1 (1995): 41–56. Nemedi shows,in particular, that Durkheim’s emphasis on substratum should not be inter-preted as a form of materialistic determinism.39. See Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (New York: The FreePress, 1982 [1895]), 57, 241.40. Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 13.41. Norris and Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, 6,62–79.


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more conservatively religious have considerably higher birth rates.For instance, Hout states that the American baby boom was concen-trated among Catholic, evangelical, and fundamentalist women,while “mainline Protestant denominations contributed whatamounted to a baby blip.”42 More recent U.S. data show that, con-trolling for race, ethnicity, income, and education, religious beliefshave substantial positive effect on both female and male fertility.43

Similarly, conservative religiosity strongly predicts teen birth ratesin America independently of economic wealth.44 Western Europeannations have human development levels (and thus, human securitylevels) similar to those of the United States. However, socioeco-nomic conditions held equal, if women in Western Europe had reli-giosity levels equal to their American counterparts, their birth rateswould be 19 percent higher, and in France, 35 percent higher thanwhat they presently are.45 In Islamic countries, higher individual-level Muslim religiosity and support for Shari’a Law are linked tohigher fertility, which may translate into growth of Islamist popula-tions.46 These patterns appear to be anything but new; as Starkexplains, Christianity’s rise in the Roman Empire is partly attribut-able to higher fertility and lower mortality rates in Christian com-munities compared with pagans.47

Thus, the religion–fertility–population growth nexus recursacross nations, (at least some) civilizations and historicalepochs.48 High fertility and resulting population growth can beseen as attributes rather than occasional concomitants of strong

42. Michael Hout, “Demographic Methods for the Sociology of Religion,” inHandbook of the Sociology of Religion, ed. Michelle Dillon (New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2003), 82.43. Li Zhang, “Religious Affiliation, Religiosity, and Male and Female Fertility,”Demographic Research 18, no. 8 (2008): 233–62, http://www.demographic-research.org/Volumes/Vol18/8/ (accessed March 24, 2010).44. Joseph M. Strayhorn and Jillian C. Strayhorn, “Religiosity and Teen BirthRate in the United States,” Reproductive Health 6, no. 14 (2009): 1–7, http://www.reproductive-health-journal.com/content/6/1/14 (accessed March 26,2010).45. Tomas Frejka and Charles F. Westoff, “Religion, Religiousness and Fertilityin the US and in Europe,” European Journal of Population 24 (2008): 5–31.46. Eric Kaufmann, “Islamism, Religiosity and Fertility in the Muslim World,”paper presented at the annual meeting for The International Studies Associa-tion, New York, February 15–18, 2009, 39. Cited with permission of the author.47. Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal JesusMovement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a FewCenturies (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997 [1996]), 115–28.48. Kaufmann’s recent large-scale, comparative overview of religion–fertilitylinks across faiths, civilizations, and nations confirms this pattern. See EricKaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics inthe Twenty-First Century (London: Profile Books, 2010).


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religions and pieties. Accordingly, rising birth rates and the result-ing growth of religious communities can be seen as indicators ofreligions’ resurging strength, and thus, of desecularization. Thisview becomes even more plausible if we abandon an “external”causal interpretation of the religion–fertility link (religion“causes” fertility as something external to it). Strong religionsusually attempt to shape their adherents’ entire ways of life, espe-cially their fundamental aspects, such as family relations. Givingbirth to, and raising, many children can thus be seen as religiouspractice (at least in conservative groups of the Abrahamic tradi-tions), as something that is intrinsic, not extrinsic to religion, intrin-sic no less than prayer and participation in rituals.

Another frequently overlooked substratum-related aspect of sec-ularization and counter-secularization deals with the territorialityof religions and with religious definitions of territories and theirpopulations. Berger, Davie, and Fokas highlight this aspect intheir discussion of religions’ resilience in European countries.Europe’s historic churches, they say, are territorially embedded.Their continued presence is reflected in spatial organization,urban planning, and architectural styles. Church buildingsdominate skylines and serve as important physical frames ofreference.49 Perhaps one could also say that just as religions areterritorially embedded, territories and their populations areembedded in symbolic spaces defined by the presence of religiousobjects. Accordingly, changing numbers and prominence ofreligion-related material objects can be seen as symptoms ofdeclines or increases in the importance of religions for the socialorganization of territories and populations. The expropriation ofchurch lands in eighteenth-century France and massive demolitionof churches under the Soviet rule were clear signs of seculariza-tion. Restitution of church properties, large-scale restoration ofold, and the building of new churches in post-Soviet Russia aresymptoms of desecularization. Consider, for instance, thenineteenth- and twentieth-century history of the cathedral ofChrist the Savior in Moscow. The gigantic cathedral was designedin the 1830s and consecrated in 1883. In 1931, it was demolished,and in the 1960s, an outdoor pool was opened on its site. Duringthe 1990s, the cathedral was rebuilt from scratch, then conse-crated in the year 2000 and presently dominates, once again,much of the downtown Moscow skyline. This story is emblematicof the secularization and counter-secularization of Russia.Similarly, construction of huge mosques in England, Italy, and

49. Berger et al., Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations,25, 27.


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other European countries is indicative of Islamic growth on thecontinent.

Many other changes in society’s substrata can be construed asindicators of desecularization. Traffic patterns on Sundays and reli-gious holidays are reflective of emerging patterns of mass religiousbehavior. Very importantly, the volumes and overall value ofreligion-related goods and services provided by national and localmarkets are tangible indicators of the changing strength ofreligion’s economic impact. Such indicators may be moreobjective than volatile opinions captured by social surveys, butthey are yet to occupy a more prominent place in the studies ofdesecularization.

Desecularization as an Unintegrated Process: In What Senseand Why?

As was mentioned above, since secularization is an unintegratedprocess, the counter-process of desecularization can be similarlyunintegrated, meaning that counter-secularization’s componentchanges may develop incongruently, be differently paced, andcoexist with secularizing trends. This thesis builds on Casanova’sview of secularization.50 Let us note, however, that Casanova’s def-inition is more of a generalized empirical observation than a theo-retically derived concept. It does not explain the concept ofunintegratedness of secularization’s (and, consequently, ofcounter-secularization’s) component processes, nor does it lay outtheoretical grounds for deeming the processes unintegrated. Theparagraphs below suggest that Sorokin’s theory of cultural dynam-ics can help us overcome these limitations.

According to Sorokin,51 sociocultural systems cyclically oscillatebetween the “ideational” and “sensate” poles. At the center ofideational systems are beliefs in supernatural truths; they empha-size transcendental knowledge and spiritual and religious valueorientations. Sensate cultures center on empirically and rationallyestablished truths and forms of knowledge, and are essentiallysecular and materialistic in their value-orientations and chief pur-suits. Yet the sociocultural systems are never perfectly integrated.A fully religious or a fully secular society is at best an “idealtype” or, at worst, pure fiction. Ideational systems have sensateenclaves and vice versa. In addition, there are transitionalsystems, such as “idealist” ones that combine foundational

50. Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 211.51. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics.


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principles of both the ideational and sensate cultures. Thus,Sorokin’s theory postulates a degree of unintegratedness in anysociocultural system.

The unintegratedness can logically be expected to increase in theprocess of cyclical transition from ideational to sensate phases andback. This gives us an important clue for understanding the uninte-gratedness of both secularization and desecularization. Both typesof social change are in essence transitions from predominantly (butnever fully) religious sociocultural systems to predominantlysecular ones, or, in the case of counter-secularization, in the oppo-site direction. Thus, the incongruence and contradictions amongcounter-secularizing trends, their varying paces, and potentialco-occurrence with secularizing changes reflect the transitionalnature of the desecularization process.

Furthermore, Sorokin’s ideas clarify in what sense secularizationand counter-secularization processes are unintegrated. He dis-cusses various types of relationships among elements and proc-esses coexisting and co-occurring in societies.52 The simplest ofthem are “congeries,” incoherent mixes of heterogeneous compo-nents that are neither causally nor functionally related to eachother. Another type relevant for this discussion is “causal or func-tional integration,” where phenomena are functionally interrelatedand/or causal links among them exist. A third type is “logico-meaningful integration” where elements are logically unified bycommon cultural principles and ideas.

From this point of view, the ideal types of “ideational” and“sensate” sociocultural systems are held together primarily bylogico-meaningful integration, while transitional, secularizing ordesecularizing systems will be only weakly, if at all, integrated.Indeed, coexistence of counter-secularizing trends with persistentor growing secularity in some societal units can be seen as a “cong-erie” inclusive of logico-meaningfully incompatible elements. At thesame time, when the component trends of counter-secularizationreflect a resurgent influence of one religion, they may exhibit ahigher level of meaningful integration. However, a more pluralisticcounter-secularization (that involves several simultaneously resur-gent faiths) will also result in a congerie rather than a meaningfulintegration.

Possible functional interdependencies between secularizing andcounter-secularizing trends also need to be considered. Forinstance, persistence and/or resurgence of state-sponsoredpublic religions may provide functional support for such forms

52. Ibid., 2–19.


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of mass religiosity as “believing without belonging”53 (a combina-tion of resilient individual belief with declining belonging to reli-gious communities) and “vicarious religion”54 (in which religiouschurch leaders, hierarchies, and small number of churchgoersare perceived as performing religious functions on behalf of thelarger society). Taxpayer supported religious education in someEuropean state school systems is functional for sustainingchurches that are attended so poorly that mass catechizationbecomes impossible. A resurgent sense of Christian identity insome European populations may be a latent function of agrowing Muslim presence, and so on. Thus, what on the surfaceappears as a lack of integration may in reality reveal complexlatent interdependencies.

A working definition of desecularization is offered below. It incor-porates the components omitted in our “first-approximation” defi-nition. It also reflects preceding discussion on the issue of theintegration of desecularization’s components. Thus, deseculariza-tion can be defined as follows.

Desecularization is a process of counter-secularization, throughwhich religion reasserts its societal influence in reaction to previousand/or co-occurring secularizing processes. The process manifestsitself as a combination of some or all of the following tendencies:(a) a rapprochement between formerly secularized institutions andreligious norms, both formal and informal; (b) a resurgence of reli-gious beliefs and practices; (c) a return of religion to the publicsphere (“de-privatization”); (d) a revival of religious content in avariety of culture’s subsystems, including the arts, philosophy, andliterature, and ina declineof thestanding ofscience relative toa resur-gent role of religion in world-construction and world-maintenance; (e)religion-relatedchanges insociety’s substratum (including religiouslyinspired demographic changes, redefinition of territories and theirpopulations along religious lines, reappearance of faith-related mate-rial structures, growing shares of religion-related goods in the overalleconomicmarket, andsoon).Theaforesaid tendencies can be, toadif-ferent degree, functionally interdependent and logico-meaningfullyintegratedbyasharedreligioussource (or lackmeaningful integrationif a simultaneous resurgence of multiple religions is taking place).Counter-secularizing trends can also co-occur with persistent ordeepening secularization in some societaldomains and, furthermore,be latently interdependent with them.

53. For analysis of this phenomenon see Grace Davie, Religion in Britain since1945: Believing without Belonging (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).54. Forms of vicarious religion are discussed in Berger et al., Religious America,Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations, 40.


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Actors, Patterns, and Regimes of Desecularization

Counter-Secularizing Actors and Activists

One cannot presume that changes in religion’s societal status androles automatically follow social–structural transformations, suchas modernization. This is an important lesson that students ofdesecularization can learn from secularization studies. The pre-sumption that modernization induces, as if by itself, a diminish-ment of religion’s societal role has dominated secularizationresearch for a long time, and its impact is still noticeable.55 Yet,recent theoretical and empirical research has criticized this struc-turalist assumption and emphasized the role of human agency, ofsocial actors whose concrete works change religion’s status invarious societal domains.

This theme is clearly articulated in Berger, Davie, and Fokas’s con-textualized comparison of religious change in Europe andAmerica56 that emphasizes intellectual elites’ orientations, differ-ences in Enlightenment ideology versions, and other factors perti-nent to the role of agency in secularization. As Chaves put it,“secularization occurs, or not, as the result of social and politicalconflicts between those social actors who would enhance or main-tain religion’s social significance and those who would reduce it.The social significance of the religious sphere at a given time andplace is the outcome of previous conflicts of this nature.”57 Chris-tian Smith develops this line of research both theoretically andempirically.58 Building on ideas of the sociology of revolutionsand social movements, Smith theorizes factors typically neglectedin secularization research. These include the “issues of agency,interests, mobilization, alliances, resources, organizations, power,and strategy in social transformations.”59 Religion’s marginaliza-tion in public institutions, he states, was historically accomplishedby specific groups of “secularizing activists”—actors who had

55. For instance, this view is expressed in Norris and Inglehart, Sacred andSecular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. A recent refinement of secularizationtheory by Bruce (God Is Dead: Secularization in the West) retains this premise,although in a softened, less deterministic manner.56. Berger et al., Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations.57. Mark Chaves, “Secularization as Declining Religious Authority,” SocialForces 72, no. 3 (1994): 752.58. Christian Smith, ed., The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests, and Conflict inthe Secularization of American Public Life (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 2003).59. Christian Smith, “Introduction: Rethinking the Secularization of AmericanPublic Life,” in The Secular Revolution, ed. Christian Smith, 29.


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specific interests, grievances, and cultural and ideological orienta-tions leading them to engage in secularizing efforts.60

To avoid repeating mistakes of earlier secularization theorists, stu-dents of desecularization need to embrace the agency-focused per-spective. This involves a view of counter-secularization as the workof “desecularizing activists,” and, more broadly, specific social actorswith specific interests, ideologies, and levels of access to resources.Unlike Smith who, to a degree, equates activists with actors, Ipropose todistinguish between them. Desecularizingactivists are indi-viduals and groups immediately and actively involved in efforts toreestablish religion’s role in societal institutions and culture. Actorsof desecularization is a broader notion. It denotes larger groupswhose interests, grievances, and cultural and ideological orientationsare congruent with activists’, but who provide a more passive backingto counter-secularizing efforts, not participating in them actively, butrather serving as a social and political support base of counter-secularizing activities’. For instance, only small activist groupsusually participate in efforts to keep or bring back displays of theTen Commandments in American courthouses. Yet these activistscan rely on a broader support base of conservative Christian groupswho, in this case, can be seen as actors of desecularization.

Religious Masses, Secular Elites?

Who the actual counter-secularizing activists and actors are willdepend on the specific religious, cultural, and socio-political con-texts in which desecularization takes place. However, in broader,conceptual terms, this question remains underexplored. Berger’sdesecularization thesis suggests that counter-secularization move-ments express mass discontent with secular elites and elite ideol-ogy of secularism.61 An implicit image here is of religious massesrevolting against irreligious or anti-religious elites. Indeed, religiousmasses can be seen as actors of counter-secularization, especiallywhen a mass mobilization against relatively secular elites takesplace. Secularist political and ideological regimes marginalize reli-gious masses that may be a majority of the population under theregimes’ control. The regimes, in Rieff’s words, “transform secondworld moral majorities into third world fundamentalist minor-ities.”62 Politico-ideological disenfranchisement of religious

60. Ibid., 32–33.61. Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview,” 11.62. Rieff, My Life among the Deathworks, 6. As was explained earlier, Rieff’s“second world” stands for theistic cultures’ sacred orders, while “third world”is the social order devoid of the sacred element.


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majorities is a potential source of counter-secularizing massmovements.

Yet, mass movements typically have vanguards (in our case,counter-secularizing activist groups) and intellectuals articulatingpeople’s grievances and desires in the form of coherent ideologiesand political programs. The intellectuals can be “organic” topopular movements, or function as their outside allies. Thus, con-flicts between secularizing and counter-secularizing forces willmanifest themselves in clashes between activist groups and intellec-tuals spearheading these forces. Accordingly, the “religious masses,secular elites” model is only part of the story of counter-secularizing movements. Another part, sociologically no lessimportant, is the struggle between, in Rieff’s terms, “officerclasses” leading secularizing and counter-secularizing forces.

The emergence and formation of counter-secularizing intellectualvanguards is another intriguing but understudied issue. Bergerremarks that “in the best tradition of Karl Marx, a relatively smallgroup of American intellectuals have become ‘traitors to theirclass’ and joined the adversary camp.”63 The witty reference toMarx leaves it unclear, however, what compels parts of educatedelites to “switch sides” in the battle. This question deservesserious investigation because our answers to it can provide keysto predicting potential transformations of the intellectual cultureof secularized societies. It would be important to understand, forexample, if, and to what extent, intellectuals’ “betrayal” of thesecular cause reflects their understanding of limitations and exis-tential pitfalls of secularism. Yet another hypothetical explanationdeals with the understanding of “betrayal” as an innovative behav-ior. Indeed, in a thoroughly secularized society loyalty to secularismis, in essence, conformism. By contrast, embracing a religious causeis innovative and nonconformist. Innovators tend to be more privi-leged and educated, which, in Stark’s view, in part explains whyChristianity as a new religious movement was initially embracedby aspiring, well-to-do urbanites.64 From this perspective, it is notso puzzling that segments of intellectual elites return to religioustraditions previously marginalized by secular regimes. An ancienttradition that has been long suppressed can have a “new religion”appeal to those who were socialized in secularized settings. Thismay partly explain the fact that the ongoing resurgence of theRussian Orthodox Church was preceded and in part prepared by aremarkable return of large numbers of the Soviet intelligentsia to

63. Berger et al., Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and Variations.64. Stark, “The Rise of Christianity,” 29–47.


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Orthodoxy,65 “including some of the best-educated, most giftedpeople in the land.”66

Another largely overlooked aspect of the masses-elites modeldeals with active roles that secular elites, including governmentaland other political leaders can and, in some cases, do play in dese-cularization. Telling in this regard are crucial roles that Russia’spost-communist and Chinese communist governments haveplayed. Surely, secular political elites are not part of counter-secularizing movements. However, for reasons of political expedi-ency, they can provide the movements with greater opportunitiesand resources for success. In particular, secular political elites inthe Russian case have played a crucial role in partial deseculariza-tion of public institutions, such as state schools, prisons, andarmed forces.67

Desecularization from below and from above

Depending on the social actors involved, the desecularization ofsocial institutions and culture, and the de-privatization of religioncan be seen as initiated and carried out “from below” and/or“from above.” When the activists and actors involved aregrassroots-level movements and groups representing the massesof religious adherents, we are dealing with a desecularization“from below.” When the activists and actors largely include religiousand secular leadership, a desecularization “from above” is takingplace. The two models are ideal types capturing prevailing patternsof counter-secularization. Empirical cases can be expected to fallsomewhere in between and include variable combinations oftrends developing in both directions.

The processes developing from below and from above will be asincongruent or congruent as are interests, ideological and culturalorientations of, and resources available to the actors involved. Forinstance, a revival of popular religiosity may not lead to the desecu-larization of public institutions because grassroots-level move-ments are weak and lack resources while elites are eager topreserve a secular status quo. Or, on the contrary, well organizedand resourceful elites can desecularize public institutions even inthe absence of a noticeable religious revival from below.

65. Jane Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History (Londonand New York: Routledge, 1986), 287.66. Ibid., 184.67. Elena Lisovskaya and Vyacheslav Karpov, “Orthodoxy, Islam, and Desecula-rization of Russia’s State Schools.”


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Prerequisites for a Desecularization from below

Theoretically, formerly secularized institutions can be desecular-ized by popular demand, i.e., from below. This, however, wouldpresume a high level of mass involvement in the attempts to bringreligion back into the institutions, which, in turn, would be possibleif the following three conditions existed. First, a broad grassrootsmovement to desecularize public institutions (e.g., schools) is pos-sible when and where there is a high level of religious adherence;after all, it is hard to expect a nonreligious populace to insist onbringing religion back into the school. Secondly, such a movementwould involve organized efforts, and thus the emergence of volun-tary associations promoting the agenda of desecularization. Third,the emerging religious movement would need considerable resour-ces to achieve its goals. The resources would need to include boththe material means and political leverage. The latter includes theopportunities to exert political influence provided by the structureof governance, representative institutions, democratic procedures,and so on. Absent these three conditions, masses of ordinarybelievers can play, at most, a passive role in desecularization by con-senting to elites’ efforts to magnify religion’s role in society.

Desecularizing Regimes

Once counter-secularizing activists and actors acquire a certainlevel of influence on society or on a subset of its institutions, oncethey occupy, to use a Leninist term, “commanding heights,” theemergence and consolidation of a specific “desecularizing regime”takes place. By this I mean a particular normative andpolitico-ideological mode in which desecularization is carried out,expanded, and sustained. It includes: (a) the scope of intended dese-cularization, ranging from only some institutions and culturaldomains to a total religious transformation of society; (b) institu-tional arrangements (both formal and informal) allocating givenamounts of power and authority to religious and secular actorsand defining the limits of religious and civil liberties for religiousand secular groups in the population; (c) a specific mode of enforce-ment of these arrangements; and (d) ideologies legitimating thearrangements.

This multifaceted definition can be used to develop a frameworkfor comparative cross-cultural and historical studies of deseculariz-ing regimes that could focus on diverse cases ranging from post-revolutionary France to post-communist Russia and EasternEurope, and from revolutionary Iran and the Taliban-era


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Afghanistan to contemporary Indonesia and China. Desecularizingregimes will vary greatly along these dimensions. Some, aiming at atotal desecularization of society, will claim authority to control thetotality of public and private institutions, as did, for instance, theTaliban rulers. Others will have a limited reach, trying to modifysome, but not other, public institutions while leaving the privatesphere alone (as it happened in Romania, Bulgaria, and Russia).Depending on the relative amounts of power in decision-makinggiven to secular and religious actors, some regimes put secularstates at the center and in control of the development and mainte-nance of counter-secularizing processes (as is the case in China),and yet others will allocate supreme authority to religious bodies(as in Iran since 1979). In terms of the degree of religious freedomand civil liberties granted to religious and secular groups, somewill at least formally allow pluralistic expression of various faithsas well as of atheism (as did Russia before the 1997 Law on Reli-gion), while others will combine limited pluralism with a hegemonicrole of one confession (e.g., Russia since 1997). Yet others will bemonistic (recognizing one legitimate faith; e.g., Shi’a Islam inpost-1979 Iran) and exclusivist. Furthermore, some desecularizingregimes are highly coercive, while others are rather liberal. Theformer use harsh, violent measures to enforce religious norms,including religious policing of public and private life (as was thecase under the Taliban rule), while the latter enforce counter-secularizing reforms within a legal framework that excludes coer-cion to comply with religious norms. Ideologies used to legitimatedesecularizing regimes will also vary greatly. Some regimes willimpose ideologies derived from resurging religions (e.g., radicalIslamism) while others will legitimate counter-secularization byessentially secular ideological means. Examples of a secular ideo-logical legitimation of counter-secularization can be found in polit-ical discourse of Russian leaders. Since the early 1990s, theyemphasized the importance of Orthodoxy and other traditional reli-gions for improving Russia’s moral climate, curbing crime, solvingdemographic problems, and enhancing national security. PitirimSorokin calls the mentality expressed by such a rhetoric “cynicalsensate,” meaning that it cynically seeks spiritual means toachieve persistently materialistic goals of a sensate culture.

Thus, the proposed conceptualization can lead to a multi-dimensional typology of desecularizing regimes. Empiricallydetected regime types are likely to fall somewhere in between twomajor types. One is a monistic, exclusivist, and coercive theocracythat legitimates its rule by a political ideology derived from its dom-inant faith and attempts a total religious transformation of society.An archetypical image of such a regime is the Taliban rule in


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Afghanistan. The polar opposite type is a pluralistic, inclusive, andliberal regime that leaves a considerable amount of decision-makingand control in the hands of secular authorities which use secularideologies to legitimate their policies aimed at desecularizing alimited number of social institutions and cultural domains. Thepost-Soviet Ukraine provides a good illustration of the second type.

A major and yet unanswered theoretical question is what explainsvariations in desecularizing regimes and their types. Potentialexplanations may focus on a variety of factors. The first amongthem is the nature of resurging faiths. Some of them, like Islam,have theologies that traditionally do not presume separation of reli-gious and secular authorities and laws, and envision limitedfreedom (e.g., in the form of a dhimmi status) for the heterodox.Others, like Orthodox Christianity, have developed a theology of achurch-state symphonia and strongly attached themselves to partic-ular nations (as in Russian, Greek, Serbian, and other Orthodoxchurches). In such cases, theocratic or hegemonic models arelikely to develop, while pluralism and protection of religious andsecular minority rights may be nonexistent or limited. On theother hand, counter-secularization driven by the global expansionof Pentecostal and evangelical churches can be expected to unfoldalong the lines of a more pluralistic model and include the normsof church-state separation that are traditional for these faiths.Another potential predictor is a religious market’s composition.For instance, greater pluralism of Ukraine’s religious scene, includ-ing its three main and competing Orthodox jurisdictions, makes aRussian-style hegemonic arrangement unworkable and opens upopportunities for a pluralistic model with a secular state playingthe role of an arbiter and enforcer of the rules regulating religiouscompetition. Other, non-religious factors of regime variation dealwith the level of socioeconomic development and historical pathdependencies of desecularizing societies. For example, within thesame religious-civilizational framework more modernized andfunctionally differentiated societies may be more resistant to total-izing and monistic desecularizing projects. Furthermore, societiesthat were purposefully subjected to a lengthy and thorough secula-rization (as was Russia) may be expected to exhibit a lasting inertiaof secular arrangements which will limit the reach of desecularizingregimes.

Another research issue related to desecularizing regime types isthe typology of mass reactions to the regimes’ establishment andfunctioning. After all, desecularizing socio-political orders will beeffective to the extent they succeed in fostering mass adherenceto resurgent faiths. A reliable typology of mass reactions is anempirical task. However, a preliminary conceptual schema may


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prove useful for guiding empirical research on the issue. I proposethat such a schema can be modeled after Merton’s classification ofattitudinal and behavioral types depending on people’s acceptanceof normative societal goals and means. Specifically, Merton’s typol-ogy differentiates between conformism, innovation, ritualism,retreat, and rebellion as major types.68 Similar notions can describereactions to goals and means that desecularizing regimes make nor-mative. Desecularizing regimes, especially rapidly emerging andfar-reaching ones, abruptly change dominant normative prescrip-tions. Religious adherence reemerges as societally normative. Forpreviously secularized, and especially deeply secularized popula-tions, becoming religious is not such an easily achievable goal.Means to this goal are to be provided by religious tradition(s) desig-nated as legitimate by a given counter-secularizing regime. Just assecularist regimes transform religious majorities into disenfran-chised minorities, rapid counter-secularization can nearly instanta-neously marginalize secular majorities (for instance, the onessocialized under official atheism). A “conformist” reaction to thisemerging condition (i.e., the acceptance of both the new goal andthe legitimate means to its achievement) is conversion broadlyunderstood to include transition from nonreligiosity to a specificreligiosity, or from an amorphous, privately held belief to practicingone of the new regime’s legitimate faiths. An “innovative” reactioninvolves acceptance of the newly imposed norm of being religious,coupled with rejection of the institutional means (specific organ-ized religion[s]) endorsed by the desecularizing regime. Innovatorswill, therefore, seek alternative religions. They will join new religiousmovements, cults and sects, or churches the regime deems illegiti-mate or “non-traditional.” A “ritualistic” reaction is acceptance ofreligious means rather than goals. Thus, ritualists will recognizethe importance of resurging faiths without becoming their faithfuladherents. This is bound to result in the spread of the “belongingwithout believing” pattern described by Hervieu-Leger.69 A “rebel-lion” against the newly imposed normative framework is likely tomanifest itself in a total rejection of both the goals and the meansof religious adherence. Rebels will, therefore, gravitate toward astaunch, entrenched secularism, including its outright atheistforms. Finally, a “retreat” from the normative pressure of counter-secularization manifests itself in religious indifference. Retreatistsendorse neither religious nor secularist norms, but rather workout a worldview and a way of life to which both seem irrelevant.

68. Robert Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: The FreePress, 1968 [1949]), 186–209.69. Hervieu-Leger, Religion as a Chain of Memory.


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Thus, conversions to “legitimate” faiths, the innovative search foralternative ones, ritualistic “belonging without believing,” religiousindifference, and a secularist rebellion can all be expected todevelop in reaction to the establishment of desecularizingregimes. Which reactions are statistically prevalent will depend onsocietal, group, and individual-level conditions preceding desecula-rization as well as on counter-secularizing regimes’ reach and per-sistence. For instance, the hegemonic but not totalizing orparticularly coercive desecularization of post-atheist Russia hasproliferated the ritualistic reaction of belonging without believingaccompanied by a relatively small proportion of more genuine con-versions. Over 80 percent of Russians describe themselves asOrthodox, including one-half of the non-believers, but proportionsof those who combine consistent Orthodox beliefs with regularchurch attendance measure in single digits.

Analytical Levels, Timeframes, and Their Implicationsfor Desecularization Theory

There are two distinct approaches to research on social change. Onefocuses on relatively small-scale, short-term social transformations.Another one deals with long-term changes involving entire culturesand social systems. Sociological theories of social change focus pri-marily on the latter type of transformations.70 This distinction alsoapplies to studies and theories of desecularization as social change.One can focus on resurging religious influences on relatively smallsocial units and look at them in the short run. However, indispensa-ble for developing a generalized theory of desecularization arelarge-scale, long-term studies of religious resurgences. How largethe scales, and how long the terms are supposed to be, remains,of course, a matter of definition. The discussion below suggeststhat the way we answer these questions has profound implicationsfor theorizing desecularization, its social foundations, and inter-play with modernity. To explain why, let us look at possible analyt-ical levels and timeframes of desecularization analysis.

Levels of Analysis

The issue of analytical levels has been addressed in theoretical andmethodological discussions of secularization. Chaves distinguishedbetween “laicization” at the societal level (religious authority’sdeclining impact on societal institutions), “internal secularization”

70. Richard P. Appelabaum, Theories of Social Change (Chicago: Markham Pub-lishing Company, 1970), 7–8.


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of religious organizations, and “religious disinvolvement” (individ-uals’ declining religious beliefs and practices).71 These conceptscorrespond to Dobbelaere’s 72 three levels of analysis: macro (soci-etal), meso (organizational), and micro (individual-level).

Such a classification of analytical levels can serve as a point ofdeparture for desecularization research. Yet, I suggest that the clas-sification is somewhat problematic and incomplete. Its problematicaspect and incompleteness deal primarily with the interpretation ofthe macro (societal) level of religious change.73 Specifically, itremains unclear what constitutes a “societal” level at which weanalyze religion’s influence on society’s other institutions. Whatare the spatial–temporal boundaries of “societal” units we shouldfocus on at the macro level? How large and lasting should theunits be for us to understand whether a societal desecularization(or secularization for that matter) is taking place? Do we mean coun-tries, regions within countries, or larger formations, such as civili-zations? These questions have clear implications for empiricallytesting theoretical assumptions about secularization and desecula-rization. Neither Chaves’s nor Dobbelaere’s classifications explicitlyaddress this consequential issue. Their discussions of the societal

71. Chaves, “Secularization as Declining Religious Authority,” 757.72. Karel Dobbelaere, “Towards an Integrated Perspective of the ProcessesRelated to the Descriptive Concept of Secularization,” Sociology of Religion 60,no. 3 (1999): 229–47.73. Also problematic is the interpretation of the micro level. Strictly speaking,individual-level facts are beyond the scope of sociological analysis in generaland sociological studies of religion in particular. Sociologists do collectindividual-level data, but they do so to analyze processes occurring in large cat-egories of population, groups, and societies. Thus, individual-level data are typ-ically aggregated to detect tendencies prevalent in the populations individualsbelong to. In this context, individuals are, to borrow a term from content anal-ysis techniques, “units of count,” whereas “units of analysis” are large humanconglomerates, including populations of entire countries, or as is the case inglobal survey research (e.g., the World Values project), populations of theworld’s larger areas. The tendencies describing these populations are measuredin terms of numbers of individuals affected by them, but not analyzed at theindividual level. And even qualitative studies delving into the lifeworlds of indi-viduals are sociologically relevant to the extent they shed light on social proc-esses occurring in larger populations. Thus, a sociologically more accurateterm to denote this analytical level is perhaps “populations-level” analysis. Asociologically more appropriate use of the term “micro” analytical level dealswith religious change (in our case, counter-secularization) occurring in micro-size social structures. These include families, informal small groups (e.g., work-place prayer groups) as well as more formally institutionalized entities, reli-gious congregations included. The micro-level analysis capturescounter-secularization’s supra-individual components that are non-deduciblefrom, or reducible to, religious transformations in individuals forming themicro-structural units.


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level revolve around abstract notions such as “a modern society”while the provided factual illustrations mostly deal with nation-states, be it Iran, France, Belgium, or others. Granted, social scien-tists commonly deal with country-specific data sources, and, conse-quently, it is convenient to compartmentalize analyses of religiouschange by country. Moreover, evidence we typically use to exploresecularization and desecularization is itself a product of themodern state and its institutions. This includes, for instance,archival materials, census data, and other statistical accounts (theword statistics is a derivative from “state”). Yet, the nature of evi-dence aside, what are the conceptual reasons for focusing macro-level secularization analyses on interactions between religion andother institutions within nation-states?

Arguments can be made both for and against focusing societal-level analyses on states-level units. In favor of such an analyticalstrategy, one can refer to the fact that states impose politicalauthority structures and normative frameworks controlling andregulating all institutions that function within their borders,which includes religion, economy, polity, education, and so on.Thus, it is only natural to look at how religion interacts with otherinstitutions within a politico-territorial complex of a given state.There are, however, at least two serious arguments against suchan approach. The first one is a well-known critique of “methodolog-ical nationalism,”74 the perception of society and state as coexten-sive which leads to interpreting states as “containers” of societalsystems. The fixation on nation-states as analytical units impedesproper consideration of the increasingly influential trans-national,global forces. I will temporarily set aside this globalization-theoryargument but will return to it later in this essay. Right now let usconsider another argument against limiting societal-level analysesto states’ boundaries. States in the Weberian sense (as territorialmonopolies on the use of force) are relatively recent phenomena.Even more recent are nation-states that derive their legitimacyfrom the mythology of nations as horizontal fraternal commun-ities.75 Thus, focusing societal-level analyses on institutionalsystems “contained” within states’ (and especially nation-states’)limits the time frame in which we can understand secularizationand desecularization to recent modern history. By contrast, reli-gions whose changing societal influences we seek to explore are typ-ically more ancient and lasting formations. Compare, for instance,the durations of histories of Catholicism and of the state of

74. See Ulrich Beck, What Is Globalization? (Malden: Polity Press, 2000), 64–65.75. This notion is based on Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities(New York: Verso, 1983).


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Poland, of Orthodoxy and modern Greece, or of Islam and SaudiArabia. Religions’ lasting influences shape the evolving civiliza-tional frameworks in which modern states have relatively recentlyformed. The frameworks comprise systems of religiously influ-enced institutions, collective representations, and material sub-strata configurations which precede the emergence of modernstates and parts of which the latter inherit and modify.76 The frame-works constitute, thus, societal systems of a different scope anddurability than those “contained” within the boundaries ofmodern states. Focusing secularization and desecularization analy-sis on religions’ changing impact on these societal systems is (atleast) no less legitimate and important than concentrating onthose operating at the state level. Moreover, paradigmatic theoreti-cal arguments concerning secularization, such as the works ofComte and Weber, looked at social change within Western civiliza-tion and beyond rather than within national boundaries. Similarly,the scope of Berger’s desecularization thesis is civilizational andglobal rather than state level.

Not that I argue against societal-level analyses limited to specificstates. Such analyses are in many cases justified, especially whenthey deal with religious influences specific to the political contextof one nation. However, I suggest a conventional distinctionbetween two kinds of societal-level analysis of secularization anddesecularization. One focuses on religions’ influences on societalsystems operating within the boundaries of nation states. I willretain Dobbelaere’s term “macro” to denote this analytical level.The second one explores religions’ influences coextensive with thegeographic scope and historical durability of civilizations. In tunewith the “micro–meso–macro” classification, I propose the term“mega” to describe this analytical level.

Implications from Shifting Analytical Timeframe to a Mega Level

As preceding discussion has suggested, macro and mega analyticallevels involve different timeframes for exploring religious andsocial change. For instance, a macro-level study of secularizationand desecularization observable in modern European stateswould be temporally limited to the last few centuries. A study ofthe same processes within Western Christian civilization would

76. For instance, modern Western states have variably secularized normativeframeworks for marriage, but the prevalence of monogamous family reflectstheir more ancient Christian roots. European states have expansive national uni-versity systems, but the institution of university is a much earlier product ofChristian civilization, and so on.


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have to go back nearly two thousand years. Switching from a macroto a mega timeframe will have substantive implications for theoriz-ing the trajectories and social foundations of religious change.

Implication 1: Unidirectional or Cyclical Change?. Switching to amega-level timeframe may make us to rethink customaryassumptions about the direction and trajectory of religious change.Consider the following metaphorical example. Suppose there is agigantic pendulum that takes hundreds upon hundreds of years tocomplete one cycle of its semicircular movement with its lowestpoint in the middle. Now imagine an observer who looks at thependulum as it approaches the lowest point of its semicirculartrajectory. If the observer applies a limited timeframe (of, say, twohundred years) to make sense of what is going on, s/he is likely toend up with a story of a recent linear descent. The trajectory theobserver will quite honestly report will likely be a downwardlydirected straight line, which, in relation to the pendulum’s actualcurve will be like a tangent drawn near a semicircle’s lowest point.It will be difficult for the observer to envision the observed descentas a fragment of a much longer cyclical movement which is aboutto enter into its ascending phase. To an extent, our reports aboutsecularization (and desecularization) are somewhat similar to thehypothetical observer’s honest but shortsighted account. Thereports are usually about relatively recent and more or less lineartendencies. Empirical social scientists have debated, for instance, if,to what extent and why Europe and/or America have become moresecular in the last fifty-sixty years (if the debate involves surveydata) or, at most, in the last two and one-half centuries (whenhistorical data are used). Meanwhile, mega-historical perspectiveson religious change would help us question the popularassumptions of linearity and unidirectionality. However, suchperspectives are almost completely abandoned.

Specifically, nearly absent from contemporary debates are mega-historical models that trace civilizations’ cycles of birth, rise, fall,and death (as in Oswald Spengler’s work) or cyclical oscillationsbetween ideational and sensate sociocultural systems (as inSorokin’s research).77 Establishing what caused these paradigms’extinction could be the subject of an important separate study.78

77. Curiously, even Parsons’s linear-evolutionary mega-model has been largelyabandoned ever since it gave birth to so much modernization and secularizationtheorizing.78. One could speculate that the abandonment of Spengler and Sorokin has alot to do with contemporary sociology’s suicidal self-separation from generalhistory, its “methodological fetishism” (an obsession with sophistication ofresearch techniques at the expense of substance; see Peter L. Berger, “Whatever


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It appears, however, that, whatever its causes, their abandonmenthas resulted in a marked impoverishment of sociological imagina-tion as it applies to understanding the trajectories and social corre-lates of religious change. Therefore, bringing these approaches backinto the sociological mainstream can breathe new life into seculari-zation and desecularization theories. This applies primarily toSorokin whose work, unlike Spengler’s, is decidedly sociologicaland richly empirical. As was already mentioned, particularly rele-vant to understanding the nature of religion’s changing societalrole is Sorokin’s pendulum-like model of fluctuations between idea-tional and sensate systems.79 For him, the growing dominance of asensate culture in the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries (theperiod we usually associate with secularization) in the West paral-lels a similar epoch that the Greco-Roman world had experiencedfrom third through first centuries BC, and that was followed by acrisis and transition to an ideational system that became dominantfrom the fifth through twelfth centuries. Writing in the mid-twentieth century, Sorokin diagnosed a profound crisis of Westernsensate culture and its entrance into a transition phase marked byresurging ideational influences. This vision resonates stronglywith what half a century later was termed desecularization.

Implication 2: The Immanent Dynamics of The Secularization–Desecularization Cycle. Looking at religion in the timeframe of thelast several centuries, early macro-theories of secularization in theWest inevitably saw it as co-occurring and increasing with societalmodernization. It has been tempting, therefore, to interpret theformer as a reflection of the latter. Hence attributions ofsecularization to modern social processes and forces external toreligion (e.g., general functional differentiation, economic growthleading to greater existential certainty, the rise of modern science,and so on) have become prominent. Remarkably, a symmetricalargument has recently developed that sees modernity asexternally causing desecularization. Jonathan Fox and ShmuelSandler have summarized existing versions of this recentargument by listing as many as seven reasons why modernity is“causing the resurgence of religion.”80 Let us note that Berger also

Happened to Sociology?” First Things 126 [October 2002]: 127–29), ever narrow-ing research specializations, and a secularist aversion to theories presumingthat surging religions can play a constructive, culture- and civilization-buildingrole, while religious declines can spell societal crises.79. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics.80. Jonathan Fox and Shmuel Sandler, Bringing Religion into International Rela-tions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 12–14.


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establishes a link between modernity and desecularization 81 butdoes not imply a straightforward causation of the latter by theformer.

By contrast, from the perspective of Sorokin’s mega-historicalmodel, neither secularization nor desecularization are unique tomodernity or caused by it.82 The decline and resurgence of reli-gion’s societal impact may take historically unique forms in themodern era. Yet in their essence, they are two inseparable phasesof a historically recurring cycle rooted in the immanent dynamicsof sociocultural systems. A return to ideational culture (i.e., theone centering on beliefs in the supernatural) occurs when a bound-less expansion of destructive, nihilistic trends of the sensate systemcomes to threaten people’s very existence and coexistence. Thus,the expansion of sensate culture (involving a decline of religion’ssocietal influence) results in a return to the ideational (involvingreligion’s resurgence). Thus, neither decline nor resurgence of reli-gion’s influence on society and culture are caused externally (e.g.,by modernity). Rather, we a dealing with immanent dynamics ofsociocultural cycles.

Here Sorokin’s ideas are remarkably congruent with what leadingsociologists of religion with very different theoretical orientations,specifically Stark, Bainbridge, and Finke on the one hand, andPeter Berger on the other, have asserted half a century later. Starkand his co-authors, in particular, have argued theoretically anddemonstrated empirically that secularization is self-limiting andgenerates the countervailing processes of revival and religious inno-vation.83 The difference between this thesis and Sorokin’s is that theformer limits analysis to processes intrinsic to the religious sphereproper and specific church-sect dynamics within it, while the latterimplies cycles of religious decline and revival encompassing entiresociocultural systems. Yet in both versions we are dealing withimmanent, non-external change-producing forces. Similar are alsounderlying theoretical assumptions about humans’ unfadingdemand for other-worldly, supernatural foundations of belief andaction. It is this demand that drives people away from worldly reli-gions and into other-worldly sects in Stark’s analyses, and from the

81. Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview,” 11.82. Ibid., 13. Berger remarks, in passing and parenthetically, that there wereearlier, pre-modern forms of secularity, such as versions of Confucianism andHellenic culture. Yet his notion of desecularization revolves around modernity.83. Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, The Future of Religion: Seculari-zation, Revival, and Cult Formation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cal-ifornia Press, 1985), 2; Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, A Theory ofReligion (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996 [1987]), 279–314;Finke and Stark, The Churching of America, 46.


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hollowness of late sensate culture toward the ideational one inSorokin’s model. And at this point, both theories converge withBerger’s view of the common foundation of diverse counter-secularizing movements as reactions to modern secular order.The movements, Berger says, express a perennial human quest fortranscendental meanings. They react to a secularity they see astaking transcendence away and leaving people in an “impoverishedand finally untenable condition.”84 Thus, the three distinct theoret-ical orientations converge in their understanding of the seculariza-tion–desecularization dynamics and its rootedness in humans’unending search for transcendence. However, among the three,Sorokin’s theory provides the most general, mega-historical per-spective and a framework for comparative study of these dynamicsacross epochs and civilizations.

What is modernity’s place in the proposed schema? If it does not“cause” secularization and/or desecularization, what is its relation-ship with these processes? This fundamental question begs book-long answers and is beyond this essay’s limited reach. However,the proposed framework allows us to sketch, albeit very roughlyand tentatively, an approach from which some answers canemerge. To simplify this task, the sketch that follows focuses onthe original notion of Western (European) modernity and neglectsthe more complex notion of “multiple modernities.”85

Seen within the proposed mega-timeframe, modernity is a rela-tively recent and short episode in the history of Western Christiancivilization. It was preceded by a lengthy development of Christian-ity. Since causes are supposed to precede effects, it is logical to lookat Christianity’s pre-modern history in search for modernity’ssources. From a Weberian perspective, there is hardly anythingexotic in trying to detect modernity’s Christian origins. Studies ofthis nature are ongoing. For instance, modernity’s origins aretraced to the nominalist revolution (which, let us note, temporallycoincides with the beginning of Sorokin’s “idealist” transitionfrom ideational culture) and subsequent theological reactions toit.86 Charles Taylor also acknowledges nominalism’s importance,yet emphasizes Reform’s crucial role in secularization and modern-ity’s rise.87 Yet, here I propose a less explored path of looking atsocietal consequences not of particular religious beliefs, but of

84. Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview,” 13.85. See Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, ed., Multiple Modernities (New Brunswick andLondon: Transaction Publishers, 2002).86. Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: TheUniversity of Chicago Press, 2008).87. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press, 2007), 773–76.


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their evolving organization into systems maintained by specializedinstitutional arrangements. For instance, Douglas C. North suggeststhat the medieval Christian framework, its overall belief structure,and its amenability to evolution were favorable for learning andfor adaptations conducive to modern civil liberties and economicgrowth.88 The Church served as the sole repository of learning.89

It developed functionally specialized institutions of accumulationand development of knowledge and learning, such as monasterylibraries and universities. Stark’s account of the medieval Christianorigins of modern science is telling in this regard.90 Let us add thatthe development of functionally specialized institutions indispen-sable to the accumulation and growth of knowledge and learningwas impossible without articulating specialized intellectual roles,such as those of librarians, scholars, and theologians. Moreover,according to Alexander Schmemann, theology in the West, unlikeits Eastern Orthodox counterpart, developed as a rationalistic enter-prise separated from the context of liturgy at least since the era ofscholastics.91 It reduced the “ontological symbolism” of earlyChristian liturgy to a merely “expressive” or “depicting” symbolism,which later was deemed superfluous to true belief in much of Prot-estantism. Thus, functional differentiation, articulation of special-ized intellectual roles, the development of theology institutionallyseparated from liturgy, and of science from theology, the processestypically attributed to the modern-era secularization, had devel-oped within Christianity before modernity. In this sense, we cantalk about an increasing “internal secularization” of pre-modernChristianity. Secularism, as Schmemann wrote, is a stepchild ofChristianity, and its development can be traced back at least tothe twelfth century.92

From this perspective, a customary view of the modernity–secula-rization link can be reversed. Instead of assuming that the latterexternally induces the former, we can think of Western modernityas an institutional embodiment of the immanently and graduallysecularized Christianity. In turn, the institutional “body”further constrains the expressions of its Christian “soul.” Such

88. Douglas C. North, Understanding the Process of Economic Change (Princetonand Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), 136–37.89. Ibid., 130.90. Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations,Science, Witch-hunts, and the End of Slavery (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 2003), 121–200.91. Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom (Crest-wood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997); Alexander Schmemann, Introduc-tion to Liturgical Theology (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003).92. Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy(Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1963), 117–34.


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a reinterpretation is, a propos, consistent with Sorokin’s theory ofimmanent sociocultural change. As secularization culminates inlate modernity, opposite, counter-secular tends become increas-ingly visible. Thus, modernity is not a “cause” of desecularization,but rather the point of departure of its present historical formand a fertile ground for its progression. The desecularization ofmodern society, however, may be as gradual and lengthy as wasthe centuries-long advent of modern secularity or the transitionfrom late Roman “sensate” secularity to the Christian “ideational”era. Or it may develop faster by taking advantage of the modernmeans of mass media and mass education that were not availableto desecularizing actors in pre-modern epochs. In any case, sociol-ogists of religion cannot produce immediate “proof” that a com-plete desecularization has indeed occurred. They can, however,monitor emerging and expanding counter-secularizing trends andtheir societal impact.

Multiple, Overlapping, and Clashing Desecularizations

Just as recent theory acknowledged the existence of “multiple mod-ernities” and “many globalizations,” we need to recognize the plu-rality of desecularization processes worldwide. Some sources of“multiple desecularizations” dealing with varying religioussources and societal environments of counter-secularizingregimes were already discussed above. However, in addition tocross-religious and cross-national variability, different but overlap-ping and potentially conflicting counter-secularizing impulses candevelop within the same religious and national context. CharlesTaylor’s periodization of West’s transition to a “secular age”93 ishelpful for understanding the origins of this multiplicity and con-flicts. His point of departure is an ideal-typical “Ancien Regime,”an integrated, vertically organized, faith-based universe with Godat its helm, monarchs and lords below Him, and individualsfirmly embedded in parishes at the bottom. The Ancien Regime’scollapse is followed by the Age of Mobilization (1800–1960),when secular forces and ideologies clash with their religious com-petitors in a struggle for defining the principles of society’s hori-zontal reintegration. Then comes the Age of Authenticity, at thecenter of which is individualistic pursuit of authentic self-expression. In the religious sphere, it leads to either seeking newkinds of spirituality or to voluntarily submitting oneself to a tradi-tional authority.

93. Taylor, A Secular Age, 424–535.


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From this perspective, counter-secular movements of the Age ofMobilization are likely to embrace and act upon organicistic reli-gious ideologies of mass mobilization and horizontal integration(e.g., ideologies of religious nationalism). By contrast, counter-secular movements of authenticity will result in the proliferationof new religious currents and/or revitalization of highly conserva-tive and traditionalist groups not necessarily concerned withnational integration or other “horizontal” ideologies. Can suchmovements occur simultaneously? Casanova asserts that at leastin Western Europe, the age of “reactive organicism,” includingsecular–religious and clerical–anticlerical cultural and politicalwarfare, is over.94 Yet, his assessment may not apply to less andunevenly modernized settings where the mobilization agendaremains relevant for segments of society and political elite, whileother groups already gravitate to individualistic authenticity pat-terns of religious quest and expression. This describes, at least toan extent, the situation in Poland and, even more so, in Russia,where reactionary religious nationalists and those embracing tradi-tion in search for spiritual authenticity have offered conflictingvisions of the societal roles of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, respec-tively. Additionally, within the authenticity camp, tensions canand do emerge among those who choose the paths of religious inno-vation and traditionalism.

Upon globalization’s entrance, the picture of overlapping andclashing counter-secularizations becomes even more complicated.Globalization leads to a global spread of transnational commun-ities, real and imagined. Drawn to the communities are peopleand groups from variably modernized and individualized nationalsettings. Previously unthinkable patterns emerge as a result.Second- and third-generation British citizens from middle-classfamilies satisfy their need for authentic religious belonging byjoining jihad in the Middle East. Evangelical and Pentecostalchurches that are among the most influential agents of globaliza-tion95 assert patterns of modern civil and economic behavior andreligious autonomy in socioeconomically backward settings. Someof these churches from Africa establish branch parishes inWestern Europe. Christian missionaries from Korea are detainedin war-torn Afghanistan. What we see in such cases is the develop-ment of multiple and competing counter-secularization forces

94. Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, 61.95. Peter L. Berger, “The Cultural Dynamics of Globalization,” in Many Global-izations. Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World, ed. Peter L. Berger andSamuel P. Huntington (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 8.


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that may fuse mobilization and authenticity currents into powerfultransnational movements.

Conclusion

This essay has offered an analytical framework for comparativestudies of desecularization processes, forces, patterns, regimes,and historical trajectories. It is my hope that the concepts offeredwill prove useful for the much needed systematic comparativeresearch on desecularization. In particular, the proposed multi-dimensional definition specifies desecularization’s componentprocesses involving a full spectrum of social facts, from collectiverepresentations crystallized in culture’s symbolic systems and insti-tutional norms to society’s material substrata. The definition mayserve as a foundation for developing a set of empirical indicatorsfor comparatively assessing the scope of desecularization proc-esses across societies. Similarly, the proposed definitions andtypologies of counter-secularizing actors, patterns, regimes, andreactions to them can be employed in comparative studies of dese-cularization’s political and ideological dynamics. Furthermore,while the essay does not (and was not intended to) offer a theoryof desecularization, its concepts can be utilized as buildingblocks for developing such a theory. A valid theory can develop byintegrating generalizations derived from comparative studies ofthe world’s multiple desecularizations (the concept introduced inthe last section). The presented reconsideration of analyticallevels and timeframes will hopefully contribute to clearing someconceptual hurdles on the road to theory development. In particu-lar, the essay proposed bringing the largely abandoned mega-historical perspectives back into the mainstream of research onreligions’ declines and resurgences. This would logically lead usto revising customary interpretations of the nexus between mod-ernity, secularization, and desecularization. This would alsoenable us to theorize the immanent dynamics of the cycles of secu-larization and desecularization. Finally, it is my hope that this paperhas shown the possibility and necessity of integrating ideas comingfrom divergent and rivaling schools of classical and contemporarysociology in order to understand desecularization’s social origins,patterns, and consequences.


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Desecularization: A Conceptual Framework - Oxford Academic

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