(What is left of) secularization?* Debate on Jörg Stolz's article on Secularization theories in the 21st century: ideas, evidence, and problems. (June 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gauthier, François
• Is Part Of: Social compass. Volume 67:Number 2(2020:Jun.)
• Page Start: 309
• Page End: 314
• Publication Date: 2020-06
• Subjects: globalization -- marketization -- qualitative methods -- quantitative method -- religion -- secularization; globalisation -- marchandisation -- méthodes qualitatives -- méthodes quantitatives -- mondialisation -- religion -- sécularisation; Religion and sociology -- Periodicals; 306.605
• DOI: 10.1177/0037768620917327
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0037-7686

Abstract

This article is a critical response to Jörg Stolz's 2019 ISSR presidential address as to the advances made by secularization research over the last 20 years. The article argues that the data presented can be boiled down to confirming what we already knew: the decline of 'churched' religion. Sketching a radical epistemological, methodological and empirical critique, it argues that the seven areas of 'advances' discussed in the presidential address erode into near insignificance. Because this quantitative research compartmentalizes religion and lacks solid contextualization in the world we live in, it completely overlooks the massive qualitative changes that have been reconfiguring religion on a global scale, and which can be understood as the result of the erosion of the nation-state container at the hands of economic globalization and the massification of neoliberal and consumer dynamics and the consequent substantial changes in global societies, well beyond the West.