Secularization theory proposes that modern societies are necessarily secular. Sociologists during the mid-twentieth century, building off the work of Max Weber and Talcott Parsons, argued that secularization was the inevitable consequence of modernization. Secularization meant that the sacred was privatized and that societal functions formerly performed by religious institutions were placed under the aegis of the State or other secular institutions. Religion was barred from the Habermasian public sphere, a relic consigned to the dust heap of modernity.

But during the 1970s and 80s sociologists and political scientists were confronted with the resurgence of religion in countries formerly thought to be secularized. The rise of the Religious Right in the US was matched by the growth of fundamentalisms around the globe. Clearly some of the assumptions of the secularization thesis need to be revised.

Philosopher Charles Taylor, who won the $1.5 million Templeton Prize in 2007, published a sweeping revision of secularization theory titled A Secular Age. Taylor roots secularization in Enlightenment rationalism, the idea that the universe was accessible through this-worldly knowledge. With the triumph of rationalism a creeping sense of disenchantment pervaded Western society. Magic and mystery used to be commonplace, but reason would banish superstition (the German word for disenchantment, “entzauberung,” translates “breaking the spell”). Angels, demons, fairies, witches, visions, and miracles – the stuff of the supernatural – no longer permeated the warp and woof of life. Religion, the guardian of the supernatural, was pushed to the margins.

But here Taylor departs from traditional secularization theory. While secularization undermined the role of traditional religion in American society, it did not vitiate the search for transcendence. Something is missing. Taylor writes,

There is a generalized sense in our culture that with the eclipse of the transcendent, something may have been lost. … How to describe this sense? Perhaps in terms like these: our actions, goals, achievements, and the like, have a lack of weight, gravity, thickness, substance. There is a deeper resonance which they lack, which we feel should be there (307).

We can feel this emptiness in the everyday, but also it comes out with particular force in what should be the crucial moments of life: birth, marriage, death. These are the important turning points of our lives, and we want to mark them as such; we want to feel that they are of particular moment, something solemn. So we talk of “solemnizing” a marriage. The way we have always done this is by linking these moments up with the transcendant, the highest, the holy, the sacred. Pre-Axial religions did this. But the enclosure in the immanent [disenchantment] leaves a hole here. Many people, who have no other connection or felt affinity with religion, go on using the ritual of the church for these rites de passage (309).

Secularism denied religion a role in shaping society, but many secularists still felt a yearning for transcendence. During the nineteenth century many became Spiritualists or Theosophists in  their search for “alternative spiritual sources.” Today, new age mysticism and Americanized eastern religions attract those looking for “spiritual” rather than religious fulfillment.

Even scientific materialism, the belief that the universe is rationally knowable, can take on spiritual overtones. In a sense, it can become an object of religious belief. Taylor again,

The appeal of scientific materialism is not so much the cogency of its detailed findings as that of the underlying epistemological stance, and that for ethical reasons. It is seen as the stance of maturity, of courage, of manliness, over against childish fears and sentimentality (365).

If I become convinced that the ancient faith reflects a more immature outlook on things, in comparison to modern science, then I will indeed see myself as abandoning the first to cleave to the second. The fact that I have not made the move following some rigorously demonstrated scientific conclusion will escape me, either because, already having taken my side, I am easily convinced by its “arguments”, or because, also owing to this parti pris, I am ready to have faith in science’s ability to come up one day with the conclusive proofs of God’s inexistence (365-366).

Other sociologists have also critiqued the notion that secularization equals irreligion. Nikki Keddie – though primarily interested in the process of secularization in non-Western nations - shows that the modern, secularized State does not simply abolish religion. Rather the State uses religion as a means for encouraging loyalty to itself.  Keddie points out that “there is a general liking by governments for moderate religions that can inculcate civic virtues.” This is the space where civil religion flourishes. The State has an interest in a religion which produces obedient, productive citizens, a civil religion reduced to its most uncontroversial and unifying elements.

In sum, the classical form of secularization theory is wrong because it assumes that the result of modernization is the absence of religion or spirituality. William Swatos and Kevin Christiano pointed out that secularization theory itself became a tenet of belief. Ironically, “the idea of secularization became sacralized” (210). Many sociologists continued to defend secularization theory well into the 1980s and 90s despite the rise of the Religious Right and global fundamentalisms.

So, is secularization a useful term for describing the evolution of religion in modern America? Swatos and Christiano don’t think so. They don’t deny that a transformation took place, but they prefer to think of that transformation as “pluralism.”

What has come to be called “secularization” is the process by which societies in the experience of “modernization” have created competing institutions for doing better. Pluralism is not only competition among multiple historic religious traditions, but it is also competition between historical religious approaches to doing better and other systems of doing better. People who say they “believe in education,” for example, are making an implicitly religious statement, just as much as people who say they “believe in Christianity;” … People who “believe in” education or science may have lessened the apparent remoteness of their sacred, placing comparatively more control over outcomes at the human level, but note that their language is often similar. They “have faith” in our schools or in their doctors. They hope for a brighter future and so on. Peace, justice, even postage-stamp love emanate from these competing systems of ultimacy: “Ultimately” science or education will solve all our problems.

Rather than speak here of secularization, however, we should really recognize these expressions as manifestations of the “new religion” of Reason that emerged in the Enlightenment, which at least in its early forms identified rationality with Divinity – albeit the deus absconditus of Deism – and found in the pursuit of knowledge a spiritual quest. … Postmodernity, so called, is nothing more than the disenchantment of that sacrality the Enlightenment gave to Reason. It is the secularization of secularism.

But even if secularization is not a useful term, the forces underlying it are quite real. The functions of religion in American society have changed. For example, churches used to be the primary social safety net in America, a role that encouraged conformity to church teachings and allegiance to the church hierarchy. With the arrival of the welfare state, that allegiance transfers to the State. The messianic overtones in the 2008 election cycle may have been more than just media spin.

Like secularization, religion is a problematic term. That’s why we use words like “spirituality” to try to describe beliefs that seem religious but are not part of a religious tradition. Religion is rooted in real, fundamental human needs. Even if traditional forms of religion continue to decline in American society (and there certainly is plenty of evidence to the contrary), the search for transcendent meaning in life will not.