Secularization: (SAGE Key Debates in Sociology)

Secularization traces the decline of religion and the rise of secular belief systems. But it also touches on the transition from traditional to modern systems of organization, the replacement of metaphysical beliefs with science, the transition from community to association and much more besides. The debate about secularism and secularization has become a central issue in politics, public policy and international affairs. There is a long history of thinking about the religious and the secular, but the modern debate has special features and a great urgency mainly as a result of fears about religious fundamentalism, religious revival, political Islam and religious nationalism. Volume One explores the history and meaning of key terms: secular, secularism, secularity, secularization and laicity. It is primarily concerned with the philosophy and theology of the secular and examines the evolution of the debate from St Augustine's two cities to contemporary writings and is not confined to Christian debate. Volume Two deals with the sociology of secularization and contains the classic statements by sociologists such as Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Bryan Wilson, David Martin, and Thomas Luckmann. Volume Three considers American exceptionalism. Much the debate in sociology has centred on the question of America's differences from secular Europe. Religion and politics have been significantly interconnected in American history. America is a very special but influential case of secularization and merits a separate volume. Volume Four involves the comparative sociology of modern religious revivalism and the notion that we are in a post-secular society. The manifestations of religious revival in post-secular societies are truly global. This volume looks at the revival of world religions and popular religions such as spirit possession in the post-communist societies.

Table of Contents:
VOLUME ONE: DEFINING SECULARIZATION: THE SECULAR IN HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE Religious Aspects of Modernization in Turkey and Japan - Robert N. Bellah Civil Religion and Secularization: Ideological revitalization in post-revolutionary communist systems - Timothy W. Luke Secularization in the Netherlands - Frank J. Lechner Tranformative Constitutionalism and the Case of Religion: Defending the moderate hegemony of liberalism - Stephen Macedo Richard Hooker and American Religious Liberty - Wendy Dackson The Reconstruction of Religious Arenas in the Framework of "Multiple Modernities" - Shmuel N. Eisenstadt Historicizing the Secularization Debate: Church, state, and society in late medieval and early modern Europe, ca. 1300 to 1700 - Philip S. Gorski The Crisis of Indian Secularism - Sumit Ganguly A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Church-State Relations in Europe - John T.S. Madeley The Enlightenment, Communism, and Political Religion: Reflections on a misleading trajectory - Richard Shorten Under God but Not the Scarf: The founding myths of religious freedom in the United States and laïcité in France - T. Jeremy Gunn Contentious Public Religion: Two conceptions of Islam in revolutionary Islam - Ali Shariàti and Abdolkarim Soroush - Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi Hinduism, Christianity and Liberal Religious Tolerance - Jeff Spinner-Halevy "Religious Nationalism": A textbook case from Turkey - Sam Kaplan Religion - Bryan S. Turner Religion in Public Space: A theoretical perspective and comparison of Russia, Japan and the United States - James T. Richardson Secularism and the Public-Private Divide: Europe can learn from Latin America - David Lehmann Religious Extremism: The good, the bad and the deadly - Laurence R. Iannacone and Eli Berman Southeast Asia Spirited Politics: Religion and public life in contemporary Southeast Asia - Henry D. Delcore Religious Nationalism and the Making of the Modern Japanese State - Fumiko Fukase-Indergaard and Michael Indergaard VOLUME TWO: THE SOCIOLOGY OF SECULARIZATION Towards Eliminating the Concept of Secularization - David Martin Secularization and Pluralism - Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann The Concept of Secularization in Empirical Research - Larry Shiner Pluralism, Religion and Secularism - Milton J. Yinger The Death of God: An analysis of ideological crisis - Richard K. Fenn Sociologists and Secularization - Roland Robertson Aspects of Secularization in the West - Bryan Wilson Secularization Theories and Sociological Paradigms - Karel Dobbelaere Toward Desacralizing Secularization Theory - Jeffrey K. Hadden The Implicit Religion of Contemporary Society: Some studies and reflections - Edward I. Bailey Religious Deregulation - Roger Finke Shrinking Transcendence, Expanding Religion? - Thomas Luckmann The Secularization Issue: Prospect and retrospect - David Martin Secularization as Declining Religious Authority - Mark Chaves A Supply-Side Reinterpretation of the "Secularization" of Europe - Rodney Stark and Laurence R. Iannaccone The Privatization of Religion and Morality - Thomas Luckmann Secularism - John Keane Christianity and the Secular - James Wetzel Secularization and the Impotence of Individualized Religion - Steve Bruce Religion in Europe in the 21st Century: The factors to take into account - Grace Davie VOLUME THREE: AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM Christianity and Modern Industrial Society - Talcott Parsons Civil Religion in America - Robert N. Bellah Fundamentalism as an American Phenomenon: A comparison with English evangelicalism - George Marsden Max Weber on Churches and Sects in North America: An alternative path toward rationalization - Colin Loader and Jeffrey C. Alexander Modernity and Fundamentalism: The new Christian right in America - Steve Bruce The Reliability of Historical United States Census Data on Religion - Rodney Stark What the Polls Don′t Show: A closer look at U. S. church attendance - C. Kirk Hadaway, Penny Long Marler and Mark Chaves Why Strict Churches Are Strong - Laurence R. Iannaccone Is There a Common American Culture? - Robert N. Bellah Excepting Exceptionalism: American religion in comparative relief - N. Jay Demerath, III Religious Pluralism and Religious Participation - Mark Chaves and Philip S. Gorski The Center Doesn′t Hold: Church attendance in the United States - Michael Hout and Andrew M. Greeley Tracking the Restructuring of American Religion: Religious affiliation and patterns of religious mobility, 1973-1998 - Darren E. Sherkat Fundamentalism as a Class Culture - Thaddeus Coreno "Being Religious" or "Being Spiritual" in America: A zero-sum proposition? - Penny Long Marler and C. Kirk Hadaway Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State - Daniel J. McCarthy Remnants of Romanticism: Max Weber in Oklahoma and Indian territory - Lawrence A. Scaff Talcott Parsons′s Sociology of Religion and the Expressive Revolution: The problem of western individualism - Bryan S. Turner Atheists as ′Other′: Moral boundaries and cultural membership in American society - Penny Edgell, Joseph Gerteis and Douglas Hartmann Uneven Secularization in the United States and Western Europe - Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart The Problem of "American Exceptionalism" Revisited - John Torpey VOLUME FOUR: THE COMPARATIVE SOCIOLOGY OF DE-SECULARIZATION Political Religion: The case of the cultural revolution in China - Jiping Zuo A Religious Revival in Russia? - Andrew M. Greeley The Worldwide Rise of Religious Nationalism - Mark Juergensmeyer Religion and Spirituality: Unfuzzying the fuzzy - Brian J. Zinnbauer et al Fundamentalism and Globalism - David Lehmann Is Religious Belief Declining in Britain? - Robin Gill, C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler New Age Spiritualities as Secular Religion: A historian′s perspective - Wouter J. Hanegraaff Problems with the (De)Privatization of Religion - Chris Hann The Varieties of Sacred Experience: Finding the sacred in a secular grove - N. Jay Demerath, III Religious Nationalism and the Problem of Collective Representation - Roger Friedland The Curious Case of the Unnecessary Recantation: Berger and secularization - Steve Bruce Winds of Change: Religious nationalism in a transformation context - Frans Hoppenbrouwers Religion in Britain: Neither believing nor belonging - David Voas and Alasdair Crockett Challenging Secularization Theory: The growth of "new age" spiritualities of life - Paul Heelas In Search of Certainties: The paradoxes of religiosity in societies of high modernity - Danièle Hervieu-Léger Religion in the Public Sphere - J rgen Habermas Bryan Wilson′s Contributions to the Study of the New Religious Movements - Eileen Barker The Future of Religion - Graham Ward New Wine in Old Wineskins: An appraisal of religious legislation in China and the regulations on religious affairs of 2005 - Fuk-Tsang Ying Spirituality and Popular Religion in Europe - Hubert Knoblauch

About the Author :
Bryan S. Turner is Professor of Sociology in the Asian Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore. Previously he was Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge from 1998-2005. His research interests include globalization and religion, concentrating on such issues as religious conflict and the modern state, religious authority and electronic information, religious, consumerism and youth cultures, human rights and religion, the human body, medical change, and religious cosmologies. He is Joint Chief Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies and serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious journals.