Does modernization lead to the decline of religion? This question lies at the centre of a key debate in the sociology of religion. During the past decade American scholars, using primarily American data, have dominated this debate and have made a strong case that the answer to this question is no. Recently, however, a new crop of European scholars, working with new sources of European data, have uncovered evidence that points toward an affirmitive answer.
This volume pays special attention to these trends and developments to provide the reader with a more well-rounded understanding of the many ways in which religion interacts with modernization. Respected scholars such as David Voas, Steve Bruce and Anthony Gill examine modern societies across the world in this splendid book which will interest sociologists, political scientists, historians, and theologians in equal measure.
1. Introduction: Religious Change in Modern Societies- Perspectives
Offered By the Sociology of Religion
2. The Continuing Secular Transition
3.
God, Gaelic and Needlepoint: Religion as a Social Accomplishment
4. Religion
in Central and Eastern Europe: Was There a Re-awakening After the Breakdown
of Communism?
5. Quantitative Evidence Favoring and Opposing the Religious
Market Model
6. Secularization and the State: The Role Government Policy
Plays in Determining Social Religiosity
7. Unsecular Europe: The Persistence
of Religion
8. From Believing without Belonging to Vicarious Religion:
Understanding the Patterns of Religion in Modern Europe
9. The Cultural
Paradigm: Declines in Belonging and Then Believing
10. Religious
Individualization or Secularization: An Attempt to Evaluate the Thesis of
Religious Individualization in Eastern and Western Germany
11. Religion and
Science or Religion versus Science? About the Social Construction of the
Science-Religion-Antagonism in the German Democratic Republic and its Lasting
Consequences
12. Secularization Theory and Rational Choice: An Integration of
Macro- and Micro-Theories of Secularization using the Example of Switzerland
Detlef Pollack is Professor of Comparative Sociology of Culture at Europa-Universitat Viadrina, Germany.
Daniel V. A. Olson is Associate Professor of Sociology at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.
