Introduction

Abstract

Abstract As the first essay in this collection notes, ‘the secularization thesis is one of sociology’s most enduring research programmes and like many other long-standing theoretical frameworks it has generated a multitude of criticisms’. Before introducing the items in what I hope will be seen as a useful contribution to an evaluation of the secularization thesis, I want to address and answer the challenge that the thesis is not worthy of evaluation because it is part of an ideological project. The secularization thesis has at least some of its roots in secularism. Comte was certainly more influenced by his desire to see the disappearance of the unhealthy superstitions of religion from the modern world than by an ‘objective’ assessment that such changes were taking place. But one might have expected that the rise of ideologically ‘neutered’ (if not entirely neutral) social science would have killed dead the argument that the secularization thesis should be judged by the values of its proponents.