Religion, Science, and Secularization Theory on a Danish Island

Abstract

The theoretical and empirical foundations of secularization theory have come under increasing criticism in the past decade. The paradigm remains generally accepted, however, for the nations of Fennoscandia, where modernization seems to have coincided with a deep decline in religious belief. Using a case study of two religious movements in northwestern Denmark, this paper contests the validity of the secularization thesis in the region that still serves as its type case. It traces the movements from their origins in a nineteenth-century awakening to the early 1990s. This history has not involved the sorts of oppositions between religion and science which are implicit in secularization theory. The secularization approach therefore has difficulty accounting for the patterns of the movements' develdpment. A focus on religion as a system for defining identity and community accounts better for the data, and also resolves some of the theoretical weaknesses of secularization theory.