Secularism or Secularization? The Secular-Religious Competition Perspective and Beyond

Abstract

Although I argue that it is time to leave secularization theory behind, it nevertheless remains a useful starting point in any discussion of the role of religion in government. Secularization theory, in its various manifestations, predicts either the decline or demise of religion in modern times. While it was never unchallenged, secularization theory was clearly the dominant theory on religion in the social sciences until at least the 1980s and perhaps through the new millennium. Even today it remains influential (Appleby, 2000: 3; Berger, 1997; Casanova, 1994: 17; Gill, 2001; Gorski & Altinordu, 2008; Philpott, 2009; Pollack, 2008; Toft et al., 2011; Warner, 1993). Recently this theory has been characterized by two trends. First, the theory's supporters now make weaker claims and rarely predict religion's demise. Rather, they predict that it will decline but remain relevant. Second, and more important, these supporters are increasingly in the minority. Yet even as secularization theory has been losing its popularity, a large portion of research on religion has centered around or at least been heavily influenced by the debate over the theory's validity. This “for or against” debate has, I argue, blinded us to a third option – asking whether it is possible to use elements of secularization theory to understand religion's role in politics and society without accepting all aspects of the theory, especially the prediction of religion's decline. As I discuss in detail in this chapter, arguments that religion remains a significant and vibrant political force are nothing new. However, most previous versions of this argument require that secularization theory be discarded in its entirety. That is, because they discredit the theory, they jettison all of it, yet to discard all of its elements is to ignore many aspects that can still help us understand religion's role in politics and society. Many of secularization theory's insights remain relevant, but not as a description of an inevitable process. Rather, they can help us to understand the genesis and influence of a family of ideologies that can be placed under the label of secularism. Accordingly, in this chapter I use secularization theory as a starting point in a process intended to build a new perspective on religion's role in politics and society, which I call the secular-religious competition perspective or, for short, the competition perspective .