Classical Secular Theory Research Articles

Can the Scope of Secularization Theory Be Expanded Beyond the Modern‐Christian‐West? Exploring the Alevi Experience in Turkey

AbstractThis study asserts that the secularization theory has the potential to offer insights into the processes of social change experienced by faith groups outside the modern West. The study focuses on the transformation undergone by Alevi groups in Turkey, who are now experiencing a more modern way of life compared to their past. In this qualitative study, data collection was conducted through semistructured interviews during field studies in the cities of Çorum (Turk Alevis) and Tunceli/Dersim (Zaza/Kurd Alevis). Based on the interview findings, the study concludes that the new Alevi generation leads a more modern and at the same time more secular daily life compared to their parents. Therefore, the main assertion of this research is that the classical secularization theory has the potential to provide valuable insights not only for modern societies where Christianity is dominant but also for understanding the transformations occurring within Alevi communities in Turkey.

The spiritual turn and the disenchantment of the world: Max Weber, Peter Berger and the religion–science conflict

There is little question that organized religion as embodied in the Christian churches has not fared well in recent decades. Yet, precisely the period when the decline of organized religion hit its stride – the 1960s and 1970s – also witnessed the rise of what Ernst Troeltsch referred to as ‘mystic religion’, only now it goes by ‘spirituality’. Indeed, recent empirical studies suggest that, in addition to secularization, we are also witnessing a veritable spiritual turn. How do we explain this? We pursue this puzzle in a somewhat peculiar fashion: by turning the sociological gaze toward the lives and oeuvres of the two sociologists who have arguably played the largest roles in the development of classical secularization theory: Max Weber and Peter Berger. Addressing their theoretical contributions in tandem with their personal stances vis-à-vis religion, we argue that the standard account of secularization rests on an extremely one-sided interpretation of their legacy: it leaves out their steadfast romanticism, their deep commitments to the value of individual freedom, and, most importantly, the particular religious paths they charted. Furthermore, we contend that each of them exemplifies a way of reconciling a rationalist commitment to disenchanting science with a romantic longing for ultimate meaning, which sheds significant light on why mystical religion (or ‘spirituality’) has come to flourish in late modernity.

Religious Trend in Contemporary Indonesia: Conservatism Domination on Social Media

Religion is predicted to dissipate from social significance through the processes of development or economic modernization. Classical secularization theory forecasted religion in the modern era will face some circumstances such as 1) the decline of personal faith, religious beliefs and practices; and (2) the retreat of religion from public space (Cassanova: 1994, 2010). However, the supporters of secularization and modernization theories failed to notice that religion did not disappear from the public sphere. The opposite occurs in Southeast Asia. Economic development program and modernization could work hand-in-hand with religion in the region (Feener and Fountain: 2018).In the context of Indonesia, the issue of religion has gone through ups and downs. The story of Indonesia’s revival of Islam had been begun when the country experienced anti-communist campaigns of 1965-66 (McVey: 2006). Since then, the government obliged all of its societies to profess one of Indonesia’s recognized religions: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, and Hinduism (now Confucianism has been added to the list) (Qurtuby: 2013). The pressure for all citizens to embrace one particular recognized religion resulted in great conversion from local religions/faiths—Hindu, Buddha, abangan, etc.—to Islam (Hefner: 1987a, 1987b, 1989; cf. Beatty: 1999). It then witnesses rapid growth of the grassroots Islam and the spread of Islamization (Houben: 2003).

Halalization: Religious Product Certification in Secular Markets

In Islam, the extension of religious regulation and certification to new product types and economic sectors—“halalization”—has become widespread. There are now Islamic mortgages, halal ports, halal refrigerators, halal blockchain, and shariah-compliant cryptocurrencies. Yet classical secularization theory says religious authority cannot regulate modern economic activity. So what explains halalization? I point to an elective affinity between fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and twenty-first-century markets. Contemporary fiqh offers widely respected religious jurists who issue fatwas certifying products. Entrepreneurs empanel the jurists on certification boards, allowing fiqh to function as a regime of voluntary regulation layered atop secular state law instead of conflicting with it. Indeed, secular liberal markets provide ideal conditions for halalization and religious meaning-making through consumption. Case studies of Islamic finance and halal logistics show how entrepreneurs assuage consumers’ religious anxieties—and generate new ones—in the context of globalization and liberalization in secular markets.

The Secular Realm as Interfaith Space: Discourse and Practice in Contemporary Multicultural Nation-States

While classically posited as the separation of religion from public life, it is suggested that the contemporary secular public sphere in multicultural contexts has become a habitat for interfaith dialogue. Looking at dynamics in classical secular theory as well as some recent theorists of secularism and multiculturalism, most particularly Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Tariq Modood, and Rajeev Bhargava, it is shown that far from being hostile to religion much of the practice of secularism is often entwined with particular discourses of religious norms. Using spatial theory, especially that of Lefebvre, four cameos from the UK, USA, Singapore, and India are used as indicative of the way that interfaith discourse is embedded in various aspects of the secular public sphere from governmental, through official Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), to grassroots levels such that as forum externum religion is accepted in this space as interfaith dialogue. It is argued that a conceptual linkage of interfaith motifs is, if not inherent, then at least embedded in the secular realm in the contemporary multicultural context.

Repensar La Secularización

Current sociology has falsified the modern prediction for the decline and extinction of religion. A lot of signs show a religious return and a revival of the religious question in a progressively more and more plural and globalized world. The survival of religion in modern societies forces philosophy to rethink the classical secularization theory and its principal equation: rationalization = modernization = secularization = religious decline. The coming of a postsecular society obliges secularism and religion to a mutual understanding in the public sphere, but beyond triumphal proclamations of both mentalities. Secularism and religion face the same fundamentalist dilemma. This essay aims to analize some thesis, premises and consequences of the secularization theory, unveiling diverse theoretical insufficiencies at three levels: at the level of the sociological theory, at the level of a theory of religion and at the level of a theory of rationality.

COMPACT PLANETARY SYSTEMS PERTURBED BY AN INCLINED COMPANION. II. STELLAR SPIN-ORBIT EVOLUTION

The stellar spin orientation relative to the orbital planes of multiplanet systems are becoming accessible to observations. Here, we analyze and classify different types of spin-orbit evolution in compact multiplanet systems perturbed by an inclined outer companion. Our study is based on classical secular theory, using a vectorial approach developed in a separate paper. When planet-planet perturbations are truncated at the second order in eccentricity and mutual inclination, and the planet-companion perturbations are developed at the quadrupole order, the problem becomes integrable. The motion is composed of a uniform precession of the whole system around the total angular momentum, and in the rotating frame, the evolution is periodic. Here, we focus on the relative motion associated to the oscillations of the inclination between the planet system and the outer orbit, and of the obliquities of the star with respect to the two orbital planes. The solution is obtained using a powerful geometric method. With this technique, we identify four different regimes characterized by the nutation amplitude of the stellar spin-axis relative to the orbital plane of the planets. In particular, the obliquity of the star reaches its maximum when the system is in the Cassini regime where planets have more angular momentum than the star, and where the precession rate of the star is similar to that of the planets induced by the companion. In that case, spin-orbit oscillations exceed twice the inclination between the planets and the companion. Even if mutual inclination is only ~ 20 deg, this resonant case can cause the spin-orbit angle to oscillate between perfectly aligned and retrograde values.

Popular Buddhists: The Relationship between Popular Religious Involvement and Buddhist Identity in Contemporary China

Drawing on previous literature and theoretical considerations, the authors identify six key independent variables related to popular religious belief and practice in mainland China: institutional religious affiliation, level of education, income, perspectives on inequality as a social problem, assessment of overall health, and rural residency. Using the 2007 Spiritual Life Study of Chinese Residents, the authors find that Buddhist identity is positively associated with popular religious involvement across measures of popular religious belief and practice. Identifying as a formally committed Buddhist consistently displays the strongest positive relationship with popular religious involvement. The level of education does not reveal a consistent negative association with popular religious adherence, contrary to predictions of classical secularization theory. One measure of existential security theory, feeling inequality is a serious social problem, shows a strong positive relationship with popular religious belief, but not popular religious practices. Finally, despite research highlighting the functional importance of popular religion in rural areas, rural residency is not consistently a significant predictor of popular religious adherence. The implications of these findings are discussed.

SMALL INNER COMPANIONS OF WARM JUPITERS: LIFETIMES AND LEGACIES

Although warm jupiters are generally too far from their stars for tides to be important, the presence of an inner planetary companion to a warm jupiter can result in tidal evolution of the system. Insight into the process and its effects comes form classical secular theory of planetary perturbations. The lifetime of the inner planet may be shorter than the age of the system, because the warm jupiter maintains its eccentricity and hence promotes tidal migration into the star. Thus a warm jupiter observed to be alone in its system might have previously cleared away any interior planets. Before its demise, even if an inner planet is of terrestrial scale, it may promote damping of the warm jupiter's eccentricity. Thus any inferences of the initial orbit of an observed warm jupiter must include the possibility of a greater initial eccentricity than would be estimated by assuming it had always been alone. Tidal evolution involving multiple planets also enhances the internal heating of the planets, which readily exceeds that of stellar radiation for the inner planet, and may be great enough to affect the internal structure of warm jupiters. Secular theory gives insight into the tidal processes, providing, among other things, a way to constrain eccentricities of transiting planets based on estimates of the tidal parameter Q.

Characterizing multi-planet systems with classical secular theory

Classical secular theory can be a powerful tool to describe the qualitative character of multi-planet systems and offer insight into their histories. The eigenmodes of the secular behavior, rather than current orbital elements, can help identify tidal effects, early planet-planet scattering, and dynamical coupling among the planets, for systems in which mean-motion resonances do not play a role. Although tidal damping can result in aligned major axes after all but one eigenmode have damped away, such alignment may simply be fortuitous. An example of this is 55 Cancri (orbital solution of Fischer et al., 2008) where multiple eigenmodes remain undamped. Various solutions for 55 Cancri are compared, showing differing dynamical groupings, with implications for the coupling of eccentricities and for the partitioning of damping among the planets. Solutions for orbits that include expectations of past tidal evolution with observational data, must take into account which eigenmodes should be damped, rather than expecting particular eccentricities to be near zero. Classical secular theory is only accurate for low eccentricity values, but comparison with other results suggests that it can yield useful qualitative descriptions of behavior even for moderately large eccentricity values, and may have advantages for revealing underlying physical processes and, as large numbers of new systems are discovered, for triage to identify where more comprehensive dynamical studies should have priority.

The Charm of Disenchantment: A Quest for the Intellectual Attraction of Secularization Theory

In the course of Western history, philosophy has proven to be an active participant in the process of secularization. This article seeks to examine that philosophical role more closely. The central question is how the role of philosophy must be rethought in light of the contemporary critique of classical secularization theory. The first part of the article sheds light on the current crisis of secularization theory. Drawing on recent scholarship in the social sciences, it explains why the classical tenets and assumptions of secularization theory are no longer being considered as plausible and empirically grounded hypotheses. Against that background, the second part turns to philosophy. It examines the implications for a philosophical tradition of religious criticism that has consciously operated within this once-undisputed model of secularization. The question is how this critique of religion must be rethought, if its prominent role in the history of modern philosophy can no longer be ascribed to a general secularization of the Western mind. The third and final part attempts to answer this question by focusing on one of the most frequently overlooked, yet most significant and crucial elements in the history of philosophical secularization: the intrinsic intellectual attraction of religious disenchantment.

Historicizing the Secularization Debate: Church, State, and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Ca. 1300 to 1700

In recent years, the sociology of religion has been consumed by a debate over secularization that pits advocates of a new, rational-choice paradigm (the so-called religious economies model) against defenders of classical secularization theory. According to the old paradigm, the Western world has become increasingly secular since the Middle Ages; according to the new paradigm, it has become increasingly religious. I put these two images of religious development to the test through a detailed examination of religious life in Western Europe before and after the Reformation. I conclude that the changes in social structure and religious experience that occurred during this period were considerably more complex than either the old or new paradigms suggest and, indeed, that the two paradigms are neither so opposed nor so irreconcilable as many of their defenders contend. It is possible, indeed probable, that Western society has become more secular without becoming less religious. I discuss the limitations of the two competing paradigms and sketch the outlines of a more adequate theory of religious change.

Historicizing the Secularization Debate: Church, State, and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ca. 1300 to 1700

In recent years, the sociology of religion has been consumed by a debate over secularization that pits advocates of a new, rational-choice paradigm (the so-called religious economies model) against defenders of classical secularization theory. According to the old paradigm, the Western world has become increasingly secular since the Middle Ages; according to the new paradigm, it has become increasingly religious. I put these two images of religious development to the test through a detailed examination of religious life in Western Europe before and after the Reformation. I conclude that the changes in social structure and religious experience that occurred during this period were considerably more complex than either the old or new paradigms suggest and, indeed, that the two paradigms are neither so opposed nor so irreconcilable as many of their defenders contend. It is possible, indeed probable, that Western society has become more secular without becoming less religious. I discuss the limitations of the two competing paradigms and sketch the outlines of a more adequate theory of religious change