Sacred and Secular; Religion and Politics Worldwide

Seminal thinkers of the nineteenth century - Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud - all predicted that religion would gradually fade in importance and cease to be significant with the emergence of industrial society. The belief that religion was dying became the conventional wisdom in the social sciences during most of the twentieth century. During the last decade, however, the secularization thesis has experienced the most sustained challenge in its long history. The traditional secularization thesis needs updating. Religion has not disappeared and is unlikely to do so. Nevertheless, the concept of secularization captures an important part of what is going on. This book develops a theory of secularization and existential security. Sacred and Secular is essential reading for anyone interested in comparative religion, sociology, public opinion, political behavior, political development, social psychology, international relations, and cultural change. • Articulates and develops a controversial new theory seeking to explain patterns of secularization and religiosity that is certain to arouse debate among social scientists. • New evidence about the causes and consequences of secularization from the World Values Survey, conducted in almost 80 societies, along with other sources of data. • The study examines the implications of secularization for politics, especially for electoral behavior and for social capital.