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- Title
Secularization as Declining Religious Authority.
- Authors
Chaves, Mark
- Abstract
Secularization is most productively understood not as declining religion, but as the declining scope of religious authority. A focus on religious authority (1) is more consistent with recent developments in social theory than is a preoccupation with religion; (2) draws on and develops what is best in the secularization literature; and (3) reclaims a neglected Weberian insight concerning the sociological analysis of religion. Several descriptive and theoretical "pay-offs" of this conceptual innovation are discussed: new hypotheses concerning the relationship between religion and social movements; the enhanced capacity to conceptually apprehend and empirically investigate secularization among societies, organizations, and individuals; and clearer theoretical connections between secularization and other sociological literatures. Ironically, these connections may indeed spell the end of secularization theory as a distinct body of theory; but in a different way than previously appreciated.
- Subjects
SECULARIZATION; RELIGION; SOCIOLOGY literature; ACTIVISTS; SOCIAL movements; SOCIAL psychology
- Publication
Social Forces, 1994, Vol 72, Issue 3, p749
- ISSN
0037-7732
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/2579779