The Dynamics of Religious Economies 97
unquestioned authority and plausibility. Berger (1967: 48) noted that “When an entire
society serves as the plausibility structure for a religiously legitimated world, all the
important social processes within it serve to confirm and reconfirm the reality of this
world.”
But if there is a single thesis that has united this paradigm, it is that the rise of
modernity is the demise of religion. Social scientists and assorted Western intellectuals
have been promising the end of religion for centuries. Auguste Comte (1830–42/1969),
famous for coining the word sociology, announced that, as a result of modernization,
human society was outgrowing the “theological stage” of social evolution and a new age
was dawning in which the science of sociology would replace religion as the basis for
moral judgments. Max Weber (1904–5/1958) later explained why modernization would
cause the “disenchantment” of the world, and Sigmund Freud (1928/1985) reassured
his disciples that this greatest of all neurotic illusions would die on the therapist’s couch.
More recently, the distinguished anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace (1966: 264–5)
explained to tens of thousands of American undergraduates that “the evolutionary
future of religion is extinction.”
For proponents of this paradigm, the secularization thesis was nestled within the
broader theoretical framework of modernization theories, proposing that as industri-
alization, urbanization, rationalization, and religious pluralism increase, religiousness
mustdecline (Hadden 1987; Finke 1992). Keep in mind that modernization is along,
gradual, relatively constant process. In terms of time series trends, modernization is a long,
linear, upward curve, and secularization is assumed to trace the reciprocal of this curve,
to be a long, linear, downward curve. Each trend represents a semievolutionary process
that is virtually inevitable. Since modernization is so advanced in many nations that
“postmodernism” is the latest buzzword, it must be assumed that secularization is at
least “ongoing” to the extent that a significant downward trend in religiousness can be
seen.
This ongoing process of secularization was expected to occur at several levels, from
individual consciousness and commitment to the vitality of the local church to the
authority and power of religion in the larger institutions. One of the most well-respected
proponents of the traditional model, Bryan Wilson (1982: 149) explained that, for
individuals, secularization results in a “decline in the proportion of their time, energy,
and resources which [individuals] devote to super-empirical concerns” and would lead
to a “gradual replacement of a specifically religious consciousness...by an empirical,
rational, instrumental orientation.” Beyond the individual, he described secularization
as including a “decay of religious institutions” and a “shift from religious to secular
control of various of the erstwhile activities and functions of religion.” Likewise, Peter
Berger, long the most sophisticated modern proponent of the secularization thesis,
was entirely candid about the effects of secularization on individuals. Having outlined
the aspects of secularization for social institutions, Berger (1967: 107–8) went on to
explain that the “process of secularization has a subjective side as well. As there is
a secularization of society and culture, so there is a secularization of consciousness.”
Recently, Berger (1997) gracefully withdrew his support for the theory of secularization.
We cite this passage from his earlier work not to emphasize our previous disagreement
with Berger, whose work we always have much admired, but as a contrast to the recent
tactic by other proponents of secularization, who seek to evade the growing mountain
of contrary evidence by redefining the term of secularization.