112 Philip S. Gorski
and educated city-dwellers – by some standards, the most “modernized” sectors of
society – seemed to underscore the connection between secularity and modernity.
There are two main sets of objections one might raise against CST. One regards
evidence and interpretation. As we have seen, secularization theorists view the recent
downtrend in orthodox Christianity as part of a long-term decline in religiosityper se.
However, it is not at all clear that the twentieth-century downtrend is really part of a
long-term decline, and proponents of CST have not produced much hard evidence to
suggest that it is. The usual way of “proving” this claim is to assault the reader with a
barrage of twentieth-century evidence, and then confront them with a romanticized
portrait of the Middle Ages, in which Christendom is all-encompassing, and all are
devout Christians – a portrait that is no longer credible.^2 Unless and until better ev-
idence is forthcoming, the hypothesis of long-term decline must remain just that – a
hypothesis. And even if such evidence were forthcoming, it still would not suffice to
prove the broader claim that religionper seis in decline. After all, the simple fact that
orthodox Christianity has lost ground does not necessarily imply that religion itself is
on the wane. For example, it could be that Christianity is in a transitional phase, similar
to the one that occurred during the Reformation era. Or, it could be that other religions
will eventually take its place, in much the same way that Christianity supplanted “pa-
ganism” in late Antiquity. Or it could be that the very nature of religiosity is changing,
as it did in the Axial Age transitions that occurred in many parts of the world roughly
two millennia ago. And even if religionper seis really on the wane of late, there is no
reason to assume that the decline is permanent or irreversible. The history of religion is
rife with ebbs and flows, and Christianity is no exception to this rule. Maybe the recent
decline is really just a cyclical downturn of sorts. To make a strong case for long-term
decline, then, secularization theorists would need to extend their analysis back beyond
the modern era, something they have not yet done.
This brings us to the second set of objections. They concern the theory itself and,
more specifically, the claim that the recent downtrend in Christian devotion can be
traced to the effects of “modernization.” If this claim were correct, then we would ex-
pect to find a strong, inverse relationship between the various dimensions of modern-
ization (e.g., industrialization, urbanization, differentiation, and rationalization) and
various indicators of secularization (e.g., levels of religious belief and participation). In
other words, we would expect to find strong correlations between modernization and
secularization across both time and space. As we have seen, there is some evidence that
seems to support this claim. When we begin to compare different countries, however,
the picture becomes more complex – and less clear-cut (on the following, see espe-
cially Hollinger 1996). Take Scandinavia and the Benelux nations, for example. Despite ̈
their late industrialization and sparse population, and the existence of unified state
churches, the Scandinavian countries, have long been, and still remain, the least de-
vout and observant countries in Western Europe. In Belgium and the Netherlands, by
contrast, where urbanization and industrialization began much earlier, and a higher
degree of church-state separation prevails, orthodox Christianity is relatively stronger.
Nor are these the only anomalies of this sort. Why, one might ask, are the Italians more
observant than the Spanish? And why are Americans generally more observant than
(^2) For a typical example of this rhetorical procedure, see Bruce 1996. The classic critiques of this
romanticized view of the Middle Ages are Delumeau (1977) and Thomas (1971).