Historicizing the Secularization Debate 119
or predestination (e.g., Calvinism). Thus, it could be that the observed variations in
religious participation are due less to changing levels of individual religiosity than to
changes in the character and context of religious belief.
This brings us to the second and deeper problem which confronts the SPCM: the
roots of the sociopolitical conflicts themselves. The SPCM treats these conflicts as a
given and focuses on their dynamics and effects. But it says nothing about their under-
lying causes, about the social and cultural conditions of possibility for the emergence
of political religions and secular ideologies. From the vantage point of the present, this
development has a certain self-evidence. But it is important to bear in mind that in
many and perhaps even most times and places, sociopolitical opposition was expressed
throughreligion rather than against it. This was particularly true in late medieval and
early modern Europe, where biblical doctrine was thelingua francaof upstarts and mal-
contents of all stripes from the Hussite Rebellion through the Revolution of 1525 to the
English Civil War. In modern Europe, however, revolutionaries learned to speak other
languages as well, languages such as nationalism and socialism, which were un- or even
antireligious. What is more, large numbers of people were willing to listen to them. But
where did these languages come from? And why did they resonate so widely? These
are important questions for which the SPCM has no answers. To address these issues,
we need another set of conceptual tools.
A FOURTH APPROACH: NOTES TOWARD A SOCIOCULTURAL
TRANSFORMATION MODEL
Classical sociological theory suggests two possible approaches to the preceding ques-
tions. The first is inspired by Durkheim’s writings on the division of labor (Durkheim
1893/1997) and the sociology of religion (Durkheim 1912/1976). For most of the last
two millennia, one could argue, intellectual labor in Western societies has been monop-
olized by the priestly classes. Since the Renaissance, however, the number of nonpriestly
intellectuals has grown steadily, and various groups of experts and professionals have
taken shape (e.g., jurists, bureaucrats, scientists, and psychologists). In order to estab-
lish their jurisdiction over areas of knowledge and practice previously controlled by
members of the priestly classes, they have had to draw sharp lines between religious
and nonreligious domains and institutions. The result of this development has been
the gradual removal of religious language and authority from an ever-expanding swath
of social life, and the articulation of nonreligious sources of moral valuation (on this,
see especially Taylor 1989).
The second approach derives directly from Weber’s sociology of religion and,
more specifically, from his essay on “Religious Rejections of the World” (cf. Weber
1919/1946). In traditional societies, argues Weber, religion and “the world” were of a
piece. The divine, however conceived, resided within the world, and “salvation” con-
sisted of worldly well-being (i.e., health, wealth, and progeny). With the emergence of
“world-rejecting religions” in South Asia and the Middle East roughly two millennia
ago, this original unity of religion and world was broken asunder, and individual salva-
tion and the divine were catapulted into another realm, a transcendental beyond. The
implications of this transformation are difficult to overstate. Wherever it took place –
in India and China, Persia and Palestine, Rome and Mecca – religious and nonreligious
values and activities now existed in a state of tension with one another. The demands