secularizationmodes of behavior with worldly ways of thinking and behaving. During
this process, the significance of religion is greatly reduced and replaced
with other convictions. Secularization is both private and public in the
sense that it alters one’s way of understanding oneself, life in general, and
one’s worldview, and it affects how one conducts oneself in public.
In its ecclesiastical literature, the Western church distinguishes
between members that are regular or secular, creating an opposition
between them. The secular refers to worldly affairs that are outside the
confines of the church, whereas regular designated members are subject
to rules of the internal monastic order. Within the context of Protestantism,
some sociologists, such as Max Weber and Bryan Wilson, agree that
reformed Christianity embodies secularizing elements within its ethos
because it promotes rationalization that necessarily leads to disenchant-
ment of the religious world, and it encourages scientific explanations that
lead to the questioning and undermining of religious justifications for the
world. The sociologist Peter Berger adds that Protestantism divests itself
of the concomitant elements of the sacred by rejecting mystery, miracle,
and magic, and it polarizes a radically transcendent deity and fallen
humankind. Moreover, Protestantism subverts mediators between God
and humans, such as sacraments, intercession of saints, and miracles,
which throws humans back upon their own coping devices.
In the modern world, there are many reasons for the process of secu-
larization besides rationalization that disrupts faith. This process also
includes industrialization, social differentiation, individualism, differen-
tiation, societalization, diversity, relativism, pluralism, modernization,
technology, and egalitarianism. These factors and others combine to
undermine religion. Charles Taylor identifies, for instance, three mean-
ings of secularity: (1) that understood in terms of public space that is
emptied of God or any reference to ultimate reality, even though many
people still believe in God; (2) the decline of religious beliefs and prac-
tice with people turning away from God and not attending services; (3)
with its connection to the initial two senses of secularity, its final mean-
ing consists of a situation in which belief in God is understood to be one
option among many others. Intending to focus on lived experience,
Taylor points to the loss of immediate certainty and the option of human-
ism with its localization of alternatives. Secularization is indicative of a
disenchanted world because of the absence of God within a pattern of
religious life that is characterized by destabilization and decomposition.
Industrialization takes a person from the home in order to perform
impersonal tasks for which one is paid a wage that enables families to
thrive economically, but it creates a wedge between family life and eco-
nomic life outside of the home. Industrialization demands specialization