The Secularization Debate

Introduced to social scientific audiences by Max Weber, the concept of secularization has had a major influence on the way in which religion has been understood in the West since the 1960s, but since the late 1980s both its predictive and descriptive adequacy has been seriously challenged. The Secularization Debate is a collection of essays by prominent American and European scholars that forcefully delineates the critical issues pivotal to the hotly contested concept of secularization and its continued relevance in the postmodern era.

Introduced to social scientific audiences by Max Weber, the concept of secularization has had a major influence on the way in which religion has been understood in the West since the 1960s, but since the late 1980s both its predictive and descriptive adequacy has been seriously challenged. The Secularization Debate is a collection of essays by prominent American and European scholars that forcefully delineates the critical issues pivotal to the hotly contested concept of secularization and its continued relevance in the postmodern era.

William H. Swatos, Jr., is the executive officer of the Association for the Sociology of Religion and the Religious Research Association. Daniel V. A. Olson is associate professor of sociology at Indiana University, South Bend.