A history of the secularization issue

"Secularization" as a concept
As noted in the introduction, we will do two things in this history of the secularization issue. On the one hand, we will discuss the theories that analyze the role of religion in modern society. But on the other hand, we must also trace the different uses of the term "secularization", even when this use does not really occur within such a theory. As we have just seen, the first sociological theories about religion in modern society did not rely on the concept of secularization. Indeed, for a very long time, "secularization" was used exclusively in the political arena. It was a term used not to describe a historical process, but to further or, more broadly, to interfere in this very process.

The term secularization was coined in 1646 by the duke of Longueville, the French envoy to the negotiations that led to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia (Stallmann 1960, pp. 5-6). The term was invented to make possible a compromise in the difficult question of the ownership of a number of spiritual lands. In order to satisfy territorial claims from Sweden and from the elector of Brandenburg, the ownership of some episcopal lands had to be transferred to secular hands. "Secularization" was the ideal term to describe this operation in diplomatically neutral terms: "The word 'secular' belonged to the churchly vocabulary, and designated a worldliness which was not characterized by an excluding contrast to the spiritual. [...] 'The secular' can be useful to churchly purposes and can be ratified spiritually. The word secularization was particularly suited to the situation in that it allowed to characterize the transformation of spiritual principalities not as an alienation of property from its original purposes nor as a reversal carried out by force, but to imagine a use which was provisional, and which did not preempt the possibility of a different use of the property" (Stallman 1960, p. 7). Thus, from its very origins, the term secularization contained the ambiguity that has so much disturbed many subsequent scholars. It is this ambiguity that accounts, for a large part, for the muddy aspect of the secularization debate: Where some theologians hail secularization as an authentic product of Christian spirituality, other scholars use the term to refer to the final and total demise of religion in modern society.

In the following centuries, the term tended to lose its original neutrality, and to become a weapon in the fight for emancipation from the Church. For one thing, with the increase in the Church/state conflict and the ever more numerous "secularizations" of Church lands and prerogatives, the word could not but take a negative meaning. The French revolution, the 1803 secularizations in Germany, and the later Kulturkampf constitute the main historical benchmarks in this process. For another thing, "secularization" started to be used by the thinkers who led the fight against the Church. However, the first very systematic such use of "secularization" did not occur before the middle of the XIX^th century. In France, Victor Cousin announced the "secularization of education" and the "secularization of philosophy" (Lübbe 1965, p. 43), while in England, George Holyoake founded the Secular Society. This latter movement is particularly interesting for our purposes.

The secular movement was created as an offshoot of the Owenite movement (Campbell 1971, p. 47). The founder of the movement, George Jacob Hoyoake, converted himself to Owenism in his youth and, as a result, lost his job. He thus became a full-time "social missionary" for the movement. After an offending anti-religious remark he made in a meeting, he ended up in jail, one among several victims of anti-atheist "persecutions". When he was freed, the persecutions had notably abated and the Owenite movement had virtually disappeared. Holyoake decided to found his own movement, an association of freethinkers dedicated to the establishment of a secular morality.

In creating his movement, Holyoake drew on several traditions. In addition to Owenism, he drew on the anti-clerical tradition inherited from the French revolution (1971, p. 48). He was also close to contemporary positivism: Although he seems to have created his system of thought without relying on them, he was a great admirer of Comte (1971, p. 49) and of Spencer. The parallels are sufficiently obvious not to require too much elaboration: Like Comte and Spencer, Holyoake wanted to autoreferentially build a secular foundation for social life by drawing on the resources of "science" and "reason": "Science (which he used interchangeaby with reason) was revealing to men the operation of the natural world, and the contemporary systems of scientific morals of the utilitarians, Spencer and the positivists and the science of personality of phrenology would ultimately reveal the science of social life" (Budd 1977, p. 27).

The Londoner Secular Society was founded in 1853 (Campbell 1971, p. 49). In 1866, the movement had gained enough impetus for the foundation of a National Secular Society to take place. The movement continued gaining momentum until about 1885, when it started to decline (1971, p. 50). The Secular Society suffered from internal rivalries between its founder, who believed that secularism did not imply atheism, and his challenger Charles Bradlaugh, who believed it did and advocated more aggressive tactics. But it also suffered from the growth of tolerance toward freethinking in society in general, and from competition with the more successful socialist movement (1971, p. 54). The secular movement had different offshoots both in Britain and in the U.S.A. One of them which might be worth mentioning is the British Rationalist Press Association, founded in 1899 by Charles A. Watts, a great admirer of Spencer and of the other evolutionists, whose works he eagerly published and helped disseminate (Budd 1977, p. 133). Watts even attempted to "deify Spencer in the services held at the Agnostic Temple in South London" (1977, p. 127). The importance of this movement for our purposes is rather anecdotical: while continuing to publish secular manifestoes, Watts also published Wilson's Religion in Secular Society (1966). Thus, the age-old links between secularism as a political movement and secularization as a sociological theory were briefly revived on the occasion of this important publication⁹⁵.

Another, earlier and more significant such link is evident in Germany. A movement similar to the British Secular Society emerged in this country at the end of the XIX^th century: the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ethische Kultur (DGEK). This association of scholars, united to promote a technocratic positivism as an "apolitical" alternative to either nationalism or Marxism (Lübbe 1965, pp. 44-45), proposed the creation of an "ethical culture". By this, they referred to a morality independent from religious assumptions, and based on the "practical conditions of social existence" (Lübbe 1965, p. 47). But although the program of the DGEK was very similar to that of the British Secular Society, the word secularization itself was used only occasionally by its members. What makes this association of interest to us is the fact that among its members, we find Ferdinand Tönnies (Lübbe 1965, p. 43). Although Tönnies did not propose a "secularization theory" nor systematically use the term (1965, p. 62), he proposed a theory which forms one of the most important stepping stones in the development of the "social-structural" approach to the problem of secularization. As we will see, in Tönnies, the problem of the place of religion was posed in new terms.
Ferdinand Tönnies
Tönnies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887⁹⁶) is generally considered one of the great classics of sociology. The reputation of this work is based mainly on the impact of the two concepts it put forward⁹⁷ on subsequent sociological thinking. Although literally dozens of other sociologists⁹⁸ have proposed classifications of types of societies running along similar lines, it is Tönnies' terminology which has survived. Few present-day sociologist refer to Redfield's "folk-urban" dichotomy, or to Becker's "sacred-secular" dichotomy⁹⁹ (see chap. 9), but the opposition between "community" and "society", or between "communal" and "societal" types of organization, has become part of the sociologist's stock in trade.

The most important level of analysis underlying Tönnies' theory is psychological¹⁰⁰. According to Tönnies, there exist two distinct types of human wills¹⁰¹: Natural will is "the will which includes the thinking", whereas rational will is "the thinking which encompasses the will" (1887, p. 103). In other words, in natural will, man's thought processes are dependent upon his organic life, whereas in rational will, these thought processes come to take preponderance over organic life. Natural will can be understood only in terms of the past: it is the produce of past experience, to which it always refers. By contrast, rational will must be understood in terms of the future, because it exists only in relation to a given, deliberately devised, project. Natural will is a produce of activity; its rational counterpart "is prior to the activity to which it refers [...], while activity is its realization" (1887, pp. 103-04).

Turning to the sociological level of analysis, the actions which express these wills can either take the form of aggression or of cooperation. Only in the second case can we speak of social relations. Thus, social relations are the product of the interaction of human wills (1887, p. 33). But this interaction does not only result in social relations, but also in the formation of a new type of will, a common, or social will (1887, p. 66).

Not surprisingly, depending on the type of will that is at work, different types of social wills, and different social systems, will obtain. Natural will results in a social organization Tönnies calls a Gemeinschaft¹⁰². In this type of organization, people are related to each other through personal bonds, whose paradigm is the blood relation (1887, p. 37). Even if they are not directly related, people living in a Gemeinschaft know each other personally, and do not think of their relationships as being determined by self-interest. By contrast, rational will results in a social organization Tönnies calls a Gesellschaft. In this type of organization, people do not directly know each other. They do not act toward each other as total human beings, but only as abstract beings, who exist only insofar as they meet or oppose some rationally designed purpose of the acting agent (1887, p. 65). "Accordingly", Tönnies tells us, "Gemeinschaft should be understood as a living organism, Gesellschaft as a mechanical aggregate and artifact" (1887, p. 35).

Tönnies' theory contains several other levels of analysis. The only one which is needed for an understanding of the rest of this presentation is the distinction - analogous to Aristotle's distinction between three types of souls - between three forms of natural will: the first (which gives rise to pleasure) is vegetative, and is found in plants, in animals, and in humans. The second, (which gives rise to habit) is animal, and is found in animals and in humans. The third, (which gives rise to memory) is mental, and is present only in humans. Tönnies' other distinctions need not concern us here.

Tönnies' views on the evolution of religion are presented as one of the subordinate dichotomies arising from the basic dichotomies in a particular social sphere: morality. In Gemeinschaft, morality was based entirely on religion. Religion is most important in the most "supreme" of the three forms of Gemeinschaft¹⁰³. In the Gemeinschaft of ideas - best represented in town-life - the common will of the group expresses itself in religion¹⁰⁴. Furthermore, religion acts as a force that binds this looser form of Gemeinschaft together: "A worshiped deity [...] has an immediate significance for the preservation of such a bond [i.e., friendship], [and] is not bound to any place but lives in the conscience of its worshipers and accompanies them on their travels to foreign countries" (1887, p. 43).

In contrast, in Gesellschaft, religion can no longer commend men's attention: "The intellectual attitude of the individual becomes gradually less and less influenced by religion and more and more influenced by science" (scientization*; 1887, p. 226). Even tough religion retains some degree of influence in any kind of concrete social organization, its influence makes itself felt only in realms where communal forms continue to predominate, most conspicuously in family life (privatization*; 1887, p. 219). But in public life, religion has been replaced by public opinion¹⁰⁵. Thus, in Gesellschaft, public opinion has replaced religion as an agency for the conduct of collective life (autonomization*). This influence is exercised through the particular devices used in the different types of social organizations to enforce social control: "Religion approves folkways, mores, and customs as good and right or condemns them as false and bad. Likewise, public opinion condones policy and legislation as effective and clever or condemns it as ineffective and stupid" (1887, p. 219).

As we can see, in Tönnies' theory the autoreference question survives only in a very limited form. What must be noted is that the transformations of religion are no longer accounted for in cognitive terms (from "error" to "truth") nor in terms of social engineering (in term of the emergence of a "scientific" order), but as a social-structural evolution (from a form of association favorable to religion to a form of association unfavorable to religion).

Secularization was also used very briefly as a descriptive term by Hannah Arendt. In her article on "The concept of history" (1954), she starts from the premise that we no longer live in a religious, but in a secular world, and discusses two uses of the term secularization, between which she expresses her preference. This discussion of Arendt's is situated in the framework of a debate among historians as to the status of the Christian notions of history and progress in the genesis of the modern historical consciousness, as discussed most notably by Theodor Mommsen. Secularization can be viewed, on the one hand, simply as an event which happened at some point in history, as the "separation of religion and politics" (1954, p. 69). In this sense, it represents the rise of an independent secular thought, which is based on the idea of the rules of natural law. But secularization can be viewed, on the other hand, as a change in ideas, giving rise to a new historical consciousness (generalization*), in which "secular concepts" have replaced "religious categories" (1954, p. 69). This, in other words, is the thesis "that the modern historical consciousness has a Christian religious origin and came into being through a secularization of originally theological categories" (1954, p. 65). The first type of secularization, Arendt deems undeniable, but the second, she finds very doubtful.

Finally, secularization was also used by Mircea Eliade, an historian of religion. Eliade's concerns were not with secularization, far from that. He was interested almost exclusively in religious man, in the analysis of the manifestations of the sacred in all times and places. He considered the sacred as reality par excellence, and the experience of the sacred as the truest manifestation of man's humanity. Eliade was deeply distressed by the emergence of areligious, or profane man (he did not talk of secular man), who, he thought, had fully emerged only in modern western societies (1957, p. 172). To him, this evolution constituted an impoverishment of human experience. Whenever he mentioned this transformation, he used the category of "desacralization". In his view, even the religious experience of the urban Christian represented an impoverishment, because urban man had lost contact with the cosmos, with nature as a manifestation of the sacred. Eliade's analysis of desacralization was not a sociological analysis; it was entirely contained inside the framework of the phenomenology of religion.

What must be noted for our purposes, however, is that Eliade sometimes used the word secularization. And, although his terminology is not very rigorous, I think that the intention that lies behind his use of the term, as it appears in Le sacré et le profane, can be brought out quite accurately. Secularization is not the decline of the sacred; it is something different from desacralization. Eliade uses secularization in the sense of generalization*. Whenever he uses "secularization" instead of "desacralization", his intention is to point to all that areligous man has inherited from his religious forebears: "Just as 'Nature' is the produce of a progressive secularization of the Cosmos created by God, profane man is the result of a desacralization of human existence. [...] In other words, profane man, whether he wants it or not, retains traces of the behavior of religious man, but deprived of its religious meaning" (1957, pp. 172-173). At another point, he explains: "By opposing the 'sacred' to the 'profane', we mainly wanted to underscore the impoverishment brought about by the secularization of a religious behavior" (1957, pp. 9-10). Thus, in Eliade, desacralization represents the radical impoverishment brought about by the emergence of profane man, whereas secularization rather represents all that - in spite of this impoverishment - survives from the richness of the religious experience in profane man.

The evidence presented thus far should be sufficient to underscore the uncertain status of "secularization" among intellectuals in general in the first half of the century. Sometimes, secularization was loosely linked to a philosophy of history. But most often, it was simply used as shorthand pointing to a number of different phenomena in the dialectic relationship between the religious and the non-religious. The connotations of the word ranged from the clearest dismissal to an adamant valorization of religion. But in all cases, secularization was considered a thing of the past, a process which had given birth to a new, secular society, definitive in its main features.

"Secularization" in Middletown
How did sociologists position themselves in this intellectual environment? The same elementary linguistic logic which led to the use of the word secularization by historians and historians of religion led to its use in sociology. The first systematic use of the term secularization in a well-known sociological work occurred in the 1929 Middletown studies. These studies again bear testimony to the fact that interest and awareness concerning religion rose rather than fell with the advent of empirical sociology¹⁰⁶. As is apparent in the general organization of the book as well as in the conclusions drawn from the enquiry, the Lynds did not conclude that the importance of religion had drastically declined in Middletown; quite the contrary. Chapter five of the original study was entirely devoted to religious practice, and the first study concluded that, among the six "groups of activities" investigated, "formal religious activities" had the least changed (Lynd and Lynd 1929, pp. 403-04; 497), and represented "permanence in the face of surrounding change" (Lynd and Lynd 1937, p. 295).

In spite of this general trend, however, the authors noted a number of transformations. To describe these changes, they used the word secularization very systematically. But the concept was not defined explicitly: it was considered self-explanatory. One thing, however, should be stressed: Secularization was not used to refer to an overall decline of religion, but - exactly as in Weber - to a number of limited changes in specific areas.

The most striking fact emerging from the Lynd's studies is that they used virtually all the ideas which became later incorporated in the CISR paradigm as exemplars. The most important use of secularization in Middletown is related to the idea of differentiation*. In the second study, the authors note that "a further secularization of Middletown [...] since 1925 is apparent in the effort to divorce religion and politics through a bill passed by the State House of Representatives in 1931 prohibiting any person or organization from sending questionnaires to candidates concerning their moral, religious, or legislative opinions [...]" (1937, p. 307). The authors also note that religious rites are performed increasingly inside specifically religious buildings and at a particular date and time (1929, p. 339).

Secularization is also used in the sense of autonomization*, first in that an increasing number of social practices are carried out without recourse to religious ceremonies or beliefs (1929, p. 203). One example of this in the public sphere is the secularization of charity organizations - the Social Service Bureau having replaced the Church (1929, pp. 462, 468). But the most systematic use of this sense of secularization is made in connection with the family. It refers, first, to the decline in the rate of marriages performed by a religious representative as opposed to marriages performed by a secular agent (1929, p. 112). Second, it refers to the fact that the taboo on the dissolution of marriage is increasingly being lifted, which results in an increase of divorce (1929, p. 121). Finally, the loss of potency of the taboo on voluntary control of parenthood (1929, p. 123) can also be considered a secularization of the family.

Secularization is also linked to the idea of privatization* when the authors note that the rapidity of the process differs from one institutional sphere to another, and is slower "in the home and family" than in "business and industry" (1929, p. 26, n. 3).

The second core exemplar implied in the treatment of secularization in the Middletown studies is worldliness*. This is most apparent in the secularization of the Sabbath, which becomes the "Sunday Holiday" (1929, p. 343). One example of this is "the operation of a night club on Sunday evening in Middletown" (1935, p. 277, n. 47), another is the influence of the automobile, which induces people to leave the town instead of going to Church (1935, p. 307). Finally, another element which is not considered by the authors to be an example of secularization - but which is considered as such in the CISR paradigm - is the fact that the retreat of the Church inside specific buildings which we mentioned earlier is "countered" by a tendency of the Church to fight back by "taking over extra-religious activities" (1929, p. 339).

Of course, the different senses of secularization can be isolated only analytically, and the way secularization is used in Middletown makes it appear clearly that they are closely interconnected. The best example of this is probably provided by what the authors call the secularization of public lectures. This element will allow us to operate a smooth transition from worldliness to the third core exemplar of the CISR paradigm, rationalization*: "The heavy crop of moral and political lectures by visiting ministers and denominational college presidents" is increasingly being replaced by "short talks to club groups, more and more of them on specific subjects to specialized groups" (1929, p. 229; 338). Here, worldliness* (time is being devoted to this-worldly preoccupations) merges with rationalization* (in the sense that these preoccupations can be characterized as directly useful and rationally defined toward specific ends).

Rationalization* is also apparent in the secularization of health matters, modern science replacing the reliance on the "will of God" (1929, p. 457), and expresses itself in the secularization of literature: Scientific books found in the public library now carry specifically scientific titles ("Introduction to Geology") rather than religiously influenced ones ("The Wonders of Creation"; 1929, p. 237, n. 25).

But why did the authors not differentiate these different meanings of the term? It is probably safe to answer that these differences would have seemed meaningless to them. As we have noted, they are purely analytical - as their multiple interconnections make clear. In the absence of any overall secularization theory, the Lynds were quite justified in not making these distinctions. And the fact that they did not define secularization shows that, for them, it must have referred to something quite obvious, which need not be stated explicitly. In other words, as for the historians we discussed earlier, "secularization" simply referred to any kind of transition from "religion" to "non-religion".
"Secularization" as a taken-for-granted decline of religion
Secularization was not always used in the subtle and differentiated way it was used in the Middletown studies. As a matter of fact, one can find numerous examples of a much cruder use of the term. For many writers, secularization is tantamount to a taken-for-granted decline of religion. Let us take, as an illustration, Ruth Benedicts' Patterns of Culture.

Benedict does not discuss religion in modern society in any detail. The word secularization appears only once in her book, when she mentions "the minor changes that occasion so much denunciation today, such as the increase of divorce, the growing secularization in our cities, the prevalence of the petting party, and many more [...]" (Benedict 1934, pp. 36-37). Although she does not define secularization, what she means by this word is clearly linked to "the fact that religion is no longer the area of life in which the important modern battles are staged" (1934, p. 9). Thus, we see that at least two things are taken for granted in Patterns of Culture: the meaning of the word secularization, and the "fact" that religion has become unimportant.

This simplistic use of the term secularization was not restricted to the first half of the century. Indeed, it perdures even today in a great many writings. A similar pattern emerges, for instance, from Lerner's Passing of Traditional Society. In Lerner's vocabulary, to become secularized is to acquire "a concern with problems identified as socio-economic rather than religious" (1958, p. 165). This process is always closely related to urbanization, industrialization, democratization, education and media participation (1958, p. 438). Lerner considers secularization - which also includes a decline in attendance - as self-evident: "The familiar process of secularization accompanies urbanization in Egypt as elsewhere. While almost all of the Farmers interviewed visit their village mosque daily, the Workers have ruptured this Traditional bond" (1958, p. 230).

It is not necessary to pursue this presentation of the crudest uses of "secularization". It will be sufficient to note, for our purposes, that sociologists did not differ markedly from historians in their use of the term. This was to change with the impact of the European classic tradition. Before we turn to this, let us summarize our findings concerning the place of sociology of religion and the status of "secularization" in America outside the European influence.

Interest in sociology of religion was rather low during the whole period, but seems to have risen somewhat with the advent of empirical sociology. This can be explained by the fact that, once they turned to community studies, sociologists could not fail to notice that religion still played some role in the daily life of Americans - a fact that tended to be overlooked by some of the most enthusiastic proponents of sociology as a cure for the social problems brought about by the "demise" of religion. As for secularization, we have noted that the term was not very widely used, and that its meaning was not determined by a theoretical framework - rather, every writer felt free to use it as its etymology and the subject-matter he was studying seemed to indicate. Most of the ideas taken over later in the CISR paradigm, however, were already present. The core exemplar developed in most detail was that of differentiation, whereas the idea of rationalization* was not nearly as important. As we will see, with the reception of the European tradition, the secularization issue will evolve in a more theoretical direction, and the idea of rationalization* will be further developed.