A history of the secularization issue

"Secularization" as a theory (1921-1957)
"Secularization" in the Chicago School
I now wish to introduce one of the most important developments in the genesis of the CISR paraidgm: The transformation of "secularization" from a mere descriptive term into a master concept embedded in a global theory. Secularization was in effect not used only as a descriptive term in the United States. It was included in a theoretical framework for the first time by a group of sociologists - mainly Robert Park, Howard Becker, Robert Redfield, and Everett Hughes - who were initially grouped in the Chicago Department of sociology¹⁰⁷. As we will see, the whole discussion of secularization as it was used in this framework can be nicely delimited in time and in the social space, in contrast to the somewhat incoherent aspect of the discussion of "secularization as a descriptive term". This difference illustrates the interconnectedness of the social and of the cognitive realms as soon as a theory acquires the status of a paradigm. And indeed, in the 40s and 50s, secularization as used by Becker and Redfield did function as a paradigm - although on a smaller scale than the modern secularization paradigm.

This paradigm rested on a dichotomy between the sacred and the secular societies. According to Becker, the first use of the sacred-secular dichotomy can be traced to one of his masters, Robert Park¹⁰⁸, who "had used sacred and secular as terms for designating societies in their value-system aspects for a considerable time, as his publications from the early 1920's show" (Becker 1957, p. 180). At this point, Becker refers to Park and Burgess' Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1921), and to Park's Race and Culture (1950). But these references are not very convincing. The 1921 textbook offers only a discussion of the differences of character between "those [ancient] Greeks who mingled much in maritime affairs and those who did not" (Park and Burgess 1921, p. 261). The authors noted that the former were much more open to novelty than the latter, but the sacred/secular dichotomy is not used in the text. In the article reprinted in Race and Culture (which was written in 1931; Park 1950, p. 3), however, Park does indeed briefly mention the sacred-secular dichotomy: "What characterizes a sacred society is not so much antiquity as immobility. [...] The thing that characterizes a secular society, on the other hand, is its mobility" ([1931] 1950, pp. 12-13). Park very explicitly states that this dichotomy has found its classic expression in Tönnies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft and, for some reason which does not appear clearly, he goes on to explain that these two types can "perhaps, [be] describe[d] as the sacred and secular societies" (1950, p. 12). At this precise point, he refers to Tönnies, but also to Durkheim's Division du Travail in a footnote. The fact that Park's use of the sacred-secular dichotomy in his own writings was very scant should not be construed as a dismissal of his influence. As Ellworth Faris¹⁰⁹ explains, Park was much more interested and efficient in communicating his ideas in the classroom than in writing; he would rather "induce men to write ten books than to take time off to write one himself" (Faris, quoted in Coser 1971, p. 371).

Becker acknowledges that he was greatly influenced by Park's views and that, in addition, Park also greatly influenced Everett Hughes ("Who [was] the first of those working with Park, so far as the writer knows, to have utilized the concepts [of sacred and secular societies] in dealing with an empirical problem [reference is then made to Hughes 1928]") and Robert Redfield, who used it to develop his folk-urban typology (Becker 1957, p. 180).

Hughes appears, in effect, to be the first American writer to use "secularization" in a theoretical framework, in a rather brief reflection on the "secularization of the division of labor" (1928, p. 757). His immediate concern is with the different types of personalities connected with different types of division of labor. Starting from Durkheim's distinction between social segment and social organ, he draws a distinction between a sacred division of labor (which obtains in social segments) and a secular division of labor (obtaining in the social organs). He then gives a number of examples of a sacred division of labor, drawn from his own researches¹¹⁰. This type of division of labor included "'preliterate professions', including healers, performers of ritual, charmers, medicine men, etc." (1928, p. 757). In contrast to this rigidly determined type of division of labor, a secularized division of labor is much more flexible: New occupations are created every day, and individuals have to adapt to this constantly changing situation. "We may call the division of labor 'secularized' both in that new occupations or units of function are developed, which are not hampered by tradition, and in that the persons who enter the occupations come without definite, traditional notions about the way of carrying on the occupation" (1928, p. 758). At this point, Hughes then refers to Sombart's Wirtschaftsleben im Hochkapitalismus (1902), where Sombart effectively used the term "secularization".

Howard Becker
Becker developed the first elements of his secularization theory as early as 1930 in his Ph.D dissertation (Redfield 1947, p. 293). A summary of the framework developed in the dissertation is available in the form of a paper published by Becker shortly thereafter (Becker 1932). This paper contains a detailed analysis of the transition from traditional ("sacred") to modern ("secular") forms of social organization in terms of the breakdown and reconstruction, on a new basis, of the social equilibrium, as influenced, most notably, by population movements. However, it does not spell out explicitly what later came to be considered the core of Becker's secularization theory: the definition of "sacred" and "secular" in terms of refusal versus acceptance of change. We will therefore rely on a later and more well-known formulation, which appeared in Sacred-Secular Theory and its Development (Becker 1957).

In this paper, Becker's starting point is the process by which humans evaluate - that is, bestow a value upon - their environment. In Becker's schema, values are inseparably the objects of our needs (e.g., Swiss cheese or well-being) and the only form of knowledge - since only the "givens" which are desired, positively or negatively, become "takens": "What is known is needed; what is needed is known" (1957, p. 138). Moreover, every value is the object of a judgment in terms of "right-wrong, good-bad, proper-improper, convenient-inconvenient" (1957, p. 140), that is, in terms of norms. Values, then, are referred to by Becker as "knowing-desiring-norming".

To reformulate in a somewhat less exotic vocabulary: Humans perceive reality selectively (by "taking" some of the "givens" to be found in nature). In doing this, they are influenced by their needs¹¹¹ in such a way that the (positive or negative) objects of their needs are what they perceive as reality, and vice versa. At the same time, this perception is judged in moral terms. In other words, humans act in the world that surrounds them through a given set of values, which is inseparably a form of knowledge and a moral order, both of which are heavily influenced by human needs.

The distinction between the sacred and the secular is a distinction between two types of orientations to these values: "Any society or part thereof that imparts to or elicits from its members evaluations that can be altered, if at all, only in the face of definite emotionalized reluctance is a sacred society [...]. Conversely, any society or part thereof that imparts to or elicits from its members evaluations leading to well-marked readiness to change is a secular society [...]" (1957, p. 142).

What Becker has in mind when he speaks of values is much broader than what is implied in the everyday use of this term, or even than what is commonly implied in sociology: Values are not just "ultimate" or "moral" values. Instead, all the objects whatsoever that are part of the human world are values. By the same token, "sacred values must be treated as comprising far more than the religious, divine, spiritual and son on. [...] Unwillingness or inability or both - linked with distress or similar signs of tension - to alter any aspect of one's 'way of life' is sacred evaluation". Similarly, "the learning of secular conduct is [...] much more than the acquisition of awovedly or unawovedly non-religious, profane, or skeptical needs or values" (1957, p. 142).

In this scheme, secularization is a movement along a continuum that extends from the sacred pole (characterized by maximum reluctance to change) to the secular pole (characterized by maximum acceptance of change). Along this continuum, Becker defines a number of intermediary types, the exact description of which need not concern us here. Let us briefly notice that at the secular pole, we find holy sacredness (that is, religion) and loyalistic sacredness (patriotism); that when approaching the middle of the scale, we find types like the "fittingly sacred"; and finally that moving toward the secular pole, we first find different forms of rationality, and reach the extreme of the scale with the irrational "pronormless" societies (1957, pp. 143-161).

We now begin to see where religion fits in in Becker's scheme. Although secularization is much more than a transformation of religion, the starting point of the process (sacred society) is defined mainly as holy, that is, religious (1957, p. 144). Moreover, religion does not appear at any other place along the continuum: Any movement toward the secular pole is by definition a moving away from religion. One consequence of this view must be brought out right away. Religion is defined as intrinsically opposed to change; indeed, immobilism itself is defined as religion. There is apparently no room, in Becker's scheme, for a dynamic view of religion. Similarly, there is no place in it for a consideration of the rational aspects of religion (in the sense of substantive rationality): "Traditionalism and non-rationality go hand in hand" (1957, p. 153). As a result of this perspective, any tendency toward immobilism must, in the last analysis, be attributed to sacred values, of which the most extreme form is religion, while any tendency toward change must be attributed to secularism. Indeed, any movement, in any direction on Becker's scale, can be understood only in terms of the degree of sacredness of the values, for the "secular" pole is nothing but the negation of the sacred pole; it does not possess a quality of its own: it can either be rational or irrational. Becker's scheme does not include a bipolarity (sacredness-rationality). The whole process of social change is reduced to a single dimension. Social change is never a movement toward something, only a movement away from something.

As is apparent, Becker's view is that societies, if they want to survive, must somehow find a compromise between these two extremes. At the two poles lies the "extinction criterion": "sacrificial extinction" at the sacred pole (1957, p. 144) and extinction through the "thrilling carving for the comfortable" (i.e., drug addicts) at the secular pole (1957, p. 162). For this reason, secularization is not just an affair of modern times: it is a process which has occurred many times in history, and which "has been repeatedly followed by its reverse, sacralization" (1957, p. 173). "Far-reaching secularization not infrequently engenders intensified sacralization; extremes meet" (1957, p. 175).

Robert Redfield
Redfield first developed his secularization theory as early as 1934 (Tax 1941, p. 35). However, for our purposes, we will rely on a later formulation of this theory, as it appeared in his book on The Folk Culture of Yucatan (Redfield 1941). In this book, Redfield establishes a dichotomy between the folk society, which is "small, isolated, nonliterate, and homogeneous, with a strong sense of group solidarity" (Redfield 1947, p. 297) and the urban society, which displays roughly the opposed characteristics. The folk society, Redfield tells us, can also be considered a sacred society with respect to certain of its characteristics (1947, p. 303). The transition from folk to urban society is characterized by three processes: "the disorganization of culture, the secularization of society, and the individualization of the society" (Redfield 1941, p. 18). Thus, secularization is used by Redfield in a more restricted sense than by Becker: Secularization is merely one of the aspects in the global process of social change. The different processes brought together under the heading of secularization can be conveniently summarized under five headings. 1) "The separation of maize from the context of religion and its treatment simply as a means of getting food or money" (1941, p. 352); 2) the secularization of the division of labor; 3) the secularization of marriage; 4) the decline of the gods; 5) the emergence of medicine.

First, the growing of maize (in contrast to the growing of chicle, which is an entirely secular activity) is deeply interconnected with the religious life (religious ceremonies to secure rain and co-operative endeavor) in Tusik (the collectivity which most resembles a folk society), but it is very much secularized in the more urban collectivities (1941, pp. 163-64). Second, there is a secularization of the division of labor. We are already familiar with this notion, which had been developed by Hughes, to whose 1928 article Redfield refers at this point (1941, p. 180). Third, there is a secularization of marriage, which ceases to have the character of a sacrament, and "tends to be a party, an occasion fo gaiety, rather than a religious observance" (1941, p. 218). But the most important element of secularization is designated in the title of chapter IX: "Decline of the gods". This decline manifests itself through the "decline of religious faith and the reduction in sanctity of the acts and images in which faith is manifest" (1941, p. 262). First, whereas in the villages, the whole of life is embedded in "a sacred plan" which presides over the conduct of individuals, in the cities, the rituals associated with this sacred plan tend to disappear (1941, p. 229). This trend applies not only to pagan beliefs, but also to the Catholic faith (1941, p. 241). In the villages, the Most Holy Cross is "so sacred that few of its votaries are allowed to see it", and the local santo plays a very important role. But in the city many of the inhabitants "do not even know which santo is the patron of their local community" (1941, p. 244). As one moves from folk to urban society, the proportion of unbelievers increases (1941, p. 244). The same trend can be observed in the declining importance of the religious aspects of the novenas, the ritual recitations of Catholic prayers held in private houses, which also served as a means for the wealthy families to express their social status by inviting a great number of people. Increasingly, novenas are being replaced by secular celebrations: "The santo had become the excuse for a celebration, the owner of the santo an entrepreneur, and the novena a business enterprise" (1941, p. 260). Finally, the last element of secularization is the "transfer of the functions of healing from a man who is a priest as well as a shaman to a woman who is only a healer and practitioner of beneficent magic" (1941, p. 314).

Although Redfield's analysis is mainly descriptive, at the end of his book he offers some "speculative" remarks to help account for the observed trends. Secularization appears to be related, first, to the disorganization of culture. People cease to believe because they no longer understand the meaning of the beliefs: The growth in the size of the community (or its growing heterogeneity) makes it impossible for everybody to participate in the rituals which express the understanding. Another possible explanation, suggested by the history of our own society (as understood in the continental tradition, to which Redfield refers at this point), would be the development of the modern economic system and of centralized government (1941, p. 367). "Increase of contacts, bringing about heterogeneity and disorganization of culture, constitutes one sufficient cause of secularization and individualization. And the case of Guatemala [see Tax 1941], fortified by certain interpretations of the history of our society, suggests that the development of important commerce and a money economy may be another such sufficient cause" (1941, p. 369).

Redfield's attempt thus appears much more modest than Becker's, and at the same time closer to the CISR paradigm, mainly because formal religion plays a more central role in Redfield's account. But we are still a far cry from the modern theories. Redfield was concerned mainly with a typology drawn from an ethnological investigation in Yucatan, and he was not very interested in the fate of religion in modern society.

The diffusion of the Chicago paradigm
The framework developed by Becker and Redfield was fairly influential in the 40s and 50s. Let us briefly mention some of the uses to which it was put in articles published in the American Journal of Sociology and in American Anthropologist. The results of Redfield's field work in the Yucatan peninsula were partly contested by Sol Tax (Tax 1941). He questioned the universality of Redfield's dichotomy and, on the basis of his own field work in Guatemala, claimed that, although the Guatemalan Indians were of the "primitive type" with respect to their world view, they were of the "civilized type" as far as their social relations were concerned (1941, p. 37).

In 1947, the idea of secularization was applied by Reuben Hill to the study of the American family. The author used Becker's idea of secularization as a general background against which he assessed the transformations of the family (Reuben Hill 1947, p. 126). One year later, Ernest Burgess (who co-authored the 1921 Introduction to the Science of Sociology with Park) used the idea of secularization to account for the changes in the family itself¹¹². Secularization was used by Burgess to refer to "the declining control of religion, and [...] the increasing role of material comforts, labor-saving devices, and other mechanical contrivances like the automobile, the radio, and television" (Burgess 1948, pp. 417-18). Finally, in 1952, a study by Austin Portfield concluded that the two extremes of the "folk-secular continuum" were characterized, on the secular side, by higher rates of suicide, whereas the "depressed folk society resorts more to crime" (Portfield 1952, p. 338).

The origins of the Chicago paradigm
We must now for a moment come back in time, and consider the origins of the Chicago paradigm. To what extent was this paradigm a reformulation of the European tradition, and to what extent was it an independent formulation? At first sight, the first American sociologists to use the term "secularization" in a theoretical framework appear to be quite heavily influenced by the German classical tradition. In suggesting the sacred-secular dichotomy, Park had in mind Tönnies. Becker, who developed the distinction in a much more detailed way, had a good knowledge of continental sociology, and recognized that he had been very much influenced by it (Becker 1957, pp. 178-80). Redfield also occasionally referred to Tönnies and Sombart, who had already pointed to the "relationship between the development of commerce and the secularization of society" (Redfield 1941, p. 185, ref. in n. 14). And Hughes, who was apparently the first of the Chicago sociologists to write about secularization, explicitly referred to Sombart.

The reason why Park decided to replace Tönnies' distinction by the sacred-secular dichotomy, however, remains unclear. Hints indicating the relationship between Gemeinschaft and sacredness can certainly be found in Tönnies, but the use of "sacred" and "secular" nonetheless represented a definite change of emphasis¹¹³. And as we have seen, the whole secularization theory developed by Becker on these premises was very different from all that had been embodied in the German tradition. On second sight, Hughes' reference to Sombart is also somewhat confusing. If we take a closer look at Sombart's book, we notice that he used secularization to designate the decline, or routinization, of the puritan ethic. The modern entrepreneur, Sombart tells us, freed himself from the bonds of religion and morality. "It is the secularization of the capitalist spirit which prepares the way for the whole pandemonium of passions" (Sombart 1902, p. 30). In this framework, secularization meant, very specifically, the loss of power of institutional religion and morality over social life, and in particular over economic life: "Today, the fundamental characteristic of all economic behavior is 'the lack of scruples', which is not very compatible with any religious system which would authoritatively prescribe standards to the bourgeois morality" (1902, p. 31). As we have seen, however, what Hughes had in mind when he referred to Sombart was much broader than that. It certainly included a loss of power of the tradition over the contents of the occupation (but not necessarily in the direction on a "lack of scruples"), but it referred mainly to a new type of division of labor. Sombart's concerns, in short, were with morality; Hughes' concerns were more with social structure and its effects on personality.

We must therefore conclude that, in developing their views on secularization, the sociologists of the Chicago school were not simply following the German tradition. They were reformulating the classical problem of that tradition (the transition from community to society¹¹⁴) in terms of a sacred-secular dichotomy which was not to be found in that tradition. And, confusingly, this dichotomy entailed the use of the term "secularization", which was also used in the German tradition, although in a much more restricted sense. In other words, they elevated "secularization" from the status of a descriptive term to the status of a historical explicative category¹¹⁵. It seems correct, therefore, to emphasize the discontinuity, as well as the continuity, between the German and the early American tradition: Americans expanded the meaning of the term secularization as it was used in Germany to encompass a general theory of social change taken over from the German tradition - in which, however, the term secularization was not used.
CHAPTER 10

SECULARIZATION IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
The works we have studied so far displayed little interest in the situation of religion in the modern world. They were concerned mainly with the analysis of historical trends, with the analysis of the modern world as such, or with cultures situated outside the area of maximal economic development. One of the reasons for this tendency is the dearth of empirical data concerning religion. Another is the absence of interest in religion as a subject matter among professional sociologists. As we will see, in these days, religion tended to be considered a residual category, unworthy of serious study.

In the following decades, this situation was to be decisively, if slowly, altered. One of the reasons for this change is an evolution within academic sociology. With the parallel rise of empiricism and of functionalism, sociologist found good reasons to start taking religion into account. But, perhaps more importantly, the situation was altered by the commitment of a growing number of Catholic sociologists, who started creating scholarly associations of their own, and launched empirical investigations of unprecedented scale on the situation of religion.