Secular Society/Religious Population: Our Tacit Rules for Using the Term 'Secularization'

Abstract

The increasing discussion of secularization is hampered by several ambiguities. What we need is not some new, academic definition, but to recognize that we already adopt several different meanings for the word, depending on whether we are referring to a society, a population, an institution, an activity, or a mentality. Therefore, treating secularization as a general decline of religion is hardly meaningful. This recognition will make it possible to make sense of the fact that Christianity and secularization have sometimes increased together. Finally, the magnitude of the subject is vastly increased when it is viewed from the far side of a historical divide which seems real enough, despite measures of continuing religiosity.