Secularization on trial: In defense of a neosecularization paradigm

According to its critics, the ''old'' secularization paradigm has been tried, convicted, and executed by recent scholarship in the social sciences of religion, and is being replaced by a ''new'' (postsecularization) paradigm which highlights the continued vitality of religion in modern societies. This paper argues that claims to have definitively refuted secularization theory are exaggerated. It mounts a defense of a neosecularization paradigm which retains the core insights of the old paradigm while incorporating criticisms leveled against the hubris and laziness of some deployments of the concept of ''secularization.'' Following Chaves (1994), this paper argues that the core of neosecularization theory is the proposition that secularization means not the decline of religion but the declining scope of religious authority at the individual organizational, and societal levels of analysis. Three exemplars of this perspective in the area of religion and politics are highlighted:the work of Hertzke (1988), Demerath and Williams (1992), and Casanova (1994).