This volume aims to revitalize the exchange between sociological differentiation theory and the sociology of religion, which previously held center stage among the sociological classics. It brings together contributions from different disciplines, as well as various forms of regional and historical expertise, which are indispensable in forming a globally oriented sociological perspective today. Secularization is understood as a process of boundary demarcation, that is, as the enactment of semantic, practical, and institutional distinctions between religion and other spheres of activity and knowledge. These distinctions may emerge from within the religious field itself, or may be absorbed into the field having originally emerged elsewhere. They may even be directly imposed upon religion by external forces. The volume is therefore based on the premise that societal differentiation – and secularity as a specific expression of it – is a widespread structural feature that nonetheless takes on various forms, depending on its historical and cultural context. In order to make this diversity visible, the volume adopts a global comparative perspective, and examines historical distinctions and differentiations in the West and beyond. By examining different forms and modes of secularity in statu nascendi, the volume contributes to developing a better understanding of the diversity of secularities, even of those found in the present day, in terms of their historicity and their specific path dependencies. With this shift in perspective, this special volume initiates a global and historical turn in the theory of differentiation, as well as in the study of secularity.

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. But at least since the late 1980s both the predictive and the descriptive adequacy of this concept have been seriously challenged. In the face of this challenge, The Secularization Debate offers a timely summary of the critical issues that have arisen over the past decade. With its wide range of essays by prominent international scholars, The Secularization Debate is sure to become a pivotal volume for anyone interested in the hotly contested concept of secularization and its continued relevance to the study of religion.

For decades, scholars and public intellectuals have been predicting the demise of religion in the face of secularization. Yet religion is undergoing an unprecedented resurgence in modern life—and secularization no longer appears so inevitable. Formations of Belief brings together many of today's leading historians to shed critical light on secularism's origins, its present crisis, and whether it is as antithetical to religion as it is so often made out to be. Formations of Belief offers a more nuanced understanding of the origins of secularist thought, demonstrating how Reformed Christianity and the Enlightenment were not the sole vessels of a worldview based on rationalism and individual autonomy. Taking readers from late antiquity to the contemporary era, the contributors show how secularism itself can be a form of belief and yet how its crisis today has been brought on by its apparent incapacity to satisfy people's spiritual needs. They explore the rise of the humanistic study of religion in Europe, Jewish messianism, atheism and last rites in the Soviet Union, the cult of the saints in colonial Mexico, religious minorities and Islamic identity in Pakistan, the neuroscience of religion, and more. Based on the Shelby Cullom Davis Center Seminars at Princeton University, this incisive book features illuminating essays by Peter Brown, Yaacob Dweck, Peter E. Gordon, Anthony Grafton, Brad S. Gregory, Stefania Pastore, Caterina Pizzigoni, Victoria Smolkin, Max Weiss, and Muhammad Qasim Zaman.

This anthology draws bold comparisons between secularist strategies to contain, privatize, and discipline religion and the treatment of racialized subjects by the American state. Specializing in history, literature, anthropology, theology, religious studies, and political theory, contributors expose secularism's prohibitive practices in all facets of American society and suggest opportunities for change.

This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. To what extent does the culture of the modern research university harbor and nurture a bias against religion? Some scholars believe that the academy inconsistently excludes personal religious convictions while welcoming most other kinds of personal beliefs such as those concerning gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Others says that religion in the university is thriving and point to the proliferation of religious studies programs and the mounting literature on religion in the social sciences and humanities. Related to the question of academic bias against religion is the degree to which teaching about religion is a form of religious advocacy. Some believe that even though teaching about religion is necessary to understand human experience, such teaching often borders on advocacy if the dogmatic, intolerant, and unreasonable nature of religion is not acknowledged. Others answer that if professors may advocate other ideologies -- whether political, cultural, or economic -- that are fairly partisan, then religion should not be treated differently. Religious Advocacy and American History explores the general question of bias and objectivity in higher learning from the perspective of the role of religious convictions in the study of American history. The contributors to this book, many of whom are leading historians of American religion and culture, address primarily two related questions. First, how do personal religious convictions influence one's own research, writing, and teaching? And, second, what place should personal beliefs have within American higher education? Contributors: Catherine L. Albanese Paul Boyer Paul A. Carter Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Eugene D. Genovese D. G. Hart Bruce Kuklick George M. Marsden Murray G. Murphey Mark A. Noll Leo Ribuffo Harry S. Stout Leslie Woodcock Tentler Grant Wacker

Ghosts. Railroads. Sing Sing. Sex machines. These are just a few of the phenomena that appear in John Lardas Modern’s pioneering account of religion and society in nineteenth-century America. This book uncovers surprising connections between secular ideology and the rise of technologies that opened up new ways of being religious. Exploring the eruptions of religion in New York’s penny presses, the budding fields of anthropology and phrenology, and Moby-Dick, Modern challenges the strict separation between the religious and the secular that remains integral to discussions about religion today. Modern frames his study around the dread, wonder, paranoia, and manic confidence of being haunted, arguing that experiences and explanations of enchantment fueled secularism’s emergence. The awareness of spectral energies coincided with attempts to tame the unruly fruits of secularism—in the cultivation of a spiritual self among Unitarians, for instance, or in John Murray Spear’s erotic longings for a perpetual motion machine. Combining rigorous theoretical inquiry with beguiling historical arcana, Modern unsettles long-held views of religion and the methods of narrating its past.

Writing History, Constructing Religion presents a much-needed interdisciplinary exploration of the significance of debates among historians, scholars of religion and cultural theorists over the 'nature' of history to the study of religion. The distinguished authors discuss issues related to definitions of history, postmodernism, critical theory, and the impact on the study and analysis of religious traditions; exploring the application of writing 'history from below', discussions of 'truth' and 'objectivity' as opposed to power and ideology, crises of representation, and the place of theory in the 'historicized' study of religion(s). Addressing conceptual debates in a wide range of historical and empirical contexts, the authors critically engage with issues including religious nationalism, Nazism, Islam and the West, secularism, religion in post-Communist Russia, ethnicity and post modernity. This book constitutes a significant step towards the self-reflexive and interdisciplinary study of religions in history.