The Paradox of Faith
The Paradox of Faith
Religion beyond Secularization and Desecularization
This chapter argues that the standard models of “secularization” and “desecularization” are theoretically problematic and empirically questionable. By essentializing religion, both theories adopt a secular perspective, which ignores key sociological, anthropological, and philosophical features that can account for the specificities of different religious traditions. Moreover, modernity is not a linear process that progressively replaces the religious past with a secular future. Rather, it is a dialectical process oscillating between a dominant secularism (and a variety of denominational subcultures that are positively linked to modernization) on the one hand, and an increasingly visible revival of traditional faiths that resist and seek to transform the secular outlook of global modernity, on the other hand.
Keywords: secularization, desecularization, religion, modernity, global modernity, traditional faiths
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