Secularization
Secularization is the process by which the sacred gives way to the secular, whether in matters of personal faith, institutional practice, and political power. It involves a transition in which things once revered become ordinary, the sanctified becomes mundane, and the otherworldly loses its prefix. Whereas the term "secularity" refers to a state of sacredlessness and "secularism" is the ideology devoted to that state, secularization is a historical dynamic that may occur gradually or suddenly and may be replaceable (if not reversible).
The concept of secularization has been both an organizing theme and a source of contention among scholars of religion since the beginning of the European "Enlightenment" in the seventeenth century. One might expect an increasing consensus on a matter so long on the scholarly agenda, but discord has crescendoed in recent years. Secularization has taken on different meanings in different camps. It matters whether the reference is to religion's displacement, decline, or change; to the sacred at the level of the individual, the institution, the community, or the culture; or to a pattern that is long term, linear, and inevitable or short term, cyclical, and contingent.
The object of this essay is to disentangle both the issues and the combatants.
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