ABSTRACT
Americans tend to view things differently and practically restrict the use of the term 'secularization' to its secondary and narrower meaning, to the progressive decline of religious beliefs and practices among individuals. Despite some lingering disagreements concerning the factual evidence of the extent of religious vitality on both sides of the Atlantic, there is a relative consensus that religion, in its institutional as well as in its individual manifestations, is generally doing much better in America than throughout most of Europe. European social scientists tend to view these European facts through the analytical lenses of the inherited theory of secularization. In order to move beyond the fruitless secularization debate between the 'European' and the 'American' positions we need to adopt a global perspective. The secularization of Europe is a particular, unique and 'exceptional' historical process, not a universal teleological model of development which shows the future to the rest of the world.
