ABSTRACT
Secularization is a type of concept which looks back over a series of trends and links them together in a view of the broad movement of history and its likely future development. This chapter considers three successive movements of Christianization, the Franciscan, the Reformed and the Evangelical, and the way they commingled with the 'secular' movements of urbanization, nationalization, individualization and industrialization. However, an articulation of the theory of secularization was not long delayed in the development of the magisterial work of Bryan Wilson, which provided a benchmark for the decades following. All that is eminently debateable and therefore renders vulnerable any predictions along the lines of secularization theory, especially given the genesis of that theory out of the European situation. To exemplify the counterpoint, Art Nouveau is a secular style but the roughly contemporary Symbolist movement has rather different potentials, including Neo-Platonism. The development of Boston might simultaneously exemplify secularization, counterpoint and accumulation.
