ABSTRACT
The study of secularization becomes the study of a concrete, differentiated social structure. Secularization is best understood not as the decline of religion, but as the declining scope of religious authority. This article presents a concept of religious authority that develops a basic Weberian insight. Then it discusses heavily on the work of Dobbelaere to reconceptualize secularization as the declining scope of religious authority on three different dimensions, namely laicization, internal secularization and religious disinvolvement. Weber's characterization of religious authority, however, needs modification, mainly because the direct analogy Weber drew with political authority cannot be sustained. Political authority relies at least in part on its potential to use actual physical violence. Reformulating secularization as a concept that enhances our ability to grasp the variable place of religious authority in contemporary societies may very well spell the end of secularization theory.
