ABSTRACT
Secularization 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; and to a pattern that is long-term, linear and inevitable, cyclical, and contingent. The entrance of sacralization as the dialectically opposing process which is crucial in understanding the larger context in which secularization often operates. The important point is that neither secularization nor sacralization alone is adequate to describe the US or any other nation in holistic and linear terms. While both short- and long-term trends in one direction or another are common, the two tendencies often oscillate and even play off one another as partners in a dialectic. Secularization often serves as a form of adaptation to historical change, and it can prepare the way for a sacralization that is more attuned to contemporary circumstances once the detritus of tradition is cleared away.
