ABSTRACT
While the paradigmatic core of secularization theory, namely the assumption that modernity entailed the functional differentiation of religion from other social systems, has long gone unchallenged, recent controversies over secularization have started criticizing that core assumption as well. In this essay, the author engages with David Martin’s long-ignored contribution to these controversies. Repeatedly, Martin has endorsed the theory of differentiation, himself calling it the “viable core of secularization“. But upon closer scrutiny his oeuvre does make important, yet limited contributions to revising secularization theory’s paradigmatic core. In analyzing how general processes are refracted through variable basic patterns, Martin prepares important ground for a comparative-historical sociology of secularization, although he ultimately falls short of spelling out the causal mechanisms that underlie specific episodes of institutional change. In making this argument, the author proceeds in three steps. He starts by sketching what he sees as the broader contours of Martin’s comparative-historical sociology of religion. Then, he reconstructs his general theory of secularization, focusing in particular on his account of differentiation. And finally, he contrasts Martin’s descriptive and explanatory account with recent efforts of identifying causal mechanisms of differentiation, understood as the core dimension of secularization.
