ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the major elements of David Martin’s theory of secularisation. Originating as a political sociology of religion, the theory has evolved into a disciplinary ‘hybrid’ which he now terms a ‘socio-theology’. Originating in mainly European and Christian investigations, his theory has evolved to encompass other religious traditions in non-European contexts. This has resulted in a global analysis of the varying dynamics of and relations between religion and secularity. Together with this broadening geographical scope has gone a deepening of the historical investigation into the various temporal developments of both Catholic and Protestant waves of Christianisation. In order to situate Martin’s general theory in its own historical context, the author traces the various debates and institutional relations within which the theory has been developed. As a response to these influences, often concerned with deterministic theories of history, Martin has attempted to elucidate a non-teleological account of secularisation which naturalises the theodicy question. He achieves this through constructing an empirically inflected account of varying contingent factors that shape constellations of the religion, power, and violence relations. This provides him with a socio-theological analysis of society in the form of a naturalistic account of atonement in which the expiation of sins takes place through social dynamics. In bringing sociology and theology together in such a manner, Martin’s general theory of secularisation affords the possibility to both contrast the dynamics of a world governed by force and the emergence of non-violent options in the form of the religions of Christianity and Buddhism, and to compare how sociology and theology envision ways of bringing into creative dialogue the reality of the world with religious and secular aspirations for its improvement.
