ABSTRACT
Modernisation—particularly in its manifestations as urbanisation, industrialisation and the increasing inroads of science and technology into the mundane activities of everyday life—has often been linked with the retreat of organised religion from a formal role in the public sphere. Both in the Western world and in Asia, most governments are now secular governments, claiming legitimacy without any reference to divine sanction and pursuing agendas that are largely expressed in secular rather than religious language. This secularity has emerged as the societies they govern have become more urban, more industrialised and more accustomed to the latest products of the scientific and technological revolution. In the Western world, this secularisation of politics and public life has gone hand in hand with a growing irrelevance of formal religious orientation in the private realm. In most European countries as well as in Canada, and even to a certain extent in the United States, regular attendance at formal worship services has declined, and more and more people have grown unwilling to proclaim membership in a specific religious organisation. 2
