Afterword

Understanding social change requires that we know where we are beginning, otherwise how can we assess what is different with the passage of time and under the changing conditions? Secularization theory assumes as a starting point a particular relationship between religious institutions and the state and that religion is publicly recognized and powerful. It also assumes that religion is internalized by ordinary people so that individuals are disposed toward piety, as indicated by holding orthodox beliefs, engaging in religious practices, living in a world in which the sacred can be experienced, and in religion is consequential in regard to the affairs of daily life. Secularization theory then posits a change over time in which religion lost power in the public sphere and plausibility in the private sphere, with an overall decrease in the importance of religion in modern society. What we are now thinking about is how that story might fit some people's experience and not other people's. The story, generated by elite white European male scholars, tells their understanding of the displacement of powerful state churches by secular authorities in the public realm, with a subsequent loss of status for the men who continued to lead those churches at all levels, and at the same time a migration of men like themselves out of the churches, and into other professions and institutions more highly regarded in modern societies. Of course, a loss of status for those who stayed or a choice to leave can only happen for those who had access or could imagine having access to such leadership roles in the first place. The public power of “religion” is also different depending on whether one is talking about state churches, sects, or outsiders. The secularization story is told from the vantage point of the unmarked mainstream, whose religion is mapped onto the dominant culture. Historians of the Moors in Spain, or the Jews of the Rhineland might tell a somewhat different story about modernization and the decline in the public power of religion, about exactly what changed and when and why. The US historian, Ann Braude, has observed that in telling the story of secularization in terms of decline, we tell a partial story of elite white men. In contrast, if we look at the story for women in the United States what we see that women were always the majority of participants, and become increasing involved in religious organizations. The question shifts, and Braude asks us to examine the reasons for women's prior exclusion and powerlessness (Braude 1997).