ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Bryan Wilson's work in the light of the challenge posed by postmodernist theorizing and the condition of postmodernity to our understanding of religion and communities of faith. Postmodernism self-evidently positions itself in relation to a modernism that it claims both to reject and to supersede. Secularization as a metanarrative is dead. Wilson clearly espouses a meta-narrative of history - the meta-narrative of secularization. 'Secularization' may be valid as a specific process that has been under way in particular social settings, but as a meta-narrative of western history it fails utterly. Sociology is a science, but it is a humanistic science. The ascendancy of the scientific method is one manifestation of the rationalization of the world, a process which renders personal charisma implausible to all but the zealous few.
