ABSTRACT
Secularization has been the single most important feature of the religious condition of advanced societies in the 20th century. If the trend of voluntary choice in all these – and many other – small matters has been towards a preference for secular models, that trend amounts to a response to the structural process of secularization, the process in which secular agencies have taken over functions once fulfilled by religion. The evacuation of religious dispositions from other institutional contexts does not lead to a prediction – or a prophecy – of the total disappearance of religion. In modern societies, societies in which freedom of religion is secured, designated social space is officially allocated and generally protected as space in which vent to religious feeling and the expression of belief and belonging may be manifested. Apart from the influence of the increasing secularity of the external culture, there may also be internal processes of structural change affecting sects.
