ABSTRACT
The public response to the death of Princess Diana is evidence that Britain is a very spiritual country. The social disciplines have responded to the modernistic world view by accepting that the history of modern European thought is, to adopt the title of Edwin Chadwick's book, the history of The Secularization of the European Mind. This is the chief strand in what sociologists of religion have come to call the 'secularization thesis'. Conceptual distinctions made in the sociology of religion are therefore highly applicable not only to sacred institutions but to social life in general. The chapter argues that the categories employed by the classical sociologists of religion are applicable to the event; and suggests that the fact that they are so applicable does not, in itself, imply that the phenomenon to which they are applied is religious. A whole range of phenomena associated with religion and therefore nominated 'religious' have this character.
