ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses several disparate debates that intersect with the problem of secularization. It also explores the origins of the basic vocabulary the secularisation debate in the pre-scientific vocabulary of church and world in Christianity and in the exigencies of Christian history. There have been several useful accounts of secularisation that may be described as, in a strict sense, eccentric. Jeffrey Cox, for example, took off from my original 1965 critique to the point of doubting the viability of any kind of secularisation theory, including A General Theory. The notion of internal secularisation can be defined in different ways to support contrary conclusions. Bryan Wilson, for example, saw internal secularisation at work in slackening doctrinal orthodoxy with regard to church teaching on hell and judgement, particularly judgements that God was believed to visit on sinful populations, like plague and the devastations of war.
