# Secularization Secularization — the thesis that modernization inevitably diminishes the social authority of religion — has been one of the most consequential and most contested ideas in [[Sociology]]. From [[Max Weber]]'s diagnosis of disenchantment through the rationalization of modern life, through mid-century confidence that religion would simply fade away, to the dramatic resurgence of public religion in the late 20th century, the secularization debate maps directly onto the animating anxieties of the American right. The [[Christian Nationalism]] project, the [[Seven Mountain Mandate]], and the legal architecture of [[Religious Liberty]] litigation all become intelligible as counter-secularization strategies — attempts to reverse or halt a process that evangelical leaders have framed as existential threat. Understanding what secularization actually describes, where the thesis holds, and where it breaks down is essential for grasping why the [[Republican Party]] has become so thoroughly entangled with apocalyptic religiosity. ## The Classical Secularization Thesis The classical thesis rests on Weber's argument in *The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism* that [[Protestantism]] — particularly Calvinist asceticism — paradoxically produced the rationalized, bureaucratic world that would erode the conditions for religious belief itself. Weber's concept of disenchantment (*Entzauberung*) described the progressive elimination of magical and supernatural explanations from public life, replaced by instrumental rationality, scientific inquiry, and bureaucratic administration. The iron cage of rationalization left no room for the sacred. [[Science]] would explain what prayer could not. Peter Berger elaborated this into a comprehensive sociological theory in *The Sacred Canopy* (1967), arguing that modernization produces pluralism, which in turn undermines the taken-for-granted certainty — the "plausibility structure" — that any single religious worldview requires. When you encounter people who believe differently, your own beliefs become a choice rather than a destiny. The shift from fate to choice is lethal to the kind of all-encompassing religious authority that characterized pre-modern societies. British sociologist Steve Bruce pushed this logic further, arguing that individualism, rationalism, and egalitarianism — the core products of modernity — are structurally incompatible with strong religion. Decline was not a policy choice but a sociological inevitability. The thesis seemed confirmed by the European experience. Mainline [[Protestantism]] in Northern Europe hollowed out across the 20th century. The great cathedrals became tourist attractions. Church attendance in Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, and the Netherlands collapsed to single-digit percentages. [[Catholicism]] in Ireland, Spain, and Italy retained cultural influence longer but eventually followed the same trajectory. The data appeared unambiguous: as societies modernize, they secularize. ## American Exceptionalism and Its Challengers The United States shattered the tidy European model. Here was the most technologically advanced, economically dynamic society in history — and it was extraordinarily religious. Church attendance, belief in God, and self-reported religiosity all remained dramatically higher in America than in comparably developed nations. [[American Exceptionalism]] turned out to be religious exceptionalism too. This anomaly generated the "supply-side" theory of religion, advanced by Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, which inverted the classical thesis entirely. The problem in Europe wasn't that modernity killed demand for religion — it was that state-established churches had created lazy monopolies with no incentive to innovate. The [[First Amendment]]'s prohibition on establishment created a competitive religious marketplace where denominations had to hustle for adherents. [[Fundamentalism]], [[Pentecostalism]], the [[Great Awakenings]], camp meetings, [[Billy Graham]] crusades, [[Prosperity Gospel]] megachurches — American religion thrived precisely because it operated in a deregulated market. The disestablishment that European secularization theorists saw as religion's death sentence was actually its life support. José Casanova's *Public Religions in the Modern World* (1994) offered a crucial refinement. Casanova distinguished three separate claims bundled inside "secularization": institutional differentiation (religion loses control of non-religious spheres like law, education, and science), decline of belief and practice, and privatization (religion retreats from public life into private conviction). Casanova argued the first was largely irreversible and empirically well-supported. But the second and third were contingent — not necessary consequences of modernity at all. Religion could lose institutional control of society while remaining vibrant in belief and aggressively public in politics. This is precisely what happened with the American [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]]. ## The Desecularization Turn Berger himself recanted. In *The Desecularization of the World* (1999), he declared the secularization thesis "essentially mistaken" and argued that the modern world was "as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so." The Iranian Revolution, the rise of [[Pentecostalism]] across Latin America and Africa, Hindu nationalism in India, and the explosive growth of the American Christian Right all confounded predictions of religion's decline. The exception was not religious America but secular Europe. This desecularization thesis aligned with what was happening on the ground in American politics. The founding of the [[Moral Majority]] by [[Jerry Falwell]] in 1979, the rise of [[Pat Robertson]]'s [[Christian Coalition]], [[James Dobson]]'s [[Focus on the Family]], the [[Family Research Council]] under [[Tony Perkins]], and [[Ralph Reed]]'s transformation of evangelical churches into political machines — none of this fit the narrative of inevitable secularization. Religion was not retreating from the public square. It was storming back in, organized, funded, and furious. ## Counter-Secularization as Political Project What makes secularization theory especially important for understanding the American right is that counter-secularization became an explicit political project. The [[Seven Mountain Mandate]] — the claim that Christians must claim dominion over government, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, family, and religion — is a point-by-point reversal of institutional differentiation. Where Casanova described modernity as religion losing control over non-religious spheres, the Seven Mountain Mandate demands religion reclaim control over every sphere. This project has deep intellectual roots. [[Francis Schaeffer]]'s documentary series *How Should We Then Live?* (1976) taught a generation of evangelicals to see secularization not as a neutral sociological process but as a deliberate assault by secular humanists on Christian civilization. [[R.J. Rushdoony]]'s [[Christian Reconstructionism]] and [[Theonomy]] took this further, arguing that biblical law should replace secular law entirely. [[Gary North]] translated Rushdoony's vision into practical political economics. [[David Barton]]'s [[WallBuilders]] organization systematically promoted the myth that the Founders intended America as a Christian nation, rewriting the history of the [[First Amendment]] to eliminate any meaningful separation of church and state. The [[Dominionism]] that flows from these intellectual currents found institutional expression through the [[Council for National Policy]], which since its founding has functioned as the coordination hub linking Christian Right theology to Republican political strategy. The [[Heritage Foundation]], the [[Federalist Society]], and [[Leonard Leo]]'s network have pursued a complementary legal strategy: installing judges committed to [[Originalism]] who will read the [[First Amendment]]'s Establishment Clause as narrowly as possible while expanding Free Exercise protections to maximum breadth. ## The Legal Architecture of Desecularization The Supreme Court's trajectory over the past two decades represents the juridical dimension of counter-secularization. [[Trinity Lutheran v. Comer]] (2017) ruled that religious organizations could not be excluded from generally available public benefits. [[Espinoza v. Montana]] (2020) struck down state constitutional provisions barring public funds from flowing to religious schools. [[Carson v. Makin]] (2022) went further, holding that states must fund religious education if they fund any private education. The [[School Choice]] movement, supported by the [[School Choice Ecosystem]] of think tanks and advocacy groups, became the vehicle for channeling public money to religious institutions. [[Burwell v. Hobby Lobby]] (2014) expanded corporate religious liberty claims. The [[Alliance Defending Freedom]], the [[Becket Fund]], [[Liberty Counsel]], the [[American Center for Law and Justice]] under [[Jay Sekulow]] — this network of legal organizations has systematically eroded the boundary between church and state that the classical secularization thesis took for granted. [[Samuel Alito]], [[Clarence Thomas]], [[Neil Gorsuch]], [[Amy Coney Barrett]], and [[Brett Kavanaugh]] — the majority assembled by [[Leonard Leo]] — share a jurisprudential vision in which [[Religious Liberty]] functions as a trump card against secular governance. ## The "Nones" and Evangelical Panic Ironically, the data on American religion has moved sharply toward the secularization thesis in the 21st century. The rise of the religiously unaffiliated — the "Nones" — from roughly 6% of the population in 1991 to over 30% by the mid-2020s represents one of the fastest demographic shifts in American religious history. [[Robert Putnam]]'s research in *American Grace* traced the mechanism: young people repelled by the Christian Right's identification of religion with conservative politics simply left. The politicization of evangelical Christianity that was supposed to save Christian America accelerated its demographic decline. [[Russell Moore]]'s departure from the [[Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission]] and the [[Southern Baptist Convention]]'s internal convulsions reflect institutional awareness of this crisis. But the evangelical response to demographic decline has not been accommodation — it has been escalation. [[Project 2025]], assembled by the [[Heritage Foundation]] and its allies, represents the most comprehensive attempt to embed religious conservative priorities into federal governance since the founding of the [[Moral Majority]]. The [[Trump Evangelical Advisory Board]] formalized the transactional alliance between a manifestly irreligious president and evangelical leaders willing to trade moral credibility for [[Originalism]] judges, [[Anti-Abortion Movement]] victories like [[Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization]], and cultural war positioning. [[Non-Denominational Evangelicalism]], with its entrepreneurial structure and media savvy, has proven particularly adaptable to this political role. ## Secularization Anxiety and the Culture Wars The deepest significance of secularization for understanding the American right is psychological and cultural. The [[Buchanan Culture War Speech]] at the 1992 Republican convention crystallized a narrative in which secularization was not a sociological process but a spiritual war — faithful Christians versus a secular liberal elite bent on driving God from public life. This framing draws on older traditions: the anti-[[Cultural Marxism]] conspiracy theory, [[Moral Panic]] over [[Political Correctness]], and the [[Science Denial]] ecosystem that rejects [[Evolution]] through organizations like the [[Discovery Institute]], the [[Institute for Creation Research]], and [[Ken Ham]]'s [[Answers in Genesis]]. [[Bob Jones University]], [[Liberty University]], and [[Hillsdale College]] function as institutional counter-weights to secular higher education. The [[Johnson Amendment]]'s prohibition on political endorsements by tax-exempt churches became a target. [[One Nation Under God]] — the mid-century addition to the Pledge — and similar Cold War-era sacralization of American civic life created a baseline against which any retreat felt like persecution. The anxiety is real even when the persecution is not: [[Social Capital]] has declined, mainline institutions have hollowed out, and the cultural authority that white [[Protestantism]] once exercised without challenge has evaporated. [[Alexis de Tocqueville]]'s observation in [[Democracy in America]] that religion served as a binding force in American civic life now reads less like description than eulogy. The new Catholic [[Integralism]] of [[Adrian Vermeule]], [[Sohrab Ahmari]]'s critiques of liberal proceduralism, [[Patrick Deneen]]'s *Why Liberalism Failed*, and [[Rod Dreher]]'s *The Benedict Option* — alongside [[Common Good Constitutionalism]] as a legal theory — all represent intellectually serious post-liberal responses to secularization from the right. They share the conviction that [[Liberalism]] itself is the problem, that [[Libertarianism]]'s alliance with social conservatism through [[Fusionism]] was always unstable, and that only a substantive vision of the common good rooted in religious tradition can arrest the slide into atomized meaninglessness. ## Open Questions How does the simultaneous rise of the "Nones" and the intensification of Christian political mobilization resolve? Does the secularization of the majority empower the religious minority to become more radical, or does demographic math eventually constrain the project? Can [[Integralism]] and [[Common Good Constitutionalism]] survive contact with American [[Populism]], or will they remain elite intellectual projects disconnected from the evangelical base? If the [[Southern Strategy]] realignment was partly about race and partly about religion, what happens when the religious coalition fragments? ## Connections Secularization theory intersects with [[Hegemony]] — the question of which worldview achieves taken-for-granted status in a society. [[Antonio Gramsci]]'s framework helps explain why the Christian Right adopted explicitly counter-hegemonic strategies. [[Carl Schmitt]]'s political theology — the argument that modern political concepts are secularized theological concepts — informs the [[New Right]]'s understanding of what is at stake. [[Leo Strauss]]'s critique of modernity influenced [[Neoconservatism]]'s ambivalent relationship with religion. The [[Traditionalism]] of [[Russell Kirk]] mourned the loss of sacred order. The [[Southern Strategy]] and [[White Flight and Suburbanization]] created the geographic and demographic substrate for the evangelical political machine. [[Abortion Politics]] and the [[Anti-Abortion Movement]] provided the mobilizing issue that [[Moral Majority Founding]] needed. The [[Prosperity Gospel]] represents secularization from within — the colonization of religious practice by market logic. [[Dispensationalism]] and [[Millennialism]] inflect secularization anxiety with apocalyptic urgency, visible in figures like [[Tim LaHaye]]. ## See Also - [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]] - [[Christian Right Timeline]] - [[Philosophy of Religion]] - [[Manifest Destiny]] - [[Propaganda]] - [[Civil Rights Movement]] - [[Mark Driscoll]] - [[Oral Roberts]] - [[Civil Society]] - [[Postmodernism]]