Post-secular society : consumerism and the democratization of religion

In this chapter I develop a number of critical reflections on the analysis of religion in both contemporary sociology and social philosophy. This argument has several interconnected components. Sociologists and more especially philosophers have focused too much on religious belief and too little on practice. In this respect, I return to a defense of Émile Durkheim, who can be interpreted as saying that belief is always embedded in collective practices and that they become problematic and uncertain only when there are major changes in practice. I set this contrast between philosophical understanding of belief and sociological analysis of practice in the context of developing a notion that secularization has be analyzed under two headings (the social and the political), denoting categories in which the emphasis on practice turns out to be more relevant to understanding social practices than to political secularization. I defend a version of the secularization thesis by arguing that modern religion (at the social level) has become democratized and that the traditional hierarchical, literary (as opposed to visual), and ineffable features of religion have been eroded. In this version of the secularization thesis, I take a somewhat unfashionable stand in defending the work of the late Bryan Wilson, whose work is too easily dismissed by sociologists who have become enthusiastic about "the turn to religion." Finally, I criticize much of the debate around secularization and "post-secular society" for being too narrowly focused on the West.