The Gracelands of multiple modernities

For many years coming up to the end of the 20th century, sociology tended to be absorbed within its own gaze with regards to religion. This discipline, by virtue of being so self-referential at times, could simply not take its eyes off Durkheim, Marx and Weber's prophetic work on secularism. When and/or if sociologists conducted fieldwork, they found a decrease in church attendance. This tended to be seen more as a validation of these theorists' predictions of the demise of religion, than as an indication that belief systems and practices were changing. Some sociologists of religion, nevertheless, could see the reality of these changes. For example, even if the privatization of religion was already present at the time of Troeltsch as seen in his work on mysticism (Troeltsch 1950), it is in the 1960s and 1970s that it boomed in the western world. While spirituality was growing inside and outside of religious groups, new religious movements were emerging from within and without Christianity.