1. Secularization Thesis Short version (C. Wright Mills): Once the world was filled with the sacred-in thought, practice, and institutional form. After the Reformation and the Renaissance, the forces of modernization swept across the globe and secularization, a corollary historical process, loosened the dominance of the sacred. In due course, the sacred shall disappear altogether except, possibly, in the private realm.

2. Challenges to The Secularization Thesis Iranian Revolution/Islamic movements Liberation Theology/Nicaraguan Revolution Rise of the Religious Right in the U.S. Explosive Spread of Evangelicalism, particularly in Latin America/Africa

3. Strength of Religion by Level of Development

4. % Who Go to Church at Least Once a Week

5. % Who Believe in God

6. % Who Believe in Life After Death

7. Features of “modernity” Functional Rationality Cultural Pluralism Structural pluralism Impacts on Religion Isolation (Amish) Decline/Death of Religion (Strong Secularization Hypothesis) Adaptation Resistance (Fundamentalisms, Barber’s “Jihad”?) Is resistance futile?

8. Functional Rationality "the infusion of rational controls through all spheres of human experience." Impacts on Religion Isolation (Amish) Decline/Death of Religion (Strong Secularization Hypothesis) Adaptation Resistance (Is resistance futile?)

9. Cultural Pluralism "the division of society into subsocieties with more or less distinct cultural traditions." Impacts on Religion Isolation Decline/Death of Religion (Strong Secularization Hypothesis) Adaptation Resistance

10. Structural Pluralism/Differentiation "the historically unique dichotomization of life into public and private spheres." Impacts on Religion Isolation Decline/Death of Religion (Strong Secularization Hypothesis) Adaptation Resistance