The secularization fallacies: analysis of five standard criticisms to secularization theories

Abstract

Despite being part of the scientific discourse in sociology of religions since the 1960’s, the theories of secularization have been heavily criticized since its advent. In particular its historical and ideological biases, its validity and theoretical extension and its expected results. However, these criticisms are, in most cases, scattered and they have not been developed deep and systematically. We believe that for any social scientist devoted to the study of secularization the compilation, articulation and interpretation of these criticisms is relevant in order to fully comprehend their internal deficiencies or incoherencies. Therefore our article aims to analyse the most solid and systematic critical arguments that have been made to secularization theories by the state of the art. For this purpose, we propose a descriptive, analytical, comparative and synchronic study of its inner layers and, then, of its criticisms. This examination allows us to get an in depth understanding of its propositional limitations and, thus, to support the proposal of new analytical and/or empirical categories or the development of new methodological strategies that ought to be considered in the context of multiple and global modernity.