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Sacred and Secular: Religion and
Politics Worldwide Pippa Norris, Ronald Inglehart
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Seminal thinkers of the
nineteenth century - Auguste Comte, Herbert
Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Karl Marx and
Sigmund Freud - all predicted that religion would gradually fade in
importance and cease to be significant with the emergence of industrial
society. The belief that religion was dying became the conventional wisdom in
the social sciences during most of the twentieth century. During the last
decade, however, the secularization thesis has experienced the most sustained
challenge in its long history. The traditional
secularization thesis needs updating. Religion has not disappeared and is
unlikely to do so. Nevertheless, the concept of secularization captures an
important part of what is going on. This book develops a theory of
secularization and existential security and compares it against survey
evidence from almost 80 societies worldwide. Sacred and Secular is essential reading
for anyone interested in comparative religion, sociology, public opinion,
political behavior, political development, social psychology, international
relations, and cultural change. Pippa Norris is the McGuire
Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Ronald Inglehart is professor of political science and program
director at the Institute for Social Research at the |
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