Modernity, Secularization, Religious Persistence, Spiritual Transformation

This class provides an introduction to the long-standing and wide-ranging debates in sociology about secularization. The central question that we will explore from a variety of perspectives is: What happens to religion under the conditions of modernity, and why and how so? What we will be trying to figure out is whether modernity (and post-modernity) secularizes religion, strengthens religion, transforms religion, or produces some other effect. Secularization was a central concern in the thinking of the founding fathers of sociology; Weber, Durkheim, Marx, and others. It has also been the core concern of the field of sociology of religion from the start.

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