Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Secularization is a term used by sociologists to refer to a process by which the overarching and transcendent religious system of old is reduced in modern functionally differentiated societies to a subsystem alongside other subsystems, losing in this process its overarching claims over these other subsystems. This is the original meaning, but this process has consequences for the organizational and individual levels, which suggests that secularization needs to be analyzed on the societal (macro), the organizational (meso), and the individual (micro) levels. The concept was introduced by Longueville in the negotiations that led to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 when he used the term séculariser to describe the change in statute of certain ecclesiastical territories that were being added to Brandenburg as compensation for its territorial losses. The emergence of the term is linked to the notion secularis that had already been in use for centuries, not only to distinguish the secular from the sacred, but also especially to indicate the former's subordination to and dependence on the latter. However, the connotation associated with the term secularization has reversed this relationship: it expresses the advancing “emancipation” of the secular from the sacred. For the religious, however, it means rather the “confinement” of the religious to the religious sphere. The concept has ... log in or subscribe to read full text