Sociologists and Secularization

Controversy about the process of secularization has consituted the centrepiece of the sociology of religion in recent years. It is argued that this controversy is a particularly important and illuminating site upon which the redirection of the sociological enterprise is being wrought. The major sections of the paper are concerned with the explication of the terms in which the secularization controversy has developed among sociologists and sociologically-inclined theologians. Various relationships between sociological and religious perspectives are explored, the discussion of these being linked in the concluding section with the development of critical sociology and the sociology of the possible.