Religion and Modernity in the French Context: For a New Approach to Secularization

The notion that religion and modernity are mutually exclusive has been a leading theme of the sociology of religion in France and has been amply confirmed by empirical studies of religious practice, clerical vocations, and parish culture. But recent work on popular religion, post-1968 ideological communities, and new religious movements has called the presumption of secularization into question. In fact, the theoretical argument can now be advanced that, far from being antithetical to modernity, these “renewals” of religion are in harmony with modernity, especially in respect to the private and individualistic character of their beliefs and the fluidity of their organizational forms. Modernity therefore generates its own forms of religion by creating and filling the gaps between rational certainties. Modernity arouses expectations that it cannot satisfy without stimulating the religious imagination. Secularization is no longer simply the “decline” of religion but is the process whereby religion organizes itself to meet the challenges left by modernity.