The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests, and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life First Edition

The days of the "Moral Majority" (evangelical Protestant ethos) as a major social-political force in America seem to have come and gone. Today, there is widespread concern over America's slide into radical secularism and the political rise of socialism/communism on the Left, libertarianism on the Right, and the struggle of these two broad movements for power and control. Given the Judeo-Christian roots of Western civilization and particularly America, how did this radical change/collapse/revolution come about?Two main theories of social-political dynamics are locked in debate at the academic level: 1) modernization (older/established view), and 2) revolution (newer/challenger view). This book (project) is a compilation of ten, separate-but-related essays which argue in favor of the later (#2), "...that the historical secularization of the institutions of American public life was not a natural, inevitable, and abstract by-product of modernization; rather it was the outcome of a struggle between contending groups with conflicting interests seeking to control social knowledge and institutions."I find that adherents to modernization theory (#1) are often at a loss at identifying casual "direct links between the [secular] Enlightenment thinkers and those who live in this modernized world." This book provides substantial evidence of those "direct links" and the book's thesis is overall superior in explanatory power of both sociological events and history. If you're curious as to why NATURALISM as a worldview (in all its facets: monism, materialism, physicalism, scientism, Darwinian evolution, antisupernaturalism, atheism/agnosticism, and secular humanism) has become the reigning philosophical viewpoint in America, reading this book is well worth your time!

Interesting take on the argument of religion being the adversary of secularism.

I recognize that this is a work of sociology, but even so the religious views of the editor and authors are fairly obvious. Despite the editor's statement that he doesn't lament the passing of religious dominance in America, it is made quite clear in his introduction that he does. This book greatly misrepresents the character of 19th century reform secularization, especially when it comes to freethoght and its leaders, and instead subsitutes a model of elites subverting the dominant culture for their own gain. The modernization model the editor attempts to debunk is much more convincing. Just as one example of historical misinformation, the authors are convinced that there was no real conflict between science and religion, but that it was created or at least greatly exagerated by elite secularists to further their agenda. That is wishful thinking at best or deliberate obsfucation at worst. There are many other examples of attempts to rewrite history in an attempt to shoe horn events so that they fit into the theory the authors favor. Not a balanced or even nuanced account of a vital subject.

This is an important sociological work that complicates the standard account of secularization as a natural or inevitable process. It brings into relief the importance of power and agency by focusing on the role of elites across several distinct fields: science, politics, psychology, sociology, law, education, medicine, and journalism. Each of these case studies provide convincing historical evidence for the active (though not necessarily conspiratorial) role of elites in bringing about a cultural shift that many of us today assume to have been inexorable. It thus bosters Randall Collins' argument that secularization is a "process of conflict" and not simply a zeitgeist.Readers should note that the level of analysis in the conceptualization of secularization isn't belief or religiosity, but religious authority (following Dobbeleare and Chaves). It is in this sense that their constructionist account of the consequences of elite action can justifiably make claims about secularization as an intentional outcome, analogous to toppling a regime. It also sheds light on the role of agency and conflict in the process of institutionalization (in the sense of how social structures acquire a taken-for-granted status). But certainly a bigger story on unintended consequences needs to be examined--particularly on the consequences of professionalization in general (including in religious institutions). Among the essays I found most interesting were Garroutte's and Evans' studies on the historical transitions in American science and medicine respectively, which are relevant to contemporary science-vs-religion debates.

This is an extremely valuable, insightful collection of essays that together make a powerful case for the importance of secularization in the United States as the result of a process of proactive policies and practices by elites between 1870 and 1930. The secularization of American higher education, public schools, journalism, medicine, psychology, politics, and law was not something that just happened, as if by inevitable, inexorable development; rather, it was deliberately sought and achieved during the decades between the end of the Civil War and the Great Depression. The book's editor, Christian Smith, is a sociologist of exceptional intellectual range (see his award-winning works on the religiosity and spirituality of teens and young adults, as well as his recent discipline-straddling and prize-winning book, What is a Person?). The essays in The Secular Revolution are historically informed, theologically aware sociology of secularization at its best, and the contributions on the transformation of American higher education are both shaped by and contribute further to scholarship by historians such as George Marsden, Julie Reuben, and James Turner.