Publications [#255496] of Mark Chaves

Publications

1. Chaves, M, Secularization as Declining Religious Authority, Social Forces, vol. 72 no. 3 (1994), pp. 749-774, UNIV NORTH CAROLINA PRESS, ISSN 0037-7732 [eLvHCXMwVV3BCsIwDC2C4MXLQHv1BzrazrT0PBQPgiAKemya5TgQ9_-YjQl6CeSUQMp7CcmjSu0cY2HfYMIA6JqIANyEBHuXkJL_F4T9oPmxUouu36j78XBrT2b-DMAUJ5RpfCggyJpjgs7bUoTKxKRIwk8sPTeMK0dCKDFLNBssk8wGhCwjjmfKbqvWeTwa74dJXEZaLVkq3OkRdbVkoNXqkdrz83Kd3err1u9JAVW_Bi0gPz0Q42r7ATQ9OPY], [doi]
   (last updated on 2025/06/15)

   Abstract:
   Secularization is most productively understood not as declining religion, but as the declining scope of religious authority. A focus on religious authority (1) is more consistent with recent developments in social theory than is a preoccupation with religion; (2) draws on and develops what is best in the secularization literature; and (3) reclaims a neglected Weberian insight concerning the sociological analysis of religion. Several descriptive and theoretical "pay-offs" of this conceptual innovation are discussed: new hypotheses concerning the relationship between religion and social movements; the enhanced capacity to conceptually apprehend and empirically investigate secularization among societies, organizations, and individuals; and clearer theoretical connections between secularization and other sociological literatures. Ironically, these connections may indeed spell the end of secularization theory as a distinct body of theory, but in a different way than previously appreciated.