Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide

by Pippa Norris, Ronald Inglehart

Seminal nineteenth-century thinkers predicted that religion would gradually fade in importance with the emergence of industrial society. The belief that religion was dying became the conventional wisdom in the social sciences during most of the twentieth century. The traditional secularization thesis needs updating, however, religion has not disappeared and is unlikely to do so. Nevertheless, the concept of secularization captures an important part of what is going on. This book develops a theory of existential security. It demonstrates that the publics of virtually all advanced industrial societies have been moving toward more secular orientations during the past half century, but also that the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before. This second edition expands the theory and provides new and updated evidence from a broad perspective and in a wide range of countries. This confirms that religiosity persists most strongly among vulnerable populations, especially in poorer nations and in failed states. Conversely, a systematic erosion of religious practices, values, and beliefs has occurred among the more prosperous strata in rich nations.

Genres: Religion, Politics, Sociology, Nonfiction, Political Science, Atheism, Spirituality

392 pages, Paperback

First published September 20, 2004

About the author

Pippa Norris is Associate Director (Research), and Lecturer, John F. Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard University in the USA.

Reviews

[Malek Atia · Rating 4 out of 5]

حسب اطروحة الكتاب فان العلمانية مرتبطة ايجابيا باتنمية البشرية حيث الاحساس بالامن في المجتمعات البعد صناعية يغني الافراد عن اللجوء الي الدين الكتساب الطمئنينة من الاخطار المترقبة، التحدي القوي لهذه الاطروحة هو الوباء العالمي فاذا كان الاحساس بعدم الامن مرتبطا باليمين السياسي و التدين فذلك يعني ان الكورونا ستخلف لنا مزيدا من التدين اجتماعيا و سياسيا.

[Frøy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I might be alone in this, but I have never been this affronted with an academic author's choice of wording - least of all throughout the book in its entirety. The authors' material and research came with a myriad of implications and biases that were never explored, explained, or rectified. I found the language, and, as mentioned, the choice of wording, completely undermined their attempt at relating the research. How can I take the academic points seriously if the authors keep basing them on dicotomies that generalise the very things they try to UN-generalise?

[Aidan Corrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Supreme book. But I do disagree with the new handling of secularity, I felt like I agreed with the analysis but my view differs as it refers to the reality of some of the religiosity it talked about. The use of Weber also felt a lil normative, but the way his ideas were framed as the phenomenon they were was wonderful. Def need to read more new religious thought.

[Shinynickel]

Off this review:

And in consequence they are not marginal, but involved in an ongoing discussion. And one of the anomalies in this discussion is America. And here we are sitting in your apartment in New York. So shall we talk about America?

Yes, both of the next books on my list have something particular to say about America. My fourth book is by two social scientists called Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. It’s called "Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide". It was published in 2004 and is meticulous and powerful in its interpretation of an enormous range of data. What they’re looking at are the data on religious practices in the world today and the extent to which they can be correlated, country by country, with various socioeconomic variables. Now, many books and articles on the state of religion are remarkably data-free, or get muddled in their account of the data, and this one is the antidote.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent study with an interesting hypothesis, but like others, a bunch of failings. Notably, it relies on the World Values Survey for a lot of its data and a lot the questions they sample from don't appear to translate well throughout cultures or religions, which would seem to rob the data of a lot of its value. Additionally, some of the graphs are REALLY poorly prepared - data fit to lines in unconvincing ways, data that one would not expect to be linear (and that doesn't look linear) fit to linear graphs, unlabeled axes, etc.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reads a lot like Inglehart's book on modernization; which is not surprising given that it too is drawing on data from the World Values Survey. Here the main points deal with how societies become more secular as existential threats such as hunger and disease are removed; ergo, as societies become more economically prosperous and democratic, religiosity will wane (but not disappear!). Like Modernization, this book is also convincing, but tedious in its presentation of evidence.

[Stephen Cranney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Their main thesis seems reasonable enough (that social variations in religiosity are largely explained by the personal and country-level security situation). But it seems like they were trying to find an excuse to weave together disparate findings into one thread in order to justify presenting a series of disjointed findings.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was alright in understanding things from a christian fundamentalists perspective, but still it wasn't an easy read.