Historicizing Secular-Religious Demarcations

Part IV Programmatic Proposals: Differentiation Theory and the Sociology of Religion and Secularity

The Fragmentation of the Sacred: An Alternative Narrative of Western Modernity

Philip Gorski

Abstract

In contemporary sociology, secularization theory remains the dominant paradigm of religious change. The most influential version of that theory is arguably Weber’s narrative of disenchantment. This article reviews and critiques that narrative, and sketches an alternative: the fragmentation of the sacred. What really sets the Western trajectory apart, it argues, is the monopolization of legitimate forms of the sacred by a hierarchical and hierocratic organization, independent of economic and political powers: the papacy. It is only ...