The Sacred in a Secular Age Toward Revision in the Scientific Study of Religion

Sacred in a Secular Age, edited by Phillip E. Hammond, brings together leading scholars to reassess one of the most enduring assumptions in the sociology of religion: the secularization thesis. Long taken as conventional wisdom, the thesis posits an inexorable decline of the sacred as societies modernize. Yet the persistence―and even resurgence―of religion in new movements, conservative traditions, and political struggles around the world challenges the adequacy of this model. This volume explores these paradoxes, asking how the sacred endures, transforms, and reasserts itself within ostensibly secular contexts.

The essays span theory, method, and case studies, engaging topics from new religious movements to conservative Protestantism, from cultural institutions to private life and global politics. Contributors probe the distinction between “religion” and “the sacred,” a line blurred in much modern scholarship but central to the work of classical theorists like Durkheim and Simmel. By interrogating this distinction, the volume points toward more nuanced frameworks for understanding sacred phenomena in secular societies. Rather than discarding the secularization paradigm, the contributors refine and revise it, suggesting ways forward for a field in transition. A landmark in the sociology of religion, the collection maps both the challenges and the possibilities for the next generation of inquiry.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.