A Critical Examination of the Underlying Sociological Theory of Secularization in the West in the Work of Charles Taylor
Scholarly debate on secularization in the West has been largely developed in sociological terms. Two extreme positions in the conversations are those I label as "orthodox" and "counter-orthodox", with several authors taking middle stances. "Orthodox" theorists affirm that modernity necessarily erodes religion, whereas "counter-orthodox" ones --also known as Rational Choice Theorists (RCT)-- see secularization as a self-limiting process within modernity. As the debate between these views has somewhat stalled, other perspectives have caught the interest of researchers. An important contribution among them is that made by Canadian thinker Charles Taylor in his book A Secular Age (2007).This dissertation analyses the sociological basis of Charles Taylor's account of secularization in order to elucidate what new insights he brings to the debate on the issue. It relies on textual analysis of all the pertinent works by Taylor, as well as his classical and contemporary sociological influences. As a sociological framework, it relies on the scholarship of British sociologist Margaret Archer, particularly on her views about the relationship between social and cultural structures and human agency, as well as about social change.My claim is that it is possible to uncover a consistent "Taylorean sociology" in his work. This particular sociological approach finds its roots in Taylor's philosophical anthropology, his critique of mainstream social science, his position on the problem of human agency in sociology, and his affirmation of the inextricable linkage between the social and cultural realms. In this light, secularization in the West is better understood as the change of religion due to social movement dynamics which relocates the place of religion in society and in individual experience. This change has entailed the decline of some religious forms and the appearance of new ones, a process which is not linear but more of a zigzag-shape.In spite of some shortcomings, Taylorean sociology's account of religious change is consistent with an important body of empirical data. It supersedes important theoretical and methodological problems within "orthodox" and RCT-inspired explanations. In regard to the former, this is not surprising since such views have been marginalized by the most part of scholars today. However, in regard to the latter, criticisms advanced by Taylorean sociology are more interesting because of RCT's prevalence, particularly in North America's scholarship. Among the most important of them, is the inadequacy of considering structures as closed systems --something crucial for RCT, the diminished role given to cultural structures as compared to that of social structures in religious change, and the inadequacy of RCT's view of religious choice as one between options that appear before the human agent all at the same time and in a clear fashion. Among the new paths opened by Taylorean sociology for the study of secularization, the more important are its integration of human agency and structure, and its focus on our contemporary conditions of belief, particularly its view of the "immanent frame" as our given cultural context in the West, the notion of a continuum that goes between exclusive humanism and transformative religion, two extreme positions which fragilize each other and between which a myriad of unstable intermediate positions that are taken by many Westerners.
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