@article {2895,
	title = {Secularization as declining religious authority },
	journal = {Social Forces},
	year = {2994},
	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 {\textquotedblleft}pay-offs{\textquotedblright} of this conceptual innervation 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.
},
	doi = {https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/72.3.749},
	url = {https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/72/3/749/2233014?redirectedFrom=PDF},
	author = {Mark Chaves}
}
