A THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL XLIV 2002 Published by the Protestant ...

TONY CARROLL SJ
The question of secularisation is further complicated by the fact
that the phenomena of religious belief and practice is specific to the
cultural context in which it occurs. As Theodore Caplow argues,
whilst post-World War II religious belief and practice has declined in
many European countries no significant decline in religious belief or
practice has occurred in the United States in the same period. 9 If that
were not complicated enough, there is also the question as to just
what qualifies for religious belief and practice and how one measures
this. 10 Furthermore, there is the phenomenon today that, as Grace
Davie puts it, people in Great Britain believe in God but do not belong
to a particular Church. 11 Other countries follow their own patterns
of secularisation with their own particular histories and forms
clude in philosophy: Gianni Vattimo, (Ed.) Filosophia ë86, Rome, Gius Laterza &
Figlia, 1986; Gianni Vattimo, Credere di Credere, Rome, Garzanti, 1996; Philippa
Berry and Andrew Wernick (Eds.) Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion,
London, Routledge, 1992; Dominique Janicaud, Le tourant thÈologique de la phenomenology
franÁaise, Eds de líÈclat, 1991;Jean-Louis ChrÈtien, Michel Henry,
Jean-Luc Marion, Paul Ricoeur, (Eds.) PhÈnomenologie et ThÈologie, PrÈsentation
de Jean-FranÁois ChrÈtien, Paris, Criterion, 1992. In sociology: Franz-Xaver Kaufmann,
Religion und Modernit‰t, T¸bingen J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1989; Niklaus
Luhmann, Die Religion der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 2000; Danièle
Hervieu-LÈger et Jean-Paul Willaime, Sociologies et Religion: Approches classiques,
Paris, PUF, 2001; JosÈ Casanova 1994 op cit. In theology: John Milbank, 1990 op
cit; Philip Blond, (Ed.) Post-Secular Philosophy: between philosophy and theology,
London, Routledge, 1998; Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: on the Liturgical
Consummation of Philosophy, Oxford, Blackwell, 1998. In history: Hugh McLeod,
Secularisation in Western Europe, 1848ñ1914, New York, St. Martinís Press, 2000;
Hartmut Lehmann (Ed.) S‰kularisierung, Dechristianisierung, Rechristianisierung
im neuzeitlichen Europa, Verˆffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts f¸r Geschichte†130,
Gˆttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997; Claude Langlois, ëLa quantification
en histoire religieuse. Un demi-siècle de pratiqueí, in: Líobservation quantitative
du fait religieux, Colloque de líAssociation FranÁaise díHistoire Religieuse
Contemporaine, Lille, 1992, pp. 17ñ34.
9 Theodore Caplow, The 1984 Paul Hanley Furfey Lecture: Contrasting Trends in
European and American Religion, in Sociological Analysis, 1985, 46:2, pp. 101ñ108.
10 On this question see Reinhard Henkel, Atlas der Kirchen und der anderen Religionsgemeinschaften
in Deutschland-eine Religionsgeographie, Stuttgart, Verlag
W. Kohlhammer, 2001, pp. 22ñ37.
11 Grace Davie, Religion in Britain since 1945, Oxford, Blackwell, 1994, pp. 93ñ116.
Grace Davie has recently modified her view on the weakness of institutional religion
in Europe and introduced the notion of ëvicarious religioní to suggest that although
people may not attend churches they often consider churches to be acting for them in a
variety of ways. See Grace Davie, ìThe persistence of institutional religion in modern
Europeî, in Linda Woodhead, Paul Heelas and David Martin (Eds.) Peter Berger and
the Study of Religion, London, Routledge, 2001, pp. 100ñ111.
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