Using the secularization theory and the Marxist notion of religion as masking class conscience one would expect the importance of religion and religious involvement today to wane and be limited to lower class members. To challenge this expectation, using a representative national telephone survey of 2004 youth (ages 11–18) and their parents, we attempt to answer the following two questions: How...

The present article deals with the question of emergence of new religious movements in contemporary Russia. Although sociological approach to the study of new religious movements proceeds usually from the theories of secularization, the author claims that the appearance of these movements should be viewed also in various contexts of national and historical peculiarities of different cultures. H...

Considering global trends of secularization and religious resurgence, it is unmistakable that the center of Christianity is moving from Europe and North America to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This shift affects not only the nature of church life, but also the nature of mission and missionaries. A young, large, and zealous mission force is emerging that flows from ‘the South’ all over the w...

This article proposes a new way of approaching the roots secularism and its outcome that is secularization. The fact this phenomenon arises precisely in Christian world, which ultimately leads to complete emancipation what worldly toward religion, profanum sacrum, astonishing. process European has beginning 11th century, when so-called dispute about reason was initiated resulting, next epochs h...

is religious commitment declining? is the form of religiosity changing in the society of mashhad? to find answers to these questions, we studied the various theories of secularization and determined its three levels. we defined individual secularization and its product; the secular attitude, and determined its dimensions and its indexes. next we measured the secular attitude. we then studied th...