The resilience of religion in public life in the early 21st century has surprised many secular observers who once confidently assumed that the overall thrust of history was toward secularization. The world, they expected, would follow the trajectory of post-Enlightenment Europe, which experienced steep declines in church attendance and the development of a decidedly lay public sphere. Much of the world, however, stubbornly refuses to fit that narrative. This applies certainly to the Islamic world, but even to the United States, where church attendance is one of the strongest predictors of voting behavior. Rather than fit different societies into a one-size-fits-all secularization narrative, we have to pay attention to the particularities.

read more