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This paper analyzes whether Brazil is experiencing a religious secularization process using data from Brazil Religion Survey conducted in 2007. Models of discrete choice are estimated to understand which individual attributes affect disaffiliation, disbelief and lack of religious practice, therefore confirming or disproving secularism hypotheses. Estimations confirm some hypotheses of the theory, for example, that having liberal opinions concerning moral and social issues is positively associated with secularism, and that lower income levels result in lower chances of disaffiliation. In addition, the profile of non-religious people, non-believersand those who do not practice religion is similar. Therefore, it is possible to affirm that there is secularization in Brazil.

THIS ARTICLE ARGUES THAT ISLAM MAY BE LIVING THROUGH A TURNING POINT IN ITS HISTORY WHICH WILL BRING IT FACE-TO-FACE WITH THE CHALLENGES OF THE HUMAN CONDITION AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. IT OFFERS SOME ISLAMIC RESPONSES TO SECULARIZATION. IT NOTES THAT THE CURRENT DIVIDING LINE OF ISLAMIC THOUGHT IS MORE OR LESS EQUIVALENT TO THE ONE THAT SEPARATED THE REFORMATION FROM THE COUNTERREFORMATION.

"A thought-provoking collection of essays and lectures by one of the most perceptive Italian cultural critics of the period after World War Two. The Age of Secularization is a collection of eleven essays and lectures by Augusto Del Noce, which originally appeared in print between 1964 and 1969 and which Del Noce himself selected and re-published as a book in 1970. By that time he had already established his reputation as one of Italy's foremost historians of ideas and political thinkers, and The Age of Secularization was quickly recognized as one of the most original and penetrating attempts to interpret the cultural and political turmoil of the late 1960's. Among other topics, Del Noce discusses the student protests of 1968, the counter-culture of the sixties, the significance of the sexual revolution, the nature of the technological society and the relationship between Christianity and modern culture. The Age of Secularization documents the encounter, so to speak, between a key period of contemporary history and the full intellectual maturity of one of its most perceptive observers. This is one of the reasons why it remains surprisingly relevant and fresh almost fifty years later."--

AbstractWhat is the relationship between religion and human development? Using data from the pooled 1981–2014 World and European Values Surveys, we examine the effect of human development on a country's level of religious attendance and belief. Consistent with the idea that the primary causal mechanism underlying secularization theory has to do with the substitutability of secular and religious goods, we find that human development has a negative effect on religious attendance but no effect on religious belief. Our results indicate that as societies develop, we should not be surprised if religious belief remains high even as religious attendance declines. The negative effect of human development on religious attendance is driven primarily by a country's level of education and health. Our analysis suggests that it is important to think carefully about what one's theoretical model of the secularization process implies for different aspects of religion.

This book explores the concept of diffused religion as it is found in contemporary society, resulting from a vast process of religious socialisation that continues to pervade our cultural reality. It provides a critical engagement with a framework of non-institutional religion that is based on values largely shared in society by being diffused through primary and secondary socialisation. Cipriani also contends that these very values which give form to diffused religion can also be seen in themselves as their own kind of religion. As a result, they go beyond secularisation and favour the religious continuum extending around the world of diffused religions. This work will be of great interest to scholars in the Sociology of Religion and to anyone wanting to learn more about the social aspects of religion.

Abstract
For the past 500 years, to varying degrees, the processes of religious secularization have been occurring in what today are the wealthy, highly educated, industrialized nations of the world. They are causing organized religion, as a social institution, to go from being a very important influence on the lives of people and the nations in which they live to being a smaller influence, or almost no influence at all. Various disciplines from theology to psychology to sociology have tried to explain secularization, each discipline contributing something unique. One discipline that has not contributed has been biology. From a biological perspective, based on observation and reasoning, at least one of the ultimate functions of the physical forms associated with religion appear to be that of in-group marker for a breeding population, which, as will be shown, is how all religions start. Religions structure larger human populations into smaller "clusters" that are separate in-group breeding populations. The clustering into smaller in-group breeding populations prevents the spread of contagious diseases and creates inter-group competition and intra-group cooperation, both of which have contributed to human eusociality, a very rare type of social organization that will be explained. As the physical forms of religion are losing this in-group-marker function of clustering populations with modernity, a general biological principle comes into play, which is "form follows function, and as function wanes, so does form." When applied to religion, "form" means the physical components by which all religions are built. The specific meaning of "physical," as used here, will be explained in the article. This biological perspective, which is counter-intuitive and can generate testable hypotheses, should complement, not compete, with perspectives from other disciplines. Physical forms in biology can and often do have more than one function, so the same form with a biological function can also have psychological and theological functions. The physical forms of religion are its objects of natural (genetic and cultural) selection. As socio-economic modernity spreads through the world, the evolutionary biological trajectory suggests that religion, as a social institution, will eventually become extinct.

Intro -- Diffused Religion -- Foreword -- Contents -- Part I The Basics of Diffused Religion -- 1 The Theory of Diffused Religion -- Introduction -- An Initial Approach to the Theory of Diffused Religion -- Conclusion -- References -- 2 Socialization and Diffused Religion -- Introduction -- The Value of Inheritance -- Culture, Socialization and Education -- The Variables of Socialization -- The Content of Religions -- The Resilience of Religious Belief -- Conclusion -- References -- 3 Values and Global Society -- Introduction -- Cognitive, Affective and Selective Dimension -- Constitution of Interests -- Values as Independent/Dependent Variables -- Ethics and Values -- Universality of Values -- Religious Ideologies -- Secular Impact -- Conclusion -- References -- 4 Diffused Secular Religiosity -- Introduction -- An Ante Litteram Diffused Religion: Hegel's Volksreligion -- Towards a Return to the Axial Age? -- Religion as a Personal-God Experience -- Beyond Invisible Religion -- The Religiosity of Atheism as a Consequence of Secularization -- Conclusion -- References -- 5 World Diffused Religions -- Introduction -- The European Galaxy Twixt Judaism, Catholicism and Protestantism -- The Diffused Religions of Eastern Europe -- Islamic and Post-Secular Europe -- Europe and India Compared and Contrasted -- The Latin American Context -- The Urban Space as the Nursery of Religions Diffusion -- From Diffused Religion to World Diffused Religions -- Conclusion -- References -- Part II Diffused Religion in Practice -- 6 Religion and Politics: A Peculiar Case -- Introduction -- The Starting Point of Diffused Religion -- Political Events as Indicators -- Ethics and Politics -- Religious and Political Pluralism -- An Emblematic Case -- The "Religious Field" -- Conclusion -- References -- 7 Religion and Values -- Introduction -- Church and State

What is the relationship between security and secularization in International Relations? The widespread acceptance of secularism as the paradigmatic framework that underlies the study of world politics has left this question largely unexplored. Yet, the recent challenges to the secularization thesis and the growing attention that is being devoted to questions of religion and secularism in international politics increasingly suggest the importance of undertaking this investigation. This article takes up this task in three main steps. First, it will explore how the limits of a widely accepted but nonetheless problematic account of the emergence of the modern Westphalian nation-state contribute to a dominant underlying assumption in security studies that implicitly associates security with secularization. Second, it will articulate a competing genealogy of security and secularization which suggests that rather than solving the problem of religious insecurity, secularization makes the question of fear and the politics of exceptionalism central to the state-centric project of modernity and its related vision of security. Finally, the article will examine how these elements inform and, most of all, constrain attempts to move beyond the traditional state-centric framework of security. The focus will be on three such attempts: human security, the securitization theory and Ken Booth's critical theory of security. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Sage Publications Ltd. & ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research.]

Using the 2005 and 2006 AsiaBarometer surveys I analyze religiosity and secularization in Asia. I find that, in South Asia, identification with a particular religion is the norm and most people pray every day but, in East Asia, religious identification and religious practice are both much less common. Even in secular East Asia, however, the demand for religious services is high and belief in a spiritual world is common. I conclude that secularization does not necessarily produce uniformly secular societies. Turning to the causes and consequences of religiosity, I find surprisingly few significant relationships, results that echo similar analyses in Western Europe. I then discuss the implications of these non-findings.