The Classical Secularization Thesis: The Dynamics of Modernity

Although the precipitousness of the decline of the Christian faith in Europe is quite recent, the phenomenon of its steady decline there is not new. Philosophers and social theorists have been foretelling this decline since at least the eighteenth century, i.e., since the Enlightenment. The grand parade of such thinkers includes Marx, Weber, Freud, and in his own surreal way, Nietzsche. And for most of these interpreters, the decline of the Christian faith is perfectly understandable and predictable, indeed inevitable, and it has been explained and formalized in what is known as the secularization thesis: Modernity produces secularization, and the more modern a society is, the more secular it will be. Finally, at the highest stage of modernity, there is the extinction of faith and the death of God.

During five hundred years or more of the development of modernity, different elements of it at different times have taken the prominent role in advancing secularization. These elements have included the Protestant Reformation, science (along with empirical observation and logical reasoning), commercialization, urbanization, industrialization, and most recently, globalization and the information revolution. The development of modernity has also brought about the replacement of theologies with ideologies, such as liberalism (along with individualism and capitalism), socialism, nationalism, and most recently, universalism and environmentalism. Some secularization theorists have emphasized one particular element or one particular ideology of modernity, while others have emphasized another, but all of these elements and ideologies seem to point in the same direction: the end of faith, and in the West this has meant the end of the Christian faith.

This classical secularization thesis seems to explain the broad, overall religious history of the West, especially that of Western Europe, since the Enlightenment (when science, empirical observation, and logical deduction became an actual ideology). America may have appeared to be something of an exception to this relentless secularization trend (yet another illustration of the famous “American exceptionalism”), but in recent years, its trajectory has been similar to that of Europe. Similarly, Roman Catholicism (in contrast to Protestantism) may have been thought to be something of an exception to the secularization trend, but in recent years its evolution is similar to that of most Protestant churches. As for the future, the secularization thesis predicts that, as other now-Christian (or even now-Islamic or now-Hindu) societies become more modern, they too will become less religious.

Anomalies and Puzzles

Of course, the secularization thesis, like all theses, has its skeptics and critics, and they have pointed out certain anomalies and puzzles attending it. In her book, Mary Eberstadt marshals and deploys the arguments of these critics and adds some of her own. As it turns out, there has not been a general and simple linear trend, a steady and uninterrupted decline, of the Christian faith in the West. For one thing, substantial revivals and reversals have occurred within Europe itself, e.g., in Britain during the Victorian era and in Western Europe during the decade and a half after World War II. Second, as observers since Tocqueville have noted, there is the odd paradox that the most modern Western nation, the United States, has long been the most Christian nation, too. Moreover, America has also experienced its own occasional revivals even while it was becoming ever more modern, e.g., the First Great Awakening (1740s), the Second Great Awakening (1800s–1810s), and the revivals of the 1850s, the 1890s–1900s, and recently, the 1970s–1990s. Third, beneath the level of societies and nations and at the level of status and class, the most modern people normally have been the most educated, part of the middle class, and the most religious. In short, within the supposed general and steady trend line of secularization, there have been many exceptions and variations, so many that the very existence of a general and steady trend may be called into question. Indeed Mary Eberstadt, following Rodney Stark, concludes that we need a “theory of variation” and that the secularization thesis does not provide this.

Some readers will have already discerned that these anomalies and puzzles, these exceptions and variations, could easily be handled by the classical secularization thesis with only some minor adjustments and extensions. First, the European counterexamples (the Victorian and post-WWII revivals) were relatively brief, in the long scheme of things. Second, there is the recent fate of the American counterexample. The apparent strength of American Christianity, of American exceptionalism, for a long time represented the biggest single contradiction to the secularization thesis, and this exceptionalism seemed especially evident to prominent sociologists of religion in the 1980s and1990s. However, in the 2010s, the prevailing evidence supports the argument that America is at last conforming to the secularization trend. Consequently, the classical secularization thesis now appears to be very powerful and convincing, much more so than only a decade ago.

An Alternative Thesis: The Family Factor

Because the classical secularization thesis is now indeed so powerful, the alternative thesis that Eberstadt presents in her new book is not likely to get much attention or high regard. The epistemological principle of parsimony, of Occam's Razor, nicely instructs us to choose the relatively simple, ever elegant, secularization thesis over any more complex alternative, and Eberstadt's thesis is indeed more complex. She adds a whole new dimension to the discussion, which she calls “the Family Factor.”

Eberstadt points to a remarkable correlation—the decline of the Christian faith in the West corresponds in time and in degree to the decline of the traditional (specifically, the nuclear) family, and she argues that this correlation can be converted into a new theory of causation: the decline of the faith is a consequence of the decline in the family. More precisely, she sees the causal relationship between family and faith as analogous to a two-way street or to a double helix (with family and faith each being a pillar intertwined with and affecting each other), but the state of the family is the dominant causal factor. She makes a very strong case for this thesis, one backed by both extensive evidence and a persuasive analytical model, which describes the causal mechanism. And although her thesis is more complex than the classical secularization one, it is also very powerful and convincing. It, too, is an impressive and, in its own way, elegant construction. Moreover, Eberstadt explains many important social and religious phenomena that cannot be accounted for adequately by the classical secularization thesis; her thesis therefore is more comprehensive in its explanatory scope. And most importantly, Eberstadt makes a very different prediction about the eventual outcome of the decline of faith and family than does the secularization thesis. She predicts that the consequence will be vast social disruption and possibly collapse, rather than steady social progress. The real judgment on the strengths of these two competing theses will come sometime in the next few decades (which, after all, are the normal time horizon for developments in the history of religion). But in the 2010s we can already see the first, and ominous, signs that Eberstadt is likely to be proven right.

The Zimmerman Thesis: Family and Civilization

There is no doubt that the family, and changes within its structure, can be a major causal factor for many social phenomena. Indeed by the middle of the twentieth century, a whole school of “family sociology” had developed, which focused precisely upon this link. Although this school went into eclipse in the 1960s and after, Eberstadt's book is part of a recent revival of its approach within social policy analysis.

One of the most important of the original family sociologists was Carle Zimmerman, a professor in the Sociology Department at Harvard from the mid-1930s until 1960. His great work, Family and Civilization, an 800-page treatise published in 1947, is a thorough historical examination of how changes in family structure brought about changes in other dimensions of society, and indeed changes in civilization itself.Footnote ¹ Zimmerman identified three kinds of families: 1) the clan or large extended family (which he called the “trustee” family), which corresponds to tribal and feudal societies; 2) the nuclear or small extended family (which he called the “domestic” family), which corresponds to commercial, urban, and complex societies, or to civilization as we normally understand it; and 3) alternative families or even non-families, based upon self-interested and often temporary relationships between individuals (which he called the “atomistic” family), which corresponds to societies and civilizations in the process of disintegration and decline. He explained the rise and fall of a number of civilizations—particularly the Greek, Roman, and modern Western ones—by the rise and fall of different family structures, particularly the “domestic” or nuclear family.

Zimmerman believed that there was indeed a close relationship between religion and family structure, but for him, it was religion that was largely the causal factor shaping the family, which in turn shaped civilization. In particular, Christianity from its beginning had a focus on the family, and the Bible taught very specific and stringent sexual and family standards. Later Christian theologians, most notably St. Augustine, formalized the Christian conception of the family into a kind of trinity—composed of “sanctity, fidelity, and progeny”—with each component being necessary and integral for a marriage and a family. This made for an especially strong family structure, particularly the nuclear and small extended family, and this in turn provided the basis for a strong civilization, including modern Western civilization. However, Zimmerman, already by 1947, was gravely concerned that a decline in Christian faith was causing a decline in family structure, and this would bring about a decline in Western civilization.

Zimmerman, therefore, would not have been surprised by the twin declines of the Christian faith and the traditional family that have occurred in the West during the past half-century. However, he would have thought that it was the decline in the faith that caused the decline in the family, and his major interest would have been in how that family decline was causing further declines in many other aspects of Western civilization. As for the decline in religion itself, Zimmerman shared many of the assumptions of the classical secularization thesis, and his own explanation would have been an application of it.

In any event, a number of social analysts have recently noted the correlation between our contemporary twin declines, and they too have assumed that the decline of the family is partly caused by the decline of the faith. If so, then the decline in the family becomes merely yet another consequence of secularization (as in the famous concept of the “demographic transition,” the transition from high to low birth rates, which is a consequence of urbanization, the transition from rural to urban life). As such, the classical secularization thesis might seem to be strengthened even further, for it can now account not just for one momentous historical development (or rather, decline), but for two, i.e., transformations in both religion and family structure in the West.

Eberstadt's originality, therefore, does not lie in connecting the decline of the family with the decline of faith, but in reversing the causal direction between the two; i.e., for her, decline in the family causes the decline in faith. However, she shares Zimmerman's view that decline in the family leads to declines in many other aspects of society.

The Anomaly of Hyper-Secularization

We have noted that one set of anomalies attending the classical secularization thesis is the occasional revival of the Christian faith and reversals of its decline. But another kind of anomaly is the opposite, i.e., a sudden accentuation of the decline and an advance in secularization, such as the precipitous decline of Christianity within Western Europe during the past half-century. Ironically, the classical secularization thesis itself, which depicts a steady and uninterrupted trend, does not adequately explain these moments of rapid change, of a kind of hyper-secularization.

Can the phenomenon of hyper-secularization be explained by the secularization thesis itself? Certainly, the cause of some forms of rapid secularization is self-evident. The great political and radical revolutions of the modern era, especially those claiming descent from the Enlightenment, have issued in dramatic persecutions of Christianity and caused a precipitous decline of its public practice. This was notoriously the case with the French and the Russian Revolutions, followed by Communist revolutions elsewhere.

Then there are the cases when rapid industrialization of a country's economy has led to a rapid decline in its Christian religion. During industrialization, large portions of the peasant or farmer population, which had been at least nominally religious, moved to cities and factories, where they were transformed into an industrial working class, one which was often organized by secular or even socialist parties. In most of the booming cities of nineteenth-century Europe, the new working class was captured by a socialist and anti-religious ideology. This was especially the case in Catholic countries (e.g., France, Italy, and Spain), where a general anti-religious stance was reinforced by a specific anti-clerical animus. In short, whereas the radical political revolutions were the cause of one set of precipitous Christian declines and hyper-secularizations, the Industrial Revolution was the cause of another. And since both the radical political revolutions and the Industrial Revolution were themselves central moments in the development of modernity, and therefore of secularization, the classical secularization thesis can easily be extended to include these cases of hyper-secularization, too.

The Anomaly of the Contemporary Western Decline

But the most interesting and puzzling case of hyper-secularization has been our contemporary one—the one occurring in Western Europe over the past fifty years. Explanations that focus on radical political revolutions and religious persecution obviously do not fit this case, and even explanations that focus on industrialization do not fit very well with countries that were already highly industrialized more than half a century ago. Can the classical secularization thesis be tweaked once again to generate an explanation for our contemporary case? Let me attempt to do so.

Whereas economists and sociologists have long discussed the Industrial Revolution, they are now discussing the “Information Revolution”—the transformation of industrial economies into post-industrial ones, economies centered upon technological innovations in telecommunications, computers, and the Internet, and upon the economic sectors of information, finance, and services. None of these sectors is industrial in the conventional sense. For many interpreters, the Information Revolution is proving to be as momentous and transformative in its broad consequences as the earlier Industrial Revolution. Thus, it would not be surprising if this new revolution would also have momentous consequences for the Christian faith and religion.

Let us consider some of the possible connections between the changes brought by the Information Revolution, or by one or more of its new technologies, and changes in faith and religion:

1. 1. Internet information and communication, video entertainment, and social media: Many psychologists and sociologists have observed that these new activities are driving out the traditional emphasis on the written word and on lengthy exposition of complex arguments, especially within younger generations who have used the new technologies since early childhood. This may give rise to an impatience with and dismissal of such topics as theology or the Bible.

2. 2. Horizontal social networks: Similarly, many social analysts have observed that the new forms of networking reduce the power and pervasiveness of traditional hierarchical or vertical organizations, especially within the younger generations. This may lead to impatience with and rejections of religious denominations, “organized religion,” and traditional church worship services and membership obligations.

The Women's Revolution within the Information Revolution

The most important consequence of the Information Revolution, in my view, has been something far deeper—the vastly changed role of women in the workplace, and therefore in the family. Much of the industrial economy has in effect been a male economy. But in the information economy, most jobs can be just as readily performed by women. In the industrial era, men were overwhelmingly at the center and commanding heights of the economy; in the information era, women are at the center of this economy as much as are men, and they increasingly are at its commanding heights, too. In short, the Information Revolution has produced, and is now accompanied by, the Women's Revolution.

This Women's Revolution obviously has already had momentous consequences for the role of women in Christian churches in the West. With all the new economic opportunities, and eventually economic necessities, for women in the workplace, it was virtually inevitable that more and more women would spend more and more of their life in the office, and less and less of it in the church (and in the home). Thus, the famous Catholic nuns and Protestant “church ladies” of previous generations have now become endangered species.

The movement of women into the office helped to generate and spread the feminist movement within society. This movement and its new ideology systematically critique traditional male authority roles, not only in the workplace, but in all organizations, including the churches. This has caused many women to either transform churches or to abandon them altogether.

Moreover, within and accompanying the Women's Revolution has been the Sexual Revolution, a revolution which explicitly rejects the Bible's specific and stringent constraints on sexual activity. And of course, this Sexual Revolution was greatly enabled and took a great leap forward with the innovation of the contraceptive pill in 1960 and its rapid adoption and wide distribution soon thereafter.

All of these direct consequences of the Information Revolution and the Women's Revolution can be encompassed under an extended version of the classical secularization thesis. And since these two revolutions began to have a major impact on Western societies in the 1960s, these direct consequences can go far to explain the precipitous decline in Western Christianity, which began at the same time.

The Two Revolutions and the Family Factor

However, Eberstadt argues that the greatest impact of these two revolutions—but particularly the Women's Revolution—upon Western Christianity has not been direct, but rather indirect: the impact has passed through the family first and then to the faith.

Of course, everyone agrees that the Information and Women's Revolutions have had enormous consequences for the family, especially in replacing the traditional nuclear family structure with many alternative family structures, or even with no family at all. For many, the decline of the traditional nuclear family has been something to celebrate as the end of a repressive and exploitative structure; for others, this decline has been something to lament; but all agree that an enormous transformation in family structures has indeed taken place. Eberstadt, however, goes much further than this. She argues that the traditional family—not only the extended family but the nuclear one as well—has long played a dominant role in supporting and promoting the Christian faith; the family, in a sense, has been the nursery of Christianity. Indeed, the central concepts and symbols of the Christian faith—the Trinity of God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and also the Holy Family of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus—are likely to be most meaningful to persons who have themselves grown up within an intact nuclear family, and persons who have grown up without a present and supportive father are likely to find such concepts remote from their lives. Eberstadt ably deploys studies and statistics to show that nuclear families, and especially families with children, are more likely to be Christian believers and church members, than are persons who are not in such families. In particular, having children makes a couple more likely to be Christian believers and belongers: “children drive parents to church,” as she puts it. Conversely, people outside of such families—as increasingly has become a common condition, and now has become the prevailing norm, in Western societies in the past half-century—are much less likely to be believers and belongers. Consequently, she argues, the really powerful cause of the collapse of the Christian faith has been the collapse of the traditional family.

Overall, then, we can identify three powerful trends which began operating after 1960 in the West and which continue to advance in the present time: 1) the Information Revolution, along with its accompanying Women's Revolution; 2) the precipitous decline of the traditional family; and 3) the precipitous decline of the Christian faith. The classical secularization thesis, as amended to include 1) the two contemporary revolutions, can provide an explanation for both 2) and 3). This explanation has the advantages of being direct (i.e., an immediate connection between cause and effect); parsimonious (a single and simple cause); and elegant (one cause explaining many effects or consequences). As such, this extended secularization thesis does not need to concern itself with such complications as the impact of 2) family upon 3) faith. Conversely, the Eberstadt or “Family Factor” thesis acknowledges the impact of 1) the two revolutions and especially the Women's Revolution upon 2) family, but its principal thrust is to use 2) family to provide an explanation for 3) faith. This explanation has the advantages of being direct (an immediate connection between its own cause and effect) and also powerful (in describing a clear and specific causal mechanism), but it is not as parsimonious or elegant as the classical secularization thesis, as updated and extended.

It would seem, then, that there is no obvious advantage of one thesis over the other. Some people will greatly value the epistemological criterion of parsimony, and they will be inclined to choose the classical secularization thesis. Others will greatly value the epistemological criterion of specificity, and they will be inclined to choose the Eberstadt thesis. But because the classical secularization thesis is the reigning one, and the Eberstadt thesis is the challenger, this rough balance between the two theses means that the classical one very likely will continue to prevail (and that the Eberstadt alternative is likely to be ignored).

From Explanation to Prediction

Thus far, we have concluded that, when it comes to evaluating explanations for the recent precipitous decline of Christianity in the West, the classical secularization thesis, centered on modernity, and the alterative Eberstadt secularization thesis, centered on the family, are in rough balance. What happens, however, when we turn our attention from explanations about the past to predictions about the future?

The classical thesis focuses on modernity or modernization as the driving cause of the decline not only of religion, but also of many other social transformations. Many persons, and indeed entire political movements, have opposed these transformations, lamenting “the world we have lost.” These conservative or reactionary movements have exerted great efforts and energy, but in the end they almost always have been overcome by the forces of modernization and have disappeared. And of course, other persons and movements have promoted these transformations and celebrated “that dawn which is very heaven.” These progressive or revolutionary movements have also expended great efforts and energy, and in the end they have been carried to success by the forces of modernization and have shaped the future (although that future has often turned out to be different from what they had wanted and expected).

For the most part, the theorists of modernity have adhered more to the progressive mentality than to the conservative one. Modernization theorists have shared many assumptions of the Enlightenment and of progressive political movements, especially the assumption that, all in all, modernity is a good thing, and therefore secularization is, too. Some of these theorists might acknowledge that with modernity a certain romance and mystery has been lost (as Weber put it, “the charm is going out of the world”). But there is not much expectation among them that modernization and secularization might actually bring about social decline or even collapse. (Consequently, modernization and secularization theorists have rarely given satisfactory accounts of some of the greatest and darkest phenomena of the twentieth century, i.e., the two World Wars and the mass killings carried out by many Communist regimes.) Even today, the solution that modernization theorists provide for most problems of modernity is simply more modernity, more progress, and yes, more secularization and more transformation of family structures. Such people are unlikely to be convinced by Eberstadt's arguments.

There is something in Eberstadt's book, however, that can get the attention of non-believers and secularists. This is not her account of the consequences of the decline of the faith (which is her main interest and purpose), but rather her account of the consequences of the decline of the family, which is very comprehensive and compelling. Once again, she ably marshals studies and statistics documenting the consequences of broken families, especially the stunted abilities, dysfunctional behaviors, and dismal employment prospects among the children. By now, it is clear to most informed and objective observers that within the now-vast world of fragmented families, there has grown up a vast tangle of social pathologies.

Even more important, however, is the great amount of research Eberstadt cites which documents how the collapse of traditional family structures has brought about the collapse of the birth rate, so much so that in almost all Western countries the reproduction rate (the average number of births per woman in the population) is beneath the replacement rate (2.1), ensuring both a decline in the total population and especially a decline in the number of workers needed to support the growing numbers of elderly and dependent persons. Professional demographers noticed this collapse of birth rates and its grave economic and social consequences more than a decade ago, but the effects of the global economic crisis and the Great Recession since 2008 have now made these phenomena a pressing and frequent topic in public discourse as well.Footnote ²

It is now clear, then, that the decline and collapse of the traditional family has produced many difficult and perhaps even intractable problems for the future, and some sober social analysts even see the possibility of social catastrophe. However, although the decline and collapse of the traditional family is clearly a consequence of modernization, almost none of the modernization theorists have foreseen such dark consequences—these are beyond the horizon of their bright, progressive vista. Their cheerful optimism is shared by most classic theorists of secularization. This is a grave weakness or inadequacy in modernization and classical secularization theory. However, the Eberstadt theory fully prepares us for this dark future.

And so, we can conclude our review of Eberstadt's alternative theory by noting a certain paradox and irony. Her principal purpose is to provide a new and superior theory of secularization. But although her explanation focusing on the family is certainly an excellent one, it is not obvious that it is really superior to the classical one focusing on modernity. However, Eberstadt's very focus on the family as a cause of religious decline allows her to see it as a cause of decline in much else that is of enormous importance as well, and this is something that the modernization theorists do not see. This makes her theory overall superior to theirs.

Uniting the Contending Theories

Perhaps the best theory dealing with all the factors that we have been discussing—modernity, faith, and family—would be one which 1) uses modernization to explain a wide range of social outcomes, with one of these outcomes being a) secularization, and with another being b) individualization—which includes fragmentation and decline of the traditional family—and then 2) uses the combination and reciprocal interaction of both a) and b) to explain the further joint decline of faith and family; and then 3) uses this joint decline to explain a wide range of other social declines. In short, this possibly better theory would be something of a union of the classical theory and the Eberstadt theory, with the former explaining the first, upward phase of the full trajectory of modernity, and the latter explaining its second, downward phase—the phase that we are now in. But as it happens, and as we have already seen, something like this hypothetical theory was provided by Carle Zimmerman more than sixty-five years ago.

Looking even further into the future and into the fullest development of the consequences of the twin collapses of the Christian faith and the traditional family, both Eberstadt and Zimmerman foresee the likelihood of the collapse of modern society and Western civilization itself. Its shrunken and dysfunctional working population will no longer be able to sustain the modern welfare state and pension systems which have assumed many of the important social functions that churches and families once performed. But amid the ruins of modern society and the modern state there will be both a great social void and great personal needs. This will provide an open space and a renewed calling for both faith and family to revive and to assume once again their central roles in society and civilization.

This, then, could be the end of that great trajectory of modernization that began some five hundred years ago. If so, the world of late modernity would look remarkably similar to the world of late antiquity.Footnote ³ But just as after the end of the ancient world a whole new world—one based more upon faith and family—came into being, so, too, after the end of the modern world, there may one day be another whole new world, one very likely also based even more upon faith and family than before.