Role of Religion in Modern Societies

Detlef Pollack is Professor of Comparative Sociology of Culture at Europa-Universitat Viadrina, Germany.Daniel V. A. Olson is Associate Professor of Sociology at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.

• 1. Introduction: Religious Change in Modern Societies- Perspectives Offered By the Sociology of Religion 2. The Continuing Secular Transition 3. God, Gaelic and Needlepoint: Religion as a Social Accomplishment 4. Religion in Central and Eastern Europe: Was There a Re-awakening After the Breakdown of Communism? 5. Quantitative Evidence Favoring and Opposing the Religious Market Model 6. Secularization and the State: The Role Government Policy Plays in Determining Social Religiosity 7. Unsecular Europe: The Persistence of Religion 8. From ‘Believing without Belonging’ to ‘Vicarious Religion’: Understanding the Patterns of Religion in Modern Europe 9. The Cultural Paradigm: Declines in Belonging and Then Believing 10. Religious Individualization or Secularization: An Attempt to Evaluate the Thesis of Religious Individualization in Eastern and Western Germany 11. Religion and Science or Religion versus Science? About the Social Construction of the Science-Religion-Antagonism in the German Democratic Republic and its Lasting Consequences 12. Secularization Theory and Rational Choice: An Integration of Macro- and Micro-Theories of Secularization using the Example of Switzerland