In sociology, secularization (or secularisation) is the transformation of people or a society from identification with traditional , formal, belief systems or religious values and institutions toward unacknowledged belief systems or seemingly non-religious values and secular based belief systems. The secularization thesis expresses the idea that through the lens of the European enlightenment modernization, rationalization, combined with the ascent of science and technology, religious authority diminishes in all aspects of social life and governance. In recent years, the secularization thesis has been challenged due to some global studies indicating that the irreligious population of the world may be in decline as a percentage of the world population due to irreligious countries having subreplacement fertility rates and religious countries having higher birth rates in general. Christian sociologist Peter L. Berger coined the term desecularization to describe this phenomenon. In addition, secularization rates are stalling or reversing in some countries/regions such as the countries in the former Soviet Union or large cities in the Western world with significant amounts of religious immigrants. Even global studies show that many people who do not identify with a religion, still hold religious beliefs and participate in religious practices, thus complicating the situation. The term "secularization" is also used to mean the lifting of monastic restrictions from a member of the clergy, and to deconsecration, removing the consecration of a religious building so that it may be used for other purposes. Overview Secularization, in the main, sociological meaning of the term, involves the historical process in which religion loses social and cultural significance. As a result of secularization the role of religion in modern societies becomes restricted. In secularized societies faith lacks cultural authority, and religious organizations have little social power. Secularization has many levels of meaning, both as a theory and as a historical process. Social theorists such as Karl Marx (1818–1883), Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Max Weber (1864–1920), and Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) postulated that the modernization of society would include a decline in levels of religiosity. Study of this process seeks to determine the manner in which, or extent to which religious creeds, practices, and institutions are losing social significance. Some theorists argue that the secularization of modern civilization partly results from our inability to adapt the broad ethical and spiritual needs of people to the increasingly fast advance of the physical sciences. In contrast to the "modernization" thesis, Christian Smith and others argue that