Conditions of religious belonging: Confessionalization, de-parochialization, and the Euro-American divergence
Samuel H. Nelson|Philip S. Gorski
This article presents an alternative account of comparative trajectories secularization and religious change in Europe America. Building on (1) ‘supply-side,’ (2) neo-orthodox secularization, (3) historicist schools, the authors develop a synthetic explanatory framework which emphasizes changed conditions belonging amid transition to modernity. Modernization, they suggest, disrupted older, parochialized forms community emerged Middle Ages. The describe rise diffusion newer, de-parochialized organization 18th 19th centuries stress their compatibility with modernity; here draw special attention impact missionary organizational schemas derived colonial environments re-purposed for domestic evangelism. They argue that mass unchurching was positively related persistence parochialism negatively spread post-parochialism. salient comparison is therefore not merely between Western US, but rather national cases de-parochialization accompanied political economic modernization those it did not.
International Sociology