Religion in secular society

"Fifty years after its publication, Bryan Wilson's Religion in Secular Society remains one of the clearest articulations of the modern secularization thesis: the claim that modernization brings with it fundamental changes in the nature and status of religion. For Wilson, secularization refers to religion's loss of influence at societal, institutional, and individual levels. Largely as a result of inadvertent consequences of modernization (rather than the deliberate activity of avowed secularists) religion has lost power, prestige, and popularity. Science and technology have reduced the importance of religious knowledge and the officials who carry it. With the development of secular education, social control, and welfare provision, fewer people now have any contact with the churches. Individual piety may persist as a private preference, but religion can no longer have the public presence or influence it enjoyed in pre-modern societies. Wilson considers the difference between the UK, where people abandoned the churches, and the USA, where additional social functions allowed the churches to survive shorn of much of their traditional religious content. He also considers the various forms of sectarian rejection of modernity. Steve Bruce provides a summary and assessment of critical responses to the core ideas of Religion in Secular Society and summarizes the major changes in the religious culture of the UK and USA since the 1960s"-- Publisher's website.