Elements of a Theory of Religious-Secular Competition
| Autor | Jörg Stolz - Pascal Tanner |
| Cargo | Professor de Sociologia da Religião na Universidade de Lausana, Suíça - Doutorando do Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique |
| Páginas | 295-323 |
http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-7984.2017v16n36p295
295295 – 323
Elements of a Theory of
Religious-Secular Competition
Jörg Stolz1
Pascal Tanner2
Abstract
This article presents basic elements of a theory of religious-secular competition on the individual
level. The theory claims that individuals in many societies may choose between religious and
secular options, creating a situation of competition between religious and secular institutions. The
competition between religious and secular suppliers is influenced by three important contextual
factors: innovation, regulation, and resources. We give six examples of empirical studies showing
that the theory of religious-secular competition explains such contrasting phenomena as the
difference in success of religious healing in European and African countries, the diminishing and
change of religious socialization in Switzerland, variations in church attendance in U.S. states,
variation in the attractiveness of monasteries, the late secularization of Ireland, or the success of
megachurches since the 1970s.
Keywords: Religious-secular competition. Secularization. Religious change.
“Instead of praying pilgrims, what we see are singers, gymnasts, firemen, soldiers,
year-goers, Sunday defilers in company with modern ladies overflowing hill and valley,
chasing in impetuous haste and irrepressible lust, free breath and the pleasures of life”.
(THE ANNALS OF PIUS, 1875)
Introduction3
e contrast could not be greater: religious leaders have been reporting
for a long time that their religious communities are in tough competition
1 Professor de Sociologia da Religião na Universidade de Lausana (Suíça) e presidente da Sociedade Internacional
para a Sociologia das Religiões (ISSR/SISR).
2 Doutorando do Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique (FNS) e pesquisador do Institut de sciences
sociales des religions contemporaines (ISSRC).
3 This article is based on ongoing theoretical work. Previous versions of the theory can be found in Stolz (2009,
2013) and Stolz, Könemann et al. (2016).
Elements of a Theory of Religious-Secular Competition | Jörg Stolz e Pascal Tanner
296 295 – 323
not so much with other religious communities, but with secular institutions
(MCMULLIN, 2013; SCHULZ, 2006, p. 123). But religious sociological
research has so far paid almost no attention to this fact. Pastors, priests,
and imams are faced with the increasingly dicult tasks of getting people
interested in their oers and developing marketing and branding strategies.
But religious sociological research seems blind to this fact, because religion is
not a “product” in the views of most researchers.
Remarkably, the three most important sociological theories of religion in
contemporary society – secularization theory, individualization theory, and
market theory – have so far rarely treated the phenomenon of religious-secular
competition. e reasons for this are not dicult to nd.
e secularization theory is essentially a macro-theory, which points to
major societal modernization processes (dierentiation, rationalization,
societalization) and claims that these processes are leading to a general decline
of religion (POLLACK; ROSTA, 2015; VOAS; CHAVES, 2016; WALLIS;
BRUCE, 1995). Because the perspective is on large-scale processes, the theory
seems unable to integrate religious-secular competition on a meso-level and
individual choices on the micro-level.
e individualization theory argues that modernization does not lead to
secularization, but to a change in religious forms (KNOBLAUCH, 2008, 2009;
LUCKMANN, 1967). According to this theory, church-based, institutional
religiosity is diminishing, but it is replaced by new (and often dicult to
recognize) individualized and privatized forms of religiosity. In the well-known
text by Luckmann (1967) we can nd elements of a description of religious-
secular competition. All in all, however, neither he nor the subsequent literature
kept track of this issue. is is in part a result of Luckmann’s extremely broad
functional denition of religion that made secular competition unrecognizable,
since it was by denition also called “religious”.
It is particularly astonishing that the so-called market theory has not taken
religious-secular competition into serious consideration (IANNACCONE,
1998; STARK; FINKE, 2000). It is true that Iannaccone (1988) presented
an early model in which individuals can choose between religious and
secular goods. But this promising start was overshadowed by the unfortunate
assumptions that humans have a stable demand for transcendental goods (such
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