Religion and civil society: Theoretical reflections

Abstract

Using World Values Survey data, this chapter begins with the global distinctiveness of European societies in terms of both religious vitality and support for the public role of religion. They exhibit a secularity that has been challenged in recent years by an unexpected return of religion as a contentious public issue. The chapter then asks, which theories in the social sciences can help to think constructively through the challenges of religion and civil society in such media-rich, religiously diverse, consumer-oriented secularised societies? It begins with sociology of religion, arguing that while secularisation and rational choice theories shed light on some developments, their conceptualisation of culture is too static and their account of institutionalisation too limited to capture the dynamics of religion and sociocultural change in contemporary societies. Anthropological approaches which stress the role of culture as an independent variable and examine religion's capacity to functionalise within modern systems, political science approaches which seek to elucidate processes of democratic deepening and cultural and media studies approaches which reveal the dialectical interplay between media form, religious symbols and discourse and political actors in civil society are seen as useful pointers to developing a more nuanced approach that better captures these dynamics.