III Factors, 29 “Religious Talk” in Narratives of Membership

Contrary to the predictions of secularization theory, religion is back with a vengeance. Following the tradition of the Enlightenment and adhering to theories of modernization and secularization, the canonical view across the human sciences in the second half of the twentieth century held that religion would fade away and lose its once-powerful, omnipresent hold on humanity. A perfect synopsis of this view is captured in C. Wright Mills’s words (1959): “Once the world was filled with the sacred—in thought, practice, and institutional form. After the Reformation...