Theses on a Theory of Religion

Martin Riesebrodt

Abstract

This article offers an attempt to define, understand, and explain religion, suggesting an analytical focus on religious practices and their institutionalized meanings. Spelling out the methodological and theoretical consequences of this focus, it is further argued that “secularization” is a concept that needs to be disaggregated and analyzed in terms of three relatively independent processes of institutional differentiation, of disenchantment, and of the deinstitutionalization or privatization of religion.

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