Religion and Development: Reconsidering Secularism as the Norm

Abstract

Sociologists have long predicted that the influence and role of religion(s) would wane in ‘modern’ societies. In Auguste Comte’s positivist vision, religion is somewhat constructed as an obstacle to progress. Max Weber famously posited that the rationalisation process associated with modernisation would lead to the ‘disenchantment of the world’, whereby the search for truths and meanings come to rest on scientific investigation rather than religious beliefs, myths and magic. This is not to say that the role of religious traditions should be neglected, as underscored by Weber’s thesis on the central role of Protestant ethics in the development of capitalism. Rather, it acknowledges that the separation between Church and state resulted in a power transfer from religious to secular state institutions in industrialising Western countries that witnessed the emergence of a rational legal order under the authority of non-religious social institutions. As modernisation expanded from the core to the periphery, many expected the developing world to follow suit.