Abstract
This edited volume answers fundamental questions about the role of religion in European society at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries, proving that the secularization process is not a mere consequence of modernization resulting in the decline of collective religiosity, but that it encompasses more complex processes.
The editors and contributors to this volume did a tremendous job in empirically examining major theories of religious change in contemporary Europe, showing that religion is not vanishing with modernization, but is shifting from public to private spheres, from institutionalized to individualized practice in some countries. Secularization, individualization and pluralization are three different, but compatible frameworks that the editors apply to explain changes in churches and religion, which remain a major social institution in Europe. To be able to do this remarkable research they gathered a team of leading sociologists of religion across Europe that applied the aforementioned framework of religious change in different countries, in the following order: Finland, Ireland, Portugal, Germany, Poland, Russia, Estonia, Hungary, and Croatia. They found that secularization takes different forms in different countries, depending on whether one looks at the macro or micro level, as well as at the country’s sociopolitical context.
The Social Significance of Religion in the Enlarged Europe is highly recommended to anyone interested in the sociology of religion, but also more broadly in social change. It is a great example of work that combines successfully macro and micro units of analysis: in this example, religion as a social institution, and religion as an individual practice. In different regions of Europe these two levels interact differently, but we leave it to readers to enjoy the magnificently written text and exciting findings. It is a book that will have lasting effects on the field and on future studies in the sociology of religion.