Secularization Revisited - Teaching of Religion and the State of Denmark

Book excerpt: Since 2001, history has proven the classic and once dominant theories of secularization wrong. Instead of abandoning the subject of secularization, Niels Reeh’s Secularization Revisited demonstrates how the collapse of formerly dominant secularization theories indicates fundamental conceptual challenges within sociology. Through a historical sociological case study of the political decision-making concerning the teaching of religion in Denmark from 1721 to 2006, Reeh explains why sociology of religion and sociology more generally should pay more attention to interstate relations, state-form and state-agency. The Danish state’s interest in its inhabitants’ religion over the last three centuries responded not only to religious motives but to concerns about foreign relations and the survival of the state.