The death of secularization theses keeps being announced but people keep using the word. Historically the transfer of church property to secular use, for sociologists secularization signals a decline in the influence of religious institutions or ideas; yet 'secularization' has also been an attractive idea for theologians and philosophers, signalling the transformation of religious ideas into secular form, and for political theorists asserting the existence of 'political religions' in the 20^th century.　

There is no single 'secularization thesis', nor are...