Introduction

The 1960s initiated the era of the secularisation paradigm in the social sciences. It was on a presumption that was close to certainty that religion will gradually lose its social significance, as an effect of the process of modernisation. The most famous example of this paradigm is the seminal book by Peter L. Berger The Sacred Canopy (Berger 1967), that was strongly influenced by Max Weber's notion of modernisation and disenchantment. The popularity of the secularisation paradigm is no surprise in the light of the recent book by Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960's (McLeod 2007), which is the thorough analysis of a dramatic decrease in religious practices and beliefs in God among the West European and North American societies in the 1960s. This trend has been reflected by political and social scientists who relegated religion from the scholarly debate. However, the secularisation paradigm itself came under attack and has been repeatedly revised by social scientists during the last two decades. Interestingly, also Peter L. Berger has changed his position entirely.

After years of neglect, the study of religion moved to the forefront of the research agenda in political science. This shift in attention has been, in part, a reaction to the changes in social reality, including the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 and the subsequent resurgence of religious conflicts, the rise of religiously motivated neoconservative politics in the USA, and the crisis of multiculturalism in Europe as a policy aiming at integration of immigrants with different cultural and religious backgrounds.