Document Type

Article

Version

Working paper

Publication Date

9-2026

Abstract

In this paper we examine how the modern conditions of the twenty-first century and the contemporary United States context shape religious change and religious life. Rather than treating modernity as a force that only weakens religion, as classical secularization accounts have largely argued (Berger 1963; Chaves 1994; Wallis and Bruce 1992), or as a context that promotes vitality primarily through pluralism and competition, as the religious economy paradigm suggests (Finke and Iannaccone 1993; Finke and Stark 1992, 2000; Iannaccone 1994), we show how it can also shape and produce broad patterns of religious change with particular attention to various characteristics of late modernity. We offer a typology to describe these changes in terms of innovation (new religious or spiritual forms, practices, or organizations), restoration (efforts to recover or revive older traditions, practices, beliefs, or forms of authority), and decline (closure or replacement of religious institutions, spaces, or communities). This framework builds on two recent calls to move beyond these established paradigms (Braunstein et al. 2026; Watts and Wilkins-Laflamme 2026), offering a nuanced understanding of modernity’s relationship with religion by specifying the conditions under which modernity can be a generative force for religious change.

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