As a result, explicit religious control over social and political life diminishes, but it still retains its ability to control and constrain individuals; it simply relies more on its individual adherents than formal church hierarchies and leadership.
This process has played itself out in a number of different contexts, and although the particular religious response to secularization differs according to nations and societies, in each case these responses disprove the secularization theory while reiterating the danger of religious influence in political and social affairs. For example, though the Enlightenment saw a somewhat dramatic increase in the secularization of Europe, particularly during the French Revolution, this secularization did not correspond to the expected decrease in religious influence over political and social affairs. This is because even when formal religious institutions lose some explicit power, religious belief remains an acceptable justification for the formation of public policy and social norms (Audi & Wolterstoff, 1997, p. 77). Direct religious power over political and social life might diminish, but this power does not simply disappear.
The French Revolution was dependent upon a certain conception of liberal democracy that included in it the ideal of a secular state (partially based as it was on the American Revolution), the supplanting of religious political influence with "the liberal political theory's 'procedural republic,' in which religion is privatized and made irrelevant to public deliberations," did not actually occur, or at least not to the extent that proponents of the secularization theory would believe (Smith, 2003, p. 3). Instead, this religious control simply became diffused and distributed, in the same way that political power itself is diffused and distributed in a liberal democracy (so long as that liberal democracy actually holds to its ideals; there has yet to be any real-world example of a democratic state where power did not ultimately end up in the hands of a relative few). While France has continued on a relatively steady course of secularization, the fact that it continues to face strong resistance for its attempts to ban religious symbols and iconography in public spaces demonstrates the lingering influence of religion over political and social life.
Where the case of the French Revolution demonstrates a more subtle religious response to secularization, the experience of Iran during and after its secularization under the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi came to rule as a result of British, Soviet, and American intervention. Though he originally ascended to the throne during World War II, he would not gain full control until a CIA-orchestrated coup deposed the democratically elected prime minister. Over the course of his reign Pahlavi instituted a number of reforms intended to increase the secularization and modernization of Iran, and according to the secularization theory, this would have been more than enough to ensure the continued secularization of Iran well into the future.
However, these reforms actually succeeded in galvanizing the powerful religious leadership, such that in 1979, he deposed in a revolution that resulted in one of the few newly established theocracies of the twentieth-century. Despite Iran's modernization, the new Islamic regime succeeded in imposing a number of religiously-informed rules onto society, such that much of the secularization which occurred under Pahlavi was reversed. Although there is some evidence to suggest that "the most militant Islamic movements will find it hard to maintain their present stance vis-a-vis modernity once they succeed in taking over the governments of their countries," this difficulty of reconciling modernization with religious dictatorship has only made the religious leadership of Iran more strict (Berger, 1999, p. 12). In effect, because modernization and secularization have been viewed as such close counterparts, the religious leadership of Iran has met increased modernization with increased religious imposition, and every attempt to perpetuate either modernization or secularization by internal or external forces is only met with harsher and harsher responses.
The cases of France and Iran are only two in a vast number of movements toward secularization that disprove the assumption that modernization necessarily means a decrease in religious influence over politics and society. Instead, one must consider the possibility that secularization and modernization have merely been contemporaneous phenomenon, rather than inextricably linked developments. This recognition leads one to a subsequent realization regarding the nature of secularist social and political movements; namely, that they are working against thousands of years of human history and evolution, and as such represent not so much the natural progress of...
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