Something remarkable is happening across parts of the world: religion is quietly losing its grip on entire societies.

You perhaps recall Napoleon’s question to Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace, the French polymath, about why there was no mention of God in Laplace’s work on celestial mechanics. The French ...

A few weeks ago, the French government announced public schools would be banning abayas, the full, flowing dresses some Muslim women wear. In France, “laicite,” the principle that the state and public ...

The idea of secularization is fundamental to contemporary debates over the sociology of religion. As sociologist Steve Bruce puts the issue succinctly, “The basic proposition is that modernization ...

I have never accepted irrational religious beliefs. If something in my -- or any -- religion doesn't make sense, I don't accept it. That's why my five-volume commentary on the Torah (the first five ...

The pope is dead. Thomas Lawrence, the dean of the College of Cardinals, is in charge of gathering those men, the senior 130 or so bishops of the Catholic Church, in the Sistine Chapel. There, they ...

(RNS) — Just because they’re no longer invested in a better Christianity doesn’t mean they aren’t a crucial part of the battle for a better country. (RNS) — In January 2024, Pew Research published a ...

(RNS) — When it comes to going to church, a generational pattern is playing out in many households around the world: Grandparents never miss Sunday service; parents attend only on holidays; children, ...

Today I want to try to tackle a topic which I find very painful to witness: the discord between the secular and the religious communities. It is not as pronounced here as in some other countries, ...

There is no question that the role of religion in the lives of the public has greatly diminished in Western nations. Christian denominations that were once filling churches as fast as they could build ...