Item Detail
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4043
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0
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0
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English
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Can Rising Rates of Church Participation be a Consequence of Secularization?
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Sociology of Religion
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Summer 2004
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65
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2
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139-53
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Two instances in U.S. history where the separation of church and state caused church participation to rise are studied. The author studied the transformation of Mormonism and the Second Great Awakening. Heretofore scholars have been hard-pressed to account for such instances where religious participation appeared to rise. The author shows that neo-secularization provides a better mechanism to understand this phenomenon of rising religious participation than does the competition thesis. In examining Mormon history, the author observed: 'The more the church withdrew from temporal affairs, the more important church attendance became, and the higher rates rose.'