Effective secular institutions drive religious decline by taking over its function.

Evidence

When secular institutions succeed in increasing trust and cooperation in a society, they encroach on religion’s job and precipitate its decline. I explore this dynamic in chapter 10. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 190

Categorization

• XREF: Inverts the standard narrative that secularism causes religion’s decline; here secular institutions functionally replace religion’s cooperation role, echoing Durkheim and connecting to the reader’s Japan analysis where shogunate co-opts religious authority.