Modernization theory predicted secularization of religion and natural gender equality

Evidence

As women became better educated, went out to work and won more rights, as families became smaller and less tied to the land, as information flowed more freely, scientific and technical knowledge became more widely disseminated, and thrones and dynasties crumbled in favor of representative democracy, the natural similarity of the sexes was supposed to stand revealed, making possible new, more equal and companionable relationships between them. The same forces of progress, this view held, would cause organized religion to wither away or at any rate modulate away from dogma and authority and reaction toward a kind of vague, kindly, nondenominational spiritual uplift whose politics, if it had any, would be liberal. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 244

Categorization

• DEFINE: Summarizes the secularization thesis that the chapter inverts to expose its imperial logic.
• XREF: connects to: Classical social theory defined modernity by the application of scientific rationality over tradition — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 151; The religion-secularism divide is a modern Protestant construction — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 306