Crucial Experiment, Sociology of Religion and Critical Realism

The two dominant paradigm on sociology of religion since the late 20th century sparked a hot and heated controversy around the relationship between religious pluralism and religious participation. On the one hand, the secularization paradigm argued that the power and authority of a religion in society is in its monopoly; and religious pluralism causes the erosion of religious faith, and has a secular effect. On the other hand, the economic / market of religion’s paradigm argued that the diversity and free competition among different religions in a society not only does not lead to secularization, but rather contributes to increased religious participation and mobilization. These arguments, for empirical testing in social research, lead to two contradictory hypotheses: (1) Religious pluralism has a negative relationship with religious participation (the secularization paradigm); and (2) religious pluralism has a positive relationship with religious participation (the economic / market of religion’s paradigm). Nevertheless, a large set of sociological researches has yielded conflicting results; some empirical findings support the hypothesis of the secularization paradigm and imply rejection of the hypothesis of the paradigm of the economy / market of religion, while some others have supported the hypothesis of the paradigm of the economy / market of religion and implies rejecting the hypothesis of the paradigm of secularization. On this basis, a general problem was raised for the present article about the question of why the common pattern in the social sciences in general and sociology in particular is that multiple empirical studies on a single subject, produce contradictory results? To answer this question and to solve this problem, the arguments presented in the perspective of critical realism was used.