Search

In Mexico secularization is one of the two dominant topics in the analysis of religion and, as in the Western world, a small but influential group of researchers consider the loss of the centrality of religion as an inevitable constant. During the first two decades of this century the paradigm of secularization began to be questioned and the idea of a return to religion or a re-enchantment began to emerge. It is possible to speculate that in large Mexican cities, especially Mexico City, the process of secularization remains constant only in members of a middle class who can be considered carriers of an international subculture; these are people who have received a Western-style higher education, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. In this context, the ideas that stress that an error in the theories of secularization is the belief, that modernization inevitably leads to a loss of the importance of religion and that the paradigm should be replaced by the analysis of the interaction between the forces of secularization and a counter-secularization that seem to be an acceptable approach to study of religious issues in large Mexican cities. This chapter begins by considering an overview of the study of religions in Mexico and then discusses current trends and the key questions and features in the secularization process.