I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization and modernity go hand in hand. With more modernization comes more secularization

If you are good for nothing else, you can still serve as a bad example.

But we don't have an example of a democratic society existing in a socialist economy - which is the only real alternative to capitalism in the modern world.

The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.

So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market economy.

The basic fault lines today are not between people with different beliefs but between people who hold these beliefs with an element of uncertainty and people who hold these beliefs with a pretense of certitude

The negative side to globalization is that it wipes out entire economic systems and in doing so wipes out the accompanying culture