In all advanced industrial societies, education has become the single most important vehicle of upward mobility.

It has been true in Western societies and it seems to be true elsewhere that you do not find democratic systems apart from capitalism, or apart from a market economy, if you prefer that term

When certain branches of the economy become obsolete, as in the case of the steel industry, not only do jobs disappear, which is obviously a terrible social hardship, but certain cultures also disappear.

If you say simply that pressures toward democracy are created by the market, I would say yes

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

East Asia confirms the superior capacity of industrial capitalism in raising the material standard of living of large masses of people.

The problem with liberal Protestantism in America is not that it has not been orthodox enough, but that it has lost a lot of religious substance