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Western social theory once insisted that modernization meant secularization and secularization meant the withering away of religion. But religion hasn't withered away, and this has forced a rethinking of the whole idea of the secular. IDEAS producer David Cayley talks to Craig Calhoun, Director of the London School of Economics, and Rajeev Barghava of India's Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

In modern Western societies a powerful ideology divided the world into two opposed domains, the religious and the secular. Religion was private; the secular was public and political. As societies modernized, they would become more secular, and religion would gradually lose its remaining public significance. Until quite recently this was the story told in Western social thought. But it no longer seems to fit. Religion, far from fading, has grown ever stronger. And modernization has developed along different lines in different societiesToday on Ideas we begin a new series called The Myth of the Secular. We'll feature it all this week and part of the next. You'll hear theologians, anthropologists, sociologists and political philosophers talk about why the old map of the religious and the secular no longer fits the territory. And about how it might be redrawn. It's presented by Ideas producer David Cayley., edited by, and J, is published by Oxford University Press, 2011.