Historical Sociology and Secularisation: The Political Use of ‘Culturalised Religion’ by the Radical Right in Spain

Abstract

The critique of the theory of secularisation has favoured the emergence of a series of concepts for the analysis of contemporary socio-religious transformations, such as ‘culturalised religion’. These categories constitute, in turn, an opportunity to rethink the process of secularisation from the perspective of historical sociology. Against this background, this article carries out a theoretical analysis of the ambiguities of secularisation in Spain from which a cultural approach to religion (‘culturalised religion’) emerges and its potential connection to the expansion of the radical right-wing party Vox, which became the third-largest party in Spain's parliament in the 2019 national election. After analyzing this interrelation between ‘culturalised religion’ and the radical right on the basis of statistical sources, discourse analysis and bibliographical sources, the article concludes by stressing the importance of historical sociology for understanding phenomena like ‘culturalised religion’, which take us out of the binomial logic that has marked part of the interpretation of secularisation (revival of religions vs decline of the religious) and introduce us into the multiple interactions between the historical past and sociological reality.