Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Introduction: Christianity and the world, the religious and the secular -- Secularization and the future of Catholicism and Protestantism -- Master narratives and the future of Christianity -- Pentecostalism: transnational voluntarism in the global religious economy -- Has secularization gone into reverse? -- Religious responses to modes of secularism -- Science and secularization -- An Eastern European pattern of secularization? -- East Germany: the world’s most secular society -- Religion and politics; democracy and violence -- The religious and the political -- Christianity, violence and democracy -- Protestantism and democracy -- Appendix: multiple ironies and necessary paradoxes: a review of religion, fanaticism and violence.