Abstract
This paper presents a systematic overview of the history of the different “secularization theories”, from Auguste Comte to the modern view, which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. The complex series of transformations in these theories can be reduced to four main trends, which lead: (1) from an atheoretical descriptive use of the term “secularization” to one where the term is embedded in an all-encompassing theory; (2) from an approach centred on concerns with the past to an approach used in understanding the present; (3) from a thesis that predicts the disappearance of religion to a milder position which states that religion has only been weakened, but at the same time describes its transformations; and, finally (4) from a collection of unidimensional and mutually exclusive approaches to a single integrated pluridimensional approach.