Breaking down the question
The question asks you to explain a paradox. Classical sociology confidently predicted that modernisation would erode religion — that science, urbanisation and rationalisation would steadily privatise and shrink the sacred. Yet the contemporary world has witnessed the opposite in many regions: a visible, often assertive resurgence of religion in public life. The examiner wants you to account for this revivalism by identifying its driving factors.
Religious revivalism means the renewed vitality, public assertiveness and political mobilisation of religion, frequently accompanied by a return to what adherents regard as authentic or foundational belief and practice. It is not confined to one tradition; it spans Islamic, Hindu, Christian and other movements. Your task is to move beyond description to explanation — to isolate the social, political, economic and psychological conditions that have made religion resurgent rather than residual.
A strong answer signals early that revivalism challenges the older secularisation thesis, and then organises the causes systematically rather than listing them at random.
How to approach it
Open by defining revivalism and framing it against the secularisation debate, so the examiner sees the theoretical stakes. Then devote the body to a structured account of factors, grouped into recognisable clusters — reaction to modernity, the search for identity, political instrumentalisation, socio-economic dislocation, and the role of globalisation and technology.
Weave named sociologists into the analysis. Peter Berger's later recantation of the secularisation thesis, his phrase about a furiously religious world, and Steve Bruce's counter-defence give you a genuine debate to stage. Manuel Castells on identity in the network society, and Durkheim on religion as a source of solidarity and collective conscience, add analytical depth. Keep examples global — the Iranian Revolution, evangelical growth in the global South, Hindu nationalism — so the answer feels contemporary and evidenced. The wider argument is developed in our notes on religion in modern society.
Model answer
Religious revivalism refers to the renewed public vitality, assertiveness and political mobilisation of religion in the contemporary world. It presents a striking challenge to the classical secularisation thesis, which held that modernisation would inevitably weaken religion's social significance. Instead, from the late twentieth century onwards, religion has re-entered public life with force. Peter Berger, once a leading advocate of secularisation, later conceded that the world is as furiously religious as ever, and that assumption of an inexorable decline was mistaken. Several interlocking factors explain this resurgence.
First, revivalism is in large part a reaction against modernity itself. Rapid modernisation brings rationalisation, moral pluralism and a sense of disenchantment that many experience as spiritual emptiness and normative confusion. Religion offers certainty, moral absolutes and a coherent worldview against the relativism and anomie of modern life. Fundamentalist movements, in particular, respond to the perceived erosion of traditional values by demanding a return to foundational scriptures and practices. Steve Bruce, though defending a modified secularisation thesis, accepts that such movements arise precisely where modernity threatens established religious authority.
Second, religion has become a powerful vehicle for identity in a globalising world. As Manuel Castells argues, globalisation dissolves older certainties and generates a search for secure, meaningful belonging; religion supplies a resilient source of collective identity that resists the homogenising pressures of global capitalism. Where communities feel culturally threatened — by migration, Westernisation or the dominance of a global consumer culture — religious identity offers a defensive and dignifying alternative. Durkheim's insight that religion binds a community and expresses its collective conscience helps explain why the sacred is so readily mobilised for solidarity in uncertain times.
Third, revivalism is frequently driven by political instrumentalisation. Political actors and movements harness religion to mobilise mass support, legitimise authority and contest the state. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 fused religious authority with political power; religious nationalism in South Asia has bound faith to the nation; and religious parties across many societies convert devotion into electoral strength. Where secular ideologies — socialism, developmentalism, secular nationalism — have disappointed, religion fills the vacuum as an idiom of protest and governance.
Fourth, socio-economic dislocation fuels revivalism. Uneven development, unemployment, inequality and the failures of the modernising state leave large populations marginalised. Religious movements often step in where the state has retreated, providing welfare, education, community and a sense of worth. For the dispossessed, revivalist movements offer both material support and a language of grievance and hope, which explains the rapid growth of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity across Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia.
Fifth, globalisation and modern technology, far from suppressing religion, have amplified it. Diasporic communities sustain and intensify religious identity across borders; satellite television, cassette sermons, the internet and social media allow preachers and movements to reach mass audiences cheaply and instantly. The very tools of modernity have become the infrastructure of revival, giving religious messages global reach and transnational organisation.
Finally, revivalism reflects a wider process that some scholars term desecularisation — a reassertion of religion in the public sphere against the expectation of its confinement to private conscience. The persistence of religion in the most modern societies, and its explosive growth in the global South, together suggest that the link between modernisation and secularisation was always overstated and culturally specific to parts of Western Europe.
In sum, contemporary religious revivalism arises not from a failure of modernity but from its very dynamics: the disenchantment and anomie it produces, the identity anxieties globalisation generates, the political uses to which faith can be put, the socio-economic exclusions of uneven development, and the amplifying power of new communication technologies. Religion in the modern world is being not extinguished but reconfigured, moving from the margins back towards the centre of public life.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners reward candidates who recognise that this question is really about the secularisation debate. The strongest scripts frame revivalism as a challenge to classical predictions, cite the Berger–Bruce exchange, and then set out the causal factors in a clear, grouped structure rather than an undifferentiated list. Contemporary and global examples — the Iranian Revolution, Pentecostal growth, religious nationalism — signal awareness and lift the answer.
The common weakness is a descriptive account that simply asserts religion is growing without explaining why. Because the question turns on factors, each cause should be a distinct, developed point linked to a sociological concept or thinker. A concluding line that reframes revivalism as evidence of the limits of the secularisation thesis gives the answer analytical closure.