{"id":140,"date":"2010-12-20T10:52:12","date_gmt":"2010-12-20T10:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/secularization-in-decline-says-culturomics.html"},"modified":"2010-12-20T10:52:12","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T10:52:12","slug":"secularization-in-decline-says-culturomics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/secularization-in-decline-says-culturomics.html","title":{"rendered":"Secularization in decline, says Culturomics"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you go to the Google Culturomics site and type in “Jesus” in English language publications, you’ll see<\/a>
\nthat after sinking steadily from the middle of the 19th century, usage
\nincidence plateaued between 1940 and 1980, and then began to climb, such
\nthat it’s now at the level it was it was in 1900. “God<\/a>” and “Bible<\/a>” are where it was in 1900; “Christian<\/a>” and “Gospel<\/a>,” to 1910.<\/p>\n

What
\ndoes this say about secularization in contemporary society? Obviously,
\nthe appearance of these words in particular publications is not exactly
\ndeterminative. But there’s certainly something to ponder in the apparent
\ndecline in the secularization of the printed word over the course of
\nthe past generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you go to the Google Culturomics site and type in “Jesus” in English language publications, you’ll see that after sinking steadily from the middle of the 19th century, usage incidence plateaued between 1940 and 1980, and then began to climb, such that it’s now at the level it was it was in 1900. “God”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nSecularization in decline, says Culturomics - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/secularization-in-decline-says-culturomics.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Secularization in decline, says Culturomics - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you go to the Google Culturomics site and type in “Jesus” in English language publications, you’ll see that after sinking steadily from the middle of the 19th century, usage incidence plateaued between 1940 and 1980, and then began to climb, such that it’s now at the level it was it was in 1900. “God”…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/secularization-in-decline-says-culturomics.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-12-20T10:52:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Secularization in decline, says Culturomics - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/secularization-in-decline-says-culturomics.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Secularization in decline, says Culturomics - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"If you go to the Google Culturomics site and type in “Jesus” in English language publications, you’ll see that after sinking steadily from the middle of the 19th century, usage incidence plateaued between 1940 and 1980, and then began to climb, such that it’s now at the level it was it was in 1900. “God”…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/secularization-in-decline-says-culturomics.html","og_site_name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2010-12-20T10:52:12+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/secularization-in-decline-says-culturomics.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/secularization-in-decline-says-culturomics.html","name":"Secularization in decline, says Culturomics - 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}