Secularization and medicalization

Abstract

This paper examines Bryan Turner's view that medicine has replaced religion as the 'social guardian of morality.' It argues that Turner's failure to co-ordinate the theories of secularization and medicalization has prevented this hypothesis from being fully explored. A systematic and synthesized account of both medicalization and secularization is given, and used as the framework for a review of the history of Seventh-day Adventism-a sect that is both a product and an agent of the two processes. In conclusion it is suggested that medicalization may be conductive to sect development, and that secularization and medicalization are compatible models of social change.