When does secular society displace religion? This question is at the core of a debate in which theorists and researchers argue about the fate of religion in the modern world. Gorski (2000) has categorized the two camps of the "secularization debate" as one side advocating a classical secularization position and the other proposing a religious-economies model of religious change (also see Swatos and Olson 2000). Although these two camps differ in terms of the how modernization impacts religion, both sides understand that under certain circumstances religious affiliations, activities, and beliefs decline.

I am interested in clarifying these circumstances and providing a way to understand the threat that secular society poses to religion within the religious-economies paradigm. In order to lay bare the idea of secularization I propose to model how secular society impacts religion using a religious-economies approach. Within this model, we can think of secular organizations as competing with religious groups for adherents. And from this perspective, secularization does not magically occur with modernization but is the result of competitive struggles between religious and secular institutions that can occur at any stage of modernization.

This paper formalizes the concept of a "secular competitor" in a religious market and then precedes with an analysis of 15 post-communist countries to demonstrate its explanatory usefulness. The story of religion in the Soviet Union is essentially about the dramatic rise and fall of a secular competitor and the religious market that was left in its wake. And if we view scientific atheism as an authentic secular alternative to religion, we can better understand that all religions in the former Soviet Union are still battling its effects.