Botelho Moniz, Jorge2018-06-182018-06-182017-10-011853-7081PURE: 3871119PURE UUID: c6334151-b6f4-4466-bddf-83e3e6b83f17Scielo: S1853-70812017000200006-arghttp://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1853-70812017000200006&lng=pt&tlng=ptFinanciamento: UID/CPO/04627/2013; SFRH/BD/107762/2015.The main focus of our research is the analysis and interpretation of the conditions that supported the provenience and the emergence of the secularization thesis. For that purpose, we applied a genealogical methodology that allows us to observe its historical vicissitudes, as well as its contingencies, discontinuities, and contradictions in sociological and pre-sociological discourse. Thus, we propose a diachronic and systematic review of secularization's several meanings. We start by its Greco-Roman senses - where we identify the five basic layers of meaning of the concept - and then deepen what we call the fundamental moment for the establishment of a systematic study of the religious phenomenon in modern societies - its appropriation by sociology in the mid-nineteenth century, but, especially, in the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century. The study of its provenience and emergence compels us to question secularization's representation, and of its concomitant project of modernity, as the natural order of modern societies.27499204porRELIGIONSOCIOLOGYGenealogia da tese da secularização: da sua proveniência pré-sociológica à sua emergência na sociologia do século XIXGenealogy of the secularization thesis: From its pre-sociological proveniences to its emergence in nineteenth-century sociologyjournal articlehttp://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1853-70812017000200006&lng=pt&tlng=pt