Topic 3: Secularisation

There have been four changes to religion in the UK since 1851

1) A decline in the proportion of the population going church or belonging to one.

2) An increase in average age of churchgoers.

3) Fewer baptisms and church weddings.

4) A decline in the numbers of holding traditional Christian beliefs.

• Secularisation (SC) refers to the decline in the importance of religion

How Britain has become a secular society:

• Church attendance today  - 5% of the adult population attended church on Sundays. Sunday attendance is the Church of England fell from 1.6 million to under 0.8 million.
• Religious affiliation today - decline in the number of people who have a membership of or identification with a religion. Between 1983 - 2014 the percentage of adults with no religion rose from 1/3rd to 1/2.

• Religious belief today - religious beliefs are declining along with the decline in church attendance and membership. Surveys show that there is a decline in the belief of a personal God, in the Jesus as the son of God and in Christian teachings about the afterlife and the bible.
• Religious institutions today - the state has taken over many functions that the church used to perform such as education. Faith schools are state-funded and have to conform to the state's regulations. There has also been a decline in the number of clergy to be expected in the near future as well as it declining now. A lack of clergy in local communities means the influence of the churches is reduced.

A common explanation of SC is modernisation, involving the decline of tradition and its replacement with rational and scientific ways of thinking that tend to undermine religion. Sociologists also look at the effect of social change on religion, for example, industurisation leads to the break up of small communities that were held together by common religious beliefs.

Another theme which is explored is the growth of social and religious diversity, as religious institutions are much more varied. The growth of diversity has undermined both the authority of religious institutions and the credibility of religious beliefs. As a result of these changes religious practice. such as churchgoing, has declined.

Max Weber: rationalisation

• Rationalisation is a process by which rational ways of thinking and acting come to replace religious ones.
• Max Weber argues that the Protestant Reformation begun by Martin Luther, which started a process of rationalisation of life in the West. This process undermined the religious worldview of the Middle Ages and replaced it with the rational scientific outlook found in modern society.
• Medieval Catholic worldview saw the world as an 'enchanted garden' where God and other spiritual beings and forces such as angles, the devil etc were believed to be present in the world.
• Protestant worldview differs from Catholicism as Protestantism saw God as transcenent - as existing above and beyond or outside this world.
• Disenchantment, according to Weber, it takes out magical and religious ways of thinking and starts off the rationalisation process that leads to the dominance of the rational mode of thought. This enables science to thrive and provide the basis for technological advances that give humans more power and control over nature. This undermines the religious worldview.

• Technological worldview refers to (according to Weber and Bruce) TW has replaced religous or supernatural explanations of why things happen. E.G. when a plane crashes with the loss of many lives, we are unlikely to regard it as the work of evil spirits or God's punishment of the wicked. Instead, we look for scientific and technological explanations.  This means that TW leaves little room for religious explanations in everyday life. Bruce concludes that although scientific explanations do not challange religion directly, they have reduced the scope for religious explanations. It makes people to take religion less seriously.

Structural differentiation (SD)

• SD is the process of specialisation that occurs with the development of industrual society. Specialised institutions develop to carry out functions that were previously performed by a single institution.
• SD leads to the disengagement of religion which means functions are transferre to other institutions such as the state and it becomes disconnected from wider society. E.G. church loses the influence it once has on education, social welfare and the law.
• According to Bruce, religion has become more privatised. This is because religion has become seperated from wider society and lost its former function. It has now become...

confined to the private sphere of the home and family. Religious beliefs are now a matter of personal choice and religious institutions have lost its influence to wider society. As a result, traditional rituals and symbols have lost their meaning.

Social and cultural diversity

The following are reasons thats lead to a decline in religion:

• Decline of community - industrial society brings about the decline of community. Wilson argues that pre-industrial communities, shared values were expressed through collective religious rituals that integrated individuals and regulated behaviour. However, when religion lost its basis in stable local communities it lost its vitality (strength and activity) and its hold over individuals.
• Industrialisation - undermines the consensus of religious beliefs that hold small rural communities together. Social and geographical mobility not only breaks up communities but brings people together from many different backgrounds, creating even more diversity.
• Diversity of occupations, cultures and lifestyles undermines religion - Many people around them hold very different views about life etc. Bruce argues that believablity of beliefs...

of beliefs in undermined by alternative religions. This has also been undermined by individualism because plausibilty (believabilty) of religion depends on the existence of a practising community of believers. In the absense of this, both religious and practice tend to decline.

Evaluation

• Religion can be a source of identity on a worldwide scale. This is true of Jewish, Hindu and Muslim communties.
• Some religious communities are imagined communities that interact through the use of global media.
• Pentecostal and other religious groups often flourish (grow/develop) in 'impersonal' urban areas.

Religious Diversity (RD)

• Berger suggests that RD is another cause for secularisation because instead of there being just one religious organisation which have their own interpretation of the faith, there are many others.
• The sacred canopy is a set of beliefs which everyone believed in - there was no competition with the Catholic Church. This gave these beliefs greater plausibility because they had no challangers and the Church's version of the truth was unquestioned.
• Berger says that the Protestant Reformation led to religious diversity because Protestant churches and sects broke away from the Catholic Church which has continued to grow, each with a different version of the truth. Now no church can now claim an unchallenged monopoly of the truth. Therefore, society is no longer held by a single sacred canopy. Instead, religious diversity creates a plurality of life worlds, where people's perceptions of the world vary and where are different interpretations of the truth.
• Berger argues that plausibility structure questions the credibility of religion. Diversity undermines religions 'plausibility structure (the reasons why people find it believable). When there are alternative versions of religion to choose between, people are to question...

all of them and this undermines the truth we have in traditional religion. Religious beliefs become relative rather than absolute truth, meaning what we regard as true or false comes down to our personal point of view, and this creates a possibility of opting out of religion all together.

Cultural defence and transition

Bruce finds two arguments which go against secularisation theory (evaluation points). Both points show people participating in religious activities on a higher level than just average.

• Cultural defence - This is when religion provides a focal point for the defence of national, ethic, local or group indentity in a struggle against an external force such as hostile foreign power. E.G. popularity of Catholicism in Poland before the fall of communism and the resurgance of Islam before the revolution in Iran.
• Cultural transition - Religion provides support and a sense of community for ethnic groups such as migrants to a different country and culture.

Bruce argues that religion only survives because it provides group identity, therefore these examples does not disprove secularisation but shows that religion is most likely to survive where it performs functions other than relating individuals to the supernatural.

Evaluation of secularisation theory

• diversity and choice actually stimulates interest and participation in religion, for example the New Christian Right the continuing vitality of religion was because of people was interested in what they believed in, not that it was declining.
• religious diversity will lead to some to question the plausibility about religion. However, opposing views can have the effect of strengthening a religious group's committment to its existing beliefs rather tha undermining them.

• According to Wilson, America is a secular society although they have a high church attendence, this is because religion has become an American way of life rather then holding deep religious beliefs.

Declining church attendance

• Opinion poll research asking people about church attendance suggests that it has been stable about 40% of the population since 1940.
• Kirk Hadaway, found that this figure did not match thr churches own attendance statistics. If 40% of Americans were going to church, the churches would be full, but they are not.
• Hadaway studied church attendance in Ashabula County, Ohio.
• Methods: They carried out head counts at services / They asked people in interviews if they attended church.
• Found: the level of attendance claimed by the interviewees was 83% higher than the researchers estimates of church attendance in the county.
• There is evidence that there is a tendancy to exaggerate churchgoing.
• Church attendance statistics has been seen as being exaggerated and the gap has been widening because it is still seen as socially desirable or normative to go to church, so people

who have stopped going will still say they attend if asked in a survey. E.G. a study in church attendence in San Francisco found that in 1972, opinion polls exaggerated attendance by 47% but by 1996, the exaggeration had increased to 101%.

Secularisation from within

• What Bruce means by secularisation from within is that traditional Christian beliefs and gloryifying God has declined and religion in America has been psychologised or turned into a form of therapy. This change has enabled it to fit in with a secular society.
• The decline in peoples committment to traditional beliefs can be seen in peoples attitudes and lifestyle.
• People are now much less strict in their committment to traditional religious morality.

Religious diversity

• Bruce idenitfies a trend towards practical relativism among American Christians, which involves acceptance of the view that others are entitled to hold beliefs that are different to one's own.
• This is shown in Lynd and Lynd's study. They found that in 1924 that 94% of churchgoing young people agreed with the statement - 'Christianity is the one true religion and all people should be converted to it'  however, by 1977 only 41% agreed to it.
• Erosion of absolutism is the counterpart to practical relativism, that is, we now live in a society where people hold views that are completely different to ours, which undermines our assumption that our own views are absolutely true.

Evaluation of secularisation theory

• Religion is not declining but simply its changing its form.
• ST is one sided. It focuses on decline and ignores religious revivals and the growth of new religion.
• Evidence of falling church attendance ignores people who believe but don't go to church.
• Religion may have declined in Europe but not globally so secularisation is not universal.
• Religious diversity increases participation because it offers choice. There is no overall downward trend. Religious trends point in different directions and people make use religion in all sorts of different ways.