Secularisation

Secularization in Britain - 

Crockett - estimates that in 1851 40% or more of the population of Britain went to church on Sundays. 

Church attendance today -

• Only around 6% of the population went to church on Sundays in 2005
• Sunday school attendance, weddings, and baptisms are declining 
• Some organizations have grown - the numbers of Catholics have increased slightly, due to east European immigration. 
• Evidence in 80 years of surveys show decline in belief in God & the afterlife (bible)

Religious institutions today -

• Bruce agrees that there has been a steady decline
• The influence of religion as a social institution is declining
• The state has taken over many of the functions the church use to perform (schooling)
• The number of clergies has fallen, reducing the church's local day to day influence.

Explanation of secularization - major social changes: modernisation 

1. Rationalisation -

• Rational ways of thinking replace religious ways. Weber believes that Western society has undergone the process of rationalization in the last few centuries. 
• Technology worldview - Bruce argues that a technological worldview has largely replaced religious explanations of why things happen.
• For Weber, the medieval Catholic worldview that dominated Europe saw the world as an 'enchanted garden'
• God and other spiritual beings (angel & devil) were believed to be present changing the course of events with their supernatural powers and miraculous inventions. 
• People could challenge them through prayers, fasting etc
• HOWEVER (disenchantment) the protestant reformation brought a new worldview (they saw God existing above, beyond and outside this world)
• he did not intervene but left it to run according to nature, this meant events were no longer explained as the work…