Secularisation

Bruce - Technological worldview

• Supernatural thinking replaced with rational and scientific thinking

• Industrialisation - Small communities which religion held together have now been broken up

• People still pray for things, though, that science can’t explain

Weber - Rationalisation

• We now have a rational and scientific outlook

• No longer a need for the supernatural. Began with the Protestant reformation.

• A process of disenchantment has occurred, no magical or religious ways of thinking, instead rational modes of thought

Parsons - Structural differentiation

• Institutions that were previously multi-functional lose some of their roles to specialised functions

• Functions of religion transferred to the state/government e.g. education, healthcare, politics

• Functions of religion transferred, religion disconnected from wider society - disengagement

Wilson - Social and cultural diversity

• Religion lost its base in stable local communities - no longer holds them together

• Now diversity of occupations, cultures and lifestyles and social and geographical mobility (people moved around, no longer tied to a community, all go to church together etc)

Berger - Religious diversity

• Religion changed with the reformation, breaking away from the Catholic church undermined the ‘sacred canopy’ 

• Number and variety of Churches had grown

• ‘Crisis of credibility’ - no longer one truth. 

Bruce - Not occuring

• Cultural Defence (e.g. Iranian revolution), religion as uniting against an external threat/defence of national/ethnic identity

• Cultural transition (migrants), focus of group identity

• Religion important to fulfil other functions that science/others cannot fill

Heelas & Woodhead - not occurring

• Kendal Project - Growing number of people taking part in new age movements

Davie - not occurring

• Religion becoming more private, done out of context

• People may not belong/attend church, but still believe (vicarious religion)

Aldridge - not occurring

• Religion still an important source of identity

• Imagined communities - people belong to some community all over the world (e.g. Pentecostalism)

Martin - Not occurring

• Argues UK was never religious in terms of believing in the first place

• In Victorian Britain, people only went to church because regular church attendance created and maintained a sense of respectability (was the thing to do, everyone does it)