Secularisation

Wilson: Secularisaton

• Britain is undergoing a long-term process of secularisation  

• Secularisation- process in which religious beliefs, practices and institutions lose social significance 

• ‘Bogus Baptisms’ (children having baptisms to get into high performing state schools)

• In 2024, the sunday church service attendance has dwindled 20% since 2019 

• There has been decline in portion of population going to church or belonging to one

• Fewer baptism and church weddings 

• increase in average age of churchgoers

• Greater diversity, including more non-christian religions

Weber

• Rationalisation = the process in which rational ways of thinking/acting come to replace religious ones 

• Protestant reformation started a process of reformation in the West. This process undermined the religious worldview + replaced it with the rational scientific worldview

• Medieval Catholic view: saw the world as an ‘enchanted garden’. God were believed to be active in the world and humans could try to influence him by magical means like prayers. 

• Protestants: saw god as transcendent. Events were no longer explained as the work of unpredictable supernatural beings, but as predictable workings of natural forces. No longer a need for religious explanations of the world. ‘Disenchantment’ of the world. 

Bruce

• Growth of technological worldview has largely replaced religious explanations of events. 

• E.g. When a plane crashes and a lot of people die, we look for scientific/technological explanations rather than regarding it as God’s punishment. 

• Technological worldview leaves little room for religious explanations in everyday life so they only survive where technology is least effective. 

• Although scientific explanations don’t challenge religion directly, they have greatly reduced the scope for religious explanations. 

Parsons

• Structural differentiation: process of specialisation that occurs with the development of industrial society. 

• Separate, specialised institutions develop to carry out functions that were previously carried out by a single institution (Religion)

• Structural differentiation leads to the disengagement of religion. Its functions are transferred to other institutions and it becomes disconnected from wider society. 

• Religion has become privatised (confined to the private sphere of them home + family).

•  Religious beliefs are now largely a matter of personal choice + religious institutions have lost a lot of their influence on society. 

Social and cultural diversity

• Wilson: decline of community has contributed to the decline in religion. In pre-industrial communities, shared values were expressed through collective religious rituals. When religion lost its basis in local communities, it lost its hold over individuals. 

• Bruce: industrialisation has undermined the consensus of religious beliefs holding small communities together. Small communities give way to large urban communities with diverse beliefs + values.

Criticisms of social and cultural diversity explanation

• Some religious communities are ‘imagined communities’ - have their basis online

• Pentecostalism thrives in supossedly ‘impersonal’ urban areas

Berger

• Middle ages: Medieval Catholic Church had an absolute monopoly (no competition). Everyone lived under a single sacred canopy (set of beliefs shared by all). Gave beliefs greater plausibility as there were no challenges. 

• Since the protestant reformation, the number of religious organisations has continued to grow + each has a different version of the truth. No church can now claim a religious monopoly 

• Creates a crisis of credibility for religion. Diversity undermines religions’ plausibility structure (the reasons why people find it believable). 

• Religious beliefs are now relative rather than absolute.

Criticisms of Berger

• Beckford: Religious diversity leading to abandoning of beliefs is not inevitable

• Berger: has since changed his views and argues that diversity + choice stimulate interest in religion. 

• Bruce: identifies 2 counter-trends that go against secularisation theory

1. Cultural defence: where religion provides a focal point for the defence of a group identity in a struggle against an external force. 

2. Cultural transition: where religion provides support + a sense of community for ethnic groups such as migrants to a new country.

Secularisation in America- Wilson

• 45% of Americans attended Church on Sundays but churchgoing in America is more of an expression of the ‘American way of life’ rather than of deeply held religious beliefs. 

Hadaway et al:

• studied Church attendance in Ashtabula county, Ohio. Did headcounts at services + interviewed people about their church attendance. Level of attendance claimed in interviews was 83% higher than the headcounts. 

• Bruce: This widening gap between actual and self-reported attendance is because it’s still seen as socially desirable to go to Church so people will still say they do even if they’ve stopped going. 

Bruce- Secularisation from within

• Secularisation from within

• The emphasis of traditional Christian beliefs has declined and religion in America has become ‘psychologised’ (turned into a form of therapy)

• This change has enabled it to fit in with secular society. 

• Purpose of religion is now seeking personal improvement. 

• Bruce: identifies a trend towards practical relativism in American Christians, involving acceptance of the view that others are entitled to hold beliefs that are different to their own. There has been an erosion of absolutism. 

Criticisms of secularisation

• Secularisation theory focuses on the decline of religion and ignores the revivals + growths of new religions 

• Church attendance statistics ignore people who believe but don’t go to Church

• Religion has not declined globally only in Europe