secularisation Flashcards
Sanderson - decline in organisation and practices
• believe that the church of england is losing its core business; people who attend what he calls the hatching, matching and dispatching services (christening, weddings and funerals).
• people are now increasingly abandoning the church and pursuing civil alternatives that are secular in natural, eg naming ceremonies and humanist funerals.
Bruce - decline in the power of the church (individualisation)
Steve Bruce(2004) draws attention to the process of ‘individualisation’ → not centre of our lives anymore.
• Religion no longer exerts the same control over communities
• E.g. religious teachings are no longer imposed upon society as they would have been when ‘the church’ was the dominant institution and central to social activity.
• Being religious is now something that is left to individual choice in the UK.
• Bruce calls this Privitised religious belief’
Bruce - technological world view
• The public now defer to science for explanations of the world around them.
• There is an expectation that beliefs and answers to the questions we want answered will be based on evidence.
• Misfortune, tragedy is not ‘the will of god’
berger - religious pluralism (for)
• claimed that another reason for the growth of secularisation was the growth in the number of religious organisations that now exist.
• In the past a shared, dominant faith allowed it to have ideological supremacy.
• As there are numerous religions operating n the UK, a shift in attitudes has taken place and Berger claimed that this has caused a ‘crisis of credibility’
• As religions claim a monopoly on the truth, contradictions means not knowing what to believe.
helland - the role of globalisation: technology + online religion
discusses the importance of globalisation and the media in shaping the way that the public engages with religion.
• Religious beliefs have become ‘disembedded’ from places of worship and transported to a digital space online.
- Religon online - when established religions movements use the internet to communicate messages to their followers.
- online religon - where like - minded peope interact in Forums to discuss their beliefs in an unstructed format.
relationship to government/ law
• conversion therapy still exists in the UK
• schools are required to teach RE
New religious movements and new age beliefs
• although postmodernists believe that traditional religion is on the decline in the uk - this does not mean that religious belief has become irrelevant.
•have reinvigorated religion writhing the postmodern world.
mass migration - Bird
• many Anglican Churches in the 1950s were largely white and did not weicome those from other cultures.
• In reaction to the percieved racism, many African Caribbean christians set up their own churches.
• This may partly explain the rapid rise of the pentecostal movements in the uk.
religious pluralism - berger (against)
distanced himself from his initial view by stating that religious competition and pluralism stimulates interest in religion rather than under minding it
Defining and measuring secularisation
- WILSON defined secularisation as the process whereby religious thinking, practices and institutions lose social significance. The three indicators in Wilson’s definition of secularisation correspond to the three Bs of religion: Belonging (institutions), Behaving (practices) and Believing (thinking)
- GLOCK & STARK argue that although it is true that the forms and practices of religion change, this does not necessarily amount to a decline in religious belief. This is because there is no agreement among theorists as to what constitutes ‘secularisation’. There are many aspects of secularisation. Religious commitment is so varied, we simply cannot draw grand conclusions from statistics alone.
- DAVIE people may be followers of a religion but may not engage in collective worship or do so in an institutional setting; they may prefer to practice their religion alone, or with family/friends. Davie refers to this as ‘believing without belonging’; continuing to believe in religious values but without outwardly belonging to a particular church or religious organisation.
- SANDERSON - church of england is losing its core business; people who attend what he calls the hatching, matching and dispatching services. People are now increasingly abandoning the church and pursuing civil alternatives that are secular in natural, eg humanist funerals.
stats of measuring secularisation
• organisation - decline in the number of clergy (Davies) argues that sacuiarisation has partly been caused by the decline of respect that the general public has for the clergy due to frequent allegations of child abuse especially by priests within the catholic church in recent generations.
• Practice - from the 1800s to the 1960s, church of england attendence declined significantly: around 40% of the population went to church before industrialisation, compared to only 15% in the 19605
• beliefs - census data shows less people are identifying with religion. No religon was the second most common response, with 37.2%
Globalisation and religion
• Helland - discusses the importance of globalisation and the media in shaping the way that the public engages with religion. Religious beliefs have become ‘disembedded’ from places of worship and transported to a digital space online.
1. Religon online - when established religions movements use the internet to communicate messages to their followers.
2. online religon - where like - minded peope interact in Forums to discuss their beliefs in an unstructed format.
• Giddens argues that fundamentalism is a product of and response to globalisation. This is because the processes of globalisation can undermine traditional social norms relating to family, gender, and sexuality. A common enemy that can be united against provides ideological cohesion for fundamentalist movements, allowing for a narrative of oppression within marginalised groups.
• secularisation - Bruce’s technological world view
• postmodernists such as Lyon argues globalisation has increased consumer choice, increased new forms of religion that are available to consumers, particularly online. importance of media and improvements in communication.
