Secularisation

Question 1

Secularisation:

What is secularisation?

Answer 1

When religion loses its significance in society e.g. it is less important -the UK would be considered secular.

Question 2

Secularisation in Britain:

Evidence of the UK becoming more secular e.g. the population

Answer 2

there is a decline in the proportion going to church/ belonging to one

Question 3

Secularisation in Britain:

Evidence of the UK becoming more secular e.g. age

Answer 3

There is a average increase in the age of churchgoers

Question 4

Secularisation in Britain:

Evidence of the UK becoming more secular e.g. baptisms and weddings

Answer 4

There are fewer baptisms and weddings

Question 5

Secularisation in Britain:

Evidence of the UK becoming more secular e.g. traditional beliefs

Answer 5

There is a decline in the numbers holding traditional Christian beliefs.

Question 6

Secularisation in Britain:

Evidence of the UK becoming more secular e.g. diversity

Answer 6

There is greater diversity in religions e.g. Islam and Judaism

Question 7

Secularisation in Britain:

How does church attendance decreasing help to show that the UK is becoming secular

Answer 7

Sunday attendance in the Church of England fell from 1.6 million in 1960 to under 0.8 million in 2013.

The number of church weddings and baptisms are also decreasing e.g. In 1971, 60% of weddings were in church and in 2012 the proportion was only 30%.

All these numbers help to show that the UK is becoming more secularised. Because of the amount of choice there is people are choosing the more secularised version. Values of the church don’t match modern society.

Question 8

Secularisation in Britain:

How does religious affiliation decreasing help to show that the UK is becoming secular

Answer 8

Between 1983 and 2014 the % of adults with no religion rose is 50% in 2015 while those identifying as Christian fell by a 1/3.

Other Christian denominations such as Methodists and Baptists has remained static since 1983 at 17% of the population.

Question 9

Key word:

What does religious affiliation mean

Answer 9

A person’s religious membership/identification with a religious (belonging to a religion)

Question 10

Secularisation in Britain:

How does religious belief decreasing help to show that the UK is becoming secular

Answer 10

80 years of survey research shows that religious belief is declining along with the decline in the church attendance and its membership.

e.g. Surveys show that there is a declining belief in a personal God, in Jesus and in Christian teachings about the afterlife and the Bible.

Question 11

Secularisation in Britain:

How does how religious institutions are today help to show that the UK is becoming secular

Answer 11

not only have religious beliefs and practice declined, so too has the influence of religion as a social institution.

Although the church as h=some influence on the public life e.g. there are 26 CofE bishops in the HOL (making decisions) this has declined massively since the state has taken over most of the roles that the church used to perform such as education and welfare.

The number of clergy fell from 45,000 to 34,000 in the 20th century. If it kept up with the population growth it should be around 80,000.

The clergy is also an ageing workforce. Only 12% of Anglican clergy are under 40.

Question 12

Explanations for secularisation:

How does modernisation/rationalisation explain why the UK has become more secularised? (briefly)

Answer 12

Sociologists argue that modernisation has led to secularisation with the decline of tradition and its replacement with rational and scientific ways of thinking that tend to undermine religion.

Question 13

Key word:

What is modernisation?

Answer 13

A process of social change by adopting modern values and ways of life.

Question 14

Explanations for secularisation:

How does social change explain why the UK has become more secularised? (briefly)

Answer 14

Some sociologists argue that social change led to secularisation

e.g. industrialisation leads to the break up of small communities that were held together by common religious beliefs breaking it down and leading people to find other forms of religion.

Question 15

Explanations for secularisation:

How does social religious diversity explain why the UK has become more secularised? (briefly)

Answer 15

Some sociologists argue that social and religious diversity has led to secularisation.

People are becoming more diverse in many ways meaning that religious institutions are much more varied.

Because of the growth of diversity has undermined both the authority of religious institutions and the credibility of religious beliefs leading to secularisation.

Question 16

Explanations for secularisation:

How does rationalisation explain why the UK has become more secularised? (use sociologist)

Answer 16

Weber (1905) argues that the Protestant Reformation started a process of rationalisation of life in the West undermining the religious worldview.

This process undermined the religious worldview of the Middle Ages and replaced it with the rational scientific outlook found in modern society.

In the past medieval Catholic worldview that dominated Europe saw angels and devils to change events through their supernatural powers.

However, the Protestant Reformation brought a new worldview that although God had created the world, he left it to run according to its own laws of nature meaning that events could be explained through reason.

Using reason and science there was no longer a need for religious explanations of the world, since the world was no longer an enchanted garden.

Question 17

Key word:

What is rationalisation?

Answer 17

The process by which rational ways of thinking and acting come to replace religious ones.

Question 18

Explanations for secularisation:

How does technology explain why the UK has become more secularised?

Answer 18

Weber, Bruce (2011) argues that the growth of technology has largely replaced religious or supernatural explanations of why things happen e.g. when bad things happen people don’t blame it on spirits but look for scientific and technological explanations.

Bruce argues that although scientific explanations don’t challenge religion directly, they have reduced the need for religious explanations. Scientific knowledge encourages people to take religion less seriously.

Question 19

Explanations for secularisation:

How does structural differentiation explain why the UK has become more secularised? (use sociologist)

Answer 19

Parsons (1951) argues that structural differentiation has happened to religion.

It dominated pre-industrial society, but with industrialisation it has become a smaller and more specialised institution.

Question 20

Key word:

What is structural differentiation?

Answer 20

A process of specialisation that occurs with the development of industrial society.

Separate, specialised institutions develop to carry out functions that were previously performed by a single institution.

Question 21

Explanations for secularisation:

How does disengagement within structural differentiation show that the UK is becoming more secularised (use sociologist)

Answer 21

Parsons - structural differentiation leads to the disengagement of religion.

Its functions are transferred to other institutions such as the state and it becomes disconnected from wider society e.g. the church loses the influence it once had on education, social welfare and the law.

Question 22

Explanations for secularisation:

How does privatisation within structural differentiation show that the UK is becoming more secularised (use sociologist)

Answer 22

Bruce argues that religion has become separated from wider society and lost many of its former functions.

It has become privatised - confined to the private sphere of the home and family.

Religious beliefs are now largely a matter of personal choice and religious institutions have lost much of their influence on wider society.

As a result, traditional rituals and symbols lose meaning.

Question 23

Key word:

What is social and cultural diversity?

Question 24

Explanations for secularisation:

How does decline in the community within social and cultural diversity help to show that the UK is becoming more secularised?

Answer 24

Decline of community The move from pre-industrial to industrial society brings about the decline of community and this contributes to the decline of religion. Wilson argues that in pre-industrial communities, shared values were expressed through collective religious rituals that integrated individuals and regulated their behaviour. However, when religion lost its basis in stable local communities, it lost its vitality and its hold over individuals.

Question 25

Explanations for secularisation:

Answer 25

Industrialisation Similarly, Bruce sees industrialisation as undermining the consensus of religious beliefs that hold small rural communities together. Small close-knit rural communities give way to large loose-knit urban communities with diverse beliefs and values. Social and geographical mobility not only breaks up communities but brings people together from many different backgrounds, creating even more diversity.

Question 26

Explanations for secularisation:

Answer 26

Diversity of occupations, cultures and lifestyles undermines religion. Even where people continue to hold religious beliefs, they cannot avoid knowing that many of those around them hold very different views. Bruce argues that the plausibility (believability) of beliefs is undermined by alternatives. It is also undermined by individualism because the plausibility of religion depends on the existence of a practising community of believers. In the absence of a practising religious community that functions on a day-to-day basis, both religious belief and practice tend to decline.

Question 27

Explanations for secularisation:

Answer 27

The view that the decline of community causes the decline of religion has been criticised. Aldridge points out that a community does not have to be in a particular area:

Religion can be a source of identifust coordiwide scat
This is true of Jewish, Hindu and Muslim, communities for example.

Question 28

Explanations for secularisation:

Answer 28

The view that the decline of community causes the decline of religion has been criticised. Aldridge points out that a community does not have to be in a particular area:

Some religious communities are imagined communities
that interact through the use of global media.

Question 29

Explanations for secularisation:

Answer 29

The view that the decline of community causes the decline of religion has been criticised. Aldridge points out that a community does not have to be in a particular area:

Pentecostal and other religious groups often flourish in
‘impersonal’ urban areas.

Question 30

Explanations for secularisation:

Answer 30

Religious diversity

According to Berger (1969), another cause of secularisation is the trend towards religious diversity where instead of there being only one religious organisation and only one interpretation of the faith, there are many.

The sacred canopy In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church held an absolute monopoly - it had no competition As a result, everyone lived under a single sacred canopy or set of beliefs shared by all. This gave these beliefs greater plausibility because they had no challengers and the Church’s version of the truth was unquestioned.

Answer 31

The sacred canopy inn the middle ages, the catholic church held an abolsute monopoly it had no competition. As a result, everyone lived under the single sacred canopy or set of shared beliefs shared by all. This gave tyhese beliefs greater pllausibility because they had no challengers and the church’s version of the truth was unqustioned.

This all changed with the Protestant Reformation, when Protestant churches and sects broke away from the Cathol Church in the 16th century. Since the Reformation, the number and variety of religious organisations has continue to grow, each with a different version of the truth. With t arrival of this religious diversity, no church can now claim. unchallenged monopoly of the truth.

Society is thus no longer unified under the single sacred canopy provided by one church. Instead, religious diversity creates a plurality of life worlds, where people’s perceptions of the world vary and where there are differe interpretations of the truth.

Answer 32

Plausibility structure Berger argues that this creates a crisis of credibility for religion. Diversity undermines religion’s ‘plausibility structure’ - the reasons why people find it believable. When there are alternative versions of religion to choose between, people are likely to questior all of them and this erodes the absolute certainties of traditional religion. Religious beliefs become relative ratt than absolute - what is true or false becomes simply a personal point of view, and this creates the possibility o opting out of religion altogether.

Bruce sees the trend towards religious diversity as the m important cause of secularisation. As he puts it:

‘It is difficult to live in a world that treats as equally valid a large number of incompatible beliefs, without coming to suppose that there is no one truth.’

Answer 33

Bruce identifies two counter-trends that seem to go against secularisation theory. Both are associated with higher than average levels of religious participation

Cultural defence is where religion provides a focal point for the defence of national, ethnic, local or group identity in a struggle against an external force such as a hostile foreign power. Examples include the popularity of Catholicism in Poland before the fall of communism and the resurgence of Islam before the revolution in Iran in 1979 (see Topic 5).

Answer 34

Bruce identifies two counter-trends that seem to go against secularisation theory. Both are associated with higher than average levels of religious participation

Cultural transition is where religion provides support and a sense of community for ethnic groups such as migrants to a different country and culture. Herberg describes this in his study of religion and immigration to the USA. Religion has performed similar functions for Irish, African Caribbean, Muslim, Hindu and other migrants to the UK.

Answer 35

However, Bruce argues that religion survives in such situations only because it is a focus for group identity. Thus these examples do not disprove secularisation, but show that religion is most likely to survive where it performs functions other than relating individuals to the supernatural.

Answer 36

Secularisation in America

In 1962, Wilson found that 45% of Americans attended church on Sundays. However, he argued that churchgoing in America was more an expression of the ‘American way of life’ than of deeply held religious beliefs. Wilson claimed that America was a secular society, not because people had abandoned the churches, but because religion there had become superficial.

Bruce (2002; 2011) shares Wilson’s view. He uses three sources of evidence to support his claim that America is becoming increasingly secular: declining church attendance;

‘secularisation from within’ and a trend towards religious diversity and relativism.

Answer 37

Declining church attendance

Opinion poll research asking people about church attendance suggests that it has been stable at about 40% of the population since 1940. However, Kirk Hadaway (1993), working with a team of researchers employed by major churches, found that this figure did not match the churches’ own attendance statistics. If 40% of Americans were going to church, the churches would be full - but they were not.

To investigate their suspicion that opinion polls exaggerate attendance rates, Hadaway et al (1993) studied church

Beliefs in Society

Evidence supports Bruce’s conclusion. For example, churchgoing declined in Poland after the fall of communism and there is evidence that religion loses importance for migrants once they are integrated into society.

Answer 38

Beckford (2003) They found that 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 this tendency to exaggerate churchgoing is a recent development. Until the 1970s, the findings of opinion polls matched the churches own estimates, but since then the ‘attendance gap’ has widened. For example, a study of attendance at Catholic mass in San Francisco found that in 1972, opinion polls exaggerated attendance by 47% but by

1996, the exaggeration had doubled to 101%.

Berger (1999) has changed his views and now argues that diversity and choice actually stimulate interest and participation in religion. For example, the growth of evangelicalism in Latin America and the New Christian Right in the USA point to the continuing vitality of religion, not its decline.

Thus Bruce concludes that a stable rate of self-reported attendance of about 40% has masked a decline in actual attendance in the United States. The widening gap may be due to the fact that 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.

Answer 39

Secularisation from within

Bruce argues that the way American religion has adjusted to the modern world amounts to secularisation from

within. The emphasis on traditional Christian beliefs and glorifying God has declined and religion in America has become ‘psychologised’ or turned into a form of therapy.

This change has enabled it to fit in with a secular society. In short, American religion has remained popular by becoming less religious.

The purpose of religion has changed from seeking salvation in heaven to seeking personal improvement in this world.

This decline in commitment to traditional beliefs can be seen in people’s attitudes and lifestyles. Churchgoers are now much less strict than previously in their adherence to traditional religious morality.

Answer 40

Religious diversity

The growth of religious diversity has also contributed to secularisation from within. Churchgoers are becoming less dogmatic in their views.

Bruce identifies a trend towards practical relativism among American Christians, involving 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 (1929) study which found 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.

The counterpart to practical relativism is the erosion of absolutism - that is, we now live in a society where many people hold views that are completely different to ours, which undermines our assumption that our own views are absolutely true.