Secularisation Flashcards
Church attendance today
By 2020, about 4% of the adult population attended church on Sundays.
For example, Sunday attendance in the Church of England fell from 1.6 million in 1960, to under 0.7 million in 2020.
Sunday school attendance has declined further and only a tiny proportion of children now attend.
In 1971, 59% of weddings were in church, but by 2018 the proportion was only 20%.
The number of weddings in Catholic churches fell by three quarters between 1965 and 2011.
Similarly, infant baptisms have fallen steadily. The number of Catholic baptisms today is under half those in 1964.
‘Bogus baptisms’
While infant baptisms have declined, those of older children have increased in recent years.
Research indicates that this is because many faith schools, which tend to be higher-performing schools, will only take baptised children. Baptism thus becomes an entry ticket to a good school rather than a sign of Christian commitment.
Religious affiliation today
For example, between 1983 and 2018 the proportion of adults with no religion rose from under a third to just over half (British Social Attitudes Survey, 2018).
The number of Catholics increased slightly, due to….
The number of Catholics increased slightly, due to East European immigration. Those belonging to a non-Christian religion (mainly Islam) also increased, partly due to immigration and higher birth rates.
‘Other Christians’ include denominations such as
Methodists. This category has remained static since 1983 at 17% of the population. But while over four fifths identified with a specific denomination in 1983, only a quarter are now attached to a group.
Religious institutions today
Not only have religious belief and
practice declined; so too has the influence of religion as a social institution. Although the church has some influence on public life,
(for example, 26 Church of England
bishops sit in the House of Lords, where they have some influence on lawmaking), this has declined significantly since the 19th century.
In particular, the state has taken over many of the functions that the church used to perform. Thus, whereas religion once pervaded every aspect of life, it has increasingly been confined to the private sphere of the individual and the family.
EG
For example, until the mid-19th century, the churches provided education, but since then it has been provided mainly by the state. Although there are still ‘faith schools’, these are mainly state-funded and must conform to the state’s regulations. Similarly, although there is a legal requirement for schools to provide a daily act of collective worship of a ‘broadly Christian character’ , a BBC survey in
2005 found that over half the secondary schools in Wales failed to comply with this.
The clergy
One measure of the institutional weakness of the churches is the number of clergy.
During the 20th century, this fell from 45,000 to 34,000. Had it kept pace with population growth, the clergy would now number over 80,000. The number of Catholic priests fell by half between 1965 and 2020.
The clergy are also an ageing workforce. In 2020 the average age of Anglican priests was 52, while new ordinations of Catholic priests are now below one tenth of their 1965 figure. As a result, the churches have reached a tipping point with a sharp decline in the number of clergy to be expected in the near future.
Lina Woodhead ‘there are no longer enough troupers left to keep the show on the road’ a lack of clergy in local communities means that the day to day influences of churches is reduced.
Max Weber: rationalisation
rationalisation refers to the process by which rational ways of thinking and acting come to replace religious ones.
Max Weber (1905). He argued that the Protestant Reformation begun by Martin Luther in the 16th century started a process of rationalisation of life in the West. This process undermined the religious worldview of the Middle Ages and replaced it with the rational scientific outlook found in modern society.
For Weber, the medieval Catholic worldview that dominated
Europe saw the world as an ‘enchanted (or magical) garden’. God and other spiritual beings and forces, such as angels, the devil and so on, were believed to be present and active in this world, Humans could try to influence these beings and forces by magical means such as prayers and spells, fasts and pilgrimages, the wearing of charms etc, in order to ensure a good harvest, protect against disease and so on.
Disenchantment
the Protestant Reformation brought a new worldview.
In Weber’s view, therefore, the Protestant Reformation: begins the ‘disenchantment’ of the world - it squeezes out magical and religious ways of thinking and starts off the rationalisation process that leads to the dominance of the rational mode of thought. This enables science to thrive and provide the basis for technological advances that give humans more and more power to control nature. In turn, this further undermines the religious worldview.
A technological worldview
Bruce (2011) argues that the growth of a technological worldview has largely replaced religious or supernatural explanations of why things happen. For example, when a plane crashes with the loss of many lives, we are unlikely to regard it as the work of evil spirits or God’s punishment of the wicked. Instead, we look for scientific and technological explanations.
A technological worldview thus leaves little room for religious explanations in everyday life, which only survive in areas where
in areas where technology is least effective - for example, we may pray for help if we are suffering from an illness for which scientific medicine has no cure.
Bruce concludes that although scientific explanations do not challenge religion directly, they have greatly reduced the scope for religious explanations. Scientific knowledge does not in itself make people into atheists ed worldview it encourages results in people taking religion less seriously.
Structural differentiation
Talcott Parsons (1951) defines structural differentiation as 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. Parsons sees this as having happened to religion - it dominated pre-industrial society, but with industrialisation it has become a smaller and more specialised institution.
Disengagement
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. For example, the church loses the influence it once had on education, social welfare and the law.
Privatisation
Bruce agrees 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 have lost meaning.
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.
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.
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.
Criticisms - 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 identity on a worldwide scale.
This is true of Jewish, Hindu and Muslim communities, for example.
* Some religious communities are imagined communities that interact through the use of global media
* Pentecostal and other religious groups often flourish in supposedly ‘impersonal’ urban areas.
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 European 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.
This all changed with the Protestant Reformation, when Protestant churches and sects broke away from the Catholic Church in the 16th century.
Since the Reformation, the number and variety of religious organisations has continued to grow, each with a different version of the truth.
With the arrival of this religious diversity, no church can now claim an 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 different interpretations of the truth.
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:
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 question all of them and this erodes the absolute certainties of traditional religion. Religious beliefs become relative rather than absolute - what is true or false becomes simply a personal point of view, and this creates the possibility of opting out of religion altogether.
Criticisms of Berger
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.
Beckford (2003) agrees with the idea that religious diversity will lead some to question or even abandon their religious beliefs, but this is not inevitable. Opposing views can have the effect of strengthening a religious group’s commitment to its existing beliefs rather than undermining them.
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
- 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.
Cristisms of secularistaioon
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.
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 their new society
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 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.
Declining church attendance USA
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 attendance in Ashtabula County, Ohio. To estimate attendance, they carried out head counts at services.
Then in interviews, they asked people if they attended church. 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.
**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.
**
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.
Religious diversity
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.
Criticisms of secularisation theory
- Religion is not declining but simply changing its form.
- Secularisation theory is one-sided. It focuses on decline and ignores religious revivals and the growth of new religions.
- Evidence of falling church attendance ignores people who believe but don’t go to church.
- Religion may have declined in Europe but not globally, so secularisation is not universal.
- The past was not a ‘golden age’ of faith from which we have declined, and the future will not be an age of atheism.
- Far from causing decline, religious diversity increases participation because it offers choice. There is no overall downward trend. Religious trends point in different directions and people make use of religion in all sorts of different ways.
