FOR secularisation

• Drane argues that people are becoming more disillusioned with science and religion, as they are becoming less plausible, leading to religion’s declining importance in society
• What are the main factors contributing to secularisation in contemporary Western societies?

  • Traditional organisations viewed as conservative
  • Welfare state taking over religious functions
  • Growth of alternative spiritual organisations
  • Changing leisure patterns reducing religious observance
  • Growth of science displacing religious faith
  • Decline of metanarratives leading to belief abandonment
  • Religious pluralism reducing respect for religion
• Structural Differentiation

  • Parsons argues that as society has become more complex, a variety of specialised institutions have emerged, where the Church previously carried out functions such as education and welfare, institutions such as the education system and the Welfare state have taken over these functions, ultimately side-lining religion in people's lives
• Weber argues that we have entered an age of disenchantment in which the role of religion, magic, superstition etc. becomes less prominent in society, replaced by more rational motives for acting
• Herberg argues that there is a process of internal secularisation occurring within organisations, as they become 'watered down' in order to accommodate the views of contemporary society, this corroborates Parson's theory that religion has a functional fit in society
• Internal secularisation in the Catholic Church can be seen in their recent shift towards more progressive stances on social issues. for example, Pope Francis has expressed an openness to discussions pertaining to LGBTQ+ communities and divorce, two things that are traditionally opposed by the Catholic Church
• A source of disillusionment with the Church may be the decades worth of sexual abuse scandals that are continuously being bought to light in the media
• • Berger argues that due to the introduction of pluralism, there is no longer a shared 'sacred canopy', the existence of a wide range of beliefs and values means that people are no longer unified by a single set of beliefs and values anymore they were in previous eras
  • the multitude of religion all claiming the monopoly of truth undermines the plausibility of religion