secularisation

• Secularisation in Britain

  • Crockett - 1851 census - 40% or more of the adult population of Britain attended church on sundays
  • from then major changes in religion - decline in proportion of population going to church, increase in average age of chuchgoers, fewer baptism and church weddings, decline in numbers holding traditional christian beliefs, greater religious diversity
• Explanations

  • Weber - rationalisation - western society has undergone a process of rationalisation, this process undermined the religious worldview of the middle ages and replaced it with the rational scientific outlook, no longer a need for religious explanations of the world, since the world was no longer an enchanted garden, technological worldview
• Explanations

  • Parsons - structural differentiation - process of specialisation that occurs with the development of industrial society, seperate specialised institutions develop to carry out functions that were previously performed by a single institution (the church), differentiation leads to disengagement of religion OR privatisation of religion in which confines it to the private sphere of the home and family
• Explanations

  social and cultural diversity - decline of community, industrialisation, diversity of occupations, cultures and lifestyles undermines religion (different religions around us now)
• Explanations

  • Berger - religious diversity - the scared canopy in the middle ages - no competition now there is diversity, diversity undermines religions plausibility structure - the reason why people find it believable
• criticism

  • cultural defence - religion providing 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
  • cultural transition - religion providing support and a sense of community for ethnic groups such as migrants to a different country and culture
• Secularisation in America

  • Wilson - 445% of Americans attended church on sundays but he argued that churchgoing in America was more an expression of the american way than of deeply held religious beliefs, America was a secular society not because people had abandoned the churches but because religion had become superficial