Secularisation

• Church attendance declining today

  Wilson

  • 2020 - 4% adult population attending church on Sundays
  • Decline of church weddings, baptisms and Sunday school attendance
  • 'bogus baptisms' - baptism of older children in order to be able to attend higher performing schools
• Religious affiliation today

  British Social Attitudes Survey, 2018

  • 50% adults not religious
  • Christians fell by 40%
  • Catholics rose due to East European immigration
• Weber (1905) - Rationalisation

  • Rational way of thinking replacing religious ones
  • Argues the Protestant Reformation started this process
  • Medieval Catholicism - world as an 'enchanted garden', God changing the course of events with miraculous interventions
  • Protestantism - God as transcendent (he created the world and now will not intervene)
  • This begun 'disenchantment'
  • Reason and science used to understand how the world works
• Bruce (2011) - technological worldview

  • Growth of technological explanation - expanding on Weber
  • Example: when a plane crashes we look for scientific or technological explanations rather than the work of evil spirits
  • Previously this was to blame for poor harvest
• Parsons - Structural differentiation

  • Development of industrial society
  • Disengagement: religions functions have transferred to the state (loss of influence over education, health and social welfare)
  • Privatisation: religion is confined to the private sphere of the family and the home
• Berger - Religious diversity

  • Scared canopy: set of beliefs shared by all
  • Plausibility structure: we all believe the same under one religion
  • Changed with the Reformation as variety of religions grew
  • Diversity creates a 'plurality of worlds' where peoples perceptions of the world vary
• Religious diversity - Evaluation

  Berger

  • Diversity can stimulate interest and participation in religion

  Beckford

  • Opposing views can strengthen religious groups commitment to own beliefs
• Bruce - Cultural defence and transition

  • Cultural defence: religion provides a focal point for defence of national or group identity in a struggle against an external force (foreign power)
  • Cultural transition: religion provides support and community for ethnic groups
• Hadaway - Declining church attendance

  • Opinion poll research suggests its been at 40% of the population since 1940 in America
  • Head counts were then carried out at service
  • Interviews - found it was 83% higher than the research

  Bruce

  • It is still seen as socially desirable or normative to go to church
• Secularisation - Evaluation

  • Religions form is changing
  • Declining church attendance doesn't recognise those who don't go to church
  • Secularisation is not universal