Secularisation

• Explanations - criticisms of declining statistics

  • Reliability - religious organisations may over or under estimate attendance, so it's not a reliable measurement.
  • Validity - questions in surveys focus on Christian beliefs like Heaven and Hell. Hindus and Buddhists would reply 'no', but that doesn't make them atheist.
  • Some people don't take it seriously - in the 2001 census, 0.7% of respondents claimed being Jedi Knights as their religion.
• Explanations - Rationalisation

  • Disenchantment (Weber):
  • Moving away from the ideas from the Middle Ages as we realise that we have control over our world and its not all just God.
  • We can influence the outcome of crops, not God.
• Explanations - Rationalisation

  • A technological worldview (Bruce)
  • When a plane crashes we blame a technical fault and don't see it as God's punishment.
  • Floods in Pakistan arn't God's punishment, its global warming.
• Explanations - structural differentiation (Parsons)

  • Religion has lost many of the functions it used to perform, like influence over education or welfare.
  • Bruce - agrees but adds that religion has become privatised, being confined to the private sphere of the family at home.
• Explanations - religious diversity (Berger)

  • The sacred canopy - no church can now claim an unchallenged monopoly of the truth
  • Plausibility structure - when there are alternative versions of religion to choose between, people start question any of their plausibility as they cannot all be true
  • Counter - Berger himself has since said that diversity fuels religious interest, like the growth of evangelicalism in Latin America
• Counter - cultural defence and transition (Bruce)

  • Cultural defence - religion provides a focal point for the defence of identity in a struggle against an external force, like the resurgence of Islam before the 1979 Iran revolution
  • Cultural transition - religion works as a supporting community for migrants to a new country
  • Counter - Bruce counters himself by saying that religion only survives when performing functions, not relating supernatural beliefs to individuals
• In America - declining church attendance (Bruce)

  • A stable rate of self-reported attendance of about 40% has masked a decline in actual attendance
  • Widening gap may be due to it still being socially desirably to attend, so when asked people will still say they go
• In America - secularisation form within (Bruce)

  • Purpose of religion has changed from seeking salvation in Heaven to seeking personal improvement
  • Churchgoers are now much less strict in their commitment
  • In 1951, 46% of surveyed evangelicals described going to the moves as morally wrong, in 1982 this was at 0%
• In America - religious diversity (Bruce)

  • Practical realism - acceptance of the view that others are entitled to their own beliefs
  • Erosion of absolutism - diversity undermines the assumption that our own beliefs are absolute truth