Secularisation
Processes
Disengagement
Differentiation
disenchantment
Pluralism
The lack of intervention of religion in other areas of life. In religious societies such as Iran, Islam is involved in all aspects of social life including law and politics
The loss of functions from religion to more specialised institutions
The magical and mystery elements of religion decline in significance as rational thought dominates
Religion ceases to claim it represents the only truth and recognise other belief systems as legitimate
What is secularisation
Made up of a decline of religion in 3 ways: Thinking - the influence of religion on values and beliefs. Practice - The things people do and institutions - the influence of religion on a wider society.
Beliefs
Statistics show that belief of god has declined rapidly, whilst the belief of heaven is at the same rate, belief in hell and reincarnation is slowly increasing
belief in god and in life after death by decade of birth, belief in god has declined and belief in afterlife has increased
So belief in life after death but no god has increased massively, belief in god and no life after death has declined massively, god and life after death has declined, no god and no life after death has stayed the same.
Attendance and membership
English church attendance has gone from 50% in 1851 to 6% 1998
A member of a church is someone who is formally linked to a particular congregation, a member has a say on the way that particular congregation is run.
church membership has declined massively over the last hundred years, % of population attending sunday school has decreased from 55% to 4%, whilst members have declined from 8664 to 5863 as of 2000 according to M. Brierley
Differences can be seen between some denominations and churches - all denominations in decline
Church buildings & people who work there
Less churches are now opening than closing, around 1990 the amount of churches that opened an closed were around equal now twice as many are closing than opening
around 2000 churches closed between 1990 and 2005, along with membership, however number of female ministers have increased, number of total ministers have declined however
Religious identity
between 1983 and 2008 percentage of people identifying as not religious has increased from 31% to 43%, Christianity has decreased from 67% to 50% and non-Christian 2 to 7%
Identity as a Christian has declined from around 85% to around 55%, however women remained significantly higher throughout
Age and gender
under 20 has decreased the most, followed by 20 - 44, followed by a small decrease in 45-64, whilst 65 and over have increased slightly
proportion of baptism has decreased massively
Disengagement (more)
This involves a progressive distances of the institutions of secular society from religious organisations
Religion lose their role in the public sphere (the power to either govern in their own right or influence or dictate the direction of secular policies)
Religion doesn't disappear, as such, but is largely restricted to the private sphere of personal beliefs - it becomes purely a matter of individual conscience
Problems with stats
Evidence is not conclusive and Always need to be cautious with stats, vicars in the 19th century would lie about attendance as they wanted good figures. David martin found that high attendance during Victorian time was more to do with respectability than belief
Similarly low attendances now do not necessarily mean that there has been a decline in religious belief, and people may express their belief in more personal ways
There are differences in the way membership figures are collected in different churches, members of the catholic church and C of E are taken to be those who are baptised and confirmed. The church of wales bases its figures on those who attend easter communion
Steve Bruce, Bryan Wilson and David Voas have interpreted these figures as evidence for secularisation thesis, others such as Rodney stark and grace davie read them in a completely different way