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Secularisation - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Protestantism saw God as transcendent --> events not caused by supernatural but natural forces. reason and science --> understand laws of nature and control through technology. no need for religious explanations --> “disenchantment” and rationalisation
    - - Bruce (2011): technological worldview (eg. place crashes - not God’s punishment) --> reduce scope for religious explanations + encourages people to take religion less seriously/another metanarrative
  - - - Privatisation --> separated from society, confined to private spheres (home and family) + Religious beliefs are a personal choice + traditional rituals and symbols have lost meaning.
        
        Religion continues to perform functions (eg. education and social welfare) - conform to secular state eg. teachers in faith schools --> hold qualifications recognised by the state.hurch and state is separate --> state not be identified with one faith.
  - - - Bruce: industrialisation undermines the consensus of religious beliefs --> holds small rural communities together. rural, close knit communities --> replaced by large, loose-knit urban communities with diverse beliefs. Social and geographical mobility ---> breaks up communities + creates diversity.
        
        Diversity of occupations, cultures and lifestyles --> undermines religion. Bruce: plausibility of beliefs undermined by alternatives and individualism --> no practicing religious community of believers that function daily --> religious belief and practice decline.
        
        Criticism: Aldridge - religion can be a source of identity on a worldwide scale; evidence of imagined and online religious communities; Pentecostalism flourishes in “impersonal” urban areas.
  - - - crisis of credibility for religion --> diversity undermines religion’s “plausibility structure” --> religious beliefs become relative not absolute --> choose not to believe in religion.
- - - - Religion is not declining but changing its form.
      - Secularisation theory is one-sided --> focuses on decline, ignores religious revivals + the growth of new religions.
      - Falling church attendance ignores people who believe but don’t go to church (believing without belonging and vicarious religion).
      - Religions have declined in Europe --> not globally thus secularisation is not universal (eg. Japan).
      - It has a rose-tinted view: past not a “golden age” of faith + future will not be an age of atheism.
      - religious diversity increases participation as it offers choice
      - “nominal” or “cultural” Christians--> may still have religious or spiritual beliefs such as believing in a personal God or meditating, thus, people engage with religion --> more fluid and complex way
      - Before, religion fulfilled external purposes (eg. a place in heaven, business reasons, respectability and social pressure) --> postmodernity --> now used for personal improvement