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Arguments for Secularisation - Coggle Diagram
Arguments for Secularisation
Moderinisation and Social Change
Modernisation:
Secularisation theories have a common theme of modernisation. Modernisation involves the decline of tradition and its replacement with rational and scientific ways of thinking that tends to undermine religion
Social Change:
Secularisation theories also emphasise the effect of social change on religion. For example, industrialisation leads to the break up of small communities that were held together by common religious beliefs.
Social and Religious Diversity
Diverse Backgrounds:
A major theme in the explanations of secularisation is the growth of social and religious diversity. People are increasingly diverse in terms of their occupational and cultural backgrounds and religious institutions are much more varied.
Undermining Authority:
Secularisation theorists argue that the growth of diversity has undermined both the authority of religious institutions and the credibility of religious beliefs.
Decline in Practice:
As a result of these changes religious practice, such as churchgoing, has declined.
Max Weber: Rationalisation
Protestant Reformation:
Weber argued that the Protestant Reformation, begun by Martin Luther in the 16th century, started a process of rationalisation in the West.
Undermining Religious Worldview:
This process undermined the religious worldview of the Middle Ages and replaced it with the rational scientific outlook found in modern society.
Enchanted Garden to Rational World:
For Weber, the medieval Catholic worldview that dominated Europe saw the world as an 'enchanted garden'. The Protestant Reformation brought a new worldview that saw God as transcendent - as existing above and beyond, or outside, this world.
Disenchantment and Technological Worldview
Disenchantment:
Weber: the Protestant Reformation begins the 'disenchantment' of the world - it squeezes out magical and religious ways of thinking and starts off the rationalisation process that leads to the dominance of the rational mode of thought.
Scientific Thriving:
This enables science to thrive and provide the basis for technological advances that give humans more and more power to control nature. In turn, this further undermines the religious worldview.
Technological worldview:
Following Weber, Bruce argues that the growth of a technological worldview has largely replaced religious or supernatural explanations of why things happen.
Structural Differentiation and Disengagement
Structural Differentiation:
Parsons defines structural differentiation as a process of specialisation that occurs with the development of industrial society. Separate, specialised institutions develop to carry out functions that were previously performed by a single institution.
Disengagement:
Parsons: structural differentiation leads to the disengagement of religion. Its functions are transferred to other institutions such as the state and it becomes disconnected from wider society. For example, the church loses the influence it once had on education, social welfare and the law.
Privatisation:
Bruce agrees that religion has become separated from wider society and lost many of its former functions. It has become privatised - confined to the private sphere of the home and family. Religious beliefs are now largely a matter of personal choice and religious institutions have lost much of their influence on wider society.
Social and Cultural Diversity
Decline of community:
Wilson argues that in pre-industrial communities, shared values were expressed through collective religious rituals that integrated individuals and regulated their behaviour. However, when religion lost its basis in stable local communities, it lost its vitality and its hold over individuals.
Industrialisation:
Bruce sees industrialisation as undermining the consensus of religious beliefs that hold small rural communities together. Small close-knit rural communities give way to large loose-knit urban communities with diverse beliefs and values.
Diversity of lifestyles:
Diversity of occupations, cultures and lifestyles undermines religion. Even where people continue to hold religious beliefs, they cannot avoid knowing that many of those around them hold very different views.
Other Theories
Martin: Disengagement:
Power, wealth and prestige has declined. The Church of England gas become distant from the state. Religion has lost out in High court cases - 2011 case of 2 Pentecostalist foster parents. Their ban was upheld, because of their homophobic views.
Herberg: Internal:
Churches are diluting their beliefs as they are loosing their place within society.
They adhere to a cosmopolitan society - e.g. use of social media - but as a result are loosing people to fundamentalism. e.g. the modernisation of church - megachurches in the US
Hervieu Leger:
Similar to Kendal Project. Religion is part of a chain of memory - passed down from generation to generation. This chain has been broken in many Western societies as individuals now choose their own path - spiritual individualism - shopping around for a religion which suits them.
Berger: Religious:
Religious diversity have now replaced the sacred canopy of medieval Catholicism. Each religion has its version of the truth; none has monopoly. Religious diversity creates a plurality of life worlds - different interpretations of the truth. Creates a crisis of credibility for religion - erodes certainty.
Religious Diversity and Plausibility
Sacred Canopy:
In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church held an absolute monopoly, providing a single set of shared beliefs.
Protestant Reformation:
The Reformation led to a growth in the number and variety of religious organisations.
Religious Diversity:
No church can now claim an unchallenged monopoly of the truth.
Crisis of Credibility:
Diversity undermines religion's 'plausibility structure' - the reasons why people find it believable.
Cultural Defence and Transition
Cultural Defence:
Religion provides a focal point for the defence of national, ethnic, local or group identity in a struggle against an external force. Examples include the popularity of Catholicism in Poland before the fall of communism and the resurgence of Islam before the revolution in Iran in 1979.
Cultural Transition:
Religion provides support and a sense of community for ethnic groups such as migrants to a different country and culture. Herbert describes this in his study of religion and immigration to the USA. Religion has performed similar functions for Irish, African Caribbean, Muslim, Hindu and other migrants to the UK.
Criticisms and Alternative Views
Berger's Changed View:
Berger has changed his views and now argues that diversity and choice simulate interest and participation in religion. For example, the growth of evangelicalism in Latin America and the New Christian Right in the USA point to the continuing vitality of religion, not its deadline.
Beckford's Perspective:
Beckford agrees with the idea that religious diversity will leadsmen to question or even abandon their religious beliefs, but this is not inevitable. Opposing views can have the effect of strengthening a religious group's commitment to its existing beliefs rather than undermining them.
Alternate view - Belief without Belonging - Grace Davie
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