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Secularisation - UK and its explanations - Coggle Diagram
Secularisation - UK and its explanations
changes in religion:
Decline in influence of the church
States taken over many of the churches functions it used to perform, now it's confined to the private sphere of the individual and the family
Education used to be provided from church, no from state
The clergy
body of people ordained for religous duties
During the 20th century fell from 45,000 to 34,000
priests fell by a third between 1965 - 2011
expected to fall in future
Decline in proportion of the population going to church
(Wilson)
2015 about 5% of the adult population attends church on sundays
English Church Census shows that attendance of small organisations remain stable it doesn't make up for the decline of the large ones
fewer baptisms + church weddings
Num of weddings fell by ¾ between 1965- 2011
Rationalism
(max weber)
rational ways of thinking and acting replace religious ones
Disenchantment
squeezes out magical and religious ways of thinking and starts off the rationalisation process, that leads to the dominance of the rational model of thought allowing science and technology to thrive
Protestant reformation bought a new view instead of seeing God as transcendent, see it as God had created the world but he didn't intervene with it instead left it to run according to its own laws
This meant that events were no longer to be explained as the work of unpredictable supernatural beings but as the predictable workings of natural forces.
All that's needed is to understand them rationally (using power of reason and science)
An example of this is the Protestant reformation begun by Martin Luther king. This process undermined the religious worldview of the middle ages and replaced it with the rational scientific outlook found in modern society
A technological worldview
Growth of technology has largely replaced religion - and when disasters happen such as a plane crash we look instead for scientific explanations as to why
we pray for people in illness when there is no scientific medical cure
Although scientific explanations do not challenge religion directly they have greatly reduced the scope for religious explanations
(Bruce)
Social and cultural diversity
Decline of community - due to industrialisation, it undermined 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 value, social and geographically mobility brakes up communities and creates more diversity
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 different views
This is a result of individualism
Religious diversity
(Berger)
Diversity creates a plurality of life worlds where people perceptions of the world vary
Plausibility structure - this creates a crisis of credibility for religion. Diversity undermines religions ‘plausibility structure’ (reason why people find it believable) with alternative visions people tend to question them
The sacred canopy - In the Middle Ages the catholic church held an absolute monopoly (no competition) as a result everyone lived under a single sacred canopy of set of beliefs shared by all
This all changed with the Protestant Reformation when protestant church and sects broke away from catholic church - means no church can claim an unchallenged monopoly of truth resulting in diversity
Structural differences
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 institutions like the church
Structural differentiation leads to disengagement of religion where its functions are transferred to other institutions and it loses its influence on law, education
Its become privatised (confined to home and family shpere)
Parsons