Topic 3 - Secularisation

Question 1

What does Crockett (1998) estimate about church attendance based on the 1851 Census of Religious worship? How is this different from today?

Answer 1

40% or more of the adult population of Britain attended church on Sundays. It is far less today.

Question 2

Some major changes in religion in the UK since 1851 include:

Answer 2

• A decline in the proportion of the population going to church or belonging to one.
• An increase in the average age of churchgoers.
• Fewer baptisms and church weddings.
• A decline in the numbers holding traditional Christian beliefs.
• Greater diversity, including more non-Christian religions.

Question 3

1966 Bryan Wilson defining secularisation:

Answer 3

‘the process whereby religious beliefs, practices and institutions lose social significance’.

Question 4

Bryan Wilson 1966 on church attendance in England and Wales

Answer 4

0% of the population in the mid-19th century to 10-15% by the 1960s.

Church weddings, baptisms and Sunday school attendance had also declined.

Question 5

Church attendance today

By 2020 about …..% of the adult population attended church on Sundays

Answer 5

By 2020, about 4% of the adult population attended church on Sundays. Churchgoing in Britain has therefore more than halved since Wilson’s research in the 1960s.

Question 6

Is religious belief declining? If so, give an example of how?

Answer 6

80 years of survey research shows a significant decline in belief in a personal god, in Jesus as the son of God and in Christian teachings about the afterlife and the Bible.

Question 7

Compare stats of church weddings in 1971 with 2018

Answer 7

In 1971, 59% of weddings were in church, but by 2018 the proportion was only 20%.

Question 8

Choose the correct filler

The number of Catholic baptisms today is under half/ quarter/ third those in 1964

Answer 8

The number of Catholic baptisms today is under half those in 1964

Question 9

What are Bogus Baptisms and why are they more common than infant baptisms?

Answer 9

Baptism thus becomes an entry ticket to a good school rather than a sign Of Christian commitment. Research indicates that this is because many faith schools, which tend to be higher-performing schools, will only take baptised children.

Question 10

What is meant by religious affiliation?

Answer 10

A persons religious affiliation refers to their membership of or identification with a religion.

Question 11

Between 1983 and 2018, the proportion of adults with no religion rose from…

In the same period, those identifying as Christian fell by…

Answer 11

… under a third to just over half (British Social Attitudes Survey, 2018.

… 40%

Question 12

Until the mid 19th century, churches provided education before the state took over. This meant that some state schools have been in use. But as for the daily act of collective worship legal requirement…

Answer 12

Similarly, although there is a legal requirement for schools to provide a daily act of collective worship of a ‘broadly Christian character’, a BBC survey 2005 found that over half the secondary schools in Wales failed to comply with this.

Question 13

During the 20th century, the number of clergy fell from…

Answer 13

45,000 to 34,000

oh dear

Question 14

Between 1965 and 2020, the number of Catholic priests fell by..

Answer 14

half

crazy

Question 15

Linda Woodhead (2014) makes a conclusion about decline in the number of clergy:

Answer 15

“A lack of clergy on the ground in local communities means that the day-to-day influence of the churches is reduced”

Question 16

Steve Bruce (2002) agrees with Woodhead on secularisation:

Answer 16

” there is a steady and unremitting decline” - when measuring church attendance, religious ceremonies etc.

Question 17

In relation to secularisation, rationalism refers to?

Answer 17

Rationalisation refers to the process by which rational ways of thinking and acting come to replace religious ones.

Question 18

Who were key thinkers in relation to rationalisation leading to secularisation?

Answer 18

Max Weber (1905)
Steve Bruce (2011)

Question 19

Explain how disenchantment contributed to rationalisation?

Answer 19

Before the medieval Catholic worldview that dominated Europe saw the world as an ‘enchanted (or magical) garden’. God and other spiritual beings and forces, such as angels, the devil and so on, were believed to be present and active in this world, changing the course of events through their supernatural powers and miraculous interventions in it. Humans could try to influence these beings and forces by magical means such as prayers and spells, fasts and pilgrimages, the wearing of charms etc. in order to ensure a good harvest, protect against disease and so on. But Protestant Reformation (Martin Luther 16th century) brught a new view -Although God had created the world, he did not intervene in it, but instead left it to run according to its own laws of nature. Like a watchmaker, he had made the world and set it in motion, but thereafter it ran according to its own principles and its creator played no further part. 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 was needed to understand them was rationality - the power of reason. Using reason and science, humans could discover the laws of nature, understand and predict how the world works and control it through technology. I

According to Weber

Question 20

Bruce 2011

Explain how technological worldview cotributed to rationalisation

Answer 20

The growth of a technological worldview has largely replaced religious or supernatural explanations of why things happen. For example, when a plane crashes with the loss of many lives, we are unlikely to regard it as the work of evil spirits or God’s punishment of the wicked. Instead, we look for scientific and technological explanations.

A technological worldview thus leaves little room for religious explanations in everyday life, which only survive in areas where technology is least effective — for example, we may pray for help if we are suffering from an illness for which scientific medicine has no cure.

The worldview it encourages results in people taking religion less seriously.

Question 21

Talcott Parsons (1951)

How has structural differentiation contributed to rationalisation, through leading to disengagament?

Answer 21

Talcott Parsons (1951) 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. Parsons sees this as having happened to religion — it dominated pre-industrial society, but with industrialisation it has become a smaller and more specialised institution.

According to 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.

Question 22

How has privatisation of religion led to rationalisation?

Answer 22

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. As a result, traditional rituals and symbols have lost meaning. Even where religion continues to perform functions such as education or social welfare, it must conform to the requirements of the secular state. For example, teachers in faith schools must hold qualifications that are recognised by the state. At the same time, church and state tend to become separated in modern society. Modern states increasingly accept that religion is a personal choice and therefore that the state should not be identified with one particular faith.

Question 23

How has social and cultural diversity lead to decline of community and thus secularisation?

Answer 23

The move from pre-industrial to industrial society brings about the decline of community and this contributes to the decline of religion. 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.

Question 24

bruce

Industrialisation = secularisation, how?

Answer 24

Similarly, 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. Social and geographical mobility not only breaks up communities but brings people together from many different backgrounds, creating even 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 very different views. Bruce argues that the plausibility (believability) of beliefs is undermined by alternatives. It is also undermined by individualism because the plausibility of religion depends on the existence of a practising community of believers. In the absence of a practising religious community that functions on a day-to- day basis, both religious belief and practice tend to decline.

Question 25

Limitations that the view that the decline of community causes the decline of religion

Answer 25

• Religion can be a source of identity on a worldwide scale. This is true of Jewish, Hindu and Muslim communities, for example.
• Some religious communities are imagined communities that interact through the use of global media.
• Pentecostal and other religious groups often flourish in supposedly ‘impersonal’ urban areas.

Question 26

According to Berger (1969), another cause of secularisation is the trend towards religious diversity where instead of there being only one religious organisation and only one interpretation of the faith…

Answer 26

… there are many

Question 27

What was the sacred canopy about?

Answer 27

In the Middle Ages, the European Catholic Church held an absolute monopoly — it had no competition. As a result, everyone lived under a single sacred canopy or set of beliefs shared by all. This gave these beliefs greater plausibility because they had no challengers and the Church’s version of the truth was unquestioned. This all changed with the Protestant Reformation, when Protestant churches and sects broke away from the Catholic Church in the 16th century. Since the Reformation, the number and variety of religious organisations has continued to grow, each with a different version of the truth.

Question 28

How has pluasibilty structure contributed to secularisation?

Answer 28

Berger argues that this creates a crisis of credibility for religion. Diversity undermines religion’s ‘plausibility structure’ - the reasons why people find it believable. When there are alternative versions of religion to choose between, people are likely to question all of them and this erodes the absolute certainties of traditional religion. Religious beliefs become relative rather than absolute — what is true or false becomes simply a personal point of view, and this creates the possibility of opting out of religion altogether.

As he puts it: ‘It is difficult to live in a world that treats as equally valid a large number of incompatible beliefs, without coming to suppose that there is no one truth. ‘

Question 29

Limitations on how diversity led to decline in religion

Answer 29

Berger (1999) has changed his views and now argues that diversity and choice actually stimulate 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 decline.

Beckford (2003) agrees with the idea that religious diversity will lead some 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.

Question 30

2 trends that Bruce identifies that seem to go against secularisation theory

Answer 30

Cultural defence and transition

Question 31

Cultural defence?

Answer 31

• Cultural defence is where religion provides a focal point for the defence of national, ethnic, local or group identity in a struggle against an external force such as a hostile foreign power. 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

Question 32

Cultural transition?

Answer 32

• Cultural transition is where religion provides support and a sense of community for ethnic groups such as migrants to a different country and culture. Herberg 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.

Question 33

Secularisation from within? America

Answer 33

Bruce argues that the way American religion has adjusted to the modern world amounts to secularisation from within. The emphasis on traditional Christian beliefs and glorifying God has declined and religion in America has become ‘psychologised’ or turned into a form of therapy. This change has enabled it to fit in with a secular society. In short, American religion has remained popular by becoming less religious. The purpose of religion has changed from seeking salvation in heaven to seeking personal improvement in this world. This decline in commitment to traditional beliefs can be seen in people’s attitudes and lifestyles. Churchgoers are now much less strict than previously in their adherence to traditional religious morality, as Table IA shows.

Question 34

Religious diversity contributing to secularisation in America

Answer 34

The growth of religious diversity has also contributed to secularisation from within. Churchgoers are becoming less dogmatic in their views. Bruce identifies a trend towards practical relativism among American Christians, involving acceptance of the view that others are entitled to hold beliefs that are different to one’s own. This is shown in Lynd and Lynd’s (1929) study which found in 1924 that 94% of churchgoing young people agreed with the statement, ‘Christianity is the one true religion and all people should be converted to it’. However, by 1977 only 41% agreed. The counterpart to practical relativism is the erosion of absolutism - that is, we now live in a society where many people hold views that are completely different to ours, which undermines our assumption that our own views are absolutely true.

Question 35

britain and america

Criticisms of secularisation theory

Answer 35

• Religion is not declining but simply changing its form. Secularisation theory is one-sided. It focuses on decline and ignores religious revivals and the growth of new religions.
  
  • Evidence of falling church attendance ignores people who believe but don’t go to church.
  • Religion may have declined in Europe but not globally, so secularisation is not universal.
  • The past was not a ‘golden age’ of faith from which we have declined, and the future will not be an age of atheism.
  • Far from causing decline, religious diversity increases participation because it offers choice. There is no overall downward trend. Religious trends point in different directions and people make use of religion in all sorts of different ways.