The image is from “The Atheist Bus Campaign” which took place in Britain in 2008/9 in response to evangelical Christian advertising.
The first explanation of religious decline came, in one sense, before any great statistical measure of decline. It might even be suggested that it set ‘decline’ as the proper category for interpreting religious experience within western societies. Secularisation characterises western societies. Pickel notes how “the term subsumes a number of ideas that all refer to one main relationship: the fundamental tension between modernization and religion. Provided that modernization progresses, this tension results in a diminishing in the social significance of religion” (Pickel 2011, 5). Max Weber, coiner of the word secularisation, linked this to the “disenchantment of the world” [Entzauberung — the de-magicification], and the manner in which “the authority of charisma gives way to technical rationality and utilitarian bureaucracy” (Hughey 1979, 85–111). Weber’s own accent fell on the structural. Modernisation leads to social differentiation, and so the development of subsystems and wider rationalisation of human life. Religious behaviour ceases to direct social existence because basic social structures (legal, economic, political and educational) require no religious ground. Religion reduces to one subsystem among many, and its avenues of ‘help’ become obsolete in relation to social welfare and insurance systems. Insofar as “mainline” expressions of Christianity locate identity and mission within this social significance, then secularisation becomes a key interpretive category.
Classic Theorists
Thomas Luckmann
- Luckmann, Thomas. The Invisible Religion: The Problem of Religion in Modern Society. New York: MacMillan, 1967.
- Luckmann, Thomas. “The Structural Conditions of Religious Consciousness in Modern Societies.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 6, no. 1-2 (1979): 121–37.
Peter Berger
- Berger, Peter. The Sacred Canopy. Doubleday Anchor, 1969.
- Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1967.
Bryan Wilson
- Wilson, Brian. “Aspects of Secularization in the West.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 3 (1976): 259–76.
- Wilson, Brian. “Secularization: The Inherited Model,” In The Sacred in a Secular Age: Toward Revision in the Scientific Study of Religion, edited by Phillip E. Hammond, 9–20. University of California Press, 1985.
David Martin
- Martin, David. A General Theory of Secularization. Harper & Row, 1978.
This summary definition of secularisation, however, includes a number of different elements.
1. Differentiation: Differentiation refers to the identification of a religious sphere separate from a wider framework. Such differentiation occurs in stages, from an early undifferentiated world view where religion and culture appear identical, to an institutionalised religious framework with religious professionals. In this process social structures become withdrawn from the religious sphere. It is possible to further distinguish between “functional” and “social” differentiation. Functional differentiation indicates how institutions which often developed as an extensions of religious mission and drew on religious funding and networks, such as education and health, have become run by the state and governed by its legislative principles. Or, specific task within a society become identified with a particular site. Secularisation might then be less due to the spread of “scientific knowledge and education” but to the development of greater welfare systems. Countries with greater “existential security” tend to have higher degrees of secularisation of belief (Inglehart and Baker 2000, 29). Social differentiation, differentiation at a more human level, means that religion is no longer necessary to the processes of socialisation. This means the “disintegration of traditional internal structures and supporting social networks. This is why the passing on of religious knowledge and religious traditions in the course of socialization in particular is eroding across generations over time”(Pickel 2011, 5). One might talk here of the demise of a religious authority and the movement “from a culture of obligation or duty to a culture of consumption or choice. What until somewhat recently was simply imposed (with all the negative connotations of this word), or inherited (a rather more positive spin), becomes instead a matter of personal choice”(Davie 2006, 251).
2. Rationalization: This builds on a contrast between “society” [Gesellschaft] and “community” [Gemeinschaft] as developed by Max Weber. For Brian Wilson, a community “is affective, customary, and constituted of stable units with ongoing, sustained relationships. It lives in continuity with the past, and the past is a vital determinant of the present” (Wilson 1976, 264). Though he considers this “essentially religious,” one finds it also political mobilisation of constituents, or incoming class of university students. Relationships within a society, by contrast, are grounded in “rational agreement by mutual consent.” A society, to cite Bryan Wilson, is “a centralized, rationally articulated system, increasingly organized and consciously planned. It is increasingly dominated by instrumental values.” Within this contrast, Wilson argues that the “commodity” religious sells has relevance only within a community. It is “irrelevant to a societally organized system. That commodity is salvation. Taken in its widest sense ‘salvation’ extends from immediate relief, solace, security, reassurance or the removal of curses, to such all-inclusive ideas as the continuance of life after death, or the resurrection of the body.” Though, as Swatos suggests, “[r]ationalization at the societal level has disenchanted institutional religion,” this should not simply be understood is not simply a question of whether a society believes or does not believes such things (Swatos Jr. 1983, 321). It speaks more to a flattening of the discussion; a confidence that solutions to the big questions can be found in the organisational.
3. Decline in practice is regarded as a poor indicator of secularisation. The theory deals not with organised patterns of religious activity but with the role of these activities within social structures. But one might also point to how this has structuring effect over the church. “On the one hand, religious institutions increasingly tend to resemble each other. They all apply the same principles of bureaucratic efficiency, and they all attempt to increase their appeal by catering to the psychological needs of individuals. In this sense, they all become more worldly [worldly bearing similarities to rationalisation]. Furthermore, the search for an advantageous situation in the market leads to cartel-type accords between denominations (i.e., ecumenism). On the other hand, this convergence also threatens the appeal of the denominations, because their very similitude makes their existence as separate creeds seem superfluous; hence the movement toward a ‘rediscovery of confessional identities’ that allows them to regain their marginal advantage” Summarising Berger’s argument, see (Tschannen 1991, 409-10). The description of this process, in other words, belongs to the definition of secularisation.
4. Christianity has a proper role in the process of secularisation. As Berger suggests “Christianity has been its own grave digger” (Berger 1969, 129). The excitement of this position during the 1960s, however, has given way to more modest claims.
- Cox, Harvey. The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective. Princeton University Press, 2013.
- Cox, Harvey. “The Myth of the Twentieth Century: The Rise and Fall of ‘Secularization’,” In The Twentieth Century: A Theological Overview, edited by Gregory Baum, 135–43. Bloomsbury Academic, 2001.
General Overviews
- Bhargava, Rajeev. Secularism and Its Critics. Oxford University Press, 1998.
- Bruce, Steve. Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis. Oxford University Press, 1992.
- Dobbelaere, Karel. “Secularization Theories and Sociological Paradigms: Convergences and Divergences.” Social Compass 31, no. 2-3 (1984): 199–219.
- Goldstein, Warren S. “Secularization Patterns in the Old Paradigm.” Sociology of Religion 70, no. 2 (2009): 157–78.
- Schultz, Kevin M. “Secularization: A Bibliographic Essay.” Hedgehog Review 8, no. 1-2 (2006): 170–78.
- Sommerville, C. John. “Secular Society/Religious Population: Our Tacit Rules for Using the Term ‘Secularization.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 37, no. 2 (1998): 249–53.
- Swatos Jr., William H. and Daniel V. A. Olson. The Secularization Debate. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000.
- Swatos Jr., William H. “Enchantment and Disenchantment in Modernity: The Significance of ‘Religion’ as a Sociological Category.” Sociological Analysis 44, no. 4 (1983): 321–37.
- Swatos Jr., William H. and Kevin J. Christiano. “Secularization Theory: The Course of a Concept.” Sociology of Religion 60, no. 3 (1999): 209–28.
- Tschannen, Olivier. “The Secularization Paradigm: A Systematization.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30, no. 4 (1991): 395–415.
- Yinger, J. Milton. “Pluralism, Religion, and Secularism.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 6, no. 1 (1967): 17–28.
Secularisation’s Critics
As this classic secularisation theory headed into the 1990s, a number of criticisms began to emerge. Peter Berger, one of the foundational theorists of secularization during the 1960s, proposed a clear corrective: “The world today, with some exceptions…is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever. This means that a whole body of literature by historians and social scientists loosely labeled ‘secularization theory’ is essentially mistaken” (Berger 1999, 2). It is statistically impossible to argue for religion’s demise. New religious movements continue to appear (scientology). Pentecostalism and mormonism are growing. Religious fundamentalisms are clearly a growing geo-political problem. So while one might document a decline religious affiliation, especially when defined in terms of community gathering, there has not been a coordinated decline in religious practice or belief. Mark Chaves offers the following summary statement: “Weberian expectation that differentiation and its accompanying rationalization will disenchant the world in which individuals live has proven to be ground-less, based on exaggerations of religion’s hold on premodern consciousness, misapprehensions of the mechanisms (e.g., bureaucracy, science, distance from nature) by which modernity was thought to undermine religion, and blindness to evidence of religion’s resilience” (Chaves 1994, 753). Secularisation theory was based on a number of unproven assumptions, revealed to be such over time.
- Berger, Peter L. “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview,” In The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, edited by Peter L. Berger, 1–18. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999.
- Martin, David. On Secularization: Towards A Revised General Theory. Ashgate, 2005.
- Stark, Rodney. “Secularization, R.I.P.” Sociology of Religion 60, no. 3 (1999): 249–73.
- Hadden, Jeffrey K. “Toward Desacralizing Secularization Theory.” Social Forces 65, no. 3 (1987): 587–611.
- Hout, Michael and Andrew M. Greeley. “The Center Doesn’t Hold: Church Attendance in the United States, 1940-1984.” American Sociological Review 52, no. 3 (1987): 325–45.
1. It assumed an oppositional relationship between modernity and religion.The basic framework for the below is found in (Pickel 2011, 3-20). Jeffrey Hadden charges secularisation with being less a theory and more a “doctrine…secularisation was more than taken-for-granted; the idea of secularization became sacralized.” (Hadden 1987, 588). It is so, to quote Lenski, because its roots lay in a commitment to the “positivist view that religion in the modern world is merely a survival from man’s [sic] primitive past, and doomed to disappear in an era of science and general enlightenment…[R]eligion is, basically, institutionalized ignorance and superstition.” (Lenski 1963, 3). This includes the notion of a “linear secularisation,” the idea that once started the process of secularisation leads to inevitable decline (Warner 1993, 1052). Apart from this suspicion of an ideological ground, especially supply-side exponents observe the rise of religious commitment in a deregulated market.
2. It conflated notions of religious adherence, personal belief and social significance. It is possible to observe an increase in subjective religiosity while coincidentally narrating the decline in institutional religious attendance. Gert Pickel notes how secularisation theory assumes a necessary link between decreasing social significance and subjective religiosity, and does so due to an underlying substantial concept of religion(Pickel 2011, 7).
3. It based its narrative of decline on the assumption of a “an age of faith.” Swatos and Christiano note how the debate posits a past “solitary Age of Faith in which ‘the world was filled with the sacred’,” which “gave way of the Age of Reason.” (Swatos Jr. and Christiano 1999, 219). Read from one perspective, one might note how the Christian faith did constitute an imaginitive universe which informed every aspect of everyday existence and the rhythms of the year and of life. See, for example, (Duffy 2005). But, when considered from the perspective of religious adherence, Finke and Stark state that the “conception of religious commitment in earlier eras are simply wrong…In the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts on the eve of the Revolution, the rate of religious adherence was about 16 percent, compared with better than 60 percent today.” (Finke and Stark 1988, 42). One needs to separate between the rhetoric of decline (or better diagnose the type of differentiation) basic to the secularisation discussion, and the rise of religious adherence to the 1950s. This includes, by way of example, appreciating what Robin Gill has termed the “myth of the empty church,” and how a particular rendering of sacred space, along with patterns of urbanisation, and changing forms of worship helps reinforce the perception of decline.
- Gill, Robin. The Myth of the Empty Church. London: SPCK, 1993.
- Gill, Robin. The ‘Empty’ Church Myth Revisited. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003.
4. Religion is not declining in social significance.
It seems somewhat self-evident that religion continues to inform the geo-political discourse. Religion does not often appear positive within this setting. Nevertheless, it falsifies the notion that religions is without ‘public’ significance. See especially the work of José Casanova who brings a welcome international focus to the debate.
- Casanova, José. Public Religions in the Modern World. University Of Chicago Press, 1994.
5. Secularisation theory emerges from a particular European cultural context. Most secularisation theorists are of European origin, and stress secularisation within the type of welfare states common within Europe. Thus Casanova: “The traditional European theory of secularization, which postulates a structural link between social differentiation and religious decline, offers a relatively plausible account of European developments, but is unable or unwilling to take seriously, much less to explain the surprising vitality and extreme pluralism of denominational forms of salvation religion in America, notwithstanding the pronounced secularization of state and society”(Casanova 2001, 426). One needs to differentiate between Europe and America. But this also highlights how little consideration is given to religious processes within colonial contexts and the confusion of some form of cultural heritage without any ongoing institutional reinforcement.
4. The question focused on the cultural west and ignored the growth of religion within the global context. It developed in total ignorance of the explosion of religion which was occurring outside of the cultural West.
- Freston, Paul. Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- Jenkins, Philip. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
- Norris, Pippa and Ronald Inglehart. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
- Casanova, José. “Beyond European and American Exceptionalisms: Towards a Global Perspective,” In Predicting Religion: Christian, Secular and Alternative Futures, edited by Grace Davie, Paul Heelas, and Linda Woodhead, 17–29. Ashgate, 2003.
Secularisation’s Reaffirmation
Despite these criticisms, secularisation theory remains significance. Or, the criticisms have help focus its contribution. “Secularization of belief is not the end of belief but the movement by which the elements of belief break free of the structures prescribed by religious institutions.” (Hervieu-Léger 2001, 119). Schultz identifies three ways in which this differentiation continues to occur: “institutional secularization (as in the marginalization of religious institutions from a reality-defining role), cultural secularization (the transformation of mythic and symbolic markers), or social secularization (faith as a source of social solidarity and division).” (Schultz 2006, 174). People will not turn to the church as the first place to offer solutions to the challenges and celebrations within their lives — it is no longer integral to our social rhythms and often linked to peculiar beliefs.
- Bruce, Steve. God is Dead: Secularization in the West. Wiley-Blackwell, 2002.
- Bruce, Steve. Secularization: In Defence of an Unfashionable Theory. Oxford University Press, 2011.
Other Posts in this Series
- Internationalising Secularisation
- “Supply-side,” or “Rational-Choice” Religious Market Theory
- Individualisation Thesis
