Secularisation Debate
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?- Created by: BWards18
- Created on: 14-06-17 12:10
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- Secularisation Debate
- For
- WILSON - Western societies had been undergoing a long-term process of secularisation
- Practice - Membership, weddings, baptisms have all declined
- Belief - ROBIN GILL ET AL - Decline in belief of a personal god and teachings of the bible. 43% of the population said they had no belief in 1996
- Church Influence - The state has taken over, the church no longer performs the functions if previously did
- Leading to a process of disengagement - religious institutions m are less engaged with wider society.
- Criticisms - The CDU party in Germany, influence of Christian Right in USA, primary schools in Britain are faith schools
- Leading to a process of disengagement - religious institutions m are less engaged with wider society.
- Explanations for secularisation
- Modernisation - BRUCE and WILSON - Delin of tradition, supernatural thinking replaced with science, industrialisation
- Rationalisation - WEBER - 'Disenchantment' - loss of faith in the belief of the supernatural so they turn to science
- Turn to science - Rationalisation - movement towards more logical and scientific explanations
- Brought about by the Protestant Reformation
- Technologicalworldwide view - BRUCE - Technological view has replaced supernatural/religious explanations
- When disasters happen we search for scientific explanations now not religious ones
- Pray for things science can't explain
- Structural differentiation- PARSONS - A process of specialisation that occurs with the developments of industrial society
- 'Loss of functions' Thesis - religions functions been transferred to the state
- Social and Cultural Diversity -WILSON and BRUCE - Religion has lost its base in stable local communities
- It doesn't hold communities together due to new religious forms so it doesn't have the same power
- Social mobility and occupational mobility and diversity of cultural and occupations
- Religious Diversity - BERGER - There is no a single 'shred canopy' or indisputable truth due to the diversity of religious organisations
- There is religious pluralism/religious fragmentation creating a 'crisis of credibility'
- WILSON - Western societies had been undergoing a long-term process of secularisation
- Against
- GELLNER - The modern world is secular but the USA is the expectation. Islam has also resisted the modernisation through fundamentalism
- BRUCE - Cultural defence - Religion is used as a defence of national identity and Cultural Transition - Focus of a groups identity - migration
- GLASNER - Religion has flourished through sects as they demand high religious commitment
- Science explains the 'here and now' but religion helps explain the 'other worldly' concerns
- GREELEY and NELSON - Religious pluralism can be a indication of a religious rival
- HEELAS and WOODHEAD - Believe that a spiritual revolution is taking place where tradition is giving way to NAM's
- Creating a 'spiritual market' due to increased interest in spirituality
- MARTIN - Debates the validity of historical comparisons due to middle class just going to look respectful
- Questions the so called golden age of faith arguing they had no religious beliefs
- Secularisation thesis is too 'Eurocentric'
- DURKHEIM -In an industrialised world religion is relegated into a corner
- However, it will reassert itself because all societies must have acred symbols and communal rituals to survive
- 'The process in which religious thinking, practices and institutions lose their social influence" - Wilson
- For
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