1222 SECULARIZATION THEORY

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12/22 SECULARIZATION THEORY

• Max Weber The Disenchantment of the World
• The Effects of Pluralistic Competition on the
  Vitality of Religions
• Change versus Decline in the Institution of
  Religion

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WEBERIAN THEORY

• Weber defines secularization as the increased
  rationalization of viewpoint. All values become
  utilitarian values. Science rather than faith is
  the basis of belief.
• H1 Religion is slowly but surely losing its
  appeal in all societies as science gains ground
  against it.
• H2 This is happening most quickly in the more
  economically advanced societies.
• H3 Charisma is losing its power to influence
  millions and now can only influence thousands at
  a time.

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OTHER SECULARIZATION THEORIES

• Peter Berger Secularization is defined as the
  process by which sectors of society are removed
  from the domination of religious institutions.
  Beliefs and values become relative and
  contextually determined no longer absolute.
  Robert Bellah Secularization is the maturity of
  religion. It involves cutting the last ties
  between religion and magic, making secularized
  religion a purer form than prior
  superstition-laden religions.

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LUCKMANS 4 PHASE THEORY

• All societies pass through four stages
• 1. Prehistoric. Responsibility for protecting
  the sacred rests with the entire society.
• 2. Age of Empire. Responsibility for the sacred
  rests with a separate institution with strong
  ties to government
• 3. Nation-State. Religions multiply and the
  religious institution as a whole occupies only a
  part of peoples lives.
• 4. Late Modern. Privatized religion
  (spirituality) is located in individual
  consciousness which forms the basis for a
  pluralistic market supporting a wide diversity of
  co-existing beliefs.

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COUNTER-THEORIES

• Cyclical Theories. Example, Sorokins theory of
  macro-historical stages. Societies go through
  period repeating cycles known as sensate,
  ideational, and idealistic. We are now slowly
  passing from a sensate stage to an ideational
  stage in which religion will have more of a role.
• Market Theories. As societies become
  bureaucratically cold and rational, religion
  becomes more scarce and therefore more valuable.
  Instead of serving as a philosophy of life,
  religion becomes a spiritual and emotional
  compensator.

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Dover Beach. Matthew Arnold (1867)

• The sea is calm tonight.
• The tide is full, the moon lies fair
• Upon the straits -- on the French coast the
  light
• Gleams and is gone the cliffs of England stand,
• Glimmering and vast, out of the tranquil bay.
• Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
• Only, from the long line of spray
• Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
• Listen! You hear the grating roar
• Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling
• At their return, up the high strand,
• Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
• With tremulous cadence slow and bring
• The eternal note of sadness in.

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• Sophocles long ago
• Heard it on the ?g?an, and it brought
• Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
• Of human misery we
• Find also in the sound a thought,
• Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
• The Sea of Faith
• Was once too, at the full, and round earths
  shore
• Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
• But now I only hear
• Its melancholy long withdrawing roar,
• Retreating to the breath
• Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
• And naked shingles of the world

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• Ah, love, let us be true
• To one another! For the world, which seems
• To lie before us like a land of dreams,
• So various, so beautiful, so new,
• Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
• Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain
• And we are here as on a darkling plain
• Swept with confused alarms of struggle and
  flight,
• Where ignorant armies clash by night

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THE SECOND COMING. William Butler Yeats

• Turning and turning in the widening gyre
• The falcon cannot hear the falconer
• Things fall apart the center cannot hold
• Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
• The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
• The ceremony of innocence is drowned
• The best lack all conviction while the worst
• Are full of passionate intensity.

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• Surely some revelation is at hand
• Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
• The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
• When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
• Troubles my sight somewhere in the sands of the
  desert
• A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
• A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
• Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
• Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
• The darkness drops again but now I know
• That twenty centuries of stony sleep
• Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
• And what rough beast, its hour come round at
  last,
• Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

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THE NEW PARADIGM
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• SECULARIZATION EVIDENCE

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DECLINE IN CHURCH GOING

• Evidence from Western Europe
• See handout
• American exceptionalism
• Religious adherence (Finke and Stark)
• 1776 17
• 1870 35
• 1906 51
• 1980 62

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THE STARK/BRUCE DEBATE

• Complexity of measuring strength of religion
  over time
• The two paradigms dont really contradict each
  other. The are different in scale. Its no
  contradiction for the MACRO influence of religion
  in a society to be weakening at the same time
  that the MICRO influence of churches with respect
  to their members is increasing.

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