Secularization: The end of religion

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Secularization The end of religion?

• 15.04.2004

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Readings

• Stark and Bainbridge Secularization, Revival,
  and Cult Formation (in Dawson 1998)
• Wilson Secularization The Inherited Model (in
  Hammond 1985)

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Discussion topics

• On terminology
• Historical roots
• Evidence and critique
• Secularization and NRMs
• NRMs as a reaction against secularization
• Stark and Bainbridge
• Bellah / Anthony and Robbins
• NRMs as a product of secularization
• Wilson

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Secularization I

• First used in the 17th century
• Lubbe - Säkularisierung
• Wilson
• the process whereby religious thinking, practices
  and institutions lose social significance
• Burke
• interpretation of reality in natural instead of
  supernatural terms
• Weber
• the disenchantment of the world (die Entzauberung
  der Welt)
• two analytically distinct meanings
• replacement of religious faith with faith in
  scientific principles,
• increasing differentiation between the religious
  and secular spheres of life.

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Secularization II

• Problematic term
• depends largely on the definition of 'religion'
• functional or substantive?
• Concerned with Western civilization and
  Christianity
• 'dechristianization?
• Proponents
• exclusive definition of religion
• religion as 'belief in supernatural'
• born in ignorance and dying in knowledge.
• opponents
• inclusive definition of religion
• religion as symbolic 'universe of meaning
• civil religion (Bellah)

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Secularization Middle Ages

• Lucien Febvre
• before about 1650 people lacked any sense of the
  impossible, they simply distinguished the
  ordinary from the unusual
• prevalence of supernaturalist worldview
• revelation superior to reason
• explaining the world exclusively in religious
  terms
• dominance of clergy in the society (e.g.
  education)
• theology as scientific discipline

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Secularization - Renaissance

• revival of Greek and Roman secular ideals
• e.g. Neoplatonists
• the importance of human reason
• Machiavelli
• the spread of 'naturalist' worldview
• Decline of the role of the clergy

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Secularization Reformation

• Religious revival
• Weber
• Yet favoured secularization
• Advocation of a more worldly religion
• elective affinity' (Wahlverwandtschaft)
• between Calvinism and capitalism
• individualism
• salvation not through the church and sacraments
• monotheism
• more powerful god more remote god
• rationalization of religion
• elimination of magic
• clarification of symbols
• reducing theology to consistent rational system
  of ideas

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Secularization Enlightenment

• skepticism
• what do I know?
• Montaigne Que sais je?
• increasing knowledge of the world outside Europe
• the French philosophes
• (Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot etc.)
• an open attack on organized religion /
  Catholicism
• the existence of God is not provable
  (agnosticism)
• Robespierre
• attempt to secularize the calendar (A.D. 1792
  year I).
• first official rejection of Christianity in
  modern western Europe

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Secularization - Scientific Revolution

• Not initially anti-religious
• discoveries incompatible w/ religious
  explanations
• 'Book of Nature' vs the Bible
• Comte
• theological gt metaphysical gt scientific /
  positive
• Frazer
• Magic gt religion gt science

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Criticism

• ? concerns only Western intellectual elite
• minority movements
• What about ordinary people?
• Knew little about these processes.
• popular vs learned culture
• Secularization of laity
• only after the spread of literacy

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Secularization evidence and critique I

• Pluralism of 'universes of meaning'
• fragmentation of the religious field NRMs
• a differentiation of metaphysical and salvational
  systems
• gt weakening of their power and scope of
  influence Hj
• Criticism
• Secularization?
• Religious revival?
• Filling in the gaps?
• Religious zeal of atheism
• as political action and social agenda
• Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF)
• Godless Americans Political Action Committee
  (GAMPAC)

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Secularization evidence and critique II

• Disengagement of church from wider society
• Separation of state and the church
• Criticism
• specialization ? decline of importance
• Current US administration

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Secularization evidence and critique III

• Decline in church attendance
• statistics
• Criticism
• church attendance ? religious belief
• churched vs unchurched believers
• Institutional vs personal religion
• Luckmann The Invisible Religion (1967)

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Secularization evidence and critique IV

• Rise in atheism
• The Universal Almanac
• 16.9 of world population non-religious
• 4.4 of world population atheist
• Criticism
• 94 of Americans claim to believe in God
• Rise of religious fundamentalism

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Secularization evidence and critique V

• Rationalism and scientific explanations
• Rationalization as a basis for Western capitalism
  and science (Weber)
• Criticism
• Skepticism part of all societies (Douglas)
• Magic and witchcraft as rational (Malinowski,
  Evans-Pritchard)
• Science and religion as complementary
• contemporary society should not be
  over-rationalized
• The openness of scientific explanation not
  absolute
• Kuhn paradigms

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Secularization and NRMs I

• two views on the relationship (Wallis)
• 1) NRMs as a response to secularization which
  seeks to reverse the trend
• filling in the gaps
• religious revival
• roots in Durkheims functionalism
• Religion as a source of solidarity and collective
  identity
• Change in social structure
• gt change in dominant form of religious
  expression.
• Stark and Bainbridge theory of religion
• Bellah and civil religion gt Anthony and Robbins

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Secularization and NRMs II

• 2) NRMs as a product of secularization
• with little prospect of halting its course
• Wilson

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Stark and Bainbridge I

• A Theory of Religion (1987)
• Premises
• people seek to gain rewards
• Some rewards are scarce or unavailable
• People prepared to accept compensators instead
• promises
• for value surrendered now, the desired reward
  will be obtained in the future
• Production of credible compensators
• Religions gt naturalistic systems of belief

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Stark and Bainbridge II

• 1 gt
• secularization is a selflimiting process
• major religious denominations decline
• gt new faiths of a more supernaturalistic kind
  rise
• Proof
• number of sects high where churches traditionally
  strong
• but church involvement has declined
• Catholic vs Protestant Europe / US

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Stark and Bainbridge III

• 2 gt
• Although sources of religion may vary within a
  society
• the amount of religion will remain relatively
  constant

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Stark and Bainbridge IV

• 3 gt
• shift from naturalistic to supernaturalistic
  premises
• Supernatural org-s have bigger compensators that
  natural org-s
• natural gt supernatural orgs
• Eg. Dianetics gt Scientology

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Robert Bellah

• Civil Religion in America (1967)
• The Broken Covenant (1975)
• the Vietnam War, Watergate, repression of the
  civil rights and anti-war movements
• gt breakdown in civil religion in America
• gt 'moral ambiguity'

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Anthony and Robbins

• Cultural Crisis and Contemporary Religion"
  (1981)
• Origins of the success of new religions
• in a reaction to the crisis in American civil
  religion
• crisis of civil religion
• gt need for new moral meaning systems
• NRMs
• systematized responses to the moral ambiguity
• attempts to formulate new approaches to civil
  religion and the meaning of America
• Reaffirmation of elements of traditional moral
  absolutism
• Often in an exaggerated manner

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Bryan Wilson I

• Contemporary Transformations of Religion (1976)
• NRMs
• gt a free choice
• not a matter of necessity but a matter of
  preference
• gt become part of consumption economy
• an item of consumption
• On religious market
• In competition with each other
• On leisure market
• As a leisure activity
• a highly privatized issue
• the significance of pushpin, poetry, or popcorn

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Bryan Wilson II

• gt NRMs
• Not a reaction against secularization
• Except Charismatic renewal
• a product of secularization
• Incapable of resacralizing the world
• world-affirming movements
• centrally located in the modern world
• Reproduce individualism, rationality,
  impersonality, consumerism
• World-rejecting movements
• Marginal
• isolated and numerically insignificant