Due to the expansion of secondary & higher education, the population is becoming better informed and so young people are now less likely to have a belief in spiritual explanations of the world. Instead, they are looking for explanations that are based on rational, factual scientific evidence. In addition, the privatisation of families in modern society means that people will more often look for answers within themselves. Families no longer look to external forces such as the church for help for example, if a child needs to be disciplined, parents will be less inclined to take the child to confession and will instead use a 'naughty step'. Sundays are no longer a day of rest an in the absence of a holy day, people no longer have a day to formally worship. Many people will instead be shopping, with shops that open on Sundays being common place, working or spending time with their family.
According to statistics, secularisation must be occurring as from the years 1998-2005 the attendance at the Catholic Church dropped by 27% and in the Anglican church it dropped by 11%. Around 45% or Americans will attend church on Sundays but only because it is part of 'tha American way of life' and not necessarily a deeply help belief of most American church attendants. America is a secular society but not because people have abandoned the church, but more that religion is now seen as superficial.
But on the other hand, Davie explains that by using statistics to measure secularisation will only give a partial view of secularisation as people are changing the way they will express their religiosity. For example there is 'believing without belonging' in which people will take part in private prayer. In addition, there are methodological flaws in using statistics in measuring the religiosity of people as official statistics and historical data such as Victorian membership figures are neither valid nor reliable when in comparison to today's standards. In America, opinion polls suggest that church attendance has been stable at 40% since 1940 so how can secularisation be occurring? But, self-report data doesn't account for those people who do not attend but say they do if asked in order to be socially desirable.
Pluralism could provide an explanation as to if secularisation is occurring as Bruce explains, America is becoming more secular as traditional Christian beliefs in America are declining, when more 'psychologised' religions and new religious movements, that require less commitment and have a focus on personal improvement rather than being saved, are ever more popular. Religious diversity have creates the erosion of absolutism where the amount of competing view points to our own has led to the viewpoints undermining our assumptions that our views are absolutely true. For example, in 1924 94% of American church-going young people said that Christianity was the one true religion, compared to just 41% agreeing in 1977. Furthermore, Brierley says that the fastest growing religion from 1980-2000 was Satanism, showing that traditional religion has lost power.
However pluralism doesn't explicitly say that secularisation is happening, more that a spiritual revolution is that is taking place of traditional Christianity which is declining, and New Age spiritualities increasing. There are fundamental differences between the definitions of religion and spirituality which may be the cause of the change in popularity;
Religion: it emphasises conforming to the authority of a Church, self-sacrifice and respectful behaviour
Spirituality on the other hand focuses on personal development, autonomy and connecting with your inner self.
Bellah explains that the process of individuation has led to religion moving into the private sphere, where it doesn't matter what religious beliefs people hold if they still have an element of spirituality attached to them, it will still count as a religion. By looking at Heelas' Kendal Project we can see that there is an increase in new religious movements and new age movements since the 1980s showing that people are rediscovering the importance of spirituality. Therefore a process of resacrilisation is occurring where individuals are rediscovering spirituality in their lives.
Rationalisation has apparently occurred in society according to Weber. Religion, through the protestant work ethic, helped to create capitalism. Profits were reinvested in new technology that was backed by science. Bruce adds that a technological worldview has replaced a religious worldview e.g. we now take pills rather than pray when we are ill and we no longer feel the need to offer sacrifices to appease gods after natural disasters. In today's world, religious explanations have become obsolete and science is more beneficial in peoples' lives. But, a religious worldview still survives in areas where technology isn't very effective.
But as postmodernists argue, religion will always have a role in modern society and in times of reflexity when swift moral judgements need to be made. Marxists and functionalists argue that religion still plays an important role in society. Marxists say that religion operates as the opium as the masses and is an ideological weapon of the ruling classes. Functionalists say that religion creates a collective consciousness to create solidarity.
By the process of structural differentiation, certain functions in society have become specialised, e.g. religion used to play a role in education and healthcare but now the government have taken them over, reducing the Church's power. Even though religion continues to preform certain functions such as education, as in faith schools they must still conform to requirements set by the government such as teachers must have certain qualifications to teach. This provides evidence to suggest that the church's power is reduced and so secularisation must be occurring.
However, as Casanova has said, religion now influences society as a
whole rather than being an important parts in an individuals life. Most
conflicts have a religious base for example the troubles in the
middle-east are based on Christian/Judaism. Muslim divides.
One weakness of the secularisation debate is that it is Eurocentric and as Stark and Bainbridge explain, it focuses on the decline of religion in Britain and Europe and so fails to explain religions that are continuing to influence in America and elsewhere in the world e.g. Iraq. It is possible that secularisation is occurring in some developed societies but not others. In addition, all secularisation arguments focus on Christianity and so much of the sociology is Christo-centric. This therefore suggests that the debate can only offer a partial view of religiosity in Britain and across the world.
There are no set definitions of religion or secularisation so there is no true way to measure the religiosity of individuals e.g. inclusivist definitions of religion include many numbers of different movements such as Marxism or even premier league football. The popularity of these movements cannot be measured in relation to religion so all arguments relating to secularisation lack both validity and reliability.
