British Secularization: Observation on Religion Itself - Essay Example

? To understand the phenomena involved in and progression of British secularization, it is important to consider sociological theory and observation on religion itself. We've already considered some of the explanations for the decline of religion and some degree of counter-religious backlash. Classical Religious Theories The classic sociological theorists of religion, Marx, Weber and Durkheim, deserve discussion and application here. While Durkheim, Weber and Marx were all very different theorists, they shared some primary assumptions (Crabtree, 2008; Giddens, 1997). They all assumed that religion would be of declining importance in an industrial society. They all assumed that religion performed social functions that industrialism, capitalism, potential social changes like socialism, and the democratic state would perform. They all operated from a sociological paradigm: They analyzed religion's social implications on a macro-institutional level. “The three 'classical' sociological theorists, Marx, Durkheim and Weber [all] thought that the significance of religion would decrease in modern times. Each believed that religion is in a fundamental sense an illusion. The advocates of different faiths may be wholly persuaded of the validity of the beliefs they hold and the rituals in which they participate, yet the very diversity of religions and their obvious connections to different types of society, the three thinkers held, make these claims inherently implausible” (Giddens, 1987). In Marx's view, religion is famously the “opiate of the masses” (Crabtree, 2008). Its fundamental purpose is as a power structure: Using mystery, the propagation of false consciousness (whether this process is a conscious propagandistic effort on the part of a priestly autocracy or an unconscious relaying of social norms and values), offerings of a life to come, and other techniques, it serves to channel what would be systemic resentment elsewhere. “The problem is that the life that is led by most men and women in present-day society is so hard, so intolerable, or at least so meaningless, that the idea of a life after death seems the only way to invest it with any meaning” (Woods, 2001). It also serves other ancillary functions for social elites, in the case of industrial societies the interests of capital, such as rallying troops to war. In the Marxist view, religion operates in a way Foucault might term panoptical: It becomes internalized repression, psychological chains that employ the oppressed in their own oppression by making them afraid of divine punishment or feel guilty for transgressive thought. Marxist theorists since then have extended the role of religion Many have focused on Marx's critique of religion, but it is important to note that Marx was actually not particularly hostile to it: Religion was the least of his concerns. Read carefully the “opiate of the masses” quote. Religion is a low-level drug pusher, a way to keep people from fighting against a powerful structure rather than a powerful structure in and of itself. Marx had said, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation”. This is actually almost ennobling: Marx is arguing that religion acts as a conscience and a release; his quarrel is with the source of the pain, not the release from it. Similarly, in his critique of Bauer, that “political emancipation is perfectly compatible with the continued existence of religion, as the contemporary example of the United States demonstrates. However, pushing matters deeper, in an argument reinvented by innumerable critics of liberalism, Marx argues that not only is political emancipation insufficient to bring about human emancipation, it is in some sense also a barrier. Liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings. Therefore liberal rights are rights of separation, designed to protect us from such perceived threats. Freedom on such a view, is freedom from interference. What this view overlooks is the possibility — for Marx, the fact — that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people” (Wolff, 2010). The first and foremost problem is society, not religion: “ Rather, he proposed that religion reflects society, therefore any criticism of religion must ipso facto be a criticism of society itself. "Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics ." Religion for Marx is a human product. "Man makes religion, religion doesn't make man. Religion is the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again."...what Marx proposes is that religion does not reflect man's true consciousness. Religion...is a false consciousness; religion is the product of men, the product of those in power—those who control the productive process” (Swatos, 1998). Marxist critiques apply to the process of British secularization in a few ways. Social critic Noam Chomsky, who pointed out in line with Walter Dean Burnham that increased religious radicalism “may be a reflection of depoliticization, that is, inability to participate in a meaningful fashion in the political arena, which may have a rather important psychic effect, heightened by the striking disparity between the facts and the ideological depiction of them” (Chomsky, 1999). Religion traditionally serves as a civic organizing force: When people find secular options for participation, such as the state, the value of religion decreases. In America and to a lesser extent England (which has tended to follow American trends in many ways), where atomization and social contact has decreased and people feel increasingly isolated and hopeless, religiosity has surged again. Marx's argument that religion serves a social control role in response to poverty and immiseration seems to be borne out by the fact that, in the Western world, religion declined as workers conditions improved and capitalism's worst excesses were put into check. Franck and Iannaccone found that “ the growth of the welfare state significantly diminished religiosity” (2009). McCleary points out that religion is, in economic terms, generally a form of leisure time and thus can be expected to decline as people's efficiency increases, per capita GDP increases and thus the value of their time (and therefore their leisure time) increases: “So, as a country’s per capita GDP increases, we expect to see a decrease in participation in formal religious activities. Older people and young people — in other words, those persons with a low value of time — will tend to participate more in religious activities” (2008). Rising conservative religious sentiment in the West seems to indicate that there is something to be said for the Marxist model of religion as social control for elites. However, there is an important element of neo-Marxist analysis that must be added: Liberation theology and radical religion (Riemer, 1999, p. 146; Chomsky, 1999; Sperlich, 2006). In the view of people like Otto Maturo, liberation theology and other radical religious trends such as some Christian movements like Quakers and many Buddhists invert the traditional role of religion, acting as social galvanizing force for the poor and oppressed rather than the opposite. However, Maturo still accepts the general Marxist framework, and it is important to note both that Marx did not deny that religion had many impacts but was instead interested in religion as it related to his model, and that liberation theologists themselves were deeply and intimately aware of the general role of the Catholic Church as a conservative institution. Durkheim agreed with Marx that religion was a form of social control but ended up thinking that this was a good thing in many ways (Durkheim, 1997; Crabtree, 2008; Townsley, 2004). He differed from Marx in his approach: Marx put economic engines first and analyzed religion only as a consequence of economic, “substructure” factors; Durkheim instead assumed that religion could be a powerfully formative force, “substructure” itself. “Durkheim invests a great deal of time exploring religion and how it has influenced the direction of society. Like Marx, Durkheim wanted a scientific understanding of society, an objective study. Also like Marx, he sees religion as a reflection of society and not a depiction of an external supernatural reality. However, Durkheim uses sociological method to prove that hypothesis. To do so, he explores the tribal religions of the Australian outback, as described by early anthropologists” (Townsley, 2004). In his analysis of Australian aboriginal peoples, he found that the choice of totem emphasized social and geographical differences between tribes, and served an epistemological and knowledge-arranging function. Similarly, in Le Suicide, Durkheim develops his notion of anomie. In Durkheim's view, Protestant countries that had increased personal latitude and freedom and decreased the panoptical role of religion had created a situation where people would commit suicide due to atomism and egoism (1997). He found that suicide rates were higher among men than women, soldiers than civilians, Protestants than Catholics and Jews, and higher among unmarried or childless people. Religion had acted powerfully to create social norms: The Catholic Church, as the one true wellspring of divine knowledge and mandate, would tell people how to behave, organize social life, and create norms that would remain unchallenged. By emphasizing the role of private revelation, individual conscience and so forth, Protestantism had undermined strong shared social norms. If anyone can come up with any norm they wish, what is the objective source of norms? Can't people disagree? What if someone doesn't believe anything? Durkheim argued that suicide resulted from a lack of connections to others and tangible social norms. Thus, the Durkheimian view of religion is that of value-creator, anomie-preventer, norm-propagator and universe-arranger. In the modern industrial world, the state or other institutions have taken over these norms. Values and norms are created by public educational institutions and by a nationalist ideology around the state, and the universe is arranged epistemologically, ontologically and phenomenologically by science. The Durkheimian view seems to also explain the decline of religion and the increase in secularization in Britain. Kushner and Sterk's analysis, however, argues that Durkheim was being informed by “unexamined nostalgic and patriarchal assumptions” and have re-examined his data to indicate that women actually had higher suicide rates when one takes into account suicide attempts (e.g. women attempt suicide more often than men but succeed less often, usually because they choose methods that won't threaten their beauty such as pills, slitting wrists or drowning instead of guns). Finally, Weber, the last of the big three of religious analysis, tried to offer a corrective to what he viewed as too simplistic a view on the part of the Marxists (Townsley, 2004; Smith, 2010). In Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber argues that the Protestant work ethic, specifically Calvinism, which emphasized dour, hard-working people who saved and avoided luxury was integral to the creation of early capitalism by causing people to work hard for industrial overlords and creating amassed capital that, unlike the nobles of feudal society, would be invested profitably (Townsley, 2004; Smith, 2010). Weber assumed religion could create economy just as much as economy could create religion, but also agreed with Marx that material and institutional factors created beliefs rather than the other way around: Protestantism steered capitalism, it did not make it. Weber extended an analysis of religion historically, arguing that traditionally shamans and magicians would perform practical tricks on crops or livestock. People would then create increasingly systematized religions, ordering the world with systems of priests, gods and moral commandments: Priests demonstrated a “professional equipment of special knowledge, fixed doctrine, and vocational qualifications, which brings him into contrast with sorcerers, prophets and other types of religious functionaries who exert their influence by virtue of their personal gifts (charisma) made manifest in miracle and revelation” (Townsley, 2004). A Weberian analysis of secularization may note two things. First: As capitalism becomes a consumer culture and produces ever-increasing luxuries, as well as creates a class of people with simply unprecedented wealth and power, the former utility of Protestant and religious doctrine in moderating greed and luxury spending becomes actually counterproductive. People need ideologies that lionize rather than punish personal consumption. Again, insofar as GDP increases, religiosity declines. Second: As the magicians reveal their tricks, as scientists take back the power from priests that alchemists and magicians once had, the power of the priests declines. Current Theories As already noted, current theories of religiosity such as those espoused by Bruce, Davie, Wilson, Foucault, Chomsky, and others are salient to our discussion as well. We have already considered Chomsky's analysis: He argues that the rise of radical Islamism in the Middle East and religion in the West have the same fundamental causes, a lack of ability to accomplish things through secular political institutions (Chomsky, 1999). Chomsky points out that Israel attacked the PLO and got Hezbollah and Hamas, and that the US replaced Mossadeq with Khomeini. Bruce as editor of Religion and Modernization (1992) noted that there was in fact immense controversy over the assumption that modernity per se produced secularization. Bruce tries many elements of secularization in the West in God is dead (2002). One particularly important element is the “cultural defence”: “What many settings where religion remains a powerful social force have in common is that religion is implicated in group identity, primarily of an ethnic or national character” (Bruce, 2002, 31). When people have their identity threatened, they organize around shared institutions and beliefs that can protect the dignity of their identity. Bruce offers the examples of Poland and Ireland. Ireland in particular is important to our analysis of British secularization: It shows that an area that is heavily integrated into the West can remain highly religious. This may explain the apparent permanence and power of religiosity among Polish and Muslim immigrants: They feel a need to retain their culture. An important reply to Bruce that Chomsky or Durkheim may float is that, in places like Ireland and Palestine, organizations like the Church and Hamas also serve governmental functions. The Catholic Church is such a powerful institution and so integrated into so many parts of civic, economic (through charity) and political life that it would likely still be of importance in Ireland even if the English had not so threatened the Irish cultural character. Bruce acknowledges this: “[N]ote how ethnic conflict can inhibit [secularization's] development. Consider structural differentiation. My previous account assumed there were no obstacles to the increasing autonomy of social functions... [W]here its people have been unable to dominate a national culture, the Catholic Church has insisted on maintaining its own school system and has often created parallel versions of secular institutions” (Bruce, 2002, 31). Bruce's analyses of secularization emphasize factors such as structural differentiation. Davie might respond that America has just as secular of institutions and less of a history of Catholic or Anglican entanglement yet has more religiosity (Berger, Davie and Fokas, 2008). Davie and his colleagues emphasize different constitutional structures, the weaker American welfare state, more racial struggle which would tend to lead black, Hispanic and Asian people to turn inwards and embrace their own religion, the history of much of America as specific religious sanctuaries and the history of the Fundamentalists, and so on (2008). Wilson's career was immensely complex, but a few consistent factors can be sussed out (Times Online, 2004). In Magic and the Millennium (1975), Wilson argued that merely looking at historical or material backgrounds for religions would be inadequate given the way that Zulu, Native American and Maori cultures all developed a millennialist school. Rather, he argued that religions are heavily influenced by apparently minor cultural flow and that they tend to respond to structurally similar outcomes: As societies progress, they all start to worry about the same things, and there is something enchanting and ominous about the idea of a millennium that everyone can recognise it. Similarly, Wilson pointed out that both Scientology and the Japanese mystical sect Soka Gakkai both emphasized scientific and modern imagery in their mythology and focused on individual satisfaction, health and well-being over moral development (1994). “As society moves from a production-orientated economy, which required a moral order in which the work ethic has a central role, to a consumer economy, the image of a personal God becomes replaced by the idea of an impersonal force or spirit; rewards are increasingly sought in this life, in this world; or, via reincarnation, in the next life, but still in this world” (Times Online, 2004). Wilson explained secularization primarily as a product of “how industrialisation, urbanisation, rationalisation, bureaucratisation and societalisation have undermined religious institutions; how the economy, welfare, education, health, the law and other public spheres no longer depend on religious values, practices or institutions” (Times Online, 2004). Finally, it is worthwhile to analyze Foucault and postmodern approaches to the problems of religion and secularization. Postmodernists in general have a complex relationship to religion: While religion is a totalizing discourse, many postmodern thinkers like Nandy, Raskin and Frederique and Stephen Marglin also point out that all stories are equal and argue that there is an imperialist tendency to dismiss the religious knowledge of Native peoples (Z Papers, 1992). To say too quickly that religion is bad, or that secularization has these traits, is too totalizing for them. Similarly, Foucault did “[write] under the sign of Nietzsche’s anti-Enlightenment destroyer of idols” but also had “another characterization of religion present...that is admittedly not as prevalent as his conception of religion as a set of utterly heteronomous practices that give rise to modern discourses of governmentality. This second, more positive characterization of religion lies in its capacity to contest these nascent forms of state control instituted during the modern period (which are the very forms of governmental control that Christianity helped foster)” (McCall, 2004). Conclusions There are many philosophical approaches both to the study of religion and to the study of secularization. One thing is clear: To test which of these hypotheses is correct, we will need a dizzying array of statistical tools and/or highly specific definitions. Nonetheless, there is a general consensus among these works that secularization is caused by the ascendancy of institutions that perform the roles of religion combined with the increasing irrelevancy of religion as wealth increases and worldly satisfaction can be found. Works Cited Berger, P., Davie, G. and Fokas, E. 2008, Religious America, Secular Europe? Ashgate, 2008. Bruce, S. (ed), 1992. Religion and Modernization, Oxford University Press: London, December. Bruce, S. 2002, God is dead: Secularization in the West, Wiley-Blackwell. Chomsky, N. 1999, “Remarks on Religion”, Available at: http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/1990----.htm Crabtree, V. 2008, “Secularisation Theory”, November 30, Available at: http://www.humanreligions.info/secularisation.html Franck, R. and Iannaconne, LR. 2009, “Why did religiosity decrease in the Western World during the twentieth century?”, ASREC, Available at: http://www.religionom ics.com/asrec/ASREC09_Papers/Franck%20&%20Iannaccone%20ASRE C%202009.pdf Kushner, HI and Stark, CE. 2005, “The Limits of Social Capital: Durkheim, Suicide, and Social Cohesion”, American Journal of Public Health, 95(7):1139-1143, July. McCall, C. 2004, “Autonomy, Religion, & Revolt in Foucault”, Journal of Philosophy and Scripture, vol. 2 issue 1, fall 2004. McCleary, RM. 2008, “Religion and Economic Development”, Policy Review, April & May. Riemer, N. 1996, Let justice roll: prophetic challenges in religion, politics, and society, Rowman & Littlefield. Shagor, H. “Marx and religion: A brief study”. Available at: http://www.mukto- mona.com/Articles/himel_shagor/Religion_Marx.pdf Smith, P. 2010, “Religion”, Available at: http://www.smirnov.demon.co.uk/socialism/overview/religion.htm Sperlich, WB. 2006, Noam Chomsky, Reaktion Books. Swatos Jr., WH. (ed). 1998, “Karl Marx”, Encylopedia of Religion and Society, Available at: http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/Marx.htm Times Online. 2004, “Bryan Wilson”. Townsley, Jeramy. 2004, “Marx, Weber and Durkheim on Religion”, August, Available at: http://www.jeramyt.org/papers/sociology-of-religion.html Wilson, BR. 1966, Religion in Secular Society. Wilson, BR. 1975, Magic and the Millennium. Wilson, BR. 1994, Time to Chant. Woods, A. 2001, “Marxism and Religion”, In Defense of Marxism, July 22. Wolff, J. 2010, “Karl Marx”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Z Papers. “Science Wars”. 1992. Available at: http://zmagazine.zcommunications.org/ScienceWars/index.htm Read More