Secularisation: Meaning and Effects on Church - Essay Example

Secularisation: Its Meanings and Effects on Church History Introduction This three-part paper is on secularisation, what it means, why it is an issueof considerable importance, and how it has affected church history in the world in general and Australia in particular. In the first part, the various meanings of the term secularisation are discussed to allow a clear understanding for the reader. The second part is a discussion of the past on ongoing debates on the issue of secularisation, its proponents, and its predicted effects on the world. The third part looks at the effects of secularisation on church history, with a brief commentary on the Australian experience. Meaning(s) of Secularisation It was Weber1 who first gave the sociology of religion the seminal concept of secularisation, later to be developed in greater detail by his colleague Troeltsch2 to describe what could be characterised as the decline in the influence of religion on society. The Latin root of the word - saeculum - provides a hint of its ecclesiastical origin, but its ambiguous meanings (era, age, the world, forever, etc.) act somewhat as a warning that every human effort to define it, much less pin it down into a neatly classified field of social scientific study, would either be an impossible task or a challenge that would take forever. Sociologist Larry Shiner3 tried to arrive at a universally accepted modern definition of the word "secularisation" for purposes of both empirical research and interpretation. He argued that there was a total lack of agreement as to what the term signified and how it could be measured. His paper attempted to bring the secularisation concept into focus by considering its history, types of usage and application, a critique of various forms of the concept as analytical tools, and a critique of the secular-religious polarity. However, due to the term's polemical past, its extremely varied definitions, and its frequent use as a blanket term to cover several disparate processes, he concluded that the term "secularisation" should either be abandoned or be explicitly recognised as a comprehensive term covering three complementary but distinct processes: desacralisation, differentiation, and transposition. After him, Martin argued that "the word 'secular', like the word 'religious', is amongst the richest of all words in its range of meaningfull of internal contradictions of which the conventional dictionary scarcely gives a hint". 4 Such a warning, however, should not be a source of discouragement but rather the prelude to an interesting discussion that is full of promise and insight that can help social scientists to better understand past, present, and future events. Martin identified four groups of meanings of the word "secularisation" 5: (1) Decline in the power, wealth, influence, range of control, and prestige of ecclesiastical (church) institutions. As a result, there is considerably less importance of the church's role in society, in the State, and in the professions. (2) Diminution in the frequency, number, intensity, importance, and efficacy of religious customs, practices, and rituals. These are treated as of marginal importance in life, leading to lower over-all attendance to religious worship, a decline in vocations, lower level or religious knowledge and more liberality in personal conduct. (3) Demystification and translation of religious concepts and symbols within a human and temporal reference. This includes rejection of mysterious and non-observable truths and turning to naturalistic, scientific, and objective facts. (4) Decrease in the sense of the supernatural depth and meaning, marked by rejection, indifference, lack of seriousness, dedication, and concern. However, whilst Martin associated secularisation with the decline of what could be characterised as religiosity or religious practices according to the norms of organised (Christian) institutions, he also pointed out a series of paradoxes existing within each of these definition classes that hint at alternative religious sentiments underlying human behaviour. He mentioned, for example, the presence of religious elements in anti-religious positions, the difficulties in interpreting declines in religious practices that were of questionable essence, and the 'natural' mental and behavioural framework that collapses and leads to social- and self-destruction in the absence of a religious foundation. However, what is perhaps his most important point relates to the first set of definitions: the decline in influence and power of the church in the State and in society could be a sign of the church's triumph or failure, of secularisation being good.6 What this means is that the ecclesiastical institutions were not meant to exercise such great and long-lasting power over society and social institutions. Rather, like any normal parent, their role was to nurture modern society into learning to think for itself, attaining such strength and measure of independence that it could carry out its role of looking after the temporal good of mankind. With 'mature' society and State as partners, the established ecclesiastical institutions could be held in check (as the history of the Middle Ages show, even holy people can act like demons towards others) so that they meddle less with temporal affairs and, instead, to focus on what they were established for, which is to look after the spiritual good of mankind. Therefore, it can be inferred from Martin's arguments written shortly after the Second Vatican Council that secularisation has been one of the best things that has been taking place since the last century. Another interesting insight was provided by Ely,7 who defined secularisation as one of three kinds of processes: (1) Institutional: religious institutions lose legal and financial privileges; (2) Ethical-cognitive: diminishing hold, within a given social field, or religious faith and beliefs; or, (3) Cultural: lessening use or trivialisation of religious customs, rites, and symbols. Ely agreed with the observation of social historians "that European Australia has undergone almost total institutional secularisation and partial but increasing secularisation in the ethical-cognitive and cultural domains"8. However, mirroring some of Martin's insights, Ely brought up several key observations, two of which are worth considering. The first is the important role of religion in society as a stabilising force, an intrinsic and necessary component of public life in the form of regular, public, religious or religious-like ceremonies in which the society's foundation myths, exemplary saviours, heroes, rites of passage, and constitutive social ground-rules are formally celebrated. The second is the rise of these practices of civil religion that has began forming an important part of a society's common culture, with some even demanding stricter compliance from the members of society, such as legal action against disrespecting the national flag. This argument follows Bellah,9 who wrote extensively on civil religious practices in America. Unlike in America, however, where civil religious practices are markedly influenced by undertones of the Christian religion and the sacred, Australian civil religion has been observed to be less so, linked more to a series of pedestrian acts of human heroism detached from a sacred nature. Ely also argues that although Australia's social history seemed less characterised by an overt Christian influence, there have been clear signs of an innate sense of the sacred amongst the two dominant groups in Australian life, what he called the middle (British-Protestant-middle class) and real (Irish-Catholic-working class) Australians10. Ely's thesis is that Australia's sense of the sacred is tied less to rituals and theories and more to practices, mindsets, and attitudes, resulting in a continuum between the destructive-negative secularisation and the creative-commanding force of sacralisation that has become the dynamic and structural element in Australian history11 that is worthy of further study. McAllister12 in his empirical study of the transmission of religious values in Australia identified three explanatory factors for the secularisation trend, which he characterised by the gradual erosion of religion as an important influence in modern society: (1) Continued socioeconomic development and a consequent undermining of religious explanations; (2) Life cycle effects and the differing approaches to it; and, (3) Generational change. The first states that as a society progresses and becomes more modern, its people find less time and use for religion. The second is somewhat related to the first: the result of sociological observation that young, single, and physically and socially mobile individuals have less interest in religion, but as they grow older and more stable, social pressures lead them to the practice of religion. The third is defined in terms of the particular era and social climate in which the individual grew up, which includes the family and social environments that acted as factors that influenced the way religion was "acquired" and is practiced. Testing each of these three causes, he discovered that the first two causes (modernization and life cycle effects) have significant, though limited, validity, whilst the third (generational change) accounted for much of the secularisation trend. More specifically, he identified the differences in religious socialisation across generations as a significant factor. Thus, his first significant finding is that as the loss of faith and religious fervour is transmitted from one generation to the next, the reverse is equally true, that parents who happily practice their religion transmit this to the next generation. A second finding of interest is that the secularisation trend - defined as the loss of religious influence - is experienced more by the liberalised established religions (Anglicanism) that are less demanding of its constituents, whilst those that demand greater commitment (like Catholicism) experience the negative consequences to a lesser degree.13 Through this study, McAllister likewise subtly points out the fallacy that making it easier to practice religion would lead to an increase in followers. Secularisation Issues and Debates Among the many issues related to secularisation that have been the focus of debates amongst social scientists in the latter half of the 20th century, an analysis of the literature has pointed out two which, although not necessarily the most important, are worth looking into in this paper. In both cases, a common agreement on the definition of secularisation would be needed, but absent that, the findings discussed would be non-conclusive. Besides, a paper of this length would not be the proper forum for arriving at a definitive conclusion. The first, of course, is whether secularisation is objectively taking place, i.e., religion is declining in significance in a world that is continually progressing. The second is whether secularisation is an analytic tool or a value judgment that is properly situated within the sociological field. The conceptual nature and depth of these issues point out the frustrations in past attempts to define, much less specify, the term and the process. Despite observations of a wave of declining religious influence and popular fervour that sociologists define as exhibiting evidences of secularisation, there are critics amongst the social scientists who could not accept the phenomenon as scientific fact, obvious and measurable. Amongst these prominent critics is Hadden,14 who pointed out that "secularisation is more a doctrine than a theory based on presuppositions that represent a taken-for-granted ideology of social scientists rather than a systematic set of interrelated propositions".15 He argued that social scientists have sacralised the idea of secularisation into a belief system accepted on faith. He likewise challenged secularisation theory as "internally weak in its logical structure, a hodgepodge of loosely employed ideasand unsupported by data"16 His challenge supported earlier ones by sociologists Shiner, Robertson17, and Glasner18 who also looked at the similar topic of sociology and secularisation. In the opposite camp are sociologists like Martin, Luckmann19, Dobbelaere20, and Bruce21 who continue to see secularisation, though difficult to define, as a useful analytical tool. Dobbelaere refers to secularisation as a "descriptive concept that denotes the particularisation in the religious subsystem of the general process of functional differentiation on the macro level22", which hints at the complex and highly esoteric nature of the debates amongst sociologists that continue to take place. This debate is marked by mounting evidence on both sides that secularisation, because it admits of several definitions, is easily observed but difficult to measure with objectivity according to the rigours of scientific study. Gorski23 offers a more radical thesis that a society can be more secularised without being less religious. What contemporary social scientists have been doing is nothing else but continuing the debates that have been going on since the dawn of the Enlightenment, when the world's leading philosophers and church critics began predicting the death of all organised religion. Their thesis was based on the line of reasoning that the rise of science would establish the primacy of intellectual advancement that would mark the end of theological superstitions, symbolic rituals, and sacred practices. As mankind matures, religion would be obsolete, unmodern, and pass24. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, great social thinkers like Comte, Durkheim, Weber, Marx, and Freud all believed that religion would fade in importance and lose social significance with the coming of the industrial society. The death of religion became the conventional wisdom in the social sciences, in fact regarded as the master model of sociological inquiry, where secularisation was ranked with bureaucratisation, rationalisation, and urbanisation as the key historical revolutions transforming medieval agrarian societies into modern industrial nations.25 The death knell of religion was summarised by Mills: "Once the world was filled with the sacred - in thought, practice, and institutional form. After the Reformation and the Renaissance, the forces of modernisation swept across the globe and secularisation, a corollary historical process, loosened the dominance of the sacred. In due course, the sacred shall disappear altogether except, possibly, in the private realm."26 Now, most of these philosophers and sociologists have long been gone, some of them virtually forgotten except by academics and their students, but organised religions continue to exist, and thrive. Secularisation theory continues being challenged as observers note multiple indicators of religious growth and dynamism in the world, ranging from the continued popularity of religious worship and the emergence of new religious movements in developed industrialised nations and the resurgence of fundamentalism in the Islamic world. There is also an increase in international conflicts rooted in ethnic and religious convictions. One of the social scientists to throw in the towel, Berger27, was a firm believer of secularisation in the 1960s until he observed in 1999 that "the world today, with some exceptionsis as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever. This means (that) 'secularisation theory' is essentially mistaken.28" However, despite vehement calls, for example by Finke and Stark29 that it is "time to carry the secularisation doctrine to the graveyard of failed theories, and there to whisper 'requiescat in pace'", it would be equally premature as forecasting the death of religion to declare that secularisation is dead. Whilst it is undeniable, with the presence of abundant evidence, that religion and religiosity are alive, it is difficult to conclude that it is doing well. For one, whilst attendance to Catholic and Protestant churches is stable in America, it is declining in Europe, and while the church attendance of conservative-minded immigrants from Latin America and Africa are skewing the statistics, the proportion of the white population in Christian America, Europe, and Australia that continue to practice their religion is declining30. There is a need to update the traditional secularisation thesis to take into account factors like globalisation, poverty, and immigration. The presence of charismatic and intellectual church leaders, as the Catholics have enjoyed in the last thirty years, have also had a positive effect that need to be taken into account31. And to what extent is religious revival a sign of intellectual assent, rather than of political conviction, existential insecurity, personal vulnerability in a highly-stressed world, or the growth of religion as a viable business that mixes convenience and interior peace Measuring the rise of religiosity in an objective way to neutralise the bias effects of certain variables shows how difficult it is to measure secularisation. Whilst a systematic erosion of religious practices, values and beliefs is taking place amongst the most prosperous social sectors in affluent and secure post-industrial nations, quasi-religious practices are taking their place, such as respect for the environment, defence of animal rights, human body worship, and the rise of new religious movements. Although these are not religions according to the traditional sense of the word, their general characteristics are similar to civic religious practices that, in developed nations, are more and more attaining the level of seriousness, extent of mores, and complexity of rituals that continue to characterise the established religions. The traditional secularisation thesis certainly needs updating in order to carry on the debate, at the same time that the definitions of the 'sacred' and the 'secular' continue to evolve in the light of recent and future global events that blur the dividing lines between these two concepts. This is why secularisation continues to be a topic of scientific interest, because past studies provide key elements of traditional sociological accounts that future scientists can build on by having a clear knowledge of where they have been mistaken in the past. Like the litmus paper chemists use, studies in secularisation are useful to understand, measure, and study what is difficult, if not nearly impossible, to grasp: the spirituality of the human person, the belief in an afterlife, and how a set of beliefs can influence temporal behaviour. Effects of Secularisation This third part looks at the effects - both observable and measurable - of secularisation in the church and in the world. Given the various disagreements and facets of the ongoing debate on the issue(s) related to the topic, it would be best to point out that focusing on secularisation's effects on the Christian churches, highlighting the specific Australian experience, allows for a limited though illustrative and illuminating perception of its practical consequences. Having discussed the general effects of secularisation observed in the world since the Enlightenment as already earlier pointed - decreased influence of church institutions, decline in the number of religious vocations, decrease in religious attendance, an increase in the frequency of personal behaviour that the established churches and religions classify as inherently immoral such as abortion, liberal sexual practices with humans and animals regardless of gender and species, divorce, amongst many other displays of behaviour that signify a disregard for church teachings, such as a life of virtue and the eternal - two major effects could be identified and briefly explained: (1) the reduced influence of the Church in matters of State government, and as a consequence, (2) the rise in the number of States that allow artificial birth control, divorce, and abortion, with related growth trends in the legalisation of same-sex unions and euthanasia. McQuillan,32 in arguing that religion can influence fertility, identified four factors that imply the observed and measurable effects of secularisation: (1) Religious doctrine affects the proximate determinants of fertility, such as attitudes to abortion, contraception, sexual relations, and non-marital childbearing; (2) Socio-cultural messages that support large families, emphasise the importance of family, social duty, status from parenthood, and gender role pressure supporting motherhood; (3) Communication of values through mechanisms that promote compliance and punish nonconformity; and (4) Affiliation which provides a source of identity. These four factors affect the attitudes of a population depending on the extent to which the State exercises its power over the Church. This is why most States even in the Christian and Catholic West have legalised abortion, birth control, and divorce, and allowed certain forms of promiscuous behaviour that lead necessarily to the formation and entrenchment of secularised attitudes. These trends point out the lessening of influence of the Church especially as regards issues of population management and family size determination which increasingly has been influenced by factors related to economic development, such as the level of education, career success, and the trend towards materialism and hedonism. Several related secularising factors have contributed to this. For example, in the 1970s, there was a marked contrast between the strict stand of the Catholic Church on birth control and the absence of any explicit position on most of these issues from the large non-Catholic Christian churches.33 This pressured States to adopt legislation that contained wide political appeal in a pluralist population. In the 1960s also began a wave of social liberalisation that led to the pursuit of post-materialist values like self-actualisation, individual autonomy, and recognition for individual achievement.34 The spread of feminism and birth control pill use promoted an attitude that associated child-bearing with a reduction of individual freedom, clashing with self-fulfilment that came to be pursued through work and leisure in exchange for parenthood.35 However, despite evident signs of secularisation taking place, of which Australia is not exempt, two writers provide a silver lining that are of interest to the Churches. Black36 revealed that in some respects, religion in Australia is similar to that in many other Western societies, but significantly different in other respects. Though over-all, religion in Australia tends to occupy a position intermediate to that which it occupies in Britain and the United States, various ironies or paradoxes discerned in religious institutions in Australia cannot be properly understood apart from the ideological structure of Western Judeo-Christian civilisation. Most recently, Newman and Hugo,37 in their scientific examination of the 'old' issue of religion and fertility in relation to education, concluded after conducting in-depth interviews with the use of quantitative data on religion, fertility, and educational levels using 1996 statistics for Southern Australia, that the religious upbringing of women between the ages 40-44 played a very important role in negating the traditional relationship between higher education and lower fertility. Whilst women with 'No Religion' had lower fertility than those 'With a Religion', university-educated women in New Protestant-New Christian groups had a higher fertility than university-educated women in other denominations. Their study implied that, taking off from the earlier research of McAllister, there are more children at present whose parents practice a religion than those whose parents do not, and the continuation of this trend signals the future decline of secularisation. Secularisation has undoubtedly changed church history, but as Maritain declared, after twenty centuries the church learns to adjust, adapt, and continue to find new meaning: "In truth, every vestige of the Holy Empire is today liquidated; we have definitely emerged from the sacral age and baroque age. After sixteen centuries which it would be shameful to slander or repudiate, but which have completed their death agony and whose grave defects were incontestable, a new age begins."38 Conclusion Secularisation has undoubtedly and tremendously affected the history of the church, as the Christian churches had to compete in attaining its objectives with the forces of secularisation like the rise of civil religions and the promotion of post-materialist values. Nevertheless, the recent increase in religious fervour and a growing appreciation for the sacred, even amongst the educated portions of the population, are a sign of hope for a future rebirth. Besides, practically all countries where secularisation is most advanced show fertility rates far below the replacement level, whilst societies with traditional religious orientations have fertility rates that are two or three times the replacement level, signifying a growing share of the world's population. As the gap between the sacred and secular expands around the globe, expect more important consequences for cultural change, society, world politics, and the breaking of new ground in the march of civilisation. Bibliography Aldridge, Alan Religion in the Contemporary World, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2000. Bellah, Robert N. The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial, New York, Seabury Press, 1975. Berger, Peter L. (ed.) The Desecularization of the World, Washington, DC, Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1999. Black, Alan W. 'The sociology of religion in Australia' Sociological Analysis, 51, Special Presidential Issue Sociology of Religion: International Perspectives, 1990, pp. S27-S41. Borrie, Wilfred David 'Population and Australia: A Demographic Analysis and Projection', First Report of the National Population Inquiry, Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1975. Bruce, Steve (ed.) Religion and Modernization, Oxford, O.U.P., 1972. 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Maritain, Jacques The Peasant of the Garonne: An Old Layman Questions Himself about the Present Time, trans. Michael Caddihy and Elizabeth Hughes, New York, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968. Martin, David 'Secularization: The range of meaning', in The Religious and the Secular: Studies in Secularization, New York, Schocken Books, 1969, pp. 48-57. McAllister, Ian 'Religious change and secularization: The transmission of religious values in Australia', Sociological Analysis, 49 (3), 1988, p. 249-263. McCallum, John 'Secularisation in Australia between 1966 and 1985: A Research Note', Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 23, 1987, pp. 407-22. McQuillan, Kevin 'When does religion influence fertility' Population and Development Review, 30 (1), 2004, pp. 25-56. Mills, C. Wright The Sociological Imagination, New York, O.U.P., 1959. Newman, Lareen A. and Graeme J. Hugo 'Women's fertility, religion, and education in a low-fertility population: Evidence from South Australia', Journal of Population Research, 23 (1), 2006, pp. 41-66. Owen, Richard 'The Ratzinger Effect: more money, more pilgrims - and lots more Latin', Times Online, 7 July, 2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2039932.ece, accessed 8 July, 2007. Robertson, Roland 'Sociologists and secularization', Sociology, 5, 1971, pp. 297-312. Shiner, Larry 'The concept of secularization in empirical research, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 6 (2), Autumn, 1967, pp. 207-220. Stark, Rodney 'Secularization, RIP', Sociology of Religion, 60(3), 1999, pp. 249-273. Stark, Rodney and Roger Finke Acts of Faith, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000. Troeltsch, Ernst Protestantism and Progress, Boston, Beacon Press, 1958 [1912]. Weber, Max The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York, Scribner, 1930 [1904/5]. Read More