Secularisation in the sociology of religion

Sociologists of religion in the 1960s, such as Steve Bruce or Peter Berger, argued for a secularisation paradigm, by which religion would lose its importance in the public sphere and in the private behaviour and identification of citizens. Evidence from Britain was especially important in constructing this paradigm. Since the 1850s, Britain saw a steady decline in attendance at communion and, since the 1920s, in other rites of passage such as baptism and church marriage. The ban on labour on Sundays or a pledge to abstain from alcohol, both mainstays of Nonconformist culture c.1900, are almost entirely forgotten. Finally, the most striking instance of Christianity’s loss of control over society is the disappearance of taboos surrounding sex before marriage, especially after the 1960s.

The paradigm states that these changes are side effects of intellectual and economic developments since the early modern period. The Reformation, it is argued, was linked to an expansion in literacy and the ability of laypeople to interpret Scriptures for themselves. And the diversity of Protestant interpretations of Scripture meant that uniform belief was now impossible, forcing wider discussions about religious tolerance and the management of diverse theologies after the Civil War. Industrialisation in the nineteenth century meant migration away from the social control of face-to-face village life for the relative anonymity of the town. It also meant the evolution of labour organisations that could provide welfare, without leaving the poor dependent on the provision of churches.

According to the secularisation paradigm, the transformations of the twentieth century, namely the spread of democracy and the welfare state, pushed the functions of the church as a provider of welfare and education to the sidelines of society, while the experience of democratic involvement and trade unionism made social choice, and holding rulers to account, a more common part of everyday political experience. In a political environment where choice was considered a social good, and where people were considered to be qualified to know their own interests, it became much harder to maintain the cultural and religious status quo. As Antony Giddens has put it, the key characteristic of modernity is that behaviour has to be justified and argued for, it cannot be taken for granted. As the possibilities of media and leisure diversified, religion increasingly had to compete, not only with other worldviews, but also with other ways of spending one’s time.

This, then, is the model. But many have found it a poor way of explaining the persistent role of religion in the twentieth century. Grace Davie has argued that modern Europe continues to draw on religion to define time and space, of cities known by parish names and of seasons of the year defined by the celebration of festivals. Religion continues to be present in education in many European countries and plays a political role (perhaps most notably in Germany, where religious organisations can charge additional taxes for adherents). Moreover, new religious movements such as Pentecostalism have adapted very well to a modern urban environment. Its extraordinary growth in Latin America, East Asia and Africa over the last fifty years has been attributed to its egalitarian, democratic and female-friendly leadership structures, its strong welfare organisation and its multi-racial character, all of which seem to be characteristics that are attractive in a globalising and democratising world.

Muslim-majority countries have showed some of the best examples in which the secularisation paradigm appears to have been confounded. The establishment of a theocratic government in Iran, the exaggeration of sectarian difference in Iraq and Syria and the entrenched role of religious political parties in Pakistan all seem to defy the predictions of Bruce and Berger. Indeed, Peter Berger was moved to abandon his earlier faith in the paradigm. He argued that Chicago sociology professors had expected the mullahs of Qom, American evangelicals and Tibetan lamas to become more like them, but it was the sociology professors who were actually the odd ones out.

Others theorists, like José Casanova, have argued that what we have seen in the twentieth century is not a decline in the significance of religion, but a re-definition of religion in response to different definitions of the secular. He argued that the proliferation of different spheres of knowledge (science, economics, the state) has led to specialised forms of moral investigation that traditional forms of reasoning from Scripture have found it hard to engage with.

Steve Bruce, however, has remained firm. For him, the paradigm itself is about the relationship between democracy, industrialisation, education and welfare (on one hand) and religion (on the other). I imagine that he would argue that the persistence of religious influence over politics in Pakistan (for instance) is a function of the failure of the state to produce a welfare state, foster critical education or allow democracy to affect vested interests. If there was an act of over-confidence by the secularisation theorists, it may have been an over-confidence in the spread of social democracy, rather a misconception of how social democracy had affected religion.