Implicit Religion: A New Approach to the Study of Religion?
Francis Stewart
Research Summary
A change brought to the study of religion by the development and ultimate failure of the secularisation thesis was a new approach that sought to answer the question, ‘What is secular religion?’ This approach was Implicit Religion, whose origin, nature and significance are discussed in the article summarized in this research report. The original article (available open-access) is linked at the end of the report, as are other links to further reading. The article is also a resource for A level teaching, especially OCR (H573/03) 2c. Developments in Christian thought, 6. Challenges: The Challenge of Secularism.
Researchers
Francis Stewart
Research Institution
Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln
What is this about?
This is about Implicit Religion, a new approach to the study of religion.
What was done?
The research is a concise scholarly critique of the secularisation thesis and associated ideas and developments. The secularisation thesis is that religion has gradually lost influence and significance in modern societies. The research gives particular attention to the response of Edward Bailey, who asked: how do people develop authentic selves and meaningful lives when their focus or commitment lie in what is called the secular rather than the religious? The distinction is often arbitrary. How do people express faith, belief or ritual in parts of their everyday lives?
Main findings and outputs
Examples of the above include what people sometimes feel or do in relation to sport, music or what might be called fandom (e.g. Elvis pilgrimages). To test these, Bailey developed three analytical tools or concepts:
- Commitment(s) – that to which the person, group or community is committed, to the level of being willing to make sacrifices in some respect for it.
- Integrating Foci – the aspects, rituals or material artefacts of the wider aspects of the commitment that enables the individual to bring the various aspects of their lives and/or identities into a coherent, meaningful whole.
- Intensive Concerns with Extensive Effects – the issues or causes that arise from the commitment that the individual or community is willing repeatedly to act upon, even at great cost to themselves.
Relevance to RE
The article can be used directly as a resource for A level teaching. It can be read by students and contains discussion points on which written follow-up work could also be based. More broadly, there are similarities between the ideas of Implicit Religion and Worldview. The research can be part of discussions about curriculum development in the subject, including how pupils can learn about religion as a conceptual category: what ‘counts’ as religious and why, and what the boundaries of content in the subject should be.
Generalisability and potential limitations
The article is a scholarly discussion, and does not really present data that can be assessed as generalisable or not. It is wide-ranging, and this perhaps gets to the question of limitations. Where should the limits be? Are there limits on what might count implicitly as religious? The article presents a framework for this (see above, Main findings and outputs), so again offering stimuli for discussion with pupils in the classroom.
Find out more
The article is Francis Stewart, Implicit Religion: A New Approach to the Study of Religion?, Challenging Religious Issues, Issue 16, Spring 2020: 22-27. You can access it freely at https://stgilescentre.org/16-2/
For further coverage of Francis Stewart’s research, see:
Francis Stewart (2021): Changing voices: the changing discourse of ‘religion’ and ‘implicit religious’ language, Journal of Beliefs & Values, DOI: 10.1080/13617672.2022.2005710
Francis Stewart (2021): Implicit religion: reshaping the boundary between the religious and the secular?, Journal of Beliefs & Values, DOI: 10.1080/13617672.2022.2005707