Revising Secularisation

A few points today to get you started on revising secularisation.

Here are some brief pointers for revising secularisation.

Remember to explore the definition – Bryan Wilson’s is well known and good to use for evaluation, and draw on empirical evidence.

For Secularisation

Survey evidence, e.g. Social Trends, British Social Attitudes – showing a decline in church attendance.

The laws against Sunday Trading were modified in the 1990s – Sunday increasingly seems to be a day to go shopping rather than to church.

Fewer people are getting married in church and the divorce rate is high.

There has been a long term and sustained decline in the number of clergy – Church of England and Roman Catholic.

Against Secularisation

The validity of statistics on church membership and attendance has been criticised by sociologists like David Martin.

There has been an increase in the membership of non-Trinitarian religions in the UK.

Religious broadcasting still continues to be popular – although some may argue it continues only in a secularized and watered-down form. But we still have ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4 and broadsheets do still cover religious matters.

The Head of State of the UK, the Queen is also the head of the Church of England – church and state are welded together in the constitution. The monarch must still be a member of the Church of England.

Many more points and certainly more evidence could be recounted here – but that should get you started.

You might also point out that globally, there is at least a reasonable argument to be made that religion continues to be of major social and political importance; witness the prominence of Islam. Of course however, some might argue that Islam is more of a political ideology – and so we get back to definitions. The sophisticated sociology student can at this point draw on Durkheim’s definition of religion – thus it really doesn’t matter that Islam (like many or even all religions) takes on a political role – that, if you follow Durkheim’s definition, is not particularly surprising. You could even argue that a Marxist view could quite easily explain the prominence of Islam, but unwrapping that one would take more space than I have today, and goes beyond the bounds of a few quick revision points.