Modern Britain is now a secular society

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                                                                        Jessica Pemberton

Modern Britain is now a secular society. To what extent do sociological arguments and evidence agree with this view? (40)

This essay critically evaluates the claim that secularisation is occurring in modern Britain. The claim derives mainly from view that secularisation is the product of industrial revolution and growth of scientific knowledge. Many sociologists have agreed that change in society will lead to changes in religion. Furthermore, many have claimed that social change would lead to the weakening or even disappearance of religion.

Many sociologists have tried to define secularisation, Bryan Wilson (Religion in Secular Society, 1966), describes secularisation as, “The process whereby religious thinking, practices and institutions lose their social significance”. While Peter Berger (The Social Reality of Religion, 1969) argues that it is “The process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols”.

Secularisation therefore, is a process whereby “religious activity” in any society progressively declines over time.

However, while it is one thing to describe something like secularisation, it is quite another thing to be able to demonstrate that what we have described is actually happening in our society. To be able to measure the concept of secularisation there are two basic ideas that are involved. Firstly, it must be comparative, for example, if society is less religious now, then society will have been more religious in the past. Therefore it is important to measure religious activity in past and present society. Secondly, there must be indicators by which we can measure religious activity. These indicators are religious practice, religious organisation and religious thought.

However, it is not always straightforward when measuring religious activity. Firstly, we have limited knowledge of religious activity in the past and have few accurate records of religious participation, attendance and membership. Therefore we cannot suggest whether people attended church voluntarily, how important religion was to individuals, or what “religion” actually meant to be people. Secondly, we cannot assume that religious participation necessarily indicates strong religious beliefs. Therefore we must be careful when measuring religious activity in that we do not make our own assumptions.

This essay is now going to look at religious organisation and the pro-secularisation side of the debate.

When looking at secularisation in Modern Britain, it is important to compare it to religious activity to that in the past. The role and the influence of the Church have faced significant changes over time. In Feudal Britain, the Church was able to define and control the way in which people viewed the world. It was able to propagate a clear, firmly controlled explanation of social life in a society that lacked mass education and mass communications. The Church leaders were actively involved in all economic, political, military and cultural aspects of life, creating Britain as a political dictatorship organized around religious values.

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On the other hand, when we look at modern Britain the picture we get is very different.

With the growth of political democracy in the 20th century, the role of the Church has changed as the basis of its power has been eroded by the development of political parties. The growth of scientific ideologies has meant that the Church no longer has a monopoly of knowledge, fatally weakened one of their greatest strengths, the ability to control how people see and think about the world. Although its specialist insights into “religious questions” such as the meaning of life; may ...

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