"In modern society, religious beliefs and religious behaviour are changing rather than declining" assess arguments and evidence for and against this view.

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The Sociology Of Religion _                Esme . J . Owens

“In modern society, religious beliefs and religious behaviour are changing rather than declining” assess arguments and evidence for and against this view

There are two main ways in which religion is defined. Substantive definitions define a religious belief system as involving relations between the “natural” and the “supernatural” ideas therefore religion is defined in terms of structure and content of people’s beliefs not what religion does for them. The other way is functional definitions this defines religion in terms of the function it performs for society. This is what Marx called “the opium of the masses” and a form of social cement, this means tv or football matches could be considered religious.

Wilson (1982) stated that those who defined religion in substantive terms are more likely to support the secularisation thesis because they can show that religious beliefs has declined as people accept other more rational explanations of the world. The idea of secularisation suggests that religion is becoming less prominent in society and its institutions less important and influential in the lives of individuals.

The strongest evidence for secularisation is church attendance according to the 1851 census 40% of the population attended church by 1950 this had dropped to 20% and was less than 7.5% in 2000. Sunday school attendance has also dropped considerably from 55% in 1900 to just 4% in 2000 despite the4 fact that the population has grown considerably. But statistics relating to the previous century are unreliable because firstly reliable data collection practices were not in place and secondly Martin (1978) claims that relatively high attendance figures from the Victorian age may be a reflection of non-religious factors such as the need to be seen by social superiors. Contemporary statistics may not be reliable too because different religious organisations employ different counting methods. Also people who attend church are not necessarily practicing religious beliefs while those who do believe may not see the need to attend.  

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There are other contributing reasons to the decline of church attendance firstly with the exception of the Pentecostal church, churchgoers are considerably older than non-churchgoers, it appears that fewer and fewer young people are attending church – suggesting that eventually many churches may die out all together.

Another reason why the “substantive” religion say secularisation has happened in society is that people are now more concerned with their material standard of living than they are with spiritual welfare and are more likely to take direction form the mass media than the church. But there is evidence that ...

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