David Martin however disagreed with Wilson and questioned both his methods and results. Martin argued that the statistics used as evidence were unreliable and that the data was open to interpretation. In the instance of measuring Church attendance there is always the possibilty of the size of the congregation being either overestimated or underestimated. For example, in the Roman Catholic church, the number of congregation might be underestimated so that more of the capitation can be kept for the parish. It is also possible that more people may 'worship' as individuals or may not be able to attend church, so surely this doesn't mean that they are not religious and therefore evidence that secularisation is not occurring. Martin also argued that growth of New Religious Movements is not evidence of secularisation: if more people find their beliefs in sects or cults then that should not count as proof that relgion is losing significance but perhaps that religion is developing a new form.
Sociologists such as Demereth and Hammond believe that religious beliefs cannot be measured by quantitative methods and should be studied by more qualitative methods. For example, religiosity, which is the extent to which religious belief influences a person's actions and values. They thought that such social indicators as church attendance didn't measure religiosity. For example, there are some people that may attend church as it is considered the 'done thing' and not because they have any particular religious beliefs. Also a person may choose not to attend church because they prefer private worship but this does not mean that such a person is not religious. Demereth and Hammond might also point to the growth in smaller religious groups such as Jehovah's witnesses, Krishnah Consciousness, etc. These such groups are not included in church statistics therefore they are lacking vital information.
Berger spoke from a Phenomenological perspective. This difficult concept in simple terms says that religion or a belief system is required for an individual's basis and source of knowledge. In pre- industrialisation times, religion provided the answers to all of our questions: It told us how life began and even provided us with a moral code by which to live by. Religion was our 'Universe of Meaning' (The framework which enables us to make sense of things). Berger says that now the Universe of Meaning is changing, religion is under threat by other religions, different religious beliefs and scientific perspectives. All this leads to a decline in institutionalised religions as they are no longer able to provide explanations to all questions, this forces religion to become privatised, creating a new 'crisis' Universe of Meaning by society. As Berger said "A sky empty of Angels becomes open to the intervention of the astronomer and eventually, the astronaut."
One of the very first sociologists, Emile Durkheim, anticipated secularisation. He said that the Church and religion are being replaced by Government. What was meant by this is that, the role and functions that the Church once served are now being supplied by the Government. For example, morality is now the law enforced by police, and education is now being recieved through schools. However Durkheim also said that the process of secularisation could be reversed: this is inevitable as according to Durkheim all societies need a sacred symbol in order to survive.
Another early Sociologist, Max Weber thought that rationalism would be the end of religion. Such rational things as science was taking away all the mystery in the world and there would be no questions left for religion to answer. The scientific explanations of such things as 'the meaning of life' would begin to replace the religious ones. For example, Darwin’s 'Origin of the species' would begin to be accepted as the truth, thus replacing the former explanation, the creation story in Genesis. Weber's ideas here are not unlike the Pheneomenological perspecive and their theory of the new 'Universe of Meaning'. jonb, please do not redistribute this
The likes of Shiner, Thomas and Williams all spoke on behalf of the 'Golden Age' Critique. Larry Shiner disagreed with Sociologists such as Wilson who believe that religion is losing it's significance, Shiner said that there is "a problem in determining when and where we are to find the supposedly 'religious' age from which decline has commenced". More simply Shiner was asking the question, whether or not religion ever did hold such an influence over people's lives. On a similar note, KV Thomas said in reference to 16th and 17th century England that because we do not know enough about the religious beliefs and practices of this time that we cannot be sure that a decline has occurred. Williams determined in his study of Gosforth that church attendance has always been low. Parish records indicated that there was low church attendance for 400 years but new Anglican vicars had assumed that this was a recent trend.
All of the above mentioned sociologists bring many important important issues into consideration. What is secularisation? How can you measure it? How do you know how important religion used to be, and therefore is there actually a decrease in religion? As secularisation (or religion for that matter) has no clear definition known to all, it would be foolish for anyone to answer the title of this essay. Instead, it should be accepted that people belief in different things, and that, although attendance to spiritual places of worship may be decreasing, the amount of ‘religion’ in Modern Britain, is not necessarily suffering the same fate.