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“Modern Britain is a secular society”

Secularisation has become more of an issue among sociologists recently than it has been in the past. It is the argument of whether or not religion is losing it's importance in today's society that is the topic of discussion. Bryan Wilson defined secularisation as being "The process whereby religious thinking, practices and institutions lose social significance." This definition itself and not just the topic alone causes problems: it might be argued that it is not possible to measure the significance of such a personal thing as religion and if it is possible it may not even be true that religion held such a significance in the first place. It may not be true that modern Britain is a secular society or perhaps it is and it always has been. These are just some of the problems that arise with the discussion of secularisation.codb dbr sedbdbw ordb dbk indb fodb db.

Continuing with Bryan Wilson, he believed that secularisation was in fact occurring and that religion holds less importance now than it had done in the past. Wilson used positivist methods such as analysing statistics to support his claim. Apparently Wilson thought the significance of relgion could be measured, and so he collected data from such 'Social Indicators' as church attendance, baptisms, weddings, closure of churches and growth in religious sects. The results showed that there was a decline in religious activity. For example, since 1979 the attendance of institutional churches has dropped from more than 5 million to less than 4 million. And a similar decrease has occurred in non- institutional churches also.coeb ebr seebebw oreb ebk ineb foeb eb.

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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 ...

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