What is meant by the term secularization? According to your understanding, is Australia a secularized society?

by lpage (student)

What is meant by the term ‘secularization’? According to your understanding, is Australia a ‘secularized’ society?

Secularization describes the process whereby religion loses its influence over various spheres of social life. Modern day Australia is by this definition a secularized society. Individuals may engage in religious and spiritual practices, but this has increasingly become a private pursuit; institutionalized churches no longer play the central role they once did in education, welfare or politics. It is the modern day values of profit and consumerism that are now replacing concerns about salvation.

The idea that Western societies have moved away from religious or divine authority dates back to the 1600s, but it was Weber who in 1910 gave us the term “secularization.” His phrase about the increasing “disenchantment of the world” has come to signify all that secularization could mean: the decline in importance of things mystical.

Steve Bruce (2001) asserts that the decline of religion in the modern west was not an accident but an unintended consequence of a variety of complex social changes that is modernization. Central to modernization is the differentiation and specialization of social units. Commerce and industrialization have led to the division of labor and thereby to increasing societal fragmentation. Communities in which people operated with a shared religious worldview where the church was the center of all moral, intellectual and spiritual life have all but disappeared.

In 1979, C. Wright Mills stated “In due course the sacred shall disappear altogether, except, possibly in the private realm”. Today, religion has become an increasing private, rather than a public matter. Many people who hold religious beliefs do not regularly attend services or take part in public ceremonies. And of those that do attend church, many do so out of habit or because it is expected of them in their community. For example, baptisms, church weddings, and other rituals which persist as much for social reasons as from belief in their religious significance.

In contrast to pre-modern communities in ...

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In contrast to pre-modern communities in which a single religious worldview was dominant and permeated all areas of community life, modern societies have a great number of different beliefs, from Christianity, to Islam and Buddhism. As Blatterer notes, we are no longer born into an environment where we only know the one religion.

In a context where most churches are in decline, Australian Pentecostalism has grown over thirty percent in the last decade. Hillsong, which is a branch of the Assemblies of God, is the one of the largest Pentecostal churches in Australia. John Connell (2005) explains this rise in Pentecostalism as a combination and development of mass media, entry of women into the workforce and increased mobility all of which has transformed traditional community life on which traditional church life was based.

New forms of mega churches such as Hillsong also place a large emphasis on modern day ideas such as weath and consumerism. Hillsong’s catch cry is “relevance” and it concentrates on celebrating the development of business success as a sign of the Lord’s beneficence. Mega churches have a business-like approach to religion, its consumerist trappings, and the sophisticated management of money underlie their success. Churches such as Hillsong take advantage of economies of scale to grow much more rapidly than most institutions. In this respect, although they are religious in design and intent, their causes and consequences are social and economic in nature.

In Australia today, religious organizations have progressively lost much of the social and political influence the previously had. In pre-industrial times, religious organizations could wield considerable influence over governments and social agencies, and commanded high respect in the community. In modern societies church leaders can no longer expect such influence with the powerful.

Weber, M. (1948), ‘Science as a Vocation’, in H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills (eds), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

In Australia today, religious organizations have progressively lost much of the social and political influence the previously had. Church leaders can no longer expect to be influential with the powerful. However, new religious movements such as Hillsong in Western Sydney have began to rapidily build up fourtunes.

Some of you may be aware of the current boycott of the Gloria Jeans coffee chain (owned by Hillsong) because of a $30,000 donation made to the Australian Christian Lobby’s anti-gay marriage campaign.

While some established churches remain very wealthy by any standards, and new religious movements may rapidly build up fortunes, Hillsong is an example