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 people prefer religious explanations for random events such as the early death of loved ones. Many also still subscribe to the concept of luck or fate as evidenced by the growth of gambling opportunities such as the national lottery. Wilson (1966) and others such as Bruce (1995) cited evidence for secularisation in addition to statistics they suggest that rational thinking in the shape of science has replaced religious influence because scientific progress over the last 100 years has done more for our standard of living than god has.
As a whole in society today religion plays a less political role but religion is still a major provider of education and welfare for the poor. National debates about issues such as the age on homosexual consent, the family and abortions are given a moral dimension by the contributions of religious leaders. The media still show an interest in such issues as women priests and religious programmes such as ‘songs of praise’ still attract 7-8 million viewers. Which in a functionalist’s eyes is still a form of religion. But despite very low Church membership and attendance levels surveys show that there seems to be a survival of some religious beliefs. The 1998 British social attitudes survey states that 21% of those questioned agreed to the statement ‘ I know god exists and I have no doubt about it’ and only 10% said they did not believe in god at all, but there may be a moral connection attached with such a survey such that people feel more inclined to say yes whether they do believe in god or not.
According to Hamilton (2001), decline in religious practices may be part of a more decline in organisational membership and increased privatisation. Less people join trade unions or political parties. This doesn’t mean that they don’t believe but are more committed to family or individual priorities. Bruce (1995) argues that industrialisation has fragmented society into a marketplace of religions. So there fore will no longer act as a unifying force in society. But because of this private beliefs don’t impact on the way society runs. Consumption is the way society is run now, or at least is a very significant factor. Competition between religions is seen to undermine their credibility as they compete for spiritual shoppers
There a numerous indicators to the state religion is in today one of these is how the number of clergy has fallen, their pay and status has declined. The size of the clergy is a useful indicator of the social power and popularity. In 1900 there were over 45000 clerics in Britain, this had declined to 34000 in 2000 but the population had doubled. Another indicator is the rising divorce rate, and fewer religious marriages, 30 years ago church weddings used to make up 75% of all marriages now this figure has fallen to less than halve, this when put together with the rising divorce and cohabitation and the proportion of children born outside marriage is a large indicator that religion and its moral value system exert little influence today.
It may seem in western industrialised countries that religious beliefs have declined but if you look globally, then religion is still an overwhelming and dominant force. Whilst established religion may appear to decline in western countries like Britain, the growth of our immigrant populations is causing an increase in religiosity. Islam is the fastest growing religion in Britain and non-Trinitarian church membership has mushroomed. Also in the US 40% of the adult population regularly attend church and about 5% regularly tune into religious TV and 20 million watch some religious programming every week. Hervieu Leger (1993) suggests that what secularisationists see as religious decline is merely the reorganisation of religion so that it better suits the needs of modern societies.
So in my opinion I agree with the statement that religious beliefs and behaviour are changing not declining, because people in today’s society are been offered a more varied choice of what ways are acceptable to serve god so the people are choosing these methods and are still religious because of it they are just asserting their right to be an individual, religion is still a strong influence in most peoples daily lives but some of us need to accept the way it has altered to adapt the people wishing to access it, and alter there way of viewing religion to coincide with this change.