Secularization


In sociology, secularization is a multilayered concept that generally denotes "a transition from a religious to a more worldly level." There are many types of secularization and most do not lead to atheism or irreligion, nor are they automatically antithetical to religion. Secularization has different connotations such as implying differentiation of secular from religious domains, the marginalization of religion in those domains, or it may also entail the transformation of religion as a result of its recharacterization.
The secularization thesis expresses the idea that through the lens of the European enlightenment modernization, rationalization, combined with the ascent of science and technology, religious authority diminishes in all aspects of social life and governance. Pew Research Center notes that economic development is positively correlated with less religiousness. According to Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, "virtually all advanced industrial societies" have become more secular in recent decades.
The secularization thesis was challenged in 1999 by Peter L. Berger, who coined the term desecularization to refer to a resurgence of religion after a period of secularization, with examples such as the Islamic revival since the 1970s, in particular the Iranian Revolution, and the resurgence of religion in post-Soviet Russia. Some researchers have said that people with religious beliefs may be increasing as a share of world population, due to higher fertility rates in poorer, more religious countries, but Pew Research Center estimates that between 2010 and 2020, the religiously unaffiliated share of world population increased from 23.3% to 24.2%.
There is no particular monolithic direction or trend for secularization since, even in Europe, the trends in religious history and demographical religious measures are mixed and make the region an exception compared to other parts of the world. There are many debates about the boundaries of both religion and secular and some have suggested "post-secular" models since there are areas of growth of religious influence which challenge the underlying assumptions on conventional views on secularism. Global studies show that many people who do not identify with a religion still hold religious beliefs and participate in religious practices. The secular vs religion dichotomy is false and neither concept is mutually exclusive. Both "religion" and "secular" are Western terms and concepts that are not universal across cultures, languages, or time.

Overview

Secularization, in the main sociological meaning of the term, involves the historical process in which religion declines in social and cultural significance. As a result of secularization, the role of religion in modern societies becomes restricted. In secularized societies, faith lacks cultural authority, and religious organizations have little social power.
Secularization has many levels of meaning, both as a theory and as a political process. Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim postulated that the modernization of society would include a decline in levels of formal religiosity. Study of this process seeks to determine the manner in which, or extent to which religious creeds, practices, and institutions are losing social significance. Some theorists argue that the secularization of modern civilization partly results from our inability to adapt the broad ethical and spiritual needs of people to the increasingly fast advance of the physical sciences.
Nonetheless, cross-cultural studies indicate that people in general do not think of natural and supernatural explanations as antagonistic or dichotomous, but instead see them as coexisting and complementary. The reconciliation of natural and supernatural explanations is normal and pervasive from a psychological standpoint across cultures.
In contrast to the "modernization" thesis, Christian Smith and others argue that intellectual and cultural élites promote secularization to enhance their own status and influence. Smith believes that intellectuals have an inherent tendency to be hostile to their native cultures, causing them to embrace secularism.
According to Jack David Eller, secularization is compatible with religion since most versions of secularity do not lead to atheism or irreligion. Global studies show that many people who do not identify with a religion, still hold religious beliefs and participate in religious practices, thus complicating the situation.

Background

Secularization is sometimes credited both to the cultural shifts in society following the emergence of rationality and the development of science as a substitute for superstition—Max Weber called this process the "disenchantment of the world"—and to the changes made by religious institutions to compensate. At the most basic stages, this begins with a slow transition from oral traditions to a writing culture that diffuses knowledge. This first reduces the authority of clerics as the custodians of revealed knowledge. The shift of responsibility for education from the family and community to the state has had two consequences:
  • Collective conscience as defined by Durkheim is diminished;
  • Religion becomes a matter of individual choice rather than an observed social obligation.
A major issue in the study of secularization is the extent to which certain trends such as decreased attendance at places of worship indicate a decrease in religiosity or simply a privatization of religious belief, where religious beliefs no longer play a dominant role in public life or in other aspects of decision making.

Definitions

Jack David Eller outlined Peter Glasner's 10 different institutional, normative, or cognitive versions of secularization, most of which do not lead to irreligion or atheism:
  1. Routinization — institutionalizing religion through integration into the society
  2. Differentiation — a redefined place or relation to society such as in pluralization
  3. Disengagement — the detachment of certain facets of social life from religion
  4. Transformation — change over time
  5. Generalization — where religion becomes less specific, more abstract, and inclusive
  6. Segmentation — the development of specialized religious institutions coexisting with other social institutions
  7. Desacralization — distancing the references of the "supernatural" from the material world
  8. Decline — the reduction in quantitative measures of religious identification and participation
  9. Secularization — pluralism through which society moves away from the "sacred" and toward the "profane"
  10. Secularism — the only form that leads to outright rejection of religion, amounting to atheism
C. John Sommerville outlined six uses of the term secularization in the scientific literature. The first five are more along the lines of 'definitions' while the sixth is more of a 'clarification of use':
  1. When discussing macro social structures, secularization can refer to differentiation: a process in which the various aspects of society, economic, political, legal, and moral, become increasingly specialized and distinct from one another.
  2. When discussing individual institutions, secularization can denote the transformation of a religion into a secular institution. Examples would be the evolution of institutions such as Harvard University from a predominantly religious institution into a secular institution.
  3. When discussing activities, secularization refers to the transfer of activities from religious to secular institutions, such as a shift in the provision of social services from churches to the government.
  4. When discussing mentalities, secularization refers to the transition from ultimate concerns to proximate concerns, e.g., individuals in the West are now more likely to moderate their behavior in response to more immediately applicable consequences rather than out of concern for post-mortem consequences. This is a personal religious decline or movement toward a secular lifestyle.
  5. When discussing populations, secularization refers to broad patterns of societal decline in levels of religiosity as opposed to the individual-level secularization of above. This understanding of secularization is also distinct from above in that it refers specifically to religious decline rather than societal differentiation.
  6. When discussing religion, secularization can only be used unambiguously to refer to religion in a generic sense. For example, a reference to Christianity is not clear unless one specifies exactly which denominations of Christianity are being discussed.
Abdel Wahab Elmessiri outlined two meanings of the term secularization:
  1. Partial Secularization: which is the common meaning of the word, and expresses "the separation between religion and state".
  2. Complete Secularization: this definition is not limited to the partial definition, but exceeds it to "The separation between all values, and but also to, so that the holiness is removed from the world, and this world is transformed into a usable matter that can be employed for the sake of the strong".

    History

Secularism's origins can be traced to the Bible itself and fleshed out throughout Christian history into the modern era. "Secular" is a part of the Christian church's history, which even has secular clergy since the medieval period. Furthermore, secular and religious entities were not separated in the medieval period, but coexisted and interacted naturally. Significant contributions to principles used in modern secularism came from prominent theologians and Christian writers such as St. Augustine, William of Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, Martin Luther, Roger Williams, John Locke and Talleyrand.
The term "secularization" also has additional meanings, primarily historical and religious. Applied to church property, historically it refers to the seizure of church lands and buildings, such as Henry VIII's 16th-century dissolution of the monasteries in England and the later acts during the 18th-century French Revolution, as well as by various anti-clerical enlightened absolutist European governments during the 18th and 19th centuries, which resulted in the expulsion and suppression of the religious communities which occupied them. The 19th-century Kulturkampf in Germany and Switzerland and similar events in many other countries also were expressions of secularization.
The term "secularization" can also mean the lifting of monastic restrictions from a member of the clergy, and to deconsecration, removing the consecration of a religious building so that it may be used for other purposes. The first use of "secular" as a change from religion to the mundane is from the 16th century that referred to transforming ecclesiastical possessions for civil purposes, such as monasteries to hospitals; and by the 19th century it gained traction as a political object of secularist movements. In the 20th century, "secularization" had diversified into various versions in light of the diversity of experiences from different cultures and institutions. Scholars recognize that secularity is structured by Protestant models of Christianity, shares a parallel language to religion, and intensifies Protestant features such as iconoclasm and skepticism towards rituals, and emphasizes beliefs. In doing so, secularism perpetuates Christian traits under a different name.
Still another form of secularization refers to the act of Prince-Bishops or holders of a position in a Monastic or Military Order - holding a combined religious and secular authority under the Catholic Church - who broke away and made themselves into completely secular hereditary rulers. For example, Gotthard Kettler, the last Master of the Livonian Order, converted to Lutheranism, secularised the lands of Semigallia and Courland which he had held on behalf of the order – which enabled him to marry and leave to his descendants the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia. Perhaps the most widely known example of such secularization is that of 1525, which led to the establishment of Prussia, a state which would later become a major power in European politics.
The 1960s saw a trend toward increasing secularization in Western Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. This transformation accompanied major social factors: economic prosperity, youth rebelling against the rules and conventions of society, sexual revolution, women's liberation, radical theology, and radical politics. A study found evidence that a rise in secularization generally has preceded economic growth over the past century. The multilevel, time-lagged regressions also indicate that tolerance for individual rights predicted 20th century economic growth even better than secularization.
According to another study, the rise of automation could accelerate secularization throughout the 21st century in many world regions, even though "this correlation does not prove any meaningful connection between automation and religious decline". The findings suggest that automation may reduce the instrumental value of religion, as technology provides secular alternatives for solving problems traditionally addressed by religion.
Pope Francis' view of secularization was characterised by biographer Austen Ivereigh as a "God-given shock" that gives the church a chance to change how it relates to the world. In 2022, Francis expressed regret that Christianity has lost significance after secularization, but criticised what he described as the "negative view" that sees its faith as an "armour" and believes that "the world is evil, sin reigns", but which masks a "nostalgia for a sacralised world, a bygone society in which the Church and her ministers had greater power and social relevance". He advocated a "discerning view" that sees secularization as a legitimate effort, compatible with religion, to discover the laws governing human life.