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“Once the world was filled with the sacred-in thought, practice and institutional form. After the Reformation and the Renaissance, the forces of Modernization swept across the globe and secularization, a corollary historical process, loosened the dominance of the sacred. In due course, the sacred shall disappear altogether except, possibly in the private realm” opines C Wright Mills (pp 32-33). It would be interesting to note whether this view of Mills holds water and also if the grip of religion is waning.

Starting from M.N.Srinivas in India to Peter Berger- The Sacred Canopy:Elements of Sociological theory of Religion (1967), Richard Dawkins- The God Delusion in the west, Secularization has become a lively topic of intellectual activity in the academic circles. The two parties who either want to do away with the concept in favour of industrialization, or want to support it for the psychological security purpose of the humanity-both appear to be partially true and valid. Grace Davie in 2002 Europe: The Exceptional Case- carved out Europe as a unique case in the secularization theory. Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart’s World Value Survey and European value survey were a great influence on many writers. Karel Dobbelaere’s Secularization (2002) and Steve Bruce’ God is dead: Secularization in the west (2002)  have argued the concept  from all angels but still the validity, strengthening necessity and viability of religion has not been ascertained.

This demise of Religion as an authoritative aspect and to a certain extent of God in public arena in the West, was a part of the conventional wisdom with the intelligentsia related to the social sciences departments throughout the twentieth century. According to Norris and Inglehart, “Indeed it has been regarded as the master model of sociological inquiry, where secularization was ranked with bureaucratization, rationalization and urbanization as the key historical revolutions transforming medieval agrarian societies into modern industrial nations” (p 1). Indeed the seminal minds and theoreticians of the nineteenth century like Comte, Spencer, Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Freud- all opined that the industrialization of the society would sound a death knell for religion and its related importance in the society. Not only this, the prominent figures since the Age of Enlightenment whether they be from the fields of Philosophy, Anthropology or Psychology have expressed their doubt that religious superstitions, practices and symbolic liturgical rituals as the products of the past shall be outgrown in the modern era and we in the twenty-first century are facing the same problem as had been predicted by the thinkers a few centuries back. But here again there are differences of opinion whether such a concept exists also or not, as we shall see ahead in the essay.                                                              

Now we come to the problem of so-called secularization. What do we understand by it and what has caused it to acquire such formidable proportions? The general understanding of the term in common parlance would be that as the society progresses and modernizes, the close identification and dependence on religious bonds slackens and religion loses its position of authority. And here again a distinction is drawn between secularism and secularization - a matter of debate amongst scholars. Whereas secularism has a personal orientation, secularization takes place in the public arena where the society witnesses a decrease in the public significance of religion. These two concepts can work simultaneously in the society which means that the decrease in the importance of religion in the public domain might well imply an increase of it in personal belief system. But Peter Burger denies that and says “As there is a secularization of society and culture, so is there a secularization of consciousness” (Berger 1969: 107-08).

Not only this, some scholars do not consider it as an entirely new phenomenon and say that secularization ebbs and flows i.e. old religious forms die and give place to new and progressive ones. The two most important exponents of this theory- Weber and Durkhiem, were also not of the same view regarding the status of religion with the advent of rationalization. Weber believed that modernizing forces such as urbanization, the specialization of  labor, and industrialization were bound to have a profound impact on religion and that rationalization would lead to a ‘disenchantment’-( cultural shift in society following the emergence of rationality and the development of science as a substitute for superstition) towards religion and progressively to a world in which religion would no longer play an important part in public life but would become a matter of a private choice. This would lead to secularization as religion would no longer be in a position to wield its sway of unquestioned authority. But Durkhiem, though an atheist and influenced by the Enlightenment thinking of Weber believed that religious sentiment was essential to society, whether it be traditional or modern. According to him as religion enhanced feeling of religious solidarity there was a doubt that it could ever become redundant. According to him even science could only challenge outmoded religious dogmas. But he believed that religion would stay, changing itself to tune with the changing times.         

Now this debate has been carried through to our times and the great British sociologist of religion defined secularization saying that it is “the process whereby religious thinking, practice and institution lose social significance” ( Wilson,1966:14). He gives extensively detailed data showing the decline in the number of people attending the church, getting baptized, getting marriage in the church etc. The institutions that had previously been under the domain of religion such as hospitals, schools, universities have been transferred to the secular authorities. He opines that Religion has ceased to have any significance for the working of the social system. But Wilson’s study has been fraught with problems. David Martin here says that such a data is unreliable and probably in the absence of other choices except for the church in the past, the presence in the church was the obvious choice or probably “the done thing” (Martin 1969 pp 9-113). It is unclear that when Wilson says that Religion is losing it’s significance, how does he expect us to measure that significance? Do we have any method to ascertain how influential was religion in the past? In fact we have as yet not even determined the precise meaning of religion, leave apart the meaning of religious thinking, practices and institutions. Here it would not be out of place to mention Demereth and Hammond’s (1982) query, who ask whether church attendance and religious belief are synonymous. In fact when religious institutions are disengaged from the world today and the functions of the church have been taken over by the welfare state, it could be said that there has only been a decentralization of authority and that the church has by no means become insignificant to the people at large. It is only that the people today are open to more options and a civil registered marriage is by no means an indication of decline in the faith in church or religious system.

 As indicated earlier secularization is not only hard to define but to say whether it exists or not is also quite debatable. The well known name in this field, Berger has too in this case rescinded his views almost entirely. For example he said in 1968- [By] the twenty-first century, religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture. (Peter Berger, sociologist, The New York Times, 1968) And the same person had to go back on his stand to acknowledge that there is nothing called secularization-The assumption that we live in a secularised world is false: The world today, with some exceptions…is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever. (Peter Berger, The Desecularization of the World, 1999).      

This is true as this furious religiosity could today be seen in terms of increasingly pluralistic religious societal landscape. Sociologists like Grace Davie rather than talk about religion in terms of decline or prevalence prefer to talk in terms of diversity and fragmentation. She sees the prevalent proliferation of new religious movements as multiple religious constituencies, where more people may believe rather than belong these days. According to her religion still has an important, if less visible, function as a source of identity in multi-faith Britain (Davie 1994). She does not quite agree with Wilson’s theory of privatization of religion and in this reference Casanova quite agrees with her when he says “only in the 1980’s, after the sudden eruption of religion into the public sphere, did it become obvious that differentiation and the loss of societal functions do not necessarily entail privatization” (Casanova, 1994, pg 19).   Therefore at present it seems that there is not only a disagreement amongst scholars regarding the definition of secularization, but also regarding its presence. At present, secularization as understood in the West, as being debated in the sociology of religion is a complicated issue. Whereas scholars like Rodney Stark, Peter Burger argue that the levels of religiosity are not declining, other scholars like Mark Chaves, N J Demerath have given an altogether new insight to the problem by broadening the definition of secularization to introduce the idea of non-secularization which includes the decline of religious authority.    

This brings us to the main focus of our debate that if secularization exists is it a useful concept. As has been already seen it is difficult to determine its presence and impact. But as this debate goes on we witness some very positive trends come up. According to Donald Miller, in the past two decades, the most dynamic American evangelical movements have been the so-called ‘new paradigm' churches like Vineyard, Calvary Chapel and Willow Creek.  He furthers his argument by saying that these groups seem to flourish because they avoid the fundamentalist option of isolationist separatism, and opt for the liberal option of radical accommodation, they are both recognisably traditional (even supernaturalist) in their beliefs, and well-attuned to contemporary culture and they are faithful to Christian orthodoxy, and culturally adaptable and inventive.  Therefore this sort of a new trend that has developed in the so-called post modernistic world of ours where fragmentation is the rule to live by, one sees no reason why this sort of secularization is not welcome. And there seems to be no fear of becoming religion-less also as we have seen that the pluralistic societies offer many religions making competing truth claims undermining  thereby the ideological hegemony of a single one. At the same time we see a sharpening of distinctive religious identities in a bid to preserve their own singularity. The modern consumerism serves us a variety of religious beliefs and we are free to choose. We need not be offended by the so-called fragmentation or commercialization of religion as long as it makes a multi-cultural and diversified existence possible. The world has witnessed enough carnage in the name of religion and if we in the twenty first century are able to realize the true meaning of secularization, be committed to our religious beliefs as well as respect and accommodate other’s, we might end up making the world a better place to live in.

1. Bryan Wilson, Religion in Secular Society (1966) Watts. 2. C Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (1959) Oxford University Press. 3. David Martin, General Theory of Secularization (1978) Blackwells. 4. Donald Miller, Reinventing American Protestantism (1996) University of California Press, Berkeley. 5. Grace Davie, Religion in Britain since 1945:Believing without belonging (1994) Blackwell, Oxford. 6. J.Casanova, Public Religion in the Modern World (1994) Chicago. 7. N J Demerath III and Phillip E Hammond, Religion in social Context: Tradition and Transition (1969) Random House, New York. 8. Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy (1967) Garden City. 9. Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (2004) Cambridge University Press. 10. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the human side of Religion (2000) University of California Press, Berkeley.