The Challenge of Secularism
Specification Requirement:
• The rise of secularism and secularisation, and the views that:
• God is an illusion and the result of wish fulfilment.
• Christianity should play no part in public life.
Key terms and definitions:
• Secular: Not connected/associated with religious/spiritual matters.
Used colloquially and variability by atheists, pluralist, anti-religious people
etc. The term was used historically to distinguish (secular) priests who
worked in the world from those who belonged to religious communities e.g
monasteries
• Secularism: May mean a belief that religion should not be involved
in government/public life. May be a principle that no one religion
should have a superior position in the state. Often entails a belief in
a public space and a private space, and that religion should be
restrained from public power.
• Secularisation: the process of a society becoming more secular.
• Secular humanism: philosophy that embraces human reason and
values while rejecting any basis for them in God or religion.
• Secularisation thesis: theory developed in 50s and 60s from
Enlightenment thinking, that religious belief would progressively
decline as democracy and technology advanced.
• ‘Religion will decline as technology & democracy
advance’?
Arguments FOR the statement:
1. Statistics: - Evidence from 2011 Census: Christianity decreased by
12.4%, No religion increased by 10.3%. (However, all other religious
groups were on the increase, though by small amounts).
- The British Social Attitudes Survey (2017) found that the proportion of
Britons with “no religion” was at a record high - 53%. (However The Times’
survey also found a modest recovery in religious faith over past year: the
proportion of non-believers has fallen back to 36% from being 38% in 2016,
+ number of God believers increased from 28% to 29%.)
2. Rise of the New Atheists: - “Forty years ago, there was a widespread
belief that religion was a spent force in the Western democracies…
destined to be eliminated altogether by the forces of science, reason and
secularism”, but “religion has been catapulted back into public
consciousness, not least by acts of violence, extremism and various forms
of fundamentalism. This has generated considerable public debate about
the potentially harmful effects of religious faith.” - Tina Beattie, ‘The New
Atheists’ (2007)
, 3. The ‘disenchantment’ of the world since 1500: - “Philosophy will clip
an Angel’s wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the
haunted air, and gnomèd mine— Unweave a rainbow” - Keats, ‘Lamia’
(1819)
4. Auguste Comte (1798-1857) - 3 stages of history: - Founder of
sociology: forerunner to the ‘Secularisation Thesis’. He argued that history
has gone through 3 different stages of progress: 1. Theological 2.
Philosophical 3. ‘Positivism’ of science. (social doctrine based in science) -
British sociologist Bryan Wilson developed a similar thesis in the 1960s
as seen in Religion in Secular Society (1969).
5. 0.0% of Icelanders 25 or younger believe God created the world: -
Iceland is becoming more and more secular. The poll found no one
believed in the biblical creation story of the world. (However, have
Icelanders just replaced God with another spiritual force? In 2015 they
were the first to build a temple to Norse since the Viking age)
6. Counter: Peter Berger: - “My point is that 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.”
- ‘The Desecularisation of the World: A Global Overview’
Arguments AGAINST the statement:
1. ‘Cross-currents’: - Against the ‘Secularisation Thesis’, Charles Taylor
argues that there were ‘cross-currents’ right from the beginning of the
Enlightenment movement (e.g from Romantic poets like Keats,
Wordsworth, Shelley. Or artists like Delacroix, William Blake etc.)
2. “Once, there was no ‘secular’”: - John Milbank criticises secularism.
He argues the idea of the secular was not inevitable but was a
philosophical choice. He blames it on a neglect of Aquinas’ teaching on
analogy.
3. Global context: - Projected global population change from 2015-
2060. It expects most major religious groups to increase in number. Over
the next 45 years, Islam will grow faster than any other major religion
to 2.99 billion (from 1.75). Christians will increase from 2.28 billion to
3.05 billion.
4. Largest capacity church in the world in Lagos, Nigeria (5000
people), Largest church membership in the world in South Korea.
• ‘Christianity should play no part in public life’?
Conclusions about the truth of the Secularisation Thesis:
• Zygmunt Baumann ‘Liquid Modernity’ (2000): Nothing remains stable for
very long.
• Shmuel Eisenstadt - an Israeli sociologist that sees ‘multiple
modernities’: The assumption that the rest of the world will follow the
same model of modernisation is mistaken. Religion is declining,
