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"Secularization"
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Secular beats spiritual : the westernization of the easternization of the West
The decline of the Christian churches in the West is undeniable but commentators differ in their understanding of what this represents. For some it shows a decline in interest in religion as such; for others, religion has not declined, it has only changed its shape. Possible candidates for Christianity's replacement are the new religious movements of the late 1960s and what is variously called New Age, alternative or contemporary spirituality. 'Secular Beats Spiritual' offers a detailed study of the religious and spiritual innovations of the last 50 years. It assesses their popularity in the UK and concludes that the 'not decline-just change' view cannot be sustained. Serious interest in spirituality has grown far less quickly than has the number of us who have no religious or spiritual interest. The most popular and enduring movements have been the least religious ones and those that have survived have done so by becoming more 'this-worldly' and less patently religious or spiritual. Yoga is popular but as a secular exercise programme; Transcendental Meditation now markets its meditational technique as a purely secular therapy; British Buddhists now offer the secular Mindfulness; and the Findhorn Foundation (Europe's oldest New Age centre) is no longer the germ of a counter-cultural communalism but sells its expertise to major corporations. Steve Bruce also demonstrates that, although eastern religious themes (such as reincarnation and karma) have become more popular as the power of the Christian churches to stigmatise them has declined, such themes have also been significantly altered so that what superficially looks like the easternization of the West might better be described as the westernization of the easternization of the West.
Book
Secularization Theory’s Differentiation Problem: Revisiting the Historical Relationship between Differentiation and Religion
Much theorizing about secularization tells a “differentiation story” that puts a historical process of structural differentiation at the center of its understanding of secularization. The heart of the story is the claim that the increasing differentiation of social spheres over time freed the “secular” spheres of life (politics, economics, etc.) from religious control or domination. This conceptual framing has been widely shared by scholars in the field, not only by adherents of the classical secularization paradigm, but also their leading critics in the supply-side and historicist–revisionist schools. While the story sometimes serves a purely descriptive function, at other times it is used to explain secularization (i.e., differentiation causes secularization). A close examination of the differentiation story, however, raises questions about the historical accuracy and theoretical plausibility of some of its core assumptions. Aspects of the differentiation story that require critical reconsideration include the empirical accuracy of its historical generalizations, its underspecified notion of “spheres,” and its explanatory assumption that some spheres are innately or properly nonreligious.
Journal Article
Religion and the secular in Eastern Germany
This collection examines the mosaic of the religious the secular in the GDR contemporary Eastern Germany, focusing on the interplay between local bureaucracies individual lives.
eBook
Not in the heavens
Not in the Heavenstraces the rise of Jewish secularism through the visionary writers and thinkers who led its development. Spanning the rich history of Judaism from the Bible to today, David Biale shows how the secular tradition these visionaries created is a uniquely Jewish one, and how the emergence of Jewish secularism was not merely a response to modernity but arose from forces long at play within Judaism itself.
Biale explores how ancient Hebrew books like Job, Song of Songs, and Esther downplay or even exclude God altogether, and how Spinoza, inspired by medieval Jewish philosophy, recast the biblical God in the role of nature and stripped the Torah of its revelatory status to instead read scripture as a historical and cultural text. Biale examines the influential Jewish thinkers who followed in Spinoza's secularizing footsteps, such as Salomon Maimon, Heinrich Heine, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. He tells the stories of those who also took their cues from medieval Jewish mysticism in their revolts against tradition, including Hayim Nahman Bialik, Gershom Scholem, and Franz Kafka. And he looks at Zionists like David Ben-Gurion and other secular political thinkers who recast Israel and the Bible in modern terms of race, nationalism, and the state.
Not in the Heavensdemonstrates how these many Jewish paths to secularism were dependent, in complex and paradoxical ways, on the very religious traditions they were rejecting, and examines the legacy and meaning of Jewish secularism today.
eBook
Is the United States a Counterexample to the Secularization Thesis?
Virtually every discussion of secularization asserts that high levels of religiosity in the United States make it a decisive counterexample to the claim that modern societies are prone to secularization. Focusing on trends rather than levels, the authors maintain that, for two straightforward empirical reasons, the United States should no longer be considered a counterexample. First, it has recently become clear that American religiosity has been declining for decades. Second, this decline has been produced by the generational patterns underlying religious decline elsewhere in the West: each successive cohort is less religious than the preceding one. America is not an exception. These findings change the theoretical import of the United States for debates about secularization.
Journal Article
The Faith Factor. How Scholars’ Religiosity Biases Research Findings on Secularization
Secularization is one of the most debated areas of research in current sociology of religion. Despite hundreds of empirical studies, researchers do not even agree on the very existence of secularization in different parts of the world. This article investigates whether some of the variability in findings may be attributed not to the social reality investigated but to bias in the form of researchers’ own religiosity. Specifically, we test whether researchers’ religiosity is correlated with two outcomes: their personal belief in the secularization thesis and the likelihood of supporting secularization in their published articles. To address this question, we constructed an international database of scholars working on secularization and conducted a survey measuring their religiosity and beliefs about religious decline. We then coded their publications according to whether they supported the secularization thesis and linked the two data sets. We find significant evidence of a “(non-)religious bias.” Either in their private attitudes or public writings, religious researchers find less evidence for the secularization thesis, whereas secular scholars find more. This result cannot be explained by differences in research methods, study quality, or the religious and geographic contexts under investigation.
Journal Article