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Classical Secularisation Theories
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Secularisation
In this course, Professor Linda Woodhead (Lancaster University) explores secularisation theory and evidence around the decline of religion in modern society. In the first lecture, we consider three classical theories of secularisation provided by Auguste Comte, Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. In the second lecture, we focus on the more recent approaches of Peter Berger, Bryan Wilson and Steve Bruce. In the third lecture, we look at the empirical evidence around the extent to which religion has declined in modern Britain. Next, we think about some challenges to secularisation theory. In the fifth and final lecture, we look at an alternative approach to understanding religious change which argues that religion is not declining, but rather shifting from an institutionalised to a personal, spiritual form.
Classical Secularisation Theories
In this lecture, we think about classical theories of secularisation, focusing in particular on: (i) Auguste Comte’s law of three stages and its role in shaping the basic premise of secularisation theory that as societies modernise, religion will necessarily decline; (ii) Émile Durkheim’s explanation for the decline of religion in modernity as a result of urbanisation and the decline of small-scale rural communities; (iii) Max Weber’s alternative account of secularisation based on the ideas of rationalisation and disenchantment in modern capitalist society.
Hello, everyone hope you're doing well.
00:00:05My name is Linda Woodhead and I'm distinguished
00:00:08professor of religion and society at Lancaster University,
00:00:10and I'm a sociologist of religion.
00:00:14And today we're talking about secularisation,
00:00:18and I want to start
00:00:22really at the beginning
00:00:23and look at classical theories of secularisation and where the ideas come from.
00:00:24The key figure that is often mentioned first is a Frenchman called August Comped.
00:00:31Comp does something that will be really
00:00:37influential on all subsequent secularisation theory,
00:00:39as we'll see, and that is, he thinks about historical progress or evolution,
00:00:43and he cuts history into stages
00:00:49and for comped.
00:00:53The three stages are first of all, the theological stage, where
00:00:54society and people are very religious
00:00:59and explanations are in terms of God or gods.
00:01:03And then you think society progresses
00:01:06and people move to a more metaphysical
00:01:09stage. That means more philosophically minded.
00:01:12Or you might think of the great
00:01:16Greek philosophers and their influence like Aristotle.
00:01:17And then finally, in the modern age, you get to the highest level of progress,
00:01:22and that's where people adopt a scientific approach to things.
00:01:26And that idea that there's this social progress really underpins a lot of thinking
00:01:32about secularisation because it often assumes that
00:01:36religion is something from the past,
00:01:40from a traditional stage from a pre modern stage.
00:01:42And then, as society modernises and humankind progresses,
00:01:45you move to a more scientific or rational stage, and you see religion decline.
00:01:51So that idea, that comment really lays out in the French context
00:01:59in the 19th century. That idea
00:02:06is widespread,
00:02:09and it kind of underlies the basic premise of secularisation theory,
00:02:10which is that modernisation
00:02:14implies secularisation
00:02:16and secularisation means simply a decline of religion. So the idea is
00:02:19that as a society becomes more modern
00:02:24so it will become less religious. That's the fundamental idea of secularisation,
00:02:26and we often go back to comment. He wasn't the only person saying it by any means.
00:02:31You can find it in someone like Thomas Paine or many thinkers of the time,
00:02:34and
00:02:40nevertheless, it will go from there, and it will take new forms in new thinkers.
00:02:41So moving on to one of those, um,
00:02:48the other figure who's very often mentioned as the founder
00:02:50of a classical theory of of secularisation is Emil Dirk.
00:02:53I'm dark times, another Frenchman
00:02:58and Dirk I'm is one of the like comped, one of the founders of social science.
00:03:01He's founding.
00:03:05There wasn't such a thing as sociology or
00:03:06economics or political science at that time.
00:03:08These guys are founding the discipline,
00:03:11and they're being very original in thinking that
00:03:13you can approach societies in this empirical,
00:03:16rational way.
00:03:20So dark times part of all that as well.
00:03:21Durkin produces a more sophisticated theory
00:03:24of secularisation than comped because he tries
00:03:28to explain the mechanism of the decline of religion in modern times.
00:03:31And Dirk Heim's theory, in a nutshell, is that
00:03:38religion and society go together hand in hand, particularly in small scale,
00:03:41pre modern societies.
00:03:46And why is that?
00:03:49That's because you only have a society if people
00:03:52have got some symbolic focus for a society.
00:03:56I mean, you wouldn't have, uh,
00:04:00British society if you didn't have the concept of Britain,
00:04:01and he didn't have a flag and he didn't have rituals
00:04:05and a monarch and things to make you cohere and think,
00:04:08Oh, we all belong to this this common project.
00:04:12So Dirk,
00:04:16I'm thinks that religion is really that that glue you know it
00:04:17provides it gives the basis for societies because in religious groups.
00:04:21What you're doing is you're really focusing and worshipping God, of course.
00:04:26But for Dirk, I'm God is
00:04:31a symbol of society. It's something that transcends us all.
00:04:33So when you meet in a religious group, what you're doing is creating a social group.
00:04:37Now how does that explain secularisation?
00:04:43Because for Dirk,
00:04:45I'm that works best in small scale societies
00:04:46where you can literally all gather together and,
00:04:49um, have ritual gatherings and whatever.
00:04:52So when you move to big industrial societies,
00:04:55where all that falls apart and things become more anonymous in the big
00:04:58city and people have different social roles and don't all know each other,
00:05:01Uh, then it's very hard to sustain that religion.
00:05:05He thinks that religion sort of declines as
00:05:10people moved from rural communities into the cities.
00:05:12He thought that what bound society together in
00:05:18the city's was more about law and contract.
00:05:20And
00:05:23if there was an ideology, it was more about humanism.
00:05:24So that's Dirk kind of theory that the decline of small scale, more agricultural,
00:05:29more intimate societies which have all got a religion, uh,
00:05:33once they disintegrate with urbanisation,
00:05:37industrialisation so it gets harder and harder to sustain religion as well.
00:05:40Then the final thinker that I want to talk about as a classical
00:05:46building block of what we think of a secularisation theories is Max Weber,
00:05:51German thinker.
00:05:56Um, also late 19th early 20th century,
00:05:58and
00:06:03Max Faber
00:06:05has he agrees with Compton Durkin that modernisation means secularisation.
00:06:07But he has a different account of why that is,
00:06:13and his theory
00:06:16is focused on
00:06:18the distinctive spirit. He calls it Geist in German the spirit of modern
00:06:20times, which he thinks his rationalisation.
00:06:25He thinks that's the most important characteristic of modern society.
00:06:29As they become rationalised, they become
00:06:32everything get organised on rational lines. Organisations become bureaucratic.
00:06:35We all have to follow the rules. We don't have much leeway. We're told what to do by
00:06:41science and by people being informed by science.
00:06:47And that, in his view, is very corrosive
00:06:51of religion.
00:06:54So he thinks that before rationalisation,
00:06:56you have what he calls a much more enchanted world,
00:06:58where when you go to plough the field, you'll make an offering
00:07:01to
00:07:05the god or goddess of fertility to make the corn grow and
00:07:06you come home and you have gods of the half and the home, and
00:07:09you worship gods the divine. It's much more integrated into life.
00:07:14Everything's got a bit more magic.
00:07:18But then, once people become modern scientific, they say, Oh,
00:07:21we have to leave this behind its superstition
00:07:23and everything's got to be efficient and organised and we haven't got time for that.
00:07:26So the spirit of rationalisation,
00:07:30impersonal efficiency.
00:07:33And it goes together with the rise of capitalism, which he talks a lot about.
00:07:35He thinks it's that really
00:07:39that drives out religion
00:07:41and causes secularisation.
00:07:43And he was pretty clear that modern societies are all going to become secular.
00:07:45He did think he talked about. He always had a theory about charisma.
00:07:48You have heard of that.
00:07:52it's become part of the language that
00:07:54charismatic individuals can make a breakthrough,
00:07:56and they can still attract cult followings.
00:07:58But other than that,
00:08:02he was pretty pessimistic about the future of religion in modern societies.
00:08:03One little tiny footnote Before we leave those classical theories behind, um,
00:08:08now are much more self aware and aware of privilege.
00:08:13Just think. Who's saying this?
00:08:17It's all white Western men in European societies, uh and
00:08:18um, even though really their data is based on those societies.
00:08:26Vapour actually did look around the world and religions around the world.
00:08:31But they're all assuming really,
00:08:34that what's happening in industrial Western societies is a model for
00:08:36what's going to happen in the rest of the world.
00:08:41So these days we would say, Well,
00:08:42there's quite a strong colonial bias in this way of thinking.
00:08:44
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Woodhead, L. (2021, August 23). Secularisation - Classical Secularisation Theories [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/secularisation/classical-secularisation-theories
MLA style
Woodhead, L. "Secularisation – Classical Secularisation Theories." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 23 Aug 2021, https://massolit.io/courses/secularisation/classical-secularisation-theories