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Postmodernist Approaches

As Grassie (1997) notes: “Postmodernism represents a great range of philosophical points of view” and reflects what he terms “A broad and elusive movement of thought”. It is, in other words, an approach to thinking about the social world that encompasses a wide range of different viewpoints gathered under the theoretically convenient (but potentially misleading) banner of postmodernism. This does, of course, present us with a couple of problems, the main one being that, when thinking specifically about religion, postmodernism doesn’t present a particularly unified face to the world. This “lack of theoretical unity” is reflected in Taylor’s (1987) observation that: "For some, postmodernism suggests the death of God and the disappearance of religion, for others, the return of traditional faith, and for others still, the possibility of recasting religious ideas".

Although this makes it particularly difficult to talk convincingly about postmodernist approaches to religion, there are arguably a range of general concepts employed by postmodernists that can be applied to an understanding of such behaviour. In this respect, a couple of initial concepts are initially significant:

Narratives: This idea holds, rightly or wrongly, that knowledge consists of stories that compete with one another to explain something. From this position religion represents just another form of narrative - one that, more importantly, can sometimes be considered a:

Metanarrative (or “big story”): Narratives sometimes break out of small-scale story telling and become all-encompassing stories that seek to explain “everything about something” (or, in some cases, “everything about everything”, to paraphrase Rosenau’s (1992) characterisation of the “religion metanarrative”). Religious metanarratives, in this sense, represent a general structure or framework around which individual beliefs, practices and experiences can be orientated and, of course, ordered. It also follows from this that metanarratives invariably involve a claim to exclusive truth about whatever it is they’re explaining.

The idea of religion as a metanarrative has two significant implications:

Firstly, for Lyotard (1997), the postmodern condition involves an “incredulity toward metanarratives” - a general disbelief that any single set of beliefs has a monopoly of truth.

Secondly, Ritzer (1992) argues, postmodern approaches represent an "assault on structure…and structural approaches” to understanding and explanation.

In general terms, therefore, postmodernists argue the structural frameworks that, in the past, supported organised religions (their ability to explain the nature of the world, for example), increasingly come under attack from competing world views - from the 16th century onwards in Western Europe, for example, this has involved the rise of scientific explanations. Many things that were once plausibly explained by religion are now more plausibly explained by scientific narratives - and, in consequence, the metanarrative foundations of organised religions are undermined by competing explanations and systematically:

Deconstructed: That is, broken down, in two ways: a decline in the ability of religion to exert power and control over people’s lives and a gradual retreat into what are termed “local narratives” or small stories about people’s situations and circumstances. In other words, religion, where it continues to exert influence, does so in terms of individual:

Identities: In postmodern society people are exposed to a variety of different sources of information and ideas that compete for attention - the world is no longer one where meaning and truth can be imposed and policed by elites, for example. On the contrary, people are increasingly presented with a range of possible choices and critiques that encourages:

Scepticism towards metanarratives. For every “big story” there are a multitude of “alternative stories”.

Hybridity: Postmodern society encourages the development of cultural hybrids - new ways of thinking and acting that develop out of the combination of old ways of behaving.

In this respect, Jencks (1996) notes how “The Post-Modern Age is a time of incessant choosing. It's an era when no orthodoxy can be adopted without self-consciousness and irony, because all traditions seem to have some validity…Pluralism, the "ism" of our time, is both the great problem and the great opportunity”.

The outcome of choice - and a plurality of opportunities, meanings and behaviours - is that religious symbols, for example, lose much of their original meaning and power as they are adopted into the everyday (profane) world of fashion and display.


An example here is the co-option of Rastafarian religious signs and symbols (such as dreadlocks) into some parts of mainstream fashion.

Religious practice, therefore, no longer holds a central place in people’s everyday life or identity; instead, it lives on as a set of accoutrements and adornments to the construction of identity - something that occurs not only in the world of objects (rings and pendants, for example) but also in the world of beliefs.

New forms of religious belief develop not as metanarrative but as part of individual narratives. These, as with the objects that accompany them, are “picked up, worn for a time and then discarded” much as one might wear a fashionable coat until it becomes unfashionable.

Postmodernism reflects (or possibly encourages) a contradictory set of ideas about the significance of religious ideas, practices and organisations in both the past and the present. At one and the same time, for example, we see the ideas of religious:

Decline - as organised religions lose their ability to control and influence events in the secular (non-religious) world and:

Development - in that religious beliefs and practices shift and change, reflecting perhaps basic beliefs in “supernatural phenomena” but expressed in ways that are far removed from organised religious services. In this respect, religion (or, perhaps more correctly, religions) is viewed as being constantly reinvented to reflect the ways people choose and discard different forms of personal identity (the currently fashionable Kabbalah religion being a case in point).

In addition, further contradictions are in evidence in relation to the:

Privatisation and Deprivatisation of religion: Although there are clear signs of a move towards privatised forms of religious belief (religion as something practiced in the private rather than the public sphere), organised religion stubbornly refuses to disappear. On the contrary, there’s evidence (with some forms of Islam and Christianity in particular) of a contrary process of organised forms of religion re-emerging as significant aspects of public life.

Weeding the Path: This diversity of thought makes it difficult, in some ways, to evaluate postmodern approaches to religion because, as we’ve suggested, a common set of unifying principles is absent. This is not to say, however, that we can’t offer up some observations about postmodern approaches.

Metanarratives: Callinicos (1991) argues that postmodernism is itself a form of the “metanarrative thinking” postmodernists claim to dismiss as being unsustainable. More significantly, postmodernism’s inclusive approach to metanarratives - placing scientific ideologies (such as positivism) on a par with religious ideologies - has the (unintended) effect of actually strengthening the position of religion; if both science and religion have the same metanarrative status (and postmodernists such as Lyotard (1997) suggest we should be equally sceptical about the respective claims of both) it follows that religious beliefs and explanations are no less valid than scientific beliefs and explanations. - something like Creationism (or “Intelligent Design”, a belief about how the earth was created based on a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible), for example, can claim the same explanatory status as something like evolutionary theory.

This idea leads us to consider a further question, namely:

Resacralization: One of the enduring contradictions described by postmodern approaches is noted by McLeod (1997) when he observes postmodernity is an “'era of religious fragmentation, characterised by religious pluralism and conflicting evidence of both secularization and sacralization”. In this respect, a general decline in overt forms of religious practice (such as attendance at religious ceremonies), sits alongside a reinvigoration of both public and private religious practice (in America, for example, Church attendances are generally rising). The basic idea here, therefore, is that religion actually becomes both less important to people in terms of practice, but more important as a

source of personal and social identity. In a world that appears increasingly confusing and unstable, religions become beacons of order and stability by their ability to produce moral certainties. Thus, in a world of moral relativism - where one sets of beliefs and values is as good (or bad) as any other - religions are reinvigorated precisely because what they have to offer is no worse than any other form of explanation (and, possibly, a good deal more attractive than some). In this respect, Bauman (1992) argues, ‘postmodernity can be seen as restoring…a re-enchantment of the world that modernity tried hard to disenchant”. On the other hand, Bauman (1997) also addresses the issue of religious:

Fundamentalism: This represents a form of religious belief and organisation that advocates a strict observance of the “fundamental beliefs” of a religion, whether it be of the Christian variety in America or the Islamic variety in Iran. For Bauman, fundamentalist religions draw their strength from the ability to provide certainties in an uncertain world - from a belief in the principles laid down in the Old Testament of Christianity (an “eye for an eye”, for example) to the clear specification of how men and women should dress and behave in Islam. Bauman’s ideas, in this respect, link to Beck’s (1992) concept of:

Risk in the sense fundamentalist religions, by removing choice also remove risk. The individual, by being given clear moral guidelines has the “dread of risk taking” (and the consequences of those risks) removed.

Weeding the Path: Ideas about the relationship between postmodernity and religious fundamentalism need to be considered in relation to two ideas; firstly, that such fundamentalism is not necessarily new - it has existed at various times throughout history - and secondly whether contemporary forms of fundamentalism are actually linked with postmodernity, per se, or some other socio-economic processes.

The final idea we can note is:

Meaning: For many postmodernist writers religious signs and symbols have lost their “original” meaning - they become, in Baudrillard’s (1988) terms:

Simulacra, or things that simulate something that may once have been real. These simulations are not imitations; they are just as real as the things they simulate - televised religious services, for example, give the appearance of participation in a real religious service although, of course, the two experiences are quantitatively and qualitatively different. For Baudrillard, religious simulacra give the appearance of religiosity (wearing a cross, for example) but are, he argues, actually empty and devoid of any original meaning they once had - they “simulate divinity” as he puts it and, in so doing, devalue both the meaning and substance of religion. Sedgwick (2004), on the other hand, suggests this argument is overstated, when he notes the distinction between:

Organised religions, such as the Catholic Church and:

“Disorganised” religions, that involve a certain level of spirituality - a belief in the supernatural, for example - but which are not always explicitly practised in the same way as organised religions.

As he notes “We are often told that people are wide open to the idea of the spiritual - the religious, the numinous, call it what you like - but have no time for organised religion. And so the churches are emptying while they pursue their quest elsewhere” and suggests people are “…looking for private religion - that is, religion they can practise with minimal interruption to their normal routine and without having to bother about burdensome responsibilities. "I want the feel-good factor, but not the cost of commitment" - that, in reality, is what such people are saying. Putting it bluntly, private religion is essentially selfish religion”.

Bauman (1997) is equally scathing of “the new spiritualism”: "Postmodernity is the era of experts in ‘identity problems’ of personality healers, of marriage guides, of writers of ‘how to reassert yourself’ books; it is the era of the ‘counselling boom’. Business executives need spiritual counselling and their organizations need spiritual healing. Uncertainty postmodern-style begets not the demand for religion…[but] the ever rising demand for identity-experts".
Marxist Theories

Marxists generally (and Marx in particular) take an exclusive view of religion, preferring to study its impact on society by focusing on the particular qualities of religions - most notably the experience of “the sacred” (what Eliade (1969) called the “irreducibly religious” element of religion) that can only be found in “religious experience”. In this sense, therefore, Marxists have examined how religious beliefs and practices are qualitatively different to other forms of belief and practice. Thus, for Marxists religion is an important object of study in its own right, albeit one located in the general structure of (Capitalist) society. To understand the significance of religion, therefore, we need to think about its:

Institutional role as part of the general structure of society, which involves thinking about how Marxists theorise the relationship between economic, political add ideological institutions (such as religion). In this respect, Capitalist societies are theorised in terms of the relationship between “base and superstructure”:

Economic Base: This is the foundation on which any society is built. It is the world of work and involves particular types of relationships (owner / manager / wage labourer, for example) and organisation (based on things like wages in Capitalist societies, for example).

Political and Ideological Superstructure: This “rests” on the economic base and represents things like government and formal agencies of social control (political institutions) and cultural institutions like religion, education and the mass media (which Marxists call ideological institutions).

Our focus here is on the ideological role of religion in society.
From this position religion is seen as an:

Ideological framework (or belief system) that helps to shape the way people see the world; its role, in Capitalist society, is to “represent the world” in a way that reflects and supports the existing economic order. In other words, religious ideologies represent:

Legitimating myths about the world - “propaganda stories”, in other words, whose ultimate aim is to explain and justify the way society is ordered. Its role, in common with other cultural / ideological institutions in Capitalist society, is to uphold the status quo (to keep things as they are).

In this respect, therefore, the role of religion in society is seen as both oppressive and repressive:

Oppressive: As Marx (1844) argued, religion represented an “illusory happiness” that prevented people finding “real happiness”. The “need for illusions” about the world, he argued, stemmed from the conditions under which people lived. For most people living in Victorian Britain, conditions were grim and for Marx the solution to their unhappy situation was to remove the conditions that caused it (economic exploitation).

Repressive: Although, like Durkheim (1912), Marx saw religion as having an integrating function, he also saw it as an (ideological) agency of social control - one that teaches people to accept both the world “as it is” and, of course, their position in that world. Religion, therefore, served the interests of a ruling class by enforcing their ideological domination of other classes - in Victorian Britain, for example, religion promoted these interests by:

Upholding the status quo: The social world could legitimately be portrayed as "god-given" and consequently beyond the power of people to change.

Legitimising economic exploitation: If God made the world, it was not the place of people to question this scheme.

Justifying poverty and inequality: Poverty could be portrayed as a virtue - something to be endured in an uncomplaining fashion, since it was a means of achieving true spiritual riches in the afterlife (heaven).

The power of religious ideology, for Marx, wasn’t simply that it was “believed uncritically” - its real power to convince was based on the fact it could “do something” for believers, such as "dull the pain of oppression" with its promise of eternal life (Christianity) or reincarnation into a higher social caste (Hinduism). - as Marx(1844) expressed it: “Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”.

For traditional forms of Marxism, therefore, religion represents a form of:

False consciousness - people are unaware they are being tricked into accepting a situation that exploits them. By believing religious ideas people fail to see or understand the real causes of their misery and oppression - an exploitative economic system. Foucault (1983) captures this idea quite neatly when he notes: “People know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what they do does” (think about it - but not for too long).

Marx didn’t simply believe that by exposing the oppressive role of religion people would come to see their true interests. Religious beliefs, like any form of ideology, don’t just exist as ideas imposed upon the gullible. On the contrary, such beliefs are rooted deeply in the condition under which people live in Capitalist society:

Alienation: In a competitive, exploitative, society people gain little or no satisfaction or fulfilment from either the work they do or the relationships they form - they are, in this respect, alienated from both themselves and each other. In this situation, Marx (1844) argued, religion provided - at least at the time he was writing - a sense of meaning and purpose to life (albeit a false and illusory meaning).

Weeding the Path: At this point, you may be thinking that even if alienation is “part of the problem” it no longer seems very plausible (when thinking about Britain in the 21st century)

to see religion playing the kind of role described by Marx - and you’d probably be right (which is as good a reason as any to look at both an evaluation of classical Marxism and some more-modern (Neo) Marxist thinking about religion).


When we dig a deeper into classical Marxist theories of religion we can identify two major problems, the first of which is:

False consciousness: There are a couple of critical dimensions here:

Historical: For false consciousness to be a factor in people’s oppression it’s necessary for “the oppressed” to be “religious” in terms of their beliefs and practices. Turner (1983), however, has argued that, historically, the working classes have never been particularly religious (if you measure religious conviction in terms of Church attendance, involvement in and membership of religious groups and the like).

Contemporary: Although there is a diversity of religious beliefs and practices in modern Britain, it’s arguable that, in terms of Christianity at least, religion plays a relatively peripheral and superficial role in the lives of most people (one restricted, in many instances, to attending things like weddings and funerals). In this respect, it’s different to see religion as having much ideological significance fro the majority of people.

The second problem is that, for classical Marxism, religion was a largely conservative force (in the sense of broadly supporting the status quo). However, this is not necessarily the case, as the following examples show:

The Iranian Revolution in 1979 involved the overthrow of the (secular) regime of the Shah of Persia.

Liberation Theology: Boff (1987) notes the involvement of Roman Catholic clerics in revolutionary political movements in parts of South America from the 1960’s onwards

The Civil Rights Movement: In the USA, from the 1960’s onwards, social change was promoted and supported by Black religious activists and leaders (such as Martin Luther King).

Weeding the Path: Seiler (2004) argues that the overall picture of the relationship between religion and its ability to promote social change is complicated - he notes, for example: “Freedom is relative because it has its limits. In the case of Liberation Theology, for example, the Catholic Church hierarchy has not welcomed this ideological form and has tried, with varying degrees of success, to limit its impact”.

Neo-Marxist theories of religion attempt to resolve these problems through, initially, the concept of:

Hegemony - an idea put forward by Gramsci (1934) and elaborated by, amongst others, Poulantzas (1974). Hegemony involves the idea that beliefs about the world are not simply imposed “from above” (by a ruling class onto all other classes). Rather, as Strinati (1995) suggests, dominant groups are able to maintain their dominant position through the “consent” of subordinate groups. This “consent” (for the leadership in society by those who are led) is created through socialisation and force:

Socialisation: Consent is “manufactured” through ideological institutions (of which religion is but one). Althusser (1972) argued we should see this aspect of “consent manufacture” in terms of the concept of:

Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA’s) - socialisation processes carried out by cultural institutions such as religion, education and the media.

Force: This aspect may come directly into play (through agencies such as the police playing a repressive role in society), but one of the subtleties of hegemonic arguments is that “consent to leadership” doesn’t actually have to involve support for “dominant ideas”. On the contrary, it’s possible to oppose dominant ideas - but if you’re unable to do anything to change them you are effectively lending them your consent. Althusser argued we should see this aspect of “consent manufacture” in terms of:

Repressive State Apparatuses (RSA’s), involving groups such as the police, social workers and the armed forces.

The concept of hegemony makes it possible for “religious ideas” to be seen as influential in contemporary societies without necessarily having to show that “the majority” of people either believe or support them, an idea Strinati (1995) expresses thus: “…Gramsci's theory suggests subordinated groups accept the ideas, values and leadership of the dominant group not because they are physically or mentally induced to do so, nor because they are ideologically indoctrinated, but because they have reason of their own”.

We can build on the concept of hegemony by noting that, for traditional Marxist theory, religion formed part of a:

Dominant Ideology - a set of ideas, sanctified by God, that explained and justified the nature of the social world. Consequently, it represented an:

Integrating social force: By providing a set of beliefs and practices to which everyone was either subject or to which they could aspire, religion helped provide the “social glue” binding people together in terms of shared norms, values, traditions, customs and the like.

For neo-Marxists, as Turner (1983) notes, the ideological impact of religion is more subtle in that, rather than seeing religious ideas and rationalisations as an instrument of ideological oppression they suggest it represents a:

Cohesive force for a ruling class in Capitalist society: In other words, religion represents one way (significantly more important in the past, perhaps) the various elements and members of a ruling class are integrated as a class. Religion, in this respect, provided a set of universal, moral guidelines for ruling class behaviour - in relation to areas such as marriage and the inheritance of property (Christianity, for example, laid down the rules for legitimate relationships and hence for the inheritance of property).

Weeding the Path: Although neo-Marxism provides a different view of the role of religion in Capitalist society to its traditional counterpart, a significant criticism of this position involves the idea of:

Reductionism: That is, the explanation for the existence and role of cultural institutions like religion ultimately comes down - or is reduced - to what Pals (1996) calls “The material facts of the class struggle and alienation. Since these burdens form the reality behind the illusions of belief, [Marxists] explain religion best only when [they] reduce it to the forces of economic life that have created it”. In other words, whether from a traditional or neo-Marxist position, the significance of religion is ultimately judged in terms of how it performs an ideological role in support of a Capitalist economic system.
Cheers. :biggrin:
Reply 4
Does anyone know what the questions on religion were in January?
Reply 5
Does anyone know any theorists who talk about women and religious participation/ cults?
Reply 6
winterblue
Does anyone know what the questions on religion were in January?


yeah I do..

4 (a) Identify and briefly explain some of the reasons why New Religious Movements have such a high turnover of members. (8 marks)

(b) Using material from item B and elsewhere, briefly examine why some people feel that traditional Churches and denominations no longer meet their religious needs. (12 marks)

5 - Evaluate functionalist views on the role and functions of religion today. (40 marks)

OR

6 - Evaluate sociological explanations of the relationship between gender and religious belief and practice. (40 marks)
Reply 7
xxnizxx
yeah I do..

4 (a) Identify and briefly explain some of the reasons why New Religious Movements have such a high turnover of members. (8 marks)

(b) Using material from item B and elsewhere, briefly examine why some people feel that traditional Churches and denominations no longer meet their religious needs. (12 marks)

5 - Evaluate functionalist views on the role and functions of religion today. (40 marks)

OR

6 - Evaluate sociological explanations of the relationship between gender and religious belief and practice. (40 marks)

Thank you! So is it safe to say functionalism and gender and religious belief won't be on this friday? I can't cover everything as I've spent all my time revising psychology too :-(
Reply 8
^ Yeah I'm preety sure they won't be up!

They may however ask for conflict and conesus, where you would have to include functionalist!

BUT I'm preety sure there will be a 40 marker on SECULARISATION (which I love).fingers crossed
Does anyone know any theorists who talk about women and religious participation/ cults?


Walter and Davie’s (1998) observation that “In western societies influenced by Christianity, women are more religious than men on virtually every measure” is a useful starting point for any examination of the relationship between gender and religiosity:

Affiliation: According to O’Beirne (2004), across the major UK religions, more women (83%) than men (74%) claimed some form of religious affiliation. Within the major UK faith communities, the split is 54% - 46% in favour of women; however, apart from Christians (54% female) and Sikhs (53% female), men are in the majority across the remaining major faith communities. Of those classed as non-religious, 60% were men.

These figures confirm a trend, noted by successive British Attitudes Surveys (1983 - 1999), that men are less religious in terms of their affiliation levels. Affiliation is also declining amongst men - from 61% in 1983 to 43% in 1999.

According to Census 2001, women also have greater levels of involvement in non-traditional religions such as Spiritualism and Wicca (both nearly 70% female) - although variations were evident (Rastafarianism, for example, was 70% male).

Belief: Although the validity of data about religious is often questionable beliefs - Furlong (2002), for example, noted: “…people questioned about how much they go to church, give figures which, if true, would add up to twice those given by the churches” - the general evidence from opinion polls (such as YouGov, 2004) is that women have higher levels of belief in:

God: Crockett and Voas (2004) found 36% more women than men believed in the certainty of God’s existence).
Prayer - 44% of .women (and 29% of men) personally believe in prayer.
Life after death, heaven, the devil and so forth.

O’Beirne also notes more women (57%) than men (42%) affiliated to a faith community defined themselves in terms of their religion. On the other hand, we shouldn’t ignore the fact the majority of men and women in our society professed little or no religious belief (in other words, religion was of little or no importance in terms of identity).

Participation: Women generally participate more in religious activities (such as attendance at services and clubs) than men:

Attendance: Crockett and Voas (2004), for example, estimate women in the 21 - 40 age group were far more likely (40%) than their male counterparts to attend services.

Participation: O’Beirne’s research found Christian women slightly more likely (24% - 17%) than men to participate “in groups or clubs with a religious link”. Although the reverse was true for Muslims (30% - 40% respectively) this may reflect gender norms - Muslim women not being allowed to participate independently of men in religious activities, for example - rather than any significant difference in religiosity.

This pattern of attendance and participation is not restricted to the UK and Western Europe. Among Americans, Barna (1996) noted that the difference was even more marked with “Women twice as likely to attend a church service during any given week [and] 50% more likely than men to say they are ‘religious’ and to state they are ‘absolutely committed’ to the Christian faith”. Similarly, if we include NRMs, Bader (2003) suggests NRMs (and NAMs) generally have a higher ratio of female-to-male participants.

Finally we can note that men, by-and-large, hold positions of power and authority within the major world religions. As Malmgreen (1987) points out:“ “In modern Western cultures, religion has been a predominantly female sphere. In nearly every sect and denomination of Christianity, though men monopolized the positions of authority, women had the superior numbers”.
wow i have different studies to you, most of mine are about Bruce, Durkheim and other famous people
Reply 11
Any one have a decent way to structure an essay on Secularisation? Since i guess one of the 40 markers will be on that....I'm also guessing at a Marxism 40 marker.
LuckySeven
Any one have a decent way to structure an essay on Secularisation? Since i guess one of the 40 markers will be on that....I'm also guessing at a Marxism 40 marker.


Yes, I'd also like to see a decent way to structure an essay on Secularisation - it'd be a great help!
Reply 13
Secularisation is preety hard to structure, In the book I'm using there's points for and against in each paragraph so that's how I am structuring mine.

So for example, In one paragraph..

How some 'Sociologists believe NRMs and NAMs contribute to the religiosity of the society because..' and then say 'However..on the other hand other sociologists such as..believe they are an indication that secularisation is occuring..because..'

Sorry I don't have a structure on my comp, and don't know how useful what I told you is..but hope it helps :p: But for each paragraph I'm including for and against points for different issues.
Reply 14
Secularisation is such a broad subject, it's so hard to remember everything! What would you say are the key points?
Reply 15
Secularisation:
Pro secularisation:

Comte: Religious belief taken over by science.
Durkheim: Religion would lose it's significance, and be replaced by education.
Marx: In a socialist society, religion would lose i't's function to legitimise social inequalty, thus disappear.
Weber: Rationalisation causes religion to disappear. Desacrilisation, Disenchantment(world no longer supernatural), Disengagment from religions. Iron cage(rationality causes rise in bureacratic managment systems)
Berger: pluralistic view's, cause uncertainity, which means that the world look's more secular.
Herberg: Internal secularisation( religion's becoming a commodity to be sold)
Bruce: Decline of christianity.


Anti-Secularisation:
Glock and Stark: defintion
Roof and McInney: Evenangelical group's show serious commitment.
Stark: No proof that religion was big during middle ages. Also american religion has tripled.
Davie: People are still spiritual
Thanks for that!!

Do you have any idea of how to structure a Secularisation essay too by any chance? :biggrin:
Reply 17
Id do for and against alternating in paragraphs, criticising as you go along. Seems to work for me in practice
Thank you. :smile:
Reply 19
hiii people - i am doing my religion exam dis month..can any one help me with the question about rel organisation, rel. beliefs and social groups? thnk you

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