Religion, science and

secularization

AXA3629 LECTURE 8
 Secularization

The transformation of societies from the traditional

grip of religion and religious practices to a more
rational and irreligious approach of individuals and
public performance.
 Secularization

“The process whereby religious thinking, practice

and institutions lose social significance” – Wilson,
1966.
 Factors of secularization

• Modernity:

 urbanization

 industrialization /division of labour

 The ascendency of science

 Context

By the end of the seventeenth century Europe was

becoming prosperous through trade and industry
after a long period of religious wars (1530-1690).
Modern cities began to appear at this time
throughout Europe. But life was dangerous , the poor
suffered great hardships , and the political situation
remained unstable. A few thoughtful men began to
search for a new basis for a more peaceful life for
individuals and society.
 Science/philosophy

Thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries in Europe gave two different answers to the
question: How can we have certain and dependable
truth ?

Two answers arose from two different ways of

learning and knowing things:
 Rationalism

1. The Rationalists (from the Latin ratio, meaning

‘reason’) saw that the most certain kind of knowledge
is mathematics. Truth, the said, consists of ‘self-
evident principles’-things which everyone naturally
knows, organized into a logical system. Their model
was geometry. Rationalism was especially popular in
continental Europe. (Thomson, 1976, 107).
2. The Empiricists (from the Greek empeiria,
meaning ‘experience’) were those who believed that all real
knowledge comes from common experience. Everything we
know comes through our senses; sight, hearing, taste, touch
and smell. Their example was the way a small child learns to
speak. The most important empirical philosophers were
English. (Thomson, 1976, 107).

 The more scholarship and science developed, the more

people came to agree with the 17th century French thinker ,
Michel de Montaigne, who said that : “Knowing much
gives occasion for doubting more”
 Industrial revolution

After Belgium, England was the first the first country in

Europe to become industrialized. The new labouring class in
England worked without the right to vote, without labour
unions, without factory laws, without minimum standards of
housing, health and education required for human
development. It was places like Manchester and
Birmingham in England that Marx and Engels used for
examples in their writings , which formed the basis for the
Communist movement. For English workers,
industrialization meant a working day of twelve hours or
more , child labour, a painful and empty life, and an early
death.
The coming of the industrial revolution caused
people to move suddenly to find work in the new
factories. Entire cities grew up before people had
time to adapt to city life.

On the whole, the workers were also without

the church. The churches were in agricultural
places. It is this situation which led John Wesley
(the founder of the Methodist movement) to start
revivals among the workers.
 The Division of Labour

 Members of the clan are joined by bonds of kinship and

acknowledge reciprocal obligations. The organization of
society into tribes correspond to what Durkheim calls the
segmental structure of mechanical solidarity; where society is
made of small groups or segments organised into tribes with
close proximity to one another and where the division of
labour is along domestic and political lines. As societies
become more advanced the segments turn into organs with
more specialised functions. Advanced societies are
characterised by industrialisation and increased division of
labour with specialised functions. Solidarity now comes
from occupation rather than kinship and social links are
based on contracts.
 D.L

Common beliefs and practices start eroding and

there emerges a more political and legal form of
centralised power with specialised judicial and
administrative functions. There are fewer shared
understandings between people , or at least, social
bonds become based on contract rather than
religious beliefs or customs. Religious doctrines
declines and social relations become secular and
political.
 D.L

Durkheim on Division of labour

Although religion still maintains grip over the soul,
science tends to replace religion in areas requiring
cognitive and intellectual functions (Durkheim’s
Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 431).
 D. L.

 Max Weber on Divion of labour

 In contrast, Max Weber argues that, the individual
progressively becomes emancipated, accepting new and
greater freedoms with the development of new rights and
beliefs. But like Weber, Durkheim believes that the
modern world becomes increasingly rationalistic, with the
changing nature of belief systems leading to more diverse
and complex social processes. But the more we advance ,
the more profoundly do societies reveal the sentiment of
self and unity (Durkheim 1964, 173). The source of this is
the division of labour. (Jonathan Joseph, 2003, p.74).
 Other secular thinkers: Karl Marx

. Karl Marx
 Marx made a sweeping attack on the church. “Religion as
an ideology”, he said, “has its origin in the ruling,
dominating classes who use it as a political weapon to make
the lower classes obey the law.” (in Muga, 1975:2).
“Religion”, he further said, “is a weapon which makes the
superordinate subdue the subordinate. It protects class.” It
is this which led Marx to make this famous statement
against religion he is remembered for that: “religion is
the opiate of the people” (2).
 Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche
Like Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
described Christianity as an expression of
resentment and it is from this resentment that
democracy and other socialist movements, he
protests against, are derived (Mugo, 1975:5).
Nietzsche
“Christianity aims at destroying the strong, at
breaking the spirit, at exploiting their moments of
weariness and debility, at converting their proud
assurance into anxiety and conscience-trouble; that
it knows how to poison the noblest instincts and to
infect them with disease, until their strength, their
will to power, turns inwards against themselves-
until the strong perish through their excessive self-
contempt and self-immolation” (Mugo, 1975:3).
 Legal-rational society

Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

 “By promoting rational conduct the Protestant ethic accelarates a
process of modernisation that eventually undermines the religious
view point” (106) In other words, the detachment from the mystic
or spiritual life to that of rationality, produced more bombast than
results which now works against this religion. “The process of
modernisation and nationalisation demystifies the world and
elevates science and technology to new levels of importance”,
“the world becomes more secure through non-religious
knowledge like science and rationality so that there is less need
for religion to provide security, meaning and explanation”
(Joseph , J, Social Theory: An Introduction, 106).
In developing a body of knowledge science attempts to replace religion by
explaining causal relationship of phenomena. But Durkheim says:
“It has long been known that the first systems of representations that man
made of the world and himself were of religious origin. If philosophy and
the sciences were born in religion, it is because religion itself began by
serving as science and philosophy. Further, and less often noted, religion
has not merely enriched a human intellect already formed but in fact has
helped to form it. Men owe to religion not only the content of their
knowledge, insignificant part, but also the form in which that knowledge
is elaborated” (Durkheim, 1995, p.8).
 Weber seems to show us that we may rationalise but
without realising that there comes a point when the
real battle in society is fought not with weapons of
reason, but with values. In his anaysis Joseph reminds
us that “the development of instrument (as opposed
to value) rationalism leads to means and ends
losing their original intent”. When “Protestant ethic
is emptied of its religious content, the economic
behaviour it motivates becomes irrational in that it
has no clear relation to human needs” (Joseph , J,
Social Theory: An Introduction, 106).
 Stark on secularization

Stark (1985) states:

“ Sometimes the pace of secularization is slower
and sometimes it is faster (the rise of science in
the West may well have produced relatively rapid
secularization). But fast or slow, if secularization
is universal and normal, then it does not imply the
demise of religion. It does imply the eventual failure
of specific religious organizations as they become
too worldly and too emptied of supernaturalism to
continue to generate commitment.” ( p. 145)
 Hunter on secularization

 Hunter (1983)calls the “deinstitutionalization of religious

reality” ( p. 14) in the world views ofmodern people. Hunter
cites three characteristics of modern society that contrib-
ute to this deinstitutionalization: 1) the naturalistic
metaphysic of “functional” rationalization (i.e., the
infusion of rational controls into all human experience),
2) a cultural pluralism that both exposes people to
variant social perspectives and undercuts the support of
monopolistic world views, and 3) a structural plural-
ism that dichotomizes human experience into
public and private spheres.
The structural pluralism imposes on religion is
privatization.
 At the subjective level of people’s world views, the privatization
of religion is internalized. Among other things this means that
religious symbols and meanings tend to be relevant only within
certain contexts of the modern person’s everyday life, the moments
spent in the private sphere. The highly rational character of the public
sphere and the inutility and implausibility of religious definitions of
reality in that context make it less likely that a person’s religious
beliefs will be relevant to him in such settings. Religion will seem
much more viable in ordering his personal affairs. (p. 14)
 Conclusion: The Plot to Kill God

The Plot to Kill God: Findings from the

Soviet Experiment in Secularization by Paul
Froese (2008).
 The central argument in The Plot to Kill God is simple: the
Soviet’s government’s attempt to remove religion from the
Soviet Union failed because humanity possesses an innate
proclivity towards belief in God which cannot be eradicated
through overt legislative processes. The idea of God is
currently a fundamental aspect of human culture and
shows no signs of fading, even in some of the most
secularized regions of the Globe.”
Science