2. 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.
3. Secularization
• “The process whereby religious thinking, practice and institutions
lose social significance” – Wilson, 1966.
5. 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.
6. 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:
7. 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).
8. • 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”
9. 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.
10. • 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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).
14. 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
15. .
.
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).
16. 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).
17. • 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).
18. 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).
19. 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).
20. • 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).
21. 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)
22. 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.
23. • 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)
24. 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.”
