FIRST DRAFT

"Is secularisation good for the sociology of religion?"

James A. Beckford

University of Warwick

(Unpublished paper presented at the Department of Sociology,

University of Edinburgh, 7th March 2001)

At first glance the question in the title of my talk seems straightforward. It seems to be asking whether the declining significance of religion for social life (a conventional way of thinking about secularisation) is good or bad for the sociology of religion. Does it mean, for example, that sociologists who specialise in the study of religion will be out of a job? Or could it mean that, as expressions of religion became more and more rare, interest in the sociological study of it might become more highly valued? After all, if religion is an ‘endangered species’, perhaps there will be a future for sociologists as its chroniclers, curators or keepers. We might become part of the ‘heritage industry’.

On the other hand, there is a different reading of my question. It could refer to the concept of secularisation. In this case, the debate is about the long-term consequences of the apparent fixation of many sociologists of religion with the idea of its decline or demise. Is it good for a field of specialisation to be preoccupied with the prospect that it will sooner or later go out of existence? Isn’t there a risk that, by constantly talking about the decline of religion, sociologists of religion might help to do themselves out of a job – or at least ‘talk down’ the significance of their subject?

In other words, my topic has two sides. The first raises questions about the sociology of something that is apparently in process of declining or disappearing. What is there left to study? Is it worth studying? The other asks whether the sociological focus on the decline of religion is somehow obscuring the bigger picture or, at least, a more interesting one. If we’re only interested in the claim that the glass is half-empty, what are we missing? If the remaining contents of the glass are sufficiently potent, isn’t it a mistake to ignore them? I’m going to deal with both sides of the topic, the reality and the concept, without necessarily making a clear distinction between them.

I’ll begin with the supposedly common-sense view of secularisation and of its effects on the sociology of religion. Then I’ll discuss a range of reasons for thinking that the common-sense position has run into difficulties and complexities in recent decades. My argument will be that religion has actually become more interesting and problematic – regardless of whether it is in decline and regardless of whether sociologists of religion are preoccupied with its alleged decline. The conclusion will be that secularisation has not done any lasting damage to the sociology of religion and has been quite helpful in some respects.

Rates of religious belief, practice, affiliation and influence on society have been declining for a long time. You can find plausible explanations of these developments in the writings of, for example, Bryan Wilson, Steve Bruce or Jay Demerath, among others.

Bryan Wilson’s many depictions of secularisation are canonical. Here is one that stresses the loss of the functions that religion used to fulfil for other social institutions:

Here is the most recent version of Steve Bruce’s (2001: 249-50) view (that he sometimes qualifies as the conventional model):

The factors that Steve Bruce cites in explanation of secularisation are structural differentiation, social differentiation, societalisation, rationalisation, and egalitarianism – in short, modernisation.

A more moderate position, closer to my own, has been set out by Jay Demerath (2001: 213):

Demerath’s argument is that ‘religion is subject to oscillating moments of both secularisation and sacralization’ (2001: 226). My own preference is to regard these oscillations as the result of social construction processes. That is, notions about the meaning of religion and non-religion are constantly being constructed, defended, questioned, challenged and rejected in response to the interplay of social and cultural forces.

If religion is in decline, then surely the future for the sociology of religion doesn’t look very bright. That’s the common-sense view. One of the earliest formulations came, ironically, from David Martin. It’s ironic because he was challenging the common-sense view about secularisation. He described himself as ‘an academic deviant living by a non-existent subject’ (Martin 1966: 354). Moreover, he claimed, ‘the sociology of religion most resembles the republic of Venice just before Napoleon snuffed it out for ever’ (355). Is there any point in going on with the sociology of religion?

But I want to suggest that secularisation, either as reality or concept, has not been altogether a bad thing for the sociology of religion. I’m going to give three main reasons for thinking that secularisation isn’t such a bad thing after all for the sociology of religion.

(a) Lively debates

The first of these reasons is that the debates, sometimes quite heated ones, about secularisation have been lively at times and quite far-reaching in their potential connections with mainstream sociology. For the sake of simplicity I’ll mention only 5 main components of these debates (summarised in Tschannen 1991).

(i) First there are the so-called commonsensical or ‘orthodox’ versions that stress the gradual decline of religion in all its dimensions (personal, emotional, creedal, organisational) and in all its consequences for social life. Support for these arguments often takes the form of quantitative measures, but evidence from ethnography and other qualitative accounts is not lacking. Indeed, Bryan Wilson, Philip Rieff and Robert Bellah have all extended this line of reasoning to link secularisation to moral change.

(ii) Secondly, critics of the commonsense position dispute the meaning of the quantitative measures; question their validity or significance; claim that the evidence of some decline needs to be placed in the context of other changes; criticise the implicit assumption of high levels of religiosity in earlier periods of history; etc. (Gill 1989, 1998; Greeley 1972)

(iii) Thirdly, some alternative interpretations of recent religious history insist on religion’s continuing relevance, or indeed growing relevance, in the sphere of politics and civil society (Davie 1994; Casanova 1994).

(iv) Fourthly, some rational choice theorists in the USA have argued that religion is a rational response to existential problems and is therefore indispensable. But market conditions ensure that competition between different religious products leads to a process of constant turnover, with the loss of uncompetitive religious groups and their replacement by more dynamic or better-adapted ones (Stark & Bainbridge 1987; Stark & Finke 2000; Young 1997).

(v) Fifthly, there is a fashion among French and French-speaking sociologists of religion to re-interpret claims about secularisation as evidence of the ‘re-structuring’ of religion in response to problems posed by modernity. They argue that religion is a ‘chain of memory’ but is being ‘restructured’ in such a way that it is actually becoming more powerful in the sphere of private life and in that of small-scale intentional communities of believers (Champion & Hervieu-Léger 1990). The argument is that religion’s capacity to arouse strong feelings and personal commitments is an increasingly important antidote or counterweight to the dominance of late-modern societies by the impersonal forces of economic markets and of state bureaucracies. Other scholars hold to the view that the late modern era is far from secular because a variety of implicit, customary, diffused or folk forms of religiosity continue to flourish amidst or alongside the remains of formerly commanding religious organizations (Bailey 1998; Cipriani 1989).

In short, I believe that the liveliness of the debates about secularisation is good for the sociology of religion, especially if they focus on issues of general social and cultural significance such as moral change, the changing texture of social solidarity, and the conditions of present-day social system integration. Secularisation is ‘good to think with’.

(b) Controversies

My second reason for suggesting that secularisation is good for the sociology of religion is that it opens up some interesting questions about how the boundary of religion is negotiated in an age when it is no longer taken for granted. In particular, it seems to me that some aspects of religion have become significantly more controversial in recent decades and that this is partly due to the relatively new ways in which religion is now being ‘used’ as a result of some aspects of secularisation (Beckford 1999).

There has been a marked tendency in many countries where Christianity has long been dominant for religion to lose some of the features of a social institution (Beckford 1989). This means that, instead of operating as a ‘sacred canopy’ permanently providing identity, meaning, inspiration and consolation to very large numbers of people, religion increasingly serves as a resource to which individuals and groups may have recourse from time to time. The death of Diana, Princess of Wales was one such time both in the UK and in other countries (Kear & Steinberg 1999; Walter 1999, 2001). The number of people for whom religion still functions as an overarching and massive institution, meeting many of their perceived needs on a continuous basis, is in decline. At the same time, the institution of religion, at least in the form of religious organizations, exerts less and less influence over other social institutions such as the law, politics, economics, health care, science and the family. In this sense, the significance of religion as a social institution is diminishing in many societies. Yet, it also seems clear that, as the influence of religious organizations has waned, religious symbols, meanings and values have been de-regulated and made more exploitable. "Religion has come adrift from its former points of anchorage" (Beckford 1989: 170) and is increasingly available for use in a bewildering variety of ways. This is why I describe religion as a "free floating phenomenon".

In this context, de-regulation means more than the relaxation of legal or constitutional restraints on religious activity. It also means that religious organizations are able to exercise less control over the uses made of their own religious symbols. For example, the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK now receives proportionally more complaints about advertisements containing religious symbols than about any other category of advertisements. The British are not becoming more sensitive about religion, however. There is simply less agreement about what counts as religion – and about its ‘acceptable’ forms. (e.g. religion in schools; charitable status for religions; acceptable forms of religion on TV and radio; complementary healing; forms of public chaplaincy) This situation, regardless of whether you call it secularisation or not, creates wonderful opportunities for social constructionist research into the problem of establishing, attacking or defending the boundary between religion and non-religion (Beckford 1998). In short, controversies about the boundaries of religion are a feature of secularisation and are good for the sociology of religion.

(c) ‘Lulled into a false sense of security’

A third reason why secularisation has not necessarily sounded the death knell for the sociology of religion is that the picture painted by some early proponents of ‘secularisation theory’ was too dismissive of the significance of religion. This picture was so extreme that any evidence of religion’s continuing importance was bound to cause surprise if not shock. And this is precisely what has happened: social and cultural scientists from various disciplines have recently been falling over themselves to write about religion because its undeniable vitality came as a great surprise to them. The shock of discovering that religion could still be a potent force in some societies was so traumatic for some that they could only make sense of it as a ‘postmodern’ phenomenon.

For example, the mobilization of very large numbers of North, Central and South Americans as well as Southern Africans and Koreans in pursuit of conservative political ends in the name of conservative Protestantism could hardly be ignored (Martin 1990; Lehmann 1996; Brouwer 1996). The perception that ‘fundamentalist’ forms of various world religions were beginning to shape the lives and outlooks of increasingly large proportions of the population in many countries also called for scrutiny (Castells 1997). Furthermore, the growing salience of religious identity among the younger generations of communities of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh migrants and settlers in many European countries began to force a re-think of the priority which had previously been given to ethnicity and ‘race’ (Modood 1998). Finally, the collapse of the Soviet Union and of its client states in Central and Eastern Europe highlighted not only the latent capacity of Orthodox Churches to meet the needs of their followers but also the strenuous attempts that some of these Churches were making to prevent other religious movements from benefiting fully from increases in religious freedom (Weigel 1992; Kürti 1997). In their different ways all of these developments have forced religion back on to the agenda of mainstream sociology because it unexpectedly seemed to be an important dimension of the central processes of identity formation, social inclusion, boundary maintenance and violent conflicts over territory and law (Juergensmeyer 1993).

Many of those social scientists and social theorists who had seen no reason to take religion seriously in the middle decades of the 20th century were lulled into a false sense of security. Events in the final decades of the century all around the world forced a re-think. This not to say, of course, that writers who suddenly woke up to the unexpected importance of religion such as Giddens, Bauman and Castells have necessarily had anything interesting or new to say about it. But that’s the topic of other papers (Beckford 1992, 1996). The fact that secularisation was taken-for-granted for so long helped to make the re-discovery of religion’s significance all the more surprising or shocking: that’s my point. And the sociology of religion has benefited indirectly from the attention that some high-profile social scientists have recently given to religion.

Arguments about secularisation will probably go on for ever – especially if Steve Bruce has anything to do with it. But the final part of my argument for denying that secularisation has been bad for the sociology of religion is perhaps the most important consideration. I want to suggest that, whatever the strengths and weaknesses of secularisation theories, they have nevertheless left space for the development of several promising fields of inquiry into religion. Secularisation has not blighted the whole crop. I’ll select three that are of special importance to me, but there are plenty of others.

(i) Identity

Following the ‘cultural turn’ in sociology, interest has grown in the diversity of religious resources on which social collectivities can draw in the continuous negotiation of their identity in relation to other collectivities. Ethnographic studies of a black-led Pentecostal church in Birmingham (Toulis 1997) and of young Muslim adults in London (Jacobson 1998) are representative of this approach (just compare them with, e.g., Sheila Patterson’s Dark Strangers or with Rex & Moore’s Race, Community and Conflict). They support Hetherington’s (1998: 6) claim that ‘the relationship between expressivism, belonging and identity is a major feature of the quest for identity that runs throughout modern societies’.

The range of issues on which collective religious identity has a direct bearing is extremely wide, but outstanding research has cast fresh light on, for example, ‘culture wars’ in the US between conservative and liberal opinion on the family, education, the media and the law (Hunter 1991), sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland (Bruce & Wallis 1992), communal relations in Singapore (Hill & Lian1995), and competition between Protestants and Catholics in Latin America (Martin 1990; Lehmann 1996). Among the most significant developments has been a concern to map the subtle relations between religion and ethnic identity in countries where immigration in the latter half of the twentieth century has increased religious diversity and led to the consolidation of extensive faith communities of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs among others. The different political, legal, economic, religious and social institutions in Britain (Beckford & Gilliat 1998; Vertovec 1996; Bhatt 1997), France (Khosrokhavar 1997; Kepel 1987,1994; Boyer 1998; Césari 1998; Saint-Blancart 1997) and Germany (Tibi 1998, 1999) have made the religious identity of minority communities salient in different ways. Extensive immigration from developing countries into Western Europe (Nielsen 1992) and the change of regimes in countries formerly under the sway of the Soviet Union (Weigel 1992; Kürti 1997) have both underlined the necessity for sociologists to take seriously the contribution of collective religious identity towards the struggles for communal autonomy, cultural influence and public respect (Davie & Hervieu-Léger 1996).

Research in the USA has tended to pay less attention to the broadly political relevance of religious identity among settled communities of migrants and more attention towards processes of cultural adaptation and institution building. For example, research on ‘ethnic congregations’ among Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus (Warner & Wittner 1997; Ebaugh & Chafetz 2000) has clearly demonstrated the importance of local congregations as communal vehicles not only for religious identity but also for integration into civil society. Questions remain unanswered, however, about the members of minority communities who do not want to associate with these ethnic congregations and about the potential for competition and conflict between them.

Contrary to simplistic versions of the secularisation thesis questions about religious identity at the individual and collective levels loom increasingly large in discussions of many societies in the late twentieth century. This is especially true of societies in which ethnic and religious identities are superimposed (Modood, Beishon & Virdee 1994). Consequently, the ‘politics of identity’ cannot be adequately comprehended unless due account is taken of the extent to which religion serves as a marker of collective identity (Hanf 1994). This remains true in secularising societies. Paradoxically, the issue of religious identity becomes all the more salient in a context of religious decline or secularism (e.g. devout Muslims in Turkey; evangelical Christians in Singapore; or Falun Gong followers in China).

(ii) Feminisms and gender relations

Feminist perspectives on religion and spirituality have also attracted growing interest in recent decades. And, although religion was not the first area of social life in which gender relations became the object of extensive research, it has become sufficiently important to raise some challenging issues. There are a number of reasons for this, and most of them are unaffected by secularization.

(a) First, religion helps to construct ideas of gender. This makes it all the more important to understand how and why the scientific study of religion managed to make women virtually invisible or to exclude them from analysis (Wallace 1997).

(b) Second, religious organizations structure many of their processes and distributions of rewards in terms of gendered differences (Lehman 1993). Gender affects the lived experience of religion even in would-be universal faiths and in religious ideologies proclaiming the essential one-ness of all people. Evidence of discrimination against women and some minorities in religious organizations is not only ironic and paradoxical in itself but is also important material for broader arguments about gendered inequalities in, for example, the workplace or the home. An interesting new field of research is developing around the so-called ‘feminisation of the clergy’ (Nesbitt 1997). (One argument is that the growing access of women to priesthood and ministry in some churches is itself a consequence of secularization. Why? The answer is that men have progressively vacated the clerical profession because its status and rewards have declined. Part of the evidence in support of this claim is that female clergy find it relatively hard to secure good jobs and promotion.)

(c) Third, feminist theologies, or versions of theology heavily influenced by feminist ideas, have systematized and elaborated ways of thinking and of being-in-the-world that have radical consequences. The impact of these theological reflections has been felt not only in religious organizations but also in some social movements for peace and environmental protection, among others. The formation of ‘womanist’ theologies and feminist spiritualities within mainstream Christian and Jewish traditions, as well as in Dianic versions of Wicca, represents a form of radical separatism. This is occurring at a time when secular forms of radical feminism are also finding it harder to flourish.

(d) Fourth, religion has also been an arena in which serious challenges to feminism have been mounted. Indeed, an insistence on the sacred nature of gendered differences is characteristic of some conservative religious groups and worldviews. To some extent, therefore, disputes about the standing of women have become a site of intense ideological struggle in religions. It is as if fundamental questions about gender are rendered particularly acute and limpid in the context of religion.

For all these reasons, then, aspects of religion have attracted the interest of social scientists who might have ignored it if feminists and others had not thrown issues of gender into sharp relief. What they are discovering is that many debates about civil rights and equal opportunities come to a head around questions to do with, for example, the rights of individual women to choose whether to subject themselves to the discipline of religious collectivities or the rights of religious and cultural collectivities to require women to conform with their disciplines. The growing interest in the potential of religious leaders either to abuse their followers (Shupe 1998; Nason-Clark 1996) or, in the name of religion, to impose severe constraints on their life-chances (Yuval-Davis 1994) brings the scientific study of religion closer to the concerns of many social scientists. Evidence of some women’s clear-sighted voluntary submission to communal control makes issues about gender inequalities all the more challenging and interesting (Neitz 1993; Davidman 1991; Kaufman 1991). The latest development in this line of reasoning is Mary Jo Neitz’s (2000:389) view that sexuality, rather than gender, may be even more revealing about inequalities in religion.

(iii) Globalization

One of the rare occasions on which a sociologist of religion, Roland Robertson, has helped to compose a melody that has subsequently been orchestrated by other social scientists for their own, different purposes occurred in the case of globalisation. Robertson did not coin the term in order to contribute to debates about secularization, but other sociologists have certainly tried to do this.

From his earliest sketches of the concept, Robertson insisted -- contrary to the advocates of world systems theory -- that globalization was a complex process with distinct religious implications (Robertson 1985, 1989; Robertson & Chirico 1985). To summarize the argument grossly, the rapid escalation of the level, scope and intensity of communications among nation states, corporations, non-governmental organizations, and organizations in the arts, sports, education, and religion in the latter half of the twentieth century made people feel that the world is a smaller place. The experience of the world as a smaller place has also given urgency to the need to identify ‘humanity’ as a property shared by all the increasingly inter-dependent global actors. Religions provide many of the symbols of common humanity and are therefore implicated in globalization. But they are also vehicles of particularistic ideas about humanity, so they appropriate and filter the experience of globalization in ‘local’ terms. In short, religions can mediate between the global and the local – not just McDonaldisation or Jesus in Disneyland.

It is not surprising that the scientific study of religion was in the vanguard of attempts to develop the notion of globalization, since some worldwide religious organizations had already prefigured current trends. But it remains to be seen whether the deluge of publications about global forces in economics, politics and culture will continue to show sensitivity towards religious developments. In any case, a critical backlash against globalization is gathering pace among social scientists who regard it as either wishful thinking on the part of ‘American imperialism’ or just the latest manifestation of capitalism and modernity. More to the point for my purposes, the criticisms of the concept of globalization often have a religious coloring, thereby paradoxically confirming the usefulness of this way of thinking about religion.

To sum up, the religious situation in many advanced industrial societies is sufficiently complex to defy explanation solely in terms of secularisation. One feature is the diminishing capacity of religion to serve as an overarching institution. Another is the absolute and proportional decline in the number of people who actively participate in the activities of religious organizations – at least in Christianity and Judaism. But a third feature is the buoyancy and liveliness of selected religious movements and organizations ranging from conservative fellowships to New Age spiritualities. And a fourth feature of the current situation in many advanced industrial societies is the growing size, self-confidence and effectiveness of Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh faith communities. The situation is further complicated by the fact that each of these four features also conceals wide variations. This means that rates of decline and growth vary from time to time, place to place, and group to group. It is as if we were looking at a kaleidoscopic image that is constantly changing in shape, colour and intensity. There is no single dominant trend. And nothing is to be gained from trying to show that the kaleidoscopic pattern lends itself to a single ‘trump card’ explanation. The complexity and unevenness of changes in religion call into question the value of would-be explanations which rely on a single factor or which try to freeze the flux in a single image. So, provided that secularization is treated as just one, albeit important, perspective on religious change, it is useful for the sociology of religion. But it’s not helpful to treat secularization as the sole key to the mysteries of religion.

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