Spis Notes

Are we as secularized as we think we are?

Secularisation theory claims that the social significance of religion has declined, and is declining¹. It can be disaggregated into theories of individual-level, ‘micro’ secularisation and, institutional-level, ‘macro’ secularisation. That is, it predicts declines in both the standing of religious institutions, and a decline in the religiously-motivated actions and beliefs of individuals. What follows is analyses of four challenges to secularisation theory. These challenges are the ‘believing without belonging’ theory, the alleged robustness of religion in the USA, the ‘true religion’ theory, and a set of theories based in demography. The ‘believing without belonging’ theory concedes that the extent of religious affiliation has declined in post-industrial countries, but argues that belief remains robust; the second challenge is the alleged robustness of religious faith in the USA; the ‘true religion’ theory accepts the functional differentiation argument, but says that, shorn of its secondary functions, religion continues to shape and address a range of ‘ultimate’ questions; the demographic theory is perhaps better described as a series of related theories, which suggest that higher fertility among the religious, and migration of the religious to post-industrial countries, are inhibiting, and will continue to, inhibit secularization. I will find that these challenges at best represent addendums to the theory of secularisation. Given that secularisation theory is highly contested - one academic says it ought to be ‘consigned to the dustbin of history’² - this essay therefore demonstrates that we may in fact be more, not less, secularised than we think.

One objection to the secularisation thesis is the ‘believing without belonging’ (hereafter: ‘BWB’) thesis - which states that whilst affiliation and/or church attendance have declined, belief has not³. Religious beliefs are relevant to our question insofar as they inform behaviour and social attitudes. The BWB thesis has strong and weak versions. Davie proposes a weak version, in which belief is understood quite loosely, as “variables concerned with feelings, experience and the more numinous aspects of religious belief”⁴. Others, such as Avis⁵, understand belief as referring to more orthodox Christian belief. The strong iteration of the BWB thesis is disputed by Voas and Crockett, who show that belief in the existence of God has, in Britain, declined at the same rate as attendance, and that this decline is a product of generational change, rather than any specific period effects or changes to the population structure⁶. Even then, purely metaphysical beliefs about the existence or otherwise of God, tout court, are not obviously important for our question, since they do not necessarily motivate particular actions: God exists - so what? More important in terms of religion’s social significance are, for example, beliefs about the duties implied by faith, which would seem to encourage certain behaviours. I imagine these are harder beliefs to chart across time and space - within surveys, responses are probably particularly prone to bias arising from question wording and a state’s political climate- but it is probably the case that these sorts of belief have declined⁷⁸. The weak version of the BWB thesis, associated with Davie, conceptualises belief too broadly to be vulnerable to decisive empirical critique. She states that “if we widen the definition of religion to include questions about...the future of the planet...the 18-24 age group may respond much more positively than they do to traditional religious instruction”. This seems a bafflingly wide understanding of religion and I do not think that the alleged heightened interest of young people in ecological matters is a serious challenge to secularisation theory.

The alleged robustness of faith in the USA is often held up as an important counterexample to the secularisation thesis. For Berger, Davie, and Fokas, it is, “a big nail in the coffin of the theory”⁹. Until approximately the 1970s, church attendance in the USA rose. However, since then, attendance has declined, although it remains above the levels seen in most other post-industrial countries¹⁰. There is, however, a compositional effect on Church attendance. Different affiliations have differing requirements for attendance - mainline Protestantism is generally the least strict due to the doctrine of sola scriptura - and therefore the recent decrease in the mainline Protestant share of the religious population (between 2007 and 2014, it fell from 22 to 19%)¹¹ could have upwardly biased operationalisations of religiosity based on church attendance, so it may be that the decline in religiosity is in reality even steeper. Secondly, the most commonly told story about the continued relative strength of church attendance can also be interpreted as evidence of a decline in the social significance of religion. The common argument is that the American state’s tendency not to regulate particular religions or denominations creates a competitive religious economy, which, borrowing from economics, tends to make for diverse and well-marketed religious products, and therefore it is more likely that individuals will find a denomination or church to their liking¹². Therefore, Stark and Iannaccone argue, apparent secularisation in Europe is better explained by issues with the ‘supply’ of religion than by a fall in demand, which suggests that any secularisation we do observe is quite contingent. There are two problems with this challenge to secularisation. Firstly, Halman and Draulans find that pluralism affects patterns of religious behaviour in Europe in the opposite direction - the more religiously pluralistic a society, the less religious its members are¹³. In fact, this may also be the case in the USA - Land et al¹⁴, and Olson¹⁵ find that pluralism actually decreases attendance. The obvious reply to this...

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