Decline of Religion's Social Impact

🌟Religion has lost its social significance. Evaluate this view. Key focus of the question🌟

This question provides an opportunity for candidates to discuss the strengths and limitations of the secularisation thesis. The central argument of the secularisation thesis is that religion has lost its social significance in western societies. Good answers will demonstrate a clear understanding of the arguments and evidence for suggesting that secularisation has occurred. Evidence used to support the secularisation thesis includes church attendance records, statistics about levels of participation in religious ceremonies, attitude surveys to measure religiosity, and historical records that shed light on the role of religious organisations in the community in former times.

Good evaluative responses may question the evidence used to support the secularisation thesis both in terms of its reliability and methodological soundness. Candidates might also discuss different ways of defining secularisation and how this may affect conclusions drawn about whether religion has lost its social significance. Similarly, candidates might note that more recent evidence about religious belief and practice is, arguably, less supportive of the secularisation thesis than the evidence presented in the 1960s and 1970s when sociologists first advanced the thesis.

🌟Indicative content🌟

🌟For:🌟
💥 Sociological research supporting the secularisation thesis collected large amounts of data from many different sources and from a range of countries. Follow up studies also developed new ways of measuring the claims about secularisation and came up with findings that many sociologists found convincing as further supporting evidence for the secularisation thesis.
💥 Growth in new religious movements can be seen as evidence that established religions have lost their social significance. Wilson sees the decline of established religions, together with fragmentation in religious belief systems, as defining characteristics of secularisation. In a secular society, Wilson argues, centralised spiritual authority is replaced by support for competing religious beliefs (new religious movements, for example) and other sources of moral guidance.
💥 New religious movements are too divided and fragmented to replace the power and authority of established religions. Indeed, most proponents of the secularisation thesis believe that once secularisation has occurred there can be no return to society based on traditional values and social order that is based on religious teaching and governance.
💥 Interest in spirituality may have picked up in western societies in recent years, but studies suggest it is driven by individualistic concerns with discovering meaning and personal fulfilment rather than any desire to return to a form of society based on religious control and traditional values.

🌟Against:🌟
💥 Growing support for new religious movements helps challenge claims associated with the secularisation thesis that membership of religious organisations is declining and people are becoming less religious.
💥 Growth in new religious movements can be seen as part of a broader trend that has seen an increase interest in spirituality among people in western societies in recent years; the growth in new age movements and privatised worship provide further examples of this trend.
💥 The extent to which religion has social significance in the past has been questioned. Availability of evidence about the role of religion in earlier times is limited to some extent and, more importantly, the reliability of that evidence can be questioned on numerous points.
💥 Evidence about church attendance records, participation in religious ceremonies, and membership of religions groups tell us little about the extent to which the people involved were religious. For example, some may feel social pressure to attend religious ceremonies rather than holding strong spiritual beliefs.
💥 Some of the available evidence is ambiguous; for example, evidence of declining church membership in the UK is somewhat at odds with the fact that the number of people Expalining as Christian when completing the census form has remained relatively stable for more than a century.
💥 What evidence there is to support the secularisation thesis is being undermined by more recent evidence suggesting a religious revival in many countries. For example, there has been a sharp rise in membership of new religious groups in many western societies, and recent studies also indicate the numbers engaging in privatised worship are increasing.