ADVERTISEMENTS:
What is Secularisation:
Secularisation refers to a process of transformation in society that involves a change from close identification of society with religious institutions to a more separated relationship between society and religion.
Difference between Secularisation and Secularism:
Secularisation involves a removal of dominance of religious institutions and symbols from sectors of society and culture.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
But secularism is a belief/ideology that states that religion and religious considerations must be kept out of temporal affairs. It refers to a neutrality of the state/administration where religious affairs are concerned.
‘Secularisation’ has meanings at different levels as a theoretical concept and as a process in history. It has been stated by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Max Weber and other theorists that as a society modernises, there would be decrease in its level of religiosity. As a process, secularisation determines the manner in which and the extent to which, religious beliefs, practices and institutions are losing relevance in society.
But the basic idea in secularisation is the concept of a secular State— a State where government and religious institutions are separate and where laws are man-made rather than religion-derived. Secularisation involves cultural shifts in society and is linked to emergence of rationality and development of science that replaced superstition. With responsibility for education moving to the State, the ‘collective’ conscience is reduced. Religion becomes a matter of personal choice owing to fragmentation of communal activities.
Throughout history, secularisation has been applied with different meanings. When referring to church property, it refers to the church abandoning goods and these being sold off after the government lays claim to the property. In Catholic theology, it refers to authorisation given to individuals to live outside the monastery for a fixed period or permanently.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Six uses of the term ‘Secularisation’:
According to John Sommerville (1998), ‘secularisation’ can refer to many things:
(i) Secularisation can denote differentiation, that is, specialisation and distinct nature of various aspects of society—economic, political, legal and moral.
(ii) In the context of institutions, secularisation refers to transformation of a religious institution into a secular one. An example is that of the Harvard University which transformed from a predominantly religious institution into a secular institution.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
(iii) When speaking of activities, secularisation denotes transfer of activities from religious institutions to secular institutions.
(iv) Secularisation refers to the transition from ultimate concerns to proximate concerns, that is, people’s concern for immediate effects rather than post-mortem consequences which suggests decline in the personal religious and a movement towards a secular lifestyle.
(v) In the context of populations, ‘secularisation’ means broad patterns of decline in levels of religiosity and not individual-level secularisation, (vi) Secularisation can only be used unambiguously to refer to religion in a generic sense, that is, a reference to any religion, say Christianity, is not clear unless it is specified as to which denominations of that religion (or Christianity) are being referred to.
Differentiation:
Secularisation ushers in ‘differentiation’—areas of life becoming more distinct and specialised with modernisation of the society. The single, less differentiated institutions gave way to a differentiated subset of institutions. Talcott Parsons talked of society as a system immersed in constant differentiation. This was a process where new institutions assumed the societal tasks in order to ensure society survived even as the original monolithic institutions gave way.
The concept of differentiation mooted by Parsons has gained great acceptance. For Jose Casanova, the concept of differentiation is the “core and central thesis of the theory of secularisation”. It is “the conceptualisation of the process of societal modernisation as a process of functional differentiation and emancipation of the secular spheres—primarily the state, the economy, and science—from the religious sphere and the concomitant differentiation and specialisation of religion within its own newly found religious sphere”. It calls this the theory of privatisation of religion. David Martin criticises some aspects of the traditional sociological theory of secularisation, but labels the differentiation concept the most useful element in secularisation.
Secularisation has occurred in most countries of the West, in the sense that the government, the not-for-profit sector and the private sector have taken over the responsibility of provision of social welfare. In Germany, however, secularisation is still not there to a great degree. Many churches- based charitable foundations provide services like education and health.
However, some issues in secularisation remain. Scholars argue that secularisation cannot be directly linked to levels of religiosity. They point out that levels of religiosity are not actually declining. Others have introduced the idea of neo- secularisation which defines secularisation in such a manner that it includes decline of religious authority. This means that even if religious affiliation may not be coming down, religion’s authority is declining as people are looking outside of religion on issues like birth control. But the debate over how to measure secularisation goes on.