UPSC Sociology Mains Syllabus
Paper 1 – Chapter 8
Religion and Society:
(a) Sociological theories of religion.
(b) Types of religious practices: animism, monism, pluralism, sects, cults.
(c) Religion in modern society: religion and science, secularization, religious revivalism, fundamentalism.
- Secularization is a cultural transition in which religious values are gradually replaced with nonreligious values.
- In the process, religious figureheads such as church leaders lose their authority and influence over society.
- In the field of sociology, the term is used to describe societies that have become or are becoming modernized—meaning that features of society such as the government, the economy, and schools are more distinct, or less influenced by religion.
ORIGIN
- The development of secularism as an ideology was partly an outcome of the process of secularization in Europe.
- Secularism was an ideological goal of the new political philosophy and movement after the French Revolution.
- Secularism as a progressive ideology was a necessary qualification for a liberal, democratic state of the post French Revolution.
- Still later in 1851 George Jacoab Holyoake coined the term secularism.
DEFINITION
- Wilson (1966) defined secularization as “the process whereby religious thinking, practices and institutions lose social significance”.
- A fuller definition of secularization is provided by Steve Bruce (2002) who defines secularization as a “social condition manifest in (a) the declining importance of religion for the operation of non-religious roles and institutions such as the state and the economy’; (b) a decline in the social standing of religious roles and institutions; and (c) a decline in the extent to which people engage in religious practices, display beliefs of a religious kind, and conduct other aspects of their lives in a manner informed by such beliefs’.
MAJOR STRANDS ON SECULARISATION
- Participation in institutional religion – Extent of religion in our life is measured by the relative importance that we give to religious institutions which is reflected in attendance in Churches, temples, mosques etc and role of these institutions in performing various events in our life like solemnization of marriage, funeral rites etc. Some argue that fall in Church attendance is a symbol of secularization of society.
- Disengagement of institutional religion from everyday life – Disengagement of religious institutions from important events of life is also seen as a proof of secularization of society. Describing the process of secularization, Bryan Wilson writes that in secularization process ‘the various social institutions gradually become distinct from one another and increasingly free of the matrix of religious assumptions that had earlier informed, inspired and dominated their operation’. Education, politics and social welfare are no longer functions of religion today.
- Increasing religious pluralism as a symbol of secularization – Some argue that a truly religious society is monotheistic. Competition among various religious groups has reduced the power of religion. Religious loyalties become a matter of convenience of people.
- Secularization of religious institutions themselves – It is also argued that religious institutions themselves are adapting themselves to changed conditions. They have recognized that older values like – belief in supernatural, other world, the savior etc – no longer sound plausible to believers. They would appear irrational and irrelevant in new societies.
- Desacrilization – It is argued that sacred has no place in modern society as supernatural forces are no longer deemed to control the world. Bryan Wilson states that men act less and less in response to religious motivation – they access the world in empirical and rational terms.
- Growing individualism – This view argues that religion is no longer an act of collective worship and individuals today work out their own path of salvation.
CONCLUSION
It can now be summed as a process of lower involvement of men with religious institutions, decrease in influence of religious institutions on other material aspects of life and decline in the degree to which people hold religious beliefs. Some sociologists even see the seeds of secularization in the very development of monotheistic religions as ‘rationalization of belief in supernatural and random magico-religious beliefs’.
