Showing papers on "Secularization published in 2000"

Modernization, cultural change, and the persistence of traditional values.

Abstract: Modernization theorists from Karl Marx to Daniel Bell have argued that economic development brings pervasive cultural changes. But others, from Max Weber to Samuel Huntington, have claimed that cultural values are an enduring and autonomous influence on society. We test the thesis that economic development is linked with systematic changes in basic values. Using data from the three waves of the World Values Surveys, which include 65 societies and 75 percent of the world's population, we find evidence of both massive cultural change and the persistence of distinctive cultural traditions. Economic development is associated with shifts away from absolute norms and values toward values that are increasingly rational, tolerant, trusting, and participatory. Cultural change, however, is path dependent. The broad cultural heritage of a society - Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Confucian, or Communist - leaves an imprint on values that endures despite modernization. Moreover, the differences between the values held by members of different religions within given societies are much smaller than are cross-national differences. Once established, such cross-cultural differences become part of a national culture transmitted by educational institutions and mass media. We conclude with some proposed revisions of modernization theory

Historicizing the secularization debate : Church, state, and society in late medieval and early modern Europe, ca. 1300 to 1700

Abstract: In recent years, the sociology of religion has been consumed by a debate over secularization that pits advocates of a new, rational-choice paradigm (the so-called religious economies model) against defenders of classical secularization theory. According to the old paradigm, the Western world has become increasingly secular since the Middle Ages; according to the new paradigm, it has become increasingly religious. I put these two images of religious development to the test through a detailed examination of religious life in Western Europe before and after the Reformation. I conclude that the changes in social structure and religious experience that occurred during this period were considerably more complex than either the old or new paradigms suggest and, indeed, that the two paradigms are neither so opposed nor so irreconcilable as many of their defenders contend. It is possible, indeed probable, that Western society has become more secular without becoming less religious. I discuss the limitations of the two competing paradigms and sketch the outlines of a more adequate theory of religious change

Disenchantment, Enchantment and Re-Enchantment: Max Weber at the Millennium

Abstract: Without wishing to deny the historical reality of processes of disenchantment, this paper challenges the classic Weberian account of disenchantment as a uni-directional and universalizing tendency of modernity. This argument has a number of stages. (1) Reason and rationalization are distinguished from each other. (2) The historical relationships between modernity, Reason and rationalization are problematized. (3) The scale and scope of rationalization are questioned (it is partial and unsuccessful, almost by definition). (4) Secularization and the 'decline of magic' are distinguished from each other. (5) Enchantment and re-enchantment are placed at the heart of modernity. Enchantment and re-enchantment are both distinctively modern and a response to modernity. While disenchantment has been a stimulus to (re)enchantment, enchantment may generate its own disenchantments. The two are opposite sides of one coin. This argument is exemplified by a brief look at the contradictions, alarms and damp squibs of the recent Millennium.

Religion in American Life: A Short History

Abstract: Accessible and wide-ranging, Religion in American Life illuminates the rich spiritual heritage central to nearly every event in American history. Jon Butler begins by describing the state of religious affairs in both the Old and New Worlds on the eve of colonization. He traces the progress of religion in the colonies through the time of the American Revolution, covering all the religious groups in the colonies: Protestants, Jews, Catholics, as well as the unique religious experiences of Native Americans and African Americans Grant Wacker continues the story with a fascinating look at the ever-shifting religious landscape of 19th-century America. He focuses on the rapid growth of evangelical Protestants-Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and others-and their competition for dominance over religions such as Catholicism and Judaism, which continued to increase with large immigrant arrivals from Ireland, Eastern Europe, and other countries. The 20th century saw massive cultural changes. Randall Balmer discusses the effects industrialization, modernization, and secularization had on new and established religions. He examines Protestants, Hindus, Jews, New Age believers, Mormons, Buddhists, Roman Catholics, and many more, providing a clear look into the kaleidoscope of religious belief in modern-day America

The Sacred and the Secular University

Abstract: FOREWORD ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii INTRODUCTION BY JOHN F. WILSON 3 PART ONE: THE SCIENCES 17 CHAPTER ONE Religion, Science, and Higher Education 19 CHAPTER TWO The Emergence of the Human Sciences 43 CHAPTER THREE Knowledge and Inquiry in the Ascendant 61 PART TWO: THE HUMANITIES 73 CHAPTER FOUR The Triumph of the Humanities 75 CHAPTER FIVE The Boon and Bane of Specialization 83 CHAPTER SIX Two Ideals of Knowledge 95 CHAPTER SEVEN For and against Secularization 107 NOTES 123 INDEX 177

The secularization debate

Abstract: Chapter 1 Intro. Secularization Theory: The Course of a Concept Chapter 2 Toward an Integrated Perspective of the Processes Related to the Descriptive Concept of Secularization Chapter 3 Secularization, R.I.P. Chapter 4 Secularization in a Context of Advanced Modernity Chapter 5 Secularization from the Perspective of Globalization Chapter 6 Secularization or New Religious Paradigms?

Religion and the Market: Opposition, Absorption, or Ambiguity?

Abstract: This article addressed the complex relationship between religion and the market by proposing three basic paradigms, and then applying them to contemporary Christian social thought (or social ethics). The first conflicting model, following Max Weber and Karl Marx, views religion and the market in opposition, which results in greater secularisation. The second, following Emile Durkheim, proposes a 'functionalist' model of society, in which the market itself becomes sacred. The third, following Karl Polanyi, claims the two are more dialectical, in that both are affected by the power of the other; they remain in an ambiguous relationship. The author argues that the third model is the most coherent description of this complex relationship as well as the one most consistent with the convictions of Chrstian social thought.

New Age Religion and Secularization

Abstract: Depuis longtemps, le defi de la secularisation est etudie par les universitaires interesses par la religion dans le monde moderne. Mais beaucoup d'entre-eux tendent a le comprendre comme une opposition entre le christianisme et une vue non-religieuse de la vie. Pour l'A., cette perception est depassee. L'emergence de la religion du New Age montre comment la secularisation a genere un type entierement nouveau de religion qui semble reunir des traditions anciennes mais qui est actuellement basee sur de nouvelles fondations. En cela le New Age est un phenomene crucial.

Variations in Churchgoing Rates in England in 1851: Supply-side Deficiency or Demand-led Decline?

Abstract: In the sociology of religion of the past thirty years or so, one can identify three major approaches to the relation of religion and modernity: secularization theory, the Stark-Bainbridge rational choice theory, and the Finke-Stark A¢â‚¬A“supply-sideA¢â‚¬Â theory. In this paper, I study churchgoing rates in England in 1851 to examine which of these three theoretical approaches appears the most valid. Victorian England provides a compelling case study. Not only are the data very good (uniquely so in the case of Britain), but also England in 1851 takes us back to one of the original locales of urban- industrial development. My conclusion is that both A¢â‚¬A“supply-sideA¢â‚¬Â (of religion) and A¢â‚¬A“secularizationA¢â‚¬Â processes were influencing English churchgoing rates in 1851. However, the former were much more limited and transient in their effect, being restricted to isolated rural areas. In the more urban places, where most people lived, secularization processes were operating. There are parallels between this A¢â‚¬A“dualityA¢â‚¬Â of process operating in rural and urban England in 1851 and the fact that churchgoing appears to have increased during the nineteenth century up to that point, but declined, unabated, thereafter.

The Myth of the Twentieth Century: The Rise and Fall of Secularization

Abstract: Au 20e siecle, l'idee que la modernisation et la secularisation ont ete les assassins de la religion a beaucoup circule. Aujourd'hui, cette idee n'a plus de sens. Non seulement la religion a survecu mais elle s'est tres bien developpee dans certaines parties du monde les plus modernisees. Les nouveaux mouvements religieux continuent a proliferer precisement parce qu'ils permettent aux gens de se debrouiller avec la dislocation qu'engendre la modernisation. Nous n'assistons ni a une secularisation ni a son oppose (sacralisation), il s'agit plutot d'une transformation fascinante de la religion, d'une adaptation des religions aux nouvelles conditions creees par la modernite.

Popular Religion, Catholicism and Socioreligious Dissent in Latin America Facing the Modernity Paradigm

Abstract: Popular religion, Catholicism and religious dissent are part of the same triangle, unavoidable in any analysis of the religious life of Latin America. A conceptual frame has not yet been established, however, to explain, from the point of view of the region's own religious experience, the specific forms taken by this religious life and how they relate to other similar expressions worldwide, as well as to general processes, such as secularization. The paradigm of modernity seems to resist as long as it follows the guidelines of the gestation of a secularization process which translates into the strengthening of individual conscience, the debilitation of ecclesiastical control and the formation of freedom spaces for those who do not think like the group of believers. However, the paradigm does not find its parallel in the European model of Protestantism in the consolidation of a class or social group that feeds and explains this dissenting religious thought. Consequently, it is necessary, from our point of ...

Notes Towards a (Re)Definition of the 'Secular'

Abstract: The modern definition of a “secular society” is a society that is exclusive of religion. But that has not always been the case. This paper examines the history of the concept of “secularization”. The word “secular” used to correspond to a jurisdictional separation, a separation that did not preclude cooperation and accommodation between the two organizations. The development of this concept into something that is exclusive of religion has come at a significant cost to religious freedom and liberty. This paper argues that the Canadian courts need to work towards a definition of “secular” society that is inclusive, rather than exclusive, of those holding religious beliefs. Only with such an understanding can Canada truly become the pluralistic, multicultural, and tolerant society that it purports to be. [Note: this paper was cited with approval by the Supreme Court of Canada in its decision in Chamberlain v. Surrey School Board (2002) in which the decision of Justice Gonthier on this point was endorsed by McLachlin C.J.C. making it the judgement of the court on this point.

Enthusiasm and enlightenment in Europe, 1650-1850

Abstract: These essays on the shifting content and value attached to 'enthusiasm' treat a particular historical question and at the same time pose a general challenge to our methodological expectations. The contributors (Peter Fenves, Jan Goldstein, Lawrence E. Klein, Jon Mee, J.G.A. Pocock, Mary D. Sheriff, and Anthony J. La Vopa) study the discourses of religion, psychology, aesthetics, politics, and philosophy in which 'enthusiasm' figured as a key term - often a pejorative by which various forms of orthodoxy sought to establish their authority, sometimes a desideratum attached to intellectual, spiritual, or artistic inspiration. By tracing these often parallel discourses in France, Germany, and England, the essays establish the value of a transnational framework for the issues of secularization and modernity, one that draws on the perspectives of intellectual as well as social and political history.

The Church in the Market Place: Advertising and Religion in a Secular Age

Abstract: This paper explores the limits of Peter Berger's secularization thesis through an examination of religious advertising. If churches are part of a market situation, as Berger affirms, what can be said of their advertising in a secular age? Different types of religious advertising and their effectiveness are discussed in relation to more widely disseminated religious imagery in secular advertising. The conclusion suggests that certain religious themes, ideas and images still continue to enjoy prominence in public consciousness. This has a double implication: for churches as they market themselves in a plural world, and for sociologists who construct theories of secularization.

Globalizing the Rainbow Madonna: Old Time Religion in the Present Age

Abstract: This article examines the dynamics that have turned a recent Marian apparition on the window of a bank in Clearwater, Florida, from a local into a global phenomenon. Drawing from theories of globalization, we show how the apparition exemplifies what sociologist Roland Robertson refers to as the mutually implicative `universalization of particularism and the particularization of universalism'. Among the factors analyzed are global pilgrimage, transnational migration, mediascapes (particularly through the Internet) and the Vatican's New Evangelization initiative. On the basis of this case study, the article argues for the need to go beyond secularization theory - the dominant modernist approach to religion and social change - and to adopt a flexible, polymethodological framework that takes into account the complex, and often contradictory, relations between the local and the global and the mediating roles religion plays.

Religious history and the eighteenth-century historian

Abstract: The relationship between intellectual secularization and the writing of academic history has long been one of the major neglected themes in British historiography, and its unexamined presuppositions are explored here in relation to the religious history of the eighteenth century. A great deal of the history of eighteenth-century religion has been written from a confessional standpoint, and this has served further to marginalize discussion of the subject in a period of history concerning which secular interpretations continue to prevail. A reunion of the religious and the secular is a major desideratum in the writing of eighteenth-century history, and this applies not only to historians of religion but also, a fortiori, to political, social, and cultural historians. The perspectives offered by such historians are critically examined, and the need for them to take seriously the integral part of religious history in the broader history of the period is emphasized accordingly.

Secularization in Max Weber. On current usefulness of re-accessing that old meaning

Abstract: The author argues that the treatment of the secularization thesis by Brazilian empirical studies in sociology of religion is theoretically deficient. In the article, having regard to the empiricist and ill-advised celebration of recent religious ferments that are supposed to be turning our times into a "de-secularized" or "post-secularized" age, the author supports the claim for resetting the conceptual discussion. He suggests that it would be very useful to Brazilian sociology of religion to cope again with the old political-juridical meaning through which the problem of a socio-historical process of dessacralization was conceptualized, taking place above all in the sphere of political-juridical normativity. This is the meaning unfolded by Max Weber, considered the major proponent of the secularization theory, in his sociology of law.

Proselytism, retention and re-affiliation : the hybridisation of an Assembly of God Church

Abstract: This study provides a qualitative analysis of an Assembly of God Pentecostal church in the North East of England. The research employed an ethnographic framework incorporating overt participant observation and in-depth interviews over the period of one year at the City Christian Centre. In addition, a number of other churches (of varying denominations) were visited and observed. In this work, former interpretations within the sociology of religion, regarding membership and recruitment, are challenged and new perspectives offered. Few ethnographic studies of conservative evangelical Christians in the United Kingdom exist and quantitative work on this group, generally, has failed to define significant concepts such as salvation and conversion adequately. While such concepts remain foundational to the conservative evangelical believer, a significant transformation of religious expression is taking place within contemporary British Pentecostalism. This thesis gives an account of a synthesis between classical Pentecostals and the Charismatic movement that is creating a distinct form of spiritual expression resulting in a hybrid church. This fusion of traditions affects congregations in a number of important areas. Expressions of praise and worship, theological interpretations and church leadership each reflect the dynamics of the hybrid church. So in addition, does a shift in class composition. Once the preserve of the working classes, Pentecostalism in Britain is now much more socially and economically diverse in its membership. This thesis comes at an interesting time for the sociology of religion. Much is said about a resurgence of interest in religion, this is partly due to its persistence in society. Much work has focused on church demographics and secularisation, this work, however, shifts the emphasis away from religious decline to religious adaptation and change.

For science and for the Pope-king : writing the history of the exact sciences in nineteenth-century Rome

Abstract: This paper analyses the contents and the style of the Bullettino di bibliografia e di storia delle scienze matematiche e fisiche (1868–1887), the first journal entirely devoted to the history of mathematics. It is argued that its innovative and controversial methodological approach cannot be properly understood without considering the cultural conditions in which the journal was conceived and realized. The style of the Bullettino was far from being the mere outcome of the eccentric personality of its editor, Prince Baldassarre Boncompagni. Rather, it reflected in many ways, at the level of historiography of science, the struggle of the official Roman Catholic culture against the growing secularization of knowledge and society.

Time Exposure: The Personal Experience of Time in Secular Societies

Abstract: In this book, Richard Fenn looks at the way in which we experience time in secular societies. In Fenn's view, secularization is virtually synonymous with individualism. Although it is often the Church that decries modern individualism, he says, it is in fact the Church that created it, by its demystification of the universe, its insistence on individual self-discipline, and its intensification of individual responsibility for the use of time. The result was a profound change in the way in which time is experienced by the individual. Fenn offers a probing exploration of our modern experience of time, as expressed in such phrases as 'wasting time' and 'making up for lost time'. He is particularly interested in the idea and experience of waiting, which he believes to be a defining characteristic of modern life.

From Rechristianization to Contestation: Catholic Values and Quebec Society, 1931–1970

Abstract: Speaking before the Commission d'etude sur les laics et l'Eglise (Commission Dumont) in 1970, Jean-Paul Gignac articulated the feelings of many when he stated that although the church had greatly furthered the survival of French Canadians, the men and women of his own generation had been “strangely traumatized” by Catholicism. At one level, their perplexity can be read as but the obvious response to the travails of Quebec Catholicism in the 1960s. For many decades prior to 1960, the Catholic Church had been successful in imposing on most of Quebec society what appeared to be a unanimity of social and cultural values. But after the mid-1960s, an increasingly evident decline of religious practice, the abandonment of the priesthood by many clergy, the indifference of young people to Roman Catholicism, marked the rapid erosion of the church's social and cultural authority. That erosion was marked in many ways: the deconfessionalization of many Catholic educational and social welfare institutions; the creation of a new pluralist society through state intervention; the rise of a secular “neonationalism“ baserd upon economics, language, and the power of the state instead of a common religious faith; and, at a popular level, the replacement of Christianity by the secular values of a mass-market, North American consumer society. Together these developments, termed the “Quiet Revolution” by historians, decisively marginalized the social and cultural role of Catholicism within Quebec society.

Work, Non-Work and Resacralizing Self

Abstract: Against a dominant sociopolitical momentum of increasing and unmitigated instrumental rationality that Weber foresaw pervading all spheres of life in modern industrial society are new social and cultural signs of contestation and counterpoint. Modern critical social analysts have argued variously for delimitations to technocratic and economic rationalities and these modern contestations to instrumentality and alienation remain apparent in contemporary social and political life. Yet there is evidence of diverse contemporary social efforts that endeavor not only to delimit but to refute or transcend the assumed path of progressive rationalization and secularization. The author proposes that both modern acute rationalization and technicization and postmodern dissociation and dissolution, and their respective conditions of alienation, generate countervailing tendencies.

British Educational Policies in Palestine

Abstract: This article analyses the case of British educational policies in Palestine, from the end of the First World War until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. It focuses on the relationship between the British Mandatory government and the Hebrew educational system. Dominant groups in the Jewish community of Palestine did not regard the British Mandatory authorities as a potential asset, a source of influence and intellectual capital that could enhance the educational system. Thus they squandered opportunities to benefit that system, including financial support, while ignoring and denying British contributions that actually enriched Hebrew education and culture. Even after the state of Israel was established, official publications ignored Mandatory influences and attributed all progress to the Zionist endeavour, thus forging an institutional canonised history and a collective memory.' My main argument - involving the Zionists wasting the opportunity to be helped by the British - will be augmented by reviewing the motives of the various ethnic and ideological groups within the Jewish community who either advocated or opposed British involvement in education. The differentiating features were cultural and political rather than class based. Resistance to British involvement in education served as a means of enlisting commitment to the national ethos and inspiring the young to struggle for independence; also involved were a variety of interests and a power struggle veiled under the banner of nationalism and the plea for cultural autonomy. The main factors determining attitudes towards the British among the various groups in the Jewish community were their orientation towards modernity and religiosity, in turn based mainly on cultural background. There were three main groups among those rejecting British influence on Jewish education: Orthodox religious circles who opposed Zionism and tried to hinder modernization and secularization; Left-wing and religiousZionist parties who managed sectarian educational systems and used them for party indoctrination and recruitment; and the Teachers' Union, which spoke in the name of nationalism and the cultural autonomy while having

El delgado hilo de la vida: los niños expósitos de Buenos Aires, 1779-1823

Abstract: This article describes the first half century life of the Casa de Ninos Expositos (The Foundlings House of Buenos Aires) established in 1779 and remarks the economic and administrative conflicts between secular and religious orders. Tensions between different levels of the Spanish State and Catholic Church for its administration were increased up to the total secularization of the House. Children life conditions and mortality are also analized in the institutional context where wetnurses bred foundlings in each singular home.

Zambia's Catholic schools and secularization

Abstract: (2000). Zambia's Catholic schools and secularization. History of Education: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 357-371.