Editing Sociology of religion (section)

==Secularization and civil religion==
{{Main|Secularization|Civil religion}}

[[Secularism]] is the general movement away from religiosity and spiritual belief towards a rational, scientific, orientation, a trend observed in Muslim and Christian industrialized nations alike. In the United States of America, many politicians, court systems, schools, and businesses embrace secularism.<ref name="Conley 2019">{{Cite book|title=You May Ask Yourself|last=Conley|first=Dalton|publisher=W.W. Norton|year=2019}}</ref> In relation to the processes of rationalization associated with the development of [[modernity]], it was predicted in the works of many classical sociologists that religion would decline.<ref name="Davie 2003 19">{{cite book|last=Davie|first=Grace|title=Predicting religion: Christian, Peculiar & alternative Future|year=2003|publisher=Ashgate Publishing|isbn=978-0-7546-3010-4|pages=19}}</ref> They claimed that there would be a separation of religion from the institutions such as the state, economy, and family.<ref name="Conley 2019"/> Despite the claims of many classical theorists and sociologists immediately after [[World War II]], many contemporary theorists have critiqued secularization thesis, arguing that religion has continued to play a vital role in the lives of individuals worldwide. In the United States, in particular, [[church attendance]] has remained relatively stable in the past 40 years. In Africa, the emergence of [[Christianity in Africa|Christianity]] has occurred at a high rate. While Africa could claim roughly 10 million Christians in 1900, recent estimates put that number closer to 200 million.<ref>{{cite book|last=Cragun|first=Ryan|title=Introduction To Sociology|year=2008|publisher=Seven Treasures Publications|isbn=978-0-9800707-7-4|pages=244}}</ref> The rise of [[Islam]] as a major world religion, especially its new-found influence in the [[Western world|West]], is another significant development. Peter Berger, an American sociologist, considers secularization is the result of a larger sociostructural crisis in religion is caused by pluralism. Pluralism is the presence and engaged coexistence of numerous distinct groups in one society.<ref name="Conley 2019"/> The United States is both highly religious and pluralistic, standing out among other industrialized and wealthy nations in this regard.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://ourpluralhistory.stcc.edu/resources/Curriculum/TheIdeaofPluralism.pdf|title=The Idea of Pluralism in the United States|last=Norman|first=Richard|website=Our Plural History}}</ref> In short, presupposed secularization as a decline in religiosity might seem to be a myth, depending on its definition and the definition of its scope. For instance, some sociologists have argued that steady church attendance and personal religious belief may coexist with a decline in the influence of religious authorities on social or political issues. Additionally, regular attendance or affiliation do not necessarily translate into a behavior according to their doctrinal teachings.

===Religious economy===
According to [[Rodney Stark]], [[David Martin (sociologist)|David Martin]] was the first contemporary sociologist to reject the secularization theory outright. Martin even proposed that the concept of secularization be eliminated from social scientific discourse, on the grounds that it had only served ideological purposes and because there was no evidence of any general shift from a religious period in human affairs to a secular period.<ref>Stark, Rodney. "Secularization, R.I.P." ''Sociology of religion 60'', no. 3 (1999): 249–273.</ref>
Stark is well known for pioneering, with [[William Sims Bainbridge]], a [[theory of religious economy]], according to which societies that restrict supply of religion, either through an imposed [[state religion|state religious monopoly]] or through state-sponsored secularization, are the main causes of drops in religiosity. Correspondingly, the more [[religion]]s a society has, the more likely the population is to be religious.<ref name="Stark 2007">{{cite book |last= Stark |first= Rodney |author-link= Rodney Stark |title= Sociology |edition= 10th |year= 2007 |publisher= Thomson Wadsworth |isbn= 978-0-495-09344-2 }}</ref> This contradicts the older view of secularization which states that if a liberal religious community is tolerant of a wide array of belief, then the population is less likely to hold certain beliefs in common, so nothing can be shared and reified in a community context, leading to a reduction in religious observance.<ref name="Bruce 1999">{{cite book|last=Bruce|first=Steve|title=Choice and Religion: A Critique of Rational Choice|year=1999|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-829584-6}}</ref> The religious economy model sparked a lively debate among sociologists of religion on whether market models fit religious practices and on the extents to which this model of religious behavior is specific to the United States.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Dromi |first1=Shai M. |last2=Stabler |first2=Samuel D. |title=Good on paper: sociological critique, pragmatism, and secularization theory |journal=Theory and Society |date=18 February 2019 |volume=48 |issue=2 |pages=325–350 |doi=10.1007/s11186-019-09341-9 |s2cid=151250246 |url=http://osf.io/ke2d8/ }}</ref>

===Peter Berger===
[[Peter L. Berger|Peter Berger]] observed that while researchers supporting the secularization theory have long maintained that religion must inevitably decline in the modern world, today, much of the world is as religious as ever. This points to the falsity of the secularization theory. On the other hand, Berger also notes that secularization may be indeed have taken hold in Europe, while the United States and other regions have continued to remain religious despite the increased modernity. Dr. Berger suggested that the reason for this may have to do with the education system; in Europe, teachers are sent by the educational authorities and European parents would have to put up with secular teaching, while in the United States, schools were for much of the time under local authorities, and American parents, however unenlightened, could fire their teachers. Berger also notes that unlike Europe, America has seen the rise of Evangelical Protestantism, or "born-again Christians".<ref name=dawson11>Dawson, Andrew. ''Sociology of Religion''. Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd, 2011.</ref>{{rp|78}}<ref>Berger, Peter L. "Reflections on the sociology of religion today." ''Sociology of Religion 62'', no. 4 (2001): 443–454.</ref><ref>Berger, Peter L. "Secularization and de-secularization." ''Religions in the modern world: Traditions and transformations 336'' (2002).</ref>

===Bryan Wilson===
[[Bryan R. Wilson]] a writer on secularization, explores life in societies dominated by scientific knowledge. His work follows Max Weber's view that modern societies prioritize rationality, focusing on technical efficiency and practical solutions over existential questions, leading to a disenchanted world. Wilson<ref name="Wilson1982">Wilson, Bryan (1982). Religion in Sociological Perspective, Oxford, Oxford University Press.</ref>{{Page needed|date=September 2024}} argues that non-scientific systems, especially religions, have seen an irreversible decline in influence. While some dispute the secularization thesis, claiming that traditional religions have been replaced by new sects, individual spirituality, or functional alternatives like nationalism, Wilson views the rise in diverse non-scientific belief systems as evidence of religion’s diminished central role in modern society.

===Ernest Gellner===
Unlike Wilson and Weber, [[Ernest Gellner]]<ref>Gellner, Ernest (1974). Legitimation of Belief, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press</ref> (1974) acknowledges that there are drawbacks to living in a world whose main form of knowledge is confined to facts we can do nothing about and that provide us with no guidelines on how to live and how to organize ourselves. In this regard, we are worse off than pre-modern people, whose knowledge, while incorrect, at least provided them with prescriptions for living. However, Gellner insists that these disadvantages are far outweighed by the huge technological advances modern societies have experienced as a result of the application of scientific knowledge.

Gellner doesn't claim that non-scientific knowledge is in the process of dying out. For example, he accepts that religions in various forms continue to attract adherents. He also acknowledges that other forms of belief and meaning, such as those provided by art, music, literature, popular culture (a specifically modern phenomenon), drug taking, political protest, and so on are important for many people. Nevertheless, he rejects the relativist interpretation of this situation – that in modernity, scientific knowledge is just one of many accounts of existence, all of which have equal validity. This is because, for Gellner, such alternatives to science are profoundly insignificant since they are technically impotent, as opposed to science. He sees that modern preoccupations with meaning and being as a self-indulgence that is only possible because scientific knowledge has enabled our world to advance so far. Unlike those in pre-modern times, whose overriding priority is to get hold of scientific knowledge in order to begin to develop, we can afford to sit back in the luxury of our well-appointed world and ponder upon such questions because we can take for granted the kind of world science has constructed for us.

===Michel Foucault===
[[Michel Foucault]] was a [[Post-structuralism|post-structuralist]] who saw human existence as being dependent on forms of knowledge – discourses – that work like languages. Languages/discourses define reality for us. In order to think at all, we are obliged to use these definitions. The knowledge we have about the world is provided for us by the languages and discourses we encounter in the times and places in which we live our lives. Thus, who we are, what we know to be true, and what we think are discursively constructed.

Foucault defined history as the rise and fall of discourses. Social change is about changes in prevailing forms of knowledge. The job of the historian is to chart these changes and identify the reasons for them. Unlike rationalists, however, Foucault saw no element of progress in this process. To Foucault, what is distinctive about modernity is the emergence of discourses concerned with the control and regulation of the body. According to Foucault, the rise of body-centered discourses necessarily involved a process of secularization. Pre-modern discourses were dominated by religion, where things were defined as good and evil, and social life was centered around these concepts. With the emergence of modern urban societies, scientific discourses took over, and medical science was a crucial element of this new knowledge. Modern life became increasingly subject to medical control – the [[medical gaze]], as Foucault called it.

The rise to power of science, and of medicine in particular, coincided with a progressive reduction of the power of religious forms of knowledge. For example, normality and deviance became more of a matter of health and illness than of good and evil, and the physician took over from the priest the role of defining, promoting, and healing deviance.<ref>Foucault, Michel (1977). The Birth of the Clinic: an archaeology of medical perception, London, Tavistock</ref>

===Other perspectives===

[[BBC News]] reported on a study by physicists and mathematicians that attempted to use mathematical modelling ([[nonlinear dynamics]]) to predict future religious orientations of populations. The study suggests that religion is headed towards "extinction" in various nations where it has been on the decline: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland. The model considers not only the changing number of people with certain beliefs, but also attempts to assign utility values of a belief in each nation.<ref name="Palmer">{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197|title='Extinction threat' to religion|first=Jason|last=Palmer|work=BBC News|date=22 March 2011|access-date=2 May 2018|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180422050308/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197|archive-date=22 April 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|arxiv=1012.1375|title=A mathematical model of social group competition with application to the growth of religious non-affiliation|first1=Daniel M.|last1=Abrams|first2=Haley A.|last2=Yaple|first3=Richard J.|last3=Wiener|date=16 August 2011|journal=Physical Review Letters|volume=107|issue=8|pages=088701|doi=10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.088701|pmid=21929211|bibcode=2011PhRvL.107h8701A}}</ref>

[[Thomas Luckmann]] maintains that the sociology of religion should cease preoccupations with the traditional and institutionalized forms of religion. Luckmann points instead to the "religious problem" which is the "problem of individual existence." This is the case as with the advent of modernity, religious meaning making has shifted more into the individual domain.<ref name=dawson11/>{{rp|82}}