Mission, secularisation and modern atheism

Overview

Secularisation as Bryan Wilson understood it, grace Davie's phrase believing without belonging and vicarious religion.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

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1. 1

   Define secularisation as Bryan Wilson understood it.

   Model answer

   Bryan Wilson defined secularisation as the process by which religious thinking, practice and institutions lose social significance, so that religion ceases to shape law, politics, education and daily life.

2. 2

   What position did Peter Berger take on secularisation, and how did it change?

   Model answer

   Peter Berger argued in the 1960s that modernity dissolves the shared sacred canopy and leaves religion a matter of private choice, but he later withdrew that view, holding that the world outside western Europe remains furiously religious.

3. 3

   What does Steve Bruce argue about religion in the West?

   Model answer

   Steve Bruce argues that secularisation is real and largely irreversible in western Europe, because individualism, diversity and rationality between them remove the social supports that made religious belief plausible.

4. 4

   Explain Grace Davie's phrase believing without belonging.

   Model answer

   Grace Davie observed that many people in Britain retain religious belief and identity while rarely attending worship, so falling attendance measures the decline of membership more accurately than the decline of belief.

5. 5

   What is vicarious religion?

   Model answer

   Vicarious religion is Grace Davie's term for religion performed by an active minority on behalf of a much larger number who approve of it, notice its absence and turn to it at moments of crisis, birth, marriage and death.

6. 6

   What is Callum Brown's account of religious decline in Britain?

   Model answer

   Callum Brown argues that Christian Britain did not fade slowly but collapsed suddenly from the 1960s, when the cultural pattern of piety carried largely by women broke down.

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