Secularization and Its Discontents

Secularization and Its Discontents

Also available from Continuum: Catholic Culture in the USA, John Portmann Fundamentalisms and the Media, edited by Stewart M. Hoover and Nadia Kaneva Key Thinkers in the Sociology of Religion, Richard K. Fenn Media, Spirituality and Social Change, Stewart M. Hoover and Monica Emerich

Secularization and Its Discontents Rob Warner

Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction

1 2 3 4 5 6

vi vii 1

Classical Secularization Theory

7

Modified Secularization Theory

41

American Rejections of Secularization Theory

68

Is There a Spiritual Revolution?

89

The Durability of Conservative Religion – American and European Perspectives

119

Resilient Religion – Emerging Transatlantic and Global Trends

153

Notes Thematic and General References Index

186 188 211

List of Illustrations Figure 1.1 English Church Attendance – 150 years of decline Figure 1.2 Church of England Infant Baptisms as a percentage of births, 1900–50 Figure 1.3 Church of England Infant Baptisms as a percentage of births, 1950–2000 Figure 2.1 Diverse resilience in facets of secularization Figure 3.1 Schematic comparison of new and old paradigms (R. Stephen Warner: 2005, 24) Figure 6.1 English church attendance, 1979–2005 Figure 6.2 Major English voluntarist sectors, 1979–2005

11 13 13 43 71 178 179

Acknowledgements

My thanks, as ever, go above all to my wonderful wife, Claire, without whom little would be possible. This book was gestated within the research community of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Wales, Lampeter. It has been enriched by my colleagues and students there and at the University of Chester. The academic stimulus of Socrel, the Sociology of Religion Study Group of the British Sociological Association, has been immense. I am particularly grateful to the wise and patient counsel of Professors Linda Woodhead and Andrew Walker and to my Religion and Society research colleagues, Drs Kristin Aune, Matthew Guest and Sonya Sharma.

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Introduction This book examines the sociology of contemporary religion, drawing not only upon recent debates but also from the classical resources of the founding scholars of the discipline. The writings of Durkheim and Weber continue to offer enduring insights into the evolving condition of religion in the West. The title of this book is drawn from Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents (1930). For Freud (1856–1939), the unresting enemy of rational civilization was the seething appetites of the Id, the untamed impulses of sexual conquest and aggressive self-interest in the depths of the human psyche. Religion had served civilization well, in providing mechanisms to control the Id’s destructive impulses. Although it therefore had an ethical utility, Freud only allowed for two origins for religion (1927). On the one hand, it was a natural human response to the irresistible forces of the natural world: the farmer prayed for a bountiful harvest and a mild winter, knowing that the mild weather needed to secure a good crop was beyond human control or guarantee. On the other, religion was a projection of the collective oedipal complex that had framed early human life. Freud’s account of human psycho-religious origins was dismissed by the Oxford anthropologist Evans-Pritchard (1965) as a ‘just so story’ and a ‘fairy tale’. For Freud, the urge of young men to kill the father of the tribe required the performance of rituals to atone for their common and generational guilt (1913), and this was combined with a longing for a fatherfigure that was projected as a god – ‘the primal father was the original image of God, the model on which later generations have shaped the image of God’ (1927; 1995, 712). Given his account of the beneficial contribution of religion, Freud might have been expected to welcome its continuance, if only as a useful fiction, strengthening common morality and assuaging the inevitable oedipal guilt (1913). However, Freud was deeply and instinctively anti-religious, considering it to be no more than an illusion (1927). There was, for Freud, no place for concepts of revelation in religion, nor did he find credible or appealing accounts

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Secularization and Its Discontents of religion that emphasize the human quest for meaning and awareness of the spiritual or the transcendent. In an early essay he had argued that religion is nothing more than a collective neurosis, with repetitive religious actions mirroring the neurotic obsessions of an individual compulsive disorder (1907). In view of these similarities and analogies one might venture to . . . describe neurosis as an individual religiosity and religion as a universal obsessional neurosis. (Freud: 1907; Gay: 1995, 435)

Freud was fully persuaded that religion was in essence anti-rational, and that enlightened reason was the foundation stone of the rise of civilized modernity (1930). As a consequence, therefore, although religion had contributed to the advance of civilization, at its core it was alien, outmoded, an essentially obsolete combination of irrationality, repression and mere superstition. Religion was an infantile illusion, a residue of the primitive that had failed to stand the test of time (1927). Religion, for Freud, would simply have to go, and had nothing more to offer the advance of Western civilization. Religion . . . arose out of the Oedipal complex, out of the relation to the Father. If this view is right, it is to be supposed that a turning away from religion is bound to occur with the fatal inevitability of a process of growth, and that we find ourselves at this very juncture in the middle of that phase of development. (Freud: 1927; Gay: 1995, 713)

Early sociologists of religion did not necessarily share Freud’s dogmatic anti-religious convictions, although he shared with Comte the confident conviction that man come of age had no more need for traditional religion. However, both Durkheim and Weber recognized that Western modernity appeared increasingly inhospitable to religion. Grounded in the deteriorating condition of Christianity in Western Europe and building upon these scholars’ insights, classical secularization theory argued that the demise of religion was sociologically determined and culturally inevitable. Secularization was therefore understood to be both a process of social change, closely intertwined with the evolution of the modern world, and also a theory of increasing religious marginalization not only descriptive of present and past transitions but predictive of a future society where religion would have little or no public influence, social utility or plausible claim to a revelatory authority that in any sense transcended reason. On its long march to obscurity and eventual extinction, religion would retreat from the public to the private, from universal truth

Introduction to personal conviction, from the all-embracing life framework to the optional, spiritual lifestyle accessory. Increasingly eliminated from the corridors of power and cultural influence, the resilient residues of religion would have to make do increasingly with colonizing the margins of the late modern world. More recently than Freud, the eminent sociologist of religion and eloquent exponent of classical secularization theory, Bryan Wilson, used the title ‘Secularization and its Discontents’ for the final chapter of his Religion in Sociological Perspective (1982). Wilson emphasized in this chapter the longterm and trans-cultural dimensions of the process of secularization. He particularly emphasized the transition from the communal to the societal, which results not only in diminished space for religious functions, but also reduces the sense of communal and mutual responsibility and weakens the transmission of a shared moral code. For Wilson, not only did religious believers resist the logic of the sociological analysis that demonstrated the increasing marginalization of religion, there was also discontent at the corollarous or even consequential decline in social cohesion. Wilson’s exposition of secularization theory is a remorseless case for the prosecution: every irruption of new religious zeal becomes an indicator of further diminution of religion’s social significance, as the majority population become ‘better insulated from the effects of religious enthusiasm’ (1982, 153). Nonetheless, Wilson insisted on an essential distinction between sociological analysis of the process of secularization and the secularist’s advocacy of a secular society: To put forward the secularization thesis as an explanation of what happens in society is not to be a secularist, nor to applaud secularity; it is only to document and to illustrate social change . . . . (1982, 148)

For Wilson, therefore, classical secularization theory was not partisan, nor driven by an anti-religious agenda, but simply invited observers and participants of contemporary religion to face the harsh realities of the long-term decline in the influence, status and significance of religion. This is a crucial distinction: the secularist has an anti-religious agenda to propound, the secularization theorist seeks to provide an analytical account of the cultural transformations that have impacted the authority, breadth of reach and social significance of religion. The process and the theory of secularization inevitably produce discontents, not only among those committed to a particular religious faith who may find rumours of its demise decidedly premature, but also among social

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Secularization and Its Discontents theorists. Religionists may resist the brute empirical facts of the marginalization of religion. In my undergraduate classes are often found dedicated Christians who try to question the reliability of the evidence of 150 years of decline in church attendance. Similarly, their Muslim fellow-students characteristically argue that the decline of Western religion is a problem for Christianity but an opportunity for Islam. In a previous study (Warner: 2007), I explored evangelical ‘vision inflation’, in which conservative Christians evoke a promised land of imminent and epoch-changing advance, in defiance of the secularizing trends that result in diminishing returns for religious recruitment drives. Not only are their expectations inflated, but the centre of gravity for secularization is misdiagnosed: devout enthusiasts typically claim that decline is the fault of the church for not being sufficiently engaged with contemporary culture, with the naïve hope that, in changing the style of the church, they will transform the prospects for religion in Britain. A further type of religious discontent similarly locates the source of secularization within the church. Liberals blame the uncompromising zeal of fundamentalists for alienating sophisticated unbelievers. Meanwhile evangelicals condemn liberals for diluting distinctive Christian beliefs until there is nothing left worth believing in and no reason to bother with church. It appears that many religionists, Christian and non-Christian, conservative and liberal, find it more palatable to diagnose defective religion as the cause of secularization. If they blame religious institutions for their own marginalization, there is hope in the fact that the forms of religion may yet be transformed. However, if the source of the transformed significance of religion is identified in terms of social forces, these are more likely to prove unassailable, and the destiny of organized religion becomes more bleak and more difficult to overturn. Among social theorists, many of whom have no declared religious position of their own, the theory of secularization, in particular its ‘hard’ or ‘classical’ form that points towards the inevitable cultural obsolescence of organized religion, has generated a growing number of critical responses. First, some are sceptical whether there ever was a ‘golden age’ of religion against which the last hundred years can be fairly compared. Second, some argue for a ‘life-cycle’ of the rise and fall of religious organizations, claiming this is a more significant and enduring pattern than the particularities of the dominant forms of Christianity in modernity. Third, some identify an additional variable in the Western interaction between modernity and religion: in Western Europe the extent of secularity is in inverse proportion to the previous power of the dominant form of religion; in the United States, a free market in religion

Introduction appears to facilitate the relative buoyancy and influence of religion, with new forms gathering strength even as some institutions enter accelerating decline. Fourth, some question the applicability of secularization theory beyond Western Europe (plus Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the northern urban centres in the United States). The global resilience of religion indicates that while modernity and responses to religion are undoubtedly interconnected, the configurations are multiple and complex, with some forms of modernity and religion apparently enjoying a mutually strengthening coexistence. Fifth, some note the return of religion to the public square, which may indicate that exclusivist secularity was itself time-bound and unsustainable, indicating possibilities of a multi-faith or post-secular future. This book examines many such perspectives, and all represent in some measure a discontent with secularization theory, some repudiating it, others seeking a more refined, complex and problematized account of the condition and prospects for religion, in and beyond modernity. Social scientific methodologies in the study of religion are both quantitative and qualitative (Ammerman et al.: 1998; Robson: 2002; Bryman: 2004; Silverman: 2004). That is, the function, authority and influence of religion can all be tracked both through numerical data and through personal perspectives gathered from individual interviews, focus groups or related approaches. If I were forced to choose a single approach, it would have to be the qualitative, because personal perspectives can be assembled into a rich description that provides new and often unexpected insights. Nonetheless, there is simply no need for a methodological war: the fact is that these approaches segment the phenomenon of religion in the contemporary world and then analyse the available data in different ways, but there is no mutual exclusivity. The methodologies are best considered as complementary. For example, the beliefs of North American evangelicals have been subject to quantitative and qualitative analysis (Hunter: 1983; 1987; Smith: 1998; 2000; Bramadat: 2000), and these studies build up a fuller understanding when set side by side. In this particular study, seeking to provide an overview of the phenomenon of religion in the early twenty-first century, there is a need to provide a perspective from the past 150 years, and that requires some longitudinal and quantitative data. However, at each step in the argument, as we identify emerging patterns of decay and resurgence in contemporary forms of religion, there is significant room for new qualitative studies. Although the data examined in this book to set the context for the theoretical debates are mostly quantitative, therefore, the book also represents an agenda for qualitative research. Each section of the

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Secularization and Its Discontents argument could readily be developed, enhanced or even refuted, by future cohorts of research students and postdoctoral researchers. The vitality, social significance and likely prognosis for religion in the contemporary world will inevitably be much debated. Within the scholarly community of sociologists of religion, this continues to be an immensely fascinating and rewarding field of investigation. It is my hope that this book will contribute to this field of research in three ways: by outlining the landscape of contemporary debates and proposing a new synthesis of conflictual perspectives, by identifying the enduring significance of the insights of the early sociologists of religion and by examining some contemporary trends in the re-articulation of traditional religion, in re-aligned convergence with contemporary socio-cultural priorities and preoccupations.

Classical Secularization Theory

Chapter Outline 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5

Empirical data of church decline The intellectual context of church decline Social forces of secularization: individualism and rationalization Further socio-cultural dynamics of secularization Secularization theory and the marginality of religion

7 14 22 26 33

1.1 Empirical data of church decline The English church attendance surveys (1979–2005) have provided a quarter of a century narrative of sustained church decline (Brierley: 1991a; 2000; 2003; 2006). The trajectory appears unremitting: the Christian churches have become ever more marginalized, with less and less people attending on Sundays. The scale and speed of decline are staggering: English congregations have on average halved in size in the last quarter century. The longer historical view reinforces this trend very considerably. The Census of Religious Worship in 1851 was conducted under the leadership of Horace Mann, the Registrar General (Mann: 1853). A form was sent to the minister of every known place of worship for completion on Sunday 30 March 1851, the day before the National Census itself. Mann’s report detailed the number of buildings used for public worship, the number of sittings (services) and the number of attendances. A mere 1.1 per cent of churches failed to specify sittings and attendances in England and Wales, which represented a remarkably high level of cooperation. 14 per cent declined to comply in

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Secularization and Its Discontents Scotland, which indicates a greater independence from Westminster, but still represents a very high level of return. This resource therefore provides an invaluable snapshot of the level of mid-nineteenth-century church attendance. With all quantitative data it is possible to claim unreliability and bias. At the time some clergy complained there was ambiguity over whether churches included or excluded Sunday school attendees. They noted that attendance on that particular Sunday could have been distorted because there was bad weather and because it was Mothering Sunday. They warned that some churches were more likely to enjoy multiple attendances, whether the devout went to several services in a single church or even attended different denominations in the morning and evening. They cautioned that some ministers might have exaggerated the size of their congregations. The most forceful objections after the results were published came from Anglican clergy, presumably prompted by the fact that the results provided an unexpected and unwelcome surprise for the established church. 1851 proved to be the last time that recording church attendance was part of a national census. For the 1861 census, Anglicans argued that what should be counted was not attendance but affiliation. The free churches argued against this shift of approach. They claimed that a question about affiliation would produce unreliable and uninformative data, eliciting a default response of nominal loyalty to the established church. The question would therefore build an inevitable pro-Anglican bias into the data collection. Moreover, the free churches argued that the hard-won principle of freedom of religion set necessary limits to governmental intrusion into the religious realm. They argued that while it was legitimate to count attendance or attendees at church services, it was inappropriate for personal religious convictions to be subject to enquiry from the state. Faced with this methodological impasse and ecclesiastical dispute, the government decided against any further enquiry into religious affiliation or church attendance at that time. Mann was clear that attendances produced more significant data than affiliation: The outward conduct of persons furnishes a better guide to their religious state than can be gained by merely vague professions. (Mann: 1853, cxix)

Unfortunately, by counting attendance rather than attendees, Mann inevitably double- or even treble-counted the more zealous. Some subsequent surveys have preferred to count the laity’s professed attendance. However, this is often

Classical Secularization Theory exaggerated, at least in cultures that approve of regular churchgoing, where respondents may overstate their frequency of attendance to conform with what they perceive to be a normative cultural expectation or practice (Hadaway and Marler: 1998; Marler and Hadaway: 1999). Currie, Gilbert and Horsley (1977) counted formal membership as an explicit act of denominational commitment. The problem with this method is that in growing churches the total in formal membership can be considerably smaller than the actual congregation, while in declining churches people may stop attending long before their names are removed from any official membership list. Indeed I have come across churches where death has been known to precede final removal from the official membership roll by several years. The tendency for this time lag therefore builds a tendency to unreliability into membership data. Furthermore, while some churches prefer strict limitations on access to membership, others are more free and easy, so that the correlation between membership roll and size of congregation may vary considerably. In some churches membership is granted as soon as requested, whereas in others, often the more conservative that tend to make much higher demands of commitment and conformity upon their members, it follows a long process of induction into doctrines and practices. More recently, Gill (1993) and Brierley (Brierley et al.: 1998; Brierley and Sanger: 1999; Brierley: 2001) have argued that the most useful data come from counting actual attendees, avoiding the multiple counting of those who attend more than one each Sunday. The variety of methodologies means that there is no exact comparison between different data sets. For longitudinal studies, it is only possible to compare the best available information, harmonized as well as possible, even if variations in data collection prevent precise comparisons. Despite the limitations of his methodology and the difficulties of comparison with subsequent data sets, Mann provides a benchmark against which to measure more recent trends in church attendance. Historical enquiry has continued to evaluate the reliability of Mann’s data collection and analysis and the implications of his data. Snell and Ell (2000) identified aspects not emphasized in the immediate aftermath of the census, notably an uneven distribution of Anglicans, dominating the Tory shires, and for Methodists particular strength in the north and south-west. When it was first published, the census generated two provocative discoveries. First, Mann’s attendance figures revealed an unexpectedly low market share for the established church: Anglicans 5,292,551; Roman Catholics 383,630; free churches 5,116,410. The Roman Catholic proportion is very low compared with 100 or

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Secularization and Its Discontents 150 years later, and that is explained by the subsequent waves of Roman Catholic immigration. The unexpected result at the time was the near 1:1 ratio of Anglicans to Dissenters. Chadwick emphasized the immediate political impact: Admit that more dissenters may have attended their chapels twice or thrice, deduct Jews and Mormons and even Roman Catholics, and the statistics still pointed to the uncomfortable fact that in gross the dissenting churches commanded the allegiance of nearly half the population of England and Wales . . . It finally established the impossibility of treating the establishment as privileged on the ground that it was the church of the immense majority of the people. (Chadwick: 1966, 367–369)

This represented a seismic shift from the Compton census of 1676 (Snell and Ell: 2000, ch. 8). In 1676, a significant measure of legal and social enforcement of conformity had resulted in the following market share: Anglican 95.31 per cent, RC 0.8 per cent, Free 3.89 per cent. In 1851, this had become: Anglican 49 per cent, RC 3.6 per cent, Free 47.4 per cent. Snell and Ell estimate that, in the period from 1700 to 1851, enterprising dissenters formed 70 new free church sects and denominations (Snell and Ell: 2000, 404). Even if many of these sects erupted for a generation and then were gone, this represents a distinctive religious climate of enterprise and innovation, diversification and new missional engagement with the contemporary. The age of imperial expansion had therefore also been an age of denominational proliferation. An era of entrepreneurial opportunity gave a measure of cultural validity, even in the face of sustained disapproval or even disdain from the established church, to the captains of the religious cottage industries that were generating new experiments and outlets in chapel life. Mann’s own interpretation of the data emphasized not the rising market share of the proliferating free churches, but the fact that the total church attendance represented a considerably lower proportion of the population than Victorian rhetoric of a Christian civilization would have led many to expect. Mann adjusted his totals to exclude multiple attendance and estimated the total number of individual attendees to be 7,261,032. He reckoned that 70 per cent of the population ‘should be able’ to attend, leaving aside those who were ill, caring for others, working and so on. He therefore calculated the potential total of attendees to be 12,549,326, of whom around 5,250,000 chose to be absent. On Mann’s calculations, of those who were physically able to attend, no less than 43 per cent chose to stay away. At the time this was

Classical Secularization Theory surprising, even shocking, even though Mann cushioned the blow by his generous calculation of the proportion excluded by circumstances from being able to attend. Mann’s calculations are unrealistically precise, but in his analysis the Census exposed completely unexpected levels of secularity in Victorian Britain. For Mann, the 1851 Census represented a significant decline from what the mid-Victorians perceived to be previously much higher levels of church attendance and church influence. However, viewed from the twentyfirst century, the 1851 census represents a high point from which attendance and influence have suffered prolonged and enervating decline. Even though the precise level of church attendance that can reasonably be derived from Mann’s data continues to be contested, the longitudinal trend is unambiguous. Bruce (1995; 1996; 2002) reworked Mann’s data to estimate church attendance in 1851 of 40–60 per cent. However, if an adjustment is made to the 1851 totals in accordance with the proportion who attended twice in 1902–3, the 1851 church attendance percentage might only have been 24 per cent (Gill: 1993). The Daily News survey (1902–3) reported church attendance in London at 19 per cent. Mass Observation (1947) recorded church attendance of 15 per cent. Brierley’s series of church attendance surveys (2006a) produced the following results: 1979: 12 per cent; 1989: 10 per cent; 1998: 7.5 per cent; 2005: 6.3 per cent. Even if the decline is from a peak of 24 per cent rather than 60 per cent in 1851 (bearing in mind Mann’s view that this represented a considerable falling off in piety from former times), the fall from this level to 6.3 per cent in 150 years represents a devastating collapse in Christian participation (Figure 1.1).

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

1851

1902-3

1947

1979

1989

Figure 1.1 English Church Attendance – 150 years of decline.

1998

2005

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Secularization and Its Discontents Robin Gill (2003: 69–168) identified long-term denominational trends. He concluded that 1821–51 saw a general increase in church attendance, followed by free church increase and Anglican decline from 1851 to the 1880s. From the 1880s to 1919 there was general Protestant decline, and there was continuing decline from after the First World War to the end of the century. To Gill’s panorama we can add that the general trend of decline accelerated further in the 1960s and 1990s. Among Roman Catholics in England we can trace a distinctive trend of late-onset decline, with church attendance holding up better until the last decades of the twentieth century, when decline suddenly became rapid, even vertiginous. The empirical evidence is unambiguous. Church attendance as a proportion of the population no less than halved in 125 years (1951–79). In the next quarter century (1979–2005), church attendance no less than halved once again. Decade after decade Christian congregations in Britain, and indeed throughout Western Europe, have been haemorrhaging adults, children and youth. Similarly, 65 per cent of babies born in 1900 were baptized in the Church of England, rising to 69.9 per cent in 1930. Since the Second World War the decline has been continuous: 1950 – 67.2 per cent; 1960 – 55.4 per cent; 1970 – 46.6 per cent; 1980 – 36.5 per cent; 1990 – 27.5 per cent; 2000 – 19.8 per cent. During the past decade the collapse of infant baptisms has continued: 2001 – 18.8 per cent; 2002 – 18.1 per cent; 2003 – 16.7 per cent; 2004 – 15.9 per cent; 2005: 15.3 per cent; 206 – 14.3 per cent; 2007 – 13.4 per cent. The official Church of England website makes the point ‘The infant baptism figures for 1980 and later years are not directly comparable with those of previous years, because from the returns have specified infant baptisms as those under one year of age in order to relate more realistically to live births’.1 However, the scale of sustained decline in infant baptisms in the second half of the twentieth century is unambiguous and severe (Figures 1.2 and 1.3). As for the proportion of marriages conducted by the Church of England, in 1900 it was 67 per cent, in 1950 50 per cent, in 1960 47 per cent, in 1970 41 per cent, in 1980 33 per cent and in 1995 30 per cent (Brierley: 1999, 8.5). The average for recent decades according the Church of England’s own statistics was 34.2 per cent in the 1980s, 28.8 per cent in the 1990s and 23.3 per cent from 2001 to 2006.2 Notwithstanding the occasional headline about church marriages coming back into fashion, the data are unambiguous: not only have regular congregations suffered catastrophic decline, but the wider penumbra of affiliation expressed through rites of passage has also suffered considerable

Classical Secularization Theory 70.00%

52.50%

35.00%

17.50%

0% 1900

1910

1920

1930

1940

1950

Figure 1.2 Church of England Infant Baptisms as a percentage of births, 1900–50.

70.000%

52.500%

35.000%

17.500%

0% 1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

Figure 1.3 Church of England Infant Baptisms as a percentage of births, 1950–2000.

shrinkage. This statistical decline is symptomatic of the fact that the Christian religion has been suffering from a profound decline in social and religious significance. For example, many major government departments originated under the aegis of the church, but now function either predominantly or entirely as secular institutions, including health, education and social security. How long the Church of England can continue to retain any plausible legitimacy as the established church is surely becoming an unavoidable question. This profound cultural transition demands investigation and explanation. It has been described as ‘the death of God’ (Bruce: 2002) and, somewhat more modestly, but no less starkly, ‘the death of Christian Britain’ (Brown: 2001). Whether the roots are traced to the rise of modernity, as Bruce argues, or are more immediately determined by the rise of feminism in the 1960s, as Brown

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Secularization and Its Discontents concludes, the empirical data point towards the long-term, unidirectional and increasing marginalization of the Christian religion: it is unrealistic to describe this as anything less than a profound and potentially terminal crisis for the Christian churches. Whether or not Britain can be said to have become postreligious, there is clear evidence that the British, in common with many Western Europeans, if not in their entirety then certainly for a growing proportion, now inhabit a culture that is certainly post-Christendom, and quite probably, which marks an even greater cultural and religious departure, post-Christian.

1.2 The intellectual context of church decline The nineteenth century saw new heights to the industrial revolution and the age of European empires. These advances combined with the perceived and celebrated triumph of Reason in the Age of Enlightenment to form the seductive and compelling narrative of modernity, and this was characteristically framed in male and Western European terms. The advancement of humankind (at the time, of course, and until recent decades this was habitually gendered as the ‘The Ascent of Man’) was assured. Western Europe represented the pinnacle of human progress and was under a moral obligation to take ‘true civilization’ and indeed ‘the highest religion’ to every corner of her Christian empires. In some of the most influential formulations, this narrative of advancement expressly replaced conventional dependence upon traditional, moderate religion with a newly assertive confidence in human rationality. Attitudes to inherited religion were increasingly infused with new scepticism or outright repudiation. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who both celebrated and contributed seminally to the new age of enlightenment (Kant: 1784, ET 1970; 1787, ET 1929), claimed that the sceptical philosophy of David Hume (1711–76) decisively ‘interrupted my dogmatic slumber’ (Kant: 1783, ET 2004, 10). For Kant, the concepts of God and the immortality of the soul were not capable of being proved – indeed he exploded the old philosophical proofs of the existence of God – but they were worth retaining because they continued to be advantageous in advocating the pursuit of ethical living and promoting the categorical imperative. Kant therefore sought to construct a new form of religion within the limits of reason alone (Kant: 1793, ET 1998). With reason

Classical Secularization Theory sovereign over church tradition, the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Atonement of Christian theology were all subject to sceptical scrutiny and re-imagining (Kant: 1788, ET 1997), and could no longer be believed in conventional form. For Georg Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), who became to many Europeans a priest of the new religion of philosophical idealism, the ascent of the human race to intellectual and spiritual enlightenment was embodied in his own philosophical investigations (see for example, Hegel: 1807, ET 1979, memorably described by William James as only intelligible with the help of hallucinogenic drugs). For this study Hegel’s primary significance is that two very different nineteenth century Germans built upon his dialectical methods with a reconfiguration of theology, first in anthropocentric terms (Feuerbach) and then as a revisioning of a future where social justice was assured (Marx). Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72), building on Hegel with an emphatic anthropocentrism, argued that the true meaning of theology was anthropology (1841, ET 1989). He concluded that Christian theology had divinized humanity’s higher aspirations, and as a direct consequence had tended to denigrate humankind as sinful over against the goodness of God. This resulted, for Feuerbach, in a profound alienation from humanity’s intrinsic higher ideals. The religious antithesis that Feuerbach critiques is perhaps most apparent in John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1509–64, Institutes: ET 2001), where the knowledge of God and of humanity are both propounded, but the holiness of God is elevated in contrast with the sinfulness of ‘total depravity’. And behind Calvin, of course, are the long shadows cast by the towering Father of Western Christian Theology, Catholic and Protestant, Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430). He was the elaborator, if not the inventor, of the doctrine of Original Sin, for whom human sinfulness was sexually transmitted at conception. Given contemporary Western obsession with sexual expressiveness and the church’s long legacy of sexual discomfort, the clash of cultures is apparent, acute, and can only tend further to marginalize the Christian religion as outmoded and repressive. Augustine had lived with a woman before his conversion, but then abandoned her and remained celibate for the rest of his life, and Western Christianity, to paraphrase Freud, might be considered at least in part to be the collective outworking of Augustine’s obsessive neurosis concerning guilt about sex. In revolt against this problematic dialectic intrinsic to Christianity, Feuerbach invited humankind to reclaim these higher ideals for expression in human lives, and thereby come of age. For Feuerbach, rather than salvation

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Secularization and Its Discontents being provided ‘from above’ with God redeeming a fallen race, self-salvation arises when human beings rediscover and seek to fulfil their innate and affirmedly human potential. Moral idealism is no longer projected onto a transcendent deity, but can be appropriated with confidence as an achievable human goal. George Eliot (1819–80), one of the greatest nineteenth century novelists in the English language, abandoned her evangelical faith as no longer intellectually tenable. She was Feuerbach’s first English translator, but declined to follow his acerbic repudiation of religion: she continued to attend churches from time to time, and considered religion to have both aesthetic and ethical merits. In 1873, according to Frederick Myers, she told him in the Fellows’ Garden at Trinity College Cambridge that she had further concluded that Kant’s retention of God and the immortal soul was neither advantageous nor credible: God, Immortality, Duty . . . how inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet how peremptory and absolute the third. (Myers: 1881)

In his Theses on Feuerbach, Karl Marx (1818–83) concluded that Feuerbach’s reconfiguration of the significance of religion failed to take sufficient account of the social forces that structure and constrain human destiny. For Marxist neo-Hegelianism, dialectical materialism required facing up to the imprisoning realities of capitalist exploitation and the prospect of the overthrow of the economic injustice that had inevitably and demonstrably resulted from the ownership of capital in the hands of the few. IV Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-alienation, of the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. But that the secular basis detaches itself from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the cleavages and self-contradictions within this secular basis. The latter must, therefore, in itself be both understood in its contradiction and revolutionized in practice. ... VI Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.

Classical Secularization Theory VII Feuerbach consequently does not see that the ‘religious sentiment’ is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual whom he analyses belongs to a particular form of society. ... XI The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. (Marx: 1845, Theses on Feuerbach)

For Marx, religion was the drug of choice for many working people, a means of escape from the exigencies of a life without capital for those who were subject to increasing exploitation in the temporary age of capitalism (Marx and Engels: 1848). . . . the struggle against religion is indirectly the fight against the world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless circumstances. It is the opium of the people. (Marx: 1843, Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction)

Religion’s second function, for Marx, was as a form of ideological legitimation. That is, organized religion performed the role of a compliant servant and propagandist for the owners of capital, pronouncing dogmas that justified the domination of the powerful and persuaded the working class to remain subservient under the yoke of economic tyranny. The foundation of irreligious criticism is this: man makes religion, religion does not make man. (Marx: 1843, Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction)

For Marx, therefore, with the imminent and assured emergence of revolutionary consciousness, religion would be exposed as part escapism and as part bogus apologia for the ruling class. When the workers of the world united to reclaim ownership of capital, religion would therefore necessarily become obsolete. If it survived at all, it could only be as a throwback to the old oppressive order. Marx’s rigorously materialist account of the origins and significance

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Secularization and Its Discontents of both religion and social structures, expressly sociological, allowed no enduring significance for religion as the embodiment of ethical values, or as the articulation of the transcendent, or as the quest for meaning and truth. His account is expressly reductive, but raises pertinent questions about the willingness of organized religion to serve as consort to the powerful. For Darwin (1809–82), natural selection produced an account of life on earth that was elegant in its simplicity without any need to depend upon traditional and literal Western interpretations of Genesis 1–3. For traditional Christians, Catholic as well as Protestant, who conceived knowledge as a single category in which theology held sway over science, the instinctive first reactions to the new science were often hostile and dismissive. Those among the English Bishops who dismissed Darwin were in the tradition of the Roman Cardinals who had condemned Galileo. It would take time for most believers to concede that science and theology operated as distinct fields of learning such that theology could no more adjudicate over the validity of the theory of evolution than biology could determine the existence of God. Alongside this intellectual ferment, several leading Anglican liberals released Essays and Reviews in March 1860, just four months after Darwin’s On the Origin of Species published in November 1859. This rising tide of theological liberalism argued that the rise of biblical criticism meant that the Bible could no longer be conceived as the dictated oracles of God, but rather came to be seen as a complex interweaving of many different sources, often with significantly different emphases from one another. Christian doctrine was also reappraised, with scholars and church leaders increasingly articulating a distaste for and ultimately a rejection of a literal understanding of hell as the eternal destiny for many (Maurice: 1853), and punitive interpretations of the atonement. The miraculous narratives of the Bible could no longer be taken for granted as literal accounts of a world in which divine interventions were commonplace and self-authenticating. Possibilities of exaggeration, gullibility, superstition and myth-making could no longer be swept aside. Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh, withheld from publication until 1903 when Butler had died (1835–1902), exposes with sometimes riotous humour these nineteenth century crises of faith. For Unitarians, the triumph of reason had meant the abandonment of the Trinity as an excess of metaphysical speculation. More broadly, by the end of the nineteenth century, the authority of the Bible, the credibility of traditional Christian doctrine and the intellectual authority of the pronouncements of the church had been severely attenuated.

Classical Secularization Theory In the First Vatican Council (1869–70), Roman Catholicism reacted against modernity with the uncompromisingly conservative pronouncements of Dei Filius, and sought to reinforce ecclesiastical authority in the face of a rising tide of scepticism by promulgating the dogma of papal infallibility in Pastor Aeternus. The resolute opposition to rationalism, liberalism and modernity was unambiguous: If anyone says that in divine revelation there are contained no true mysteries properly so-called, but that all the dogmas of the faith can be understood and demonstrated by properly trained reason from natural principles: let him be anathema. If anyone says that human studies are to be treated with such a degree of liberty that their assertions may be maintained as true even when they are opposed to divine revelation, and that they may not be forbidden by the church: let him be anathema. If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the church which is different from that which the church has understood and understands: let him be anathema. And so in the performance of our supreme pastoral office, we beseech for the love of Jesus Christ and we command, by the authority of him who is also our God and savior, all faithful Christians, especially those in authority or who have the duty of teaching, that they contribute their zeal and labor to the warding off and elimination of these errors from the church and to the spreading of the light of the pure faith. But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy unless those errors are carefully shunned which approach it in greater or less degree, we warn all of their duty to observe the constitutions and decrees in which such wrong opinions, though not expressly mentioned in this document, have been banned and forbidden by this Holy See. (Canons of Session 3, 24 April 1870)

Around the same time, the conservative evangelicals of Old Princeton intensified the theory of biblical infallibility (Barr: 1977; Murphy: 1996). No matter how little common ground was apparent at the time between Roman Catholicism and the Evangelical Right, these two reformulations of scriptural and papal supremacy represented a defiant assertiveness in reaction against the crisis of religious authority that was engulfing Western religion. Emphatic conservatism, Catholic as much as Protestant, is symptomatic of a fundamental diminution of religious power. Initially at the leading edge of high culture, but increasingly in the majority culture as well, the intellectual impact of modernity meant that the authority of religion would never be the same again.

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Secularization and Its Discontents Beyond the resistant but inevitably eroding conservative enclaves, increasing numbers of theologians, priests and laity came to conclude that Christianity would need to be radically reconceived, or otherwise gradually abandoned. The cultural climate of early modernity was conducive to an evolutionary conception of human civilization (Cahoone: 1996). For Marx (1848), feudalism gave way to capitalism, which would assuredly and imminently give way to revolutionary consciousness and the communist revolution. Religion could then be dispensed with as an illusory tool of the oppressors. For Comte (1830–46, ET 1896), acknowledged widely as the father of sociology, the theological age of superstition had given way to the metaphysical age of abstract theorizing about religion, but this, in turn, was giving way in his own generation to the triumph of positivism and the elimination of traditional religion. Comte even launched a ‘church’ of positivism, hoping to retain the benefits of a ritualized ethical community after the death of supernatural religion. However, Comtean godless religion did not prove enduringly popular. The concept of a narrative of modernization that resulted in religion becoming obsolete remained beguiling. Freud later proposed a similar threestage process that resulted in the inevitable marginalization of religion, building on his earlier account of religion as religious neurosis (Freud: 1907; Gay: 1995) and a social projection of the Oedipal complex (Freud: 1913). In Freud’s (1927; 1930) evolutionary model, the animist outlook gave way to the religious, which in turn was now giving way to the scientific. He also linked this to his theory of personal psychological development, so that animism correlated with the auto-eroticism of earliest childhood, religion with the Oedipal child and scientific humanism with personal maturity. These grand narratives of human advance have in common both an antagonism towards and a presumed superiority over religion. They exhibit an assured assumption that the cultural narrative of modernity is advancing inevitably and with finality in the direction of pure and untrammelled atheism. Reason, science, modernization and cultural advance had combined to assure a post-religious emergent civilization. These narratives also have in common the assumption that humans come of age in the generation, and indeed in the writings of the religion-less seer, whether Feuerbach, Comte, Marx or Freud. Nietzsche was bold enough to express the finality of this cultural trajectory. For him, churches had out-lived their credible usefulness and both God and religion were outmoded concepts. Empty and abandoned churches would come to be seen as no more than enormous tombstones, unintentional

Classical Secularization Theory memorials to the death of the Christian God. Such rhetoric was daring at the time, but by the end of the twentieth century British townscapes were littered with church buildings that had become charity shops, furniture warehouses or luxury apartments. This made it quite straightforward to suspect that the very concept of God as well as Christianity’s religious buildings and institutions had become redundant. It was not just that less people were going to church each Sunday, but religion was drifting to the margins not only in the public, cultural, media and political spheres, but even so for the vast majority in their private lives. Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: ‘I seek God! I seek God!’ – As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? Asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? Asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Emigrated? – Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. ‘Whither is God?’ he cried; ‘I will tell you. We have killed him – you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? . . . Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him’. ‘How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us - for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto’. Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. ‘I have come too early’, he said then; ‘my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars – and yet they have done it themselves’. It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: ‘What after all are

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Secularization and Its Discontents these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchres of God?’ (Nietzsche: ET 1974, 181–2, part 3, sec. 15, ‘The Madman’)

1.3 Social forces of secularization: individualism and rationalization Following on from Marx and Comte, the second generation of early sociologists continued to give prominence to religion in their analyses of society, recognizing its centrality to social identities. Both Emile Durkheim (1858– 1917) and Max Weber (1864–1920) considered it self-evident that Christianity had entered a phase of decline in Europe (for critical introductions see Hughes et al.: 2003; Morrison: 2006; Fenn: 2009). Durkheim (1912, ET 2001) developed a functionalist theory of religion, in which religion was a profoundly important, indeed essential articulation and enactment of social cohesion. Durkheim was so convinced of the societal importance of religion, he proposed a cyclical theory in which the demise of any particular religion was always likely to be followed by the emergence of new gods. In short, the ancient gods grow old or die, and others are not yet born. Hence the futility of Comte’s attempt to organize a religion with old historic memories artificially reawakened: it is from life itself, and not from a dead past, that a living cult can emerge . . . There are no immortal gospels, and there is no reason to believe that humanity is henceforth incapable of conceiving new ones. (Durkheim: 1912, ET 2001, 322–3)

Unlike Comte, who welcomed the death of religion, and Marx, who predicted its imminent demise accompanying the workers’ revolution, Durkheim concluded that the secularizing tendencies of the nineteenth century were socially problematic rather than indicative of the triumph of enlightenment. For Durkheim, the enemy of social cohesion and religion alike was excessive individualism. Although industrial society generated mutual interdependence within a much larger circle of people, where this failed to be recognized, individualism tended to become overstated at the expense of the communal, self-obsessed and socially divisive. Durkheim’s (1897, ET 2002) comparative study of rates of suicide in Western Europe developed this thesis. While most studies of suicide had concentrated on the psychological distress of the individuals who contemplated taking their own life, Durkheim identified varying levels of suicide in

Classical Secularization Theory different countries, which enabled him to ask what social factors made suicide more likely. He concluded that the more embedded someone was within social networks, the less likely they were to commit suicide. Durkheim found that Roman Catholic countries had lower rates of suicide, which indicated that this form of religion was more conducive to social cohesion. Inevitably, Durkheim’s conclusions, loaded with his own prioritization of communal religion, can be contested. For example, can religion be shown to be the primary determinative factor? Do the long, dark winters of northern Europe have an impact? What of other variables, such as urbanization? What are the societal implications of the Roman Catholic designation of suicide as a mortal sin? Could this moral position dissuade some individuals from taking their life and dissuade some devout authorities from recording a definitive verdict of suicide that would necessarily be understood to combine social stigma for the bereaved and eternal implications for the deceased? Notwithstanding these reservations, Durkheim’s account of the interconnection of Protestantism and Western individualism can be built upon in the following sequence of conclusions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Individualism diminishes the experience of social cohesion. Individualism diminishes the practice of communal religion. Protestantism elevates the individual and legitimates individualism. Protestantism thereby diminishes social cohesion and the practice of religion. The unintended consequences of Protestantism are the growth of individualism, the decay of social cohesion and the decline of religion. 6. Protestantism may therefore in the long-term become sociologically non-viable, subverting its own religious intentions by functioning as an accidental agent of secularization.

For Durkheim, in summary, Protestantism was intrinsically secularizing and had given birth to an excessive individualism that was heralding the death of the Christian God and a diminished sense of collective identity and morality. However, the necessary social function of religion in performing the communal meant that new forms of public and civil religion could be expected to rise to prominence. Weber (Gerth and Wright Mill: 1991) similarly concluded that religion was experiencing an age of inevitable decline. For Weber, the triumph of rationality resulted in a society dominated by bureaucratic systems. To sum up the experience of life inside the ‘iron cage’ of rationalistic bureaucracy, Weber borrowed from Schiller the phrase ‘the disenchantment of the world’. Where

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Secularization and Its Discontents explanations of the human condition had formerly been in religious categories that had seemed self-evident, modernity was coming to frame human existence, just as self-evidently to cultural insiders, without reference to God. Religion was being diminished from an all-encompassing, defining and binding authority to a narrow and specialized domain. There is in Weber something wistful about his understanding of the human condition. A parallel can be drawn with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. For these Christian Oxford dons and their fellow Inklings, the world was no longer enlivened with the mythological wonder of antiquity. Creatures of fable were still part of the world of Narnia, but in the age of Tolkien’s ‘fellowship of the ring’ the elves were already departing from Middle Earth. However, while Durkheim anticipated a return of religion as a necessary expression of social cohesion, albeit with new gods, for Weber modernity had brought about a momentous disruption of the interconnections of religion and society. He proposed a bifurcation, in which the Academy was the place for the social scientific study of religion, utilizing what Berger (1967) later and aptly termed ‘methodological atheism’. For those who still longed for religion’s capacity to confer meaning, solace and identity, Weber assured them that the old religion continued to extend its welcome. Weber committed himself to the sociological study of religion while considering himself ‘unmusical’ in terms of any personal religious adherence and practice. The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the ‘disenchantment of the world’. Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations . . . To the person who cannot bear the fate of the times . . . the arms of the old churches are open widely and compassionately for him . . . religious return stands higher than the academic prophecy, which does not clearly realize that in the lecture-rooms of the university no other virtue holds but plain intellectual integrity. (Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation’ Gerth and Wright Mill: 1991f, 155–6)

For Weber, the social narrative of the rise of rationality, and hence bureaucracy, was also repeated in the dynamics of religious evolution (‘The Sociology of Charismatic Authority’ Gerth and Wright Mill: 1991). While the founder of a religion may have exceptional charisma, sooner or later every sect that survives its founder’s death must evolve systems of religious organization. For Weber this represented the ‘routinization of charisma’, the inevitable transition in which, in order to sustain their founder’s religious insights, successors in

Classical Secularization Theory leadership must employ different methods, moving from charisma to bureaucracy. Berger (1967) built upon Weber by observing that different denominations, utilizing different titles and official ecclesiologies, all gravitate in time towards a bureaucratic homogeneity of management styles and discourse. Charisma is necessarily supplanted by bureaucratic organization, and inspiration by institution. It is not difficult to interpret the Pauline correspondence in the New Testament in Weberian terms. In the early days of his apostolic ministry, Paul emphasized that his own calling was direct from God, and not subject to human approval (Gal. 1.11–24). Likewise, he affirmed the egalitarian nature of the new Christian community, in which all were empowered by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12) and the former social distinctions of race, class and gender were made obsolete (Gal. 3.28). However, the later pastoral epistles, which seek to consolidate the Pauline mission in the form of sustainable churches, switch from charismatic leadership to official appointment (Tit. 1.5), from spontaneous charismatic endowment to ordained offices (2 Tim. 1.6), and circumscribe more explicitly and narrowly the ministries of women (1 Tim. 2.9–15). From a Weberian perspective, this represents an entirely typical and even predictable instance of the routinization of charisma. In order to sustain itself beyond the first flush of charismatic enthusiasm, a religious organization transitions its preferred leadership style in favour of bureaucratic order. Weber was highly critical of Marx. He considered him a pioneer in the study of the interaction between religion and society, whose work was severely flawed by oversimplification. For Weber, the forces of social interaction between religion and society were immensely complex and worked in both directions. At times religion is shaped by social forces, at others religion reconfigures the society in which it operates. Thus, Weber argued that the rise of capitalism was an ‘unintended consequence’ of calvinistic Protestantism’s ‘this-worldly asceticism’ (Weber: 1904–5, ET 1958). Affirming non-ecclesial vocations, moderation in life’s pleasures and the demonstration of predestined salvation through works of service rather than pious devotion, Protestantism, according to Weber, gave new sanction to the priorities of capitalism. In due course, this spin-off from the Reformation outgrew dependence upon its religious precursor, and so religion gave birth to an essentially post-religious (at least in its European configurations) economic rationality. With penetrating explorations of the dynamic interaction of religion and culture, the degradation of charisma into bureaucratic institutions, secular capitalism and individualism and commodified religion as unintended

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Secularization and Its Discontents consequences of the rise of Protestantism, Weber provided enduring, fertile and provocative insights for the study of religion in the twenty-first century. I consider him the single most important genius of the sociological imagination in the sub-discipline of sociology of religion.

1.4 Further socio-cultural dynamics of secularization While Durkheim emphasized individualism and Weber rationality and capitalism, both considered social forces to have had a profound impact upon the authority, influence and public plausibility of religion. Specifically, they identify a causal interaction between the processes of modernization and the decline of religion. This causal nexus was pivotal for the subsequent development of secularization theory, in which it was assumed that this inverse relationship between modernity and religion, self-evident to many Western European intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was inevitable. Secularization theory rapidly became not only a descriptive account of how European modernity had a negative impact upon European Christianity, but also a prescriptive theory in which, at least in its most emphatic formulations, a universal and homogeneous process of modernization has an inevitable necessarily negative impact upon the significance and influence of religion in all its forms (Wilson: 1966; 1982; Bruce: 1995; 1996; 2002). Later secularization theorists retained Durkheim and Weber’s emphases upon individualism and rationalization. They argued that these social forces were more profoundly and determinately corrosive of the practice and plausibility of religion than the secularizing processes of high culture – whether Kant and Hegel or Marx and Darwin. Two further dominant emphases were the rise of social differentiation and pluralism. Functional differentiation describes the cultural transposition to a society in which we expect specialists to speak with authority specifically and solely within their designated field of expertise. This represents a dramatic and irreversible shift from a unified world, in which the priest was the source of authority in the parish, theology was the queen of the sciences in the medieval university and the church presumed the power to adjudicate the legitimacy of scientific enquiries and the validity of scientific conclusions. As a consequence of this profound cultural transition, religious leaders are therefore demoted from a position of universal and public authority to functioning with one kind of specialist expertise among many. Stripped of its regulatory function,

Classical Secularization Theory religion is pushed towards the private domain, as an optional activity for the individual, with no jurisdiction in other spheres of life. Functional differentiation therefore results in the marginalization of religion, no longer endued with an all-encompassing authority or even relevance in the worlds of science, business and politics. Christian leaders can readily misdiagnose this dislocation from public life. Some have interpreted it as a deliberate policy of exclusion by those opposed to religion. Others have tended to blame the church for an implicit Platonism that reinforces a body-spirit, sacred-secular divide. The reality, according to secularization theory, is that this gradual freeing of sectors and specialisms from religious control is a logical consequence of the processes of modernization. It requires neither a conspiracy by secularists, nor a conceptual failure or a narrowly spiritual preoccupation on the part of the church. Rather, as diverse specialisms have emerged, it is only right and appropriate that they become freed from religious domination, given that church leaders – clergy, bishops and cardinals – lack expertise in these various fields. The result has often been a tendency towards dogmatic and authoritarian or bumbling and amateur interventions by the church in non-religious domains. Consider the inept and platitudinous contribution of several bishops in commentary on the credit crunch. A reaction is inevitable against well-meaning but ill-informed intrusion of the church into fields where it lacks expertise, and this further intensifies the subsequent marginalization of the church. The consequence is not only to legitimate diverse authorities within diverse specialisms, but to diminish the credibility and authority of the church in public life, beyond the domain of private religion. Pluralism represents a further aspect in which, according to classical secularization theory, Protestantism has tended to undermine its own sociocultural viability. Weber produced an ideal type categorization of one ‘church’ and proliferating ‘sects’. ‘Church’ signifies the established, official, majority religion. It is the inherited religion of birth. The ‘sects’ represent the alternative, dissenting, more demanding religions of decision that are entered by conversion. We should note in passing that this sociological use of the term ‘sect’ was intended to be descriptive rather than pejorative, even though in everyday parlance, rather than academic terminology, ‘sect’ implies a sectarian divisiveness, exclusivity and narrow-mindedness. These value judgments were not intrinsic to Weber’s ideal type. In their origins, these various forms of Christian religion held a common assumption that can be traced back as far as Cyprian and Augustine – extra ecclesiam nulla salus (no salvation outside the church). Different churches

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Secularization and Its Discontents were more or less sole providers of assured salvation that was not available – or at least not reliably available – elsewhere. Rival churches therefore conceived themselves to be uniquely legitimate. For the official church, in an argument Augustine originally developed against the Donatists, a breakaway and strict church that questioned the willingness to compromise with the state authorities of many Catholic clergy, this entailed the right to legal sanctions to enforce conformity. For dissenters, this meant a refusal to conform and an insistence upon the need, indeed the urgency, of providing opportunities for the personal conversion of participants in the official church, who would thereby be recruited to their voluntarist variant of the Christian religion. Neither saw the other as fully legitimate co-religionists. This impasse is still evident in contemporary Latin America, where Pentecostalism is growing rapidly and sees no problem with recruiting converts from Catholicism (Cox: 1996; Martin: 1998; Martin: 2002; Anderson: 2004), and where the present Pope, with an equally monopolistic soteriology, described Pentecostalism in 2007 as the greatest danger to the Roman Catholic Church. Rival Jerusalems continue in strident conflict, but no longer in Western Europe. The religious wars that engulfed Europe after the Reformation were referred to with great distaste by the immensely influential empirical philosophers John Locke (1632–1704) and David Hume (1711–76). For Locke (1870, written 1689–93), they demonstrated the importance of his emphasis upon mutual toleration. For Hume (1993), as he argued in The Natural History of Religion, first published in 1757, and in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, first published in 1779, they signified the irrational and untenable excesses of religion. In the concluding sentences to his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume threw off the cloak of scepticism and was forthright in his dismissal of Christian metaphysics, finding it bereft of empirical grounding or rigorous analytical reasoning: If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. (Hume: 2000 (1748), 123)

In time, mutually exclusive claims to sole salvific legitimacy proved unsustainable. One of the early contributors to Protestant ecumenism was George Whitefield (Whitefield: 1960; Stout: 1991), who was threatened with a Church Court for preaching in dissenters’ chapels. This new mood of collaboration

Classical Secularization Theory slowly prevailed, and this is characteristically described by secularization theorists as the transition from a single church and rival sects to mutual recognition as denominations. Although from a theological perspective ecumenism would usually be seen as a highly virtuous endeavour, in accordance with Jesus’ high priestly prayer that his followers would be as one (Jn. 17), secularization theorists identify profound but unintended negative consequences (Wilson: 1966; Bruce: 2002). By downplaying their distinctive salvific claims, denominations move into a pluralistic arena. Choosing a denomination becomes increasingly a matter of personal choice, with little or no salvific significance. Pluralism is therefore considered to be doubly damaging. First it results in unsavoury instances of prejudice, bigotry and religious rivalry. Second, as the plural providers become more moderate, moving from exclusivity to partnership, specific patterns of religious participation that were once determinate of eternal salvation or perdition are relativized and become a matter of individual preference. Either way, alienating the high-minded through schismatic rivalries or relegating their distinctive convictions to matters of ecclesiastical or theological taste, the impact of pluralism is, according to European perspectives within classical secularization theory, severely prejudicial to the viability of religion. Building upon classical secularization theory, Peter Berger developed an elegant account of the negative consequences of religious pluralism in terms of the dissolution of the ‘sacred canopy’ (1967). This, he argued, was the all-encompassing framework of shared religious and ethical assumptions under which a society with a single church functioned effectively. The eruption of alternative and rival forms of Christianity was inevitably considered intolerable from under the sacred canopy, but in time the pluralistic forms prevailed, with the inevitable consequence that the sacred canopy was fractured and eventually fragmented beyond repair. For Berger the rise of pluralism ‘ipso facto plunges religion into a crisis of credibility’ (1967, 151). Once again, the cultural transition – from uniformity to proliferating choices – and the religious transition – from a single church to a plurality of denominations – are seen to combine in an irretrievable decline in religiosity. The ‘plausibility structure’, in Berger’s terms, of a single and authoritative religious provider, is undermined and relativized by religious choice, whether that is articulated as rival sects or mutually recognized denominations. Religious pluralism leads ineluctably to religious relativism, with secularizing consequences. According to the argument Berger developed at that time, and later rescinded, Protestant pluralism therefore represented another instance of

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Secularization and Its Discontents Weber’s (1904–5, ET 1958) ‘law of unintended consequences’ in which Protestantism’s fissile tendencies subvert conversionist aspirations with secularizing results. This analysis of the impact of Protestant pluralism has become deeply contested by contemporary sociologists of religion, particularly with reference to the North American free market economy of religions, where proliferating choice appears to sustain rather than subvert relatively high levels of religiosity, church attendance and religio-political engagement. Nonetheless for most of the twentieth century, and above all within the European orthodoxy of classical secularization theory, it was understood to be an assured conclusion of rigorous scholarship, with universal applicability that pluralism necessarily undermines religious vitality by diminishing the credence of all varieties of religion. Of course, with the rise of global immigration and global media in the late twentieth century, religious pluralism took on a new totality: the cultural and sometimes ethnic contingency of religious identities heightened relativistic awareness and scepticism before the absolutist claims of any religion to provide the only means of salvation. It is not unreasonable to suggest that there was also a connection between the rise of a newly outspoken and campaigning atheism (Dawkins: 2006; Beattie: 2007; Hitchens: 2007; Stenger: 2009) and the impact upon all religions of 9/11. With sudden, brutal and archetypal impact, the destruction of the twin towers indicated that religion could yet function in late modernity as a malevolent and destructive force, inimical to the principles of legitimated diversity and mutual tolerance. Tarnished by the fanatical and the anaemic, plural religions become doubly subject to marginalizing relativism, even among those who find the new atheists too strident, even too evangelical. Berger’s account of how Protestant pluralism shattered the sacred canopy also includes an intriguing suggestion that the secularization of Western society began in the Old Testament (see also Wilson: 1982 and Weber: 1991). Berger argues that ethical monotheism, particularly as expressed by the Hebrew Prophets, removed from the ancient world a pantheon of gods and goddesses (Berger: 1967). When the prophets argue not merely that worship should only be directed to the Living God, but, more bluntly, that the many rituals and idols of the Jews’ neighbouring peoples are worthless and mere superstitions, because their gods do not exist, the ‘disenchantment of the world’ has already begun. Berger thereby pushes the secularizing process back much further, not merely as a consequence of modernization, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, nor as an indirect and unintended consequence of the rise of Protestantism, but grounded in the early articulations

Classical Secularization Theory of monotheism, Jewish, Christian and Islamic. Wilson drew a similar conclusion about the long receding tide of supernatural religion, arguing not only that secularization is a much broader and longer process than dechristianization, but also that Christianity, in diminishing the religiosity and superstitions of former pagans, has itself, as Weber intimated, been an ‘secularizing agency’ (Wilson: 1982, 150). Robin Gill (1993; 2003) identified an additional nineteenth century factor that compounded later perceptions of church decline. In the second half of that century, continued and ambitious church building programmes, both by Anglicans and by the free churches, were no longer accompanied by the growth in church attendance enjoyed in the first half of the century. As a result, churches were built that would never be filled with the faithful. When the tide of church attendance turned, these excessive buildings exaggerated the scale of subsequent decline, which then reinforced the narrative of secularization. Once again we trace an unintended consequence, this time as a result of misplaced and excessive religious optimism. The late twentieth century saw further factors compound the marginalization of religion. Increasing social mobility diminished any residual sense of religious participation as an expression of belonging within a local community, whether geographical or as part of an extended family. As Wilson observed, when the local community dies, religion declines with it (1982, 153–62). Moreover, late twentieth century transformations in Britain of recreation and shopping on Sundays turned church services from the only ‘event in town’ to one activity among many. Churches showed little comprehension of the need to adjust their activities in response to a competitive recreational market on Sundays. Sundays also became a time when divorced and separated parents without custody of their children often took care of them for the day. The decline of lifelong marriage and the rise of living together doubtless caused some couples to stay away from church and decide not to have their children baptized, suspecting that churches would only welcome conventional nuclear families. The increasing number of children born outside marriage has inevitably contributed to the dramatic decline in the number of children being baptized, as has the rising tide of individualism that has produced a disinclination to impose a ‘religion of birth’ on Western post-Christian children. A further and profound late twentieth century transition has been a move away from the church’s accustomed and once unassailable role as guardian of society’s morality; the sacred canopy also constructed an ethical canopy. From the 1960s, particularly as a result of feminist and gay critiques that charged

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Secularization and Its Discontents churches, not unreasonably, with patriarchy and homophobia, a reversal of ethical polarities occurred in Western Europe. Those who rejected Christian morality, far from considering themselves to be immoral or amoral, increasingly claimed a higher moral ground. This was symbolized when the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell interrupted the Easter Sunday sermon of Archbishop George Carey at Canterbury Cathedral (Easter Sunday, 12 April 1998). Tatchell charged Carey with support for anti-gay legislation. This was not so much an act of assertive atheism as a claim that the church’s morality had been judged and found wanting. Tatchell was later found guilty of indecent behaviour in a church under the 1860 Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act, and was penalized with a token fine of £18.60. Even in law, the moral supremacy of the church was implicitly undermined. For classical secularization theory, these four social processes – individualism, rationalism and bureaucracy, structural differentiation and religious pluralism – combine to produce the diminishing significance of religion in the context of modernization. The most robust, contemporary defence and elaboration of the classical theory is delivered by Steve Bruce (1995; 1996; 2002). His arguments are beguiling, whether he convinces students and scholars of the secularization thesis in full or only in part: the common experience of my students is that initially Bruce carries all before him, like a first-rate lawyer, and only later do his readers begin to wonder whether the case he argues is almost too watertight, or even one-sided. He certainly provides an uncompromising account of the increasing marginalization of the church that shatters the pious optimism (or perhaps denial) still found in some church reports. While liberals blame evangelicals and evangelicals blame liberals, and one well-meaning church initiative follows its predecessors into oblivion, the church attendance data have continued to report unremitting decline. For Bruce (2007), this is not because Christian faith has become intellectually untenable, but because religious faith and practice have become for an increasing majority, particularly among younger generations, matters of indifference, even irrelevance, in the modern world. The crisis of secularization, in other words, is driven by socio-cultural change, and is not primarily cognitive. By the late twentieth century, in a society where it seemed increasingly ‘odd’ to attend church, to take religion seriously or to defend traditional Christian morality, what had emerged, at least in nascent form, was nothing less than a secular canopy. The self-evident, normative assumptions of public and professional life are essentially post-religious. It is not just Alistair Campbell,

Classical Secularization Theory chief spin doctor to Tony Blair, who can take it for granted that ‘We don’t do God.’ The disenchantment of the world therefore now appears almost complete, and with surprising rapidity, over just half a century or so of postreligious cultural revolution the secular canopy has prevailed. Weber’s ‘iron cage’ has apparently shut fast upon the inhabitants of modernity’s rationalist bureaucracy, and there is little evidence of the emergence of Durkheim’s ‘new gods’.

1.5 Secularization theory and the marginality of religion Leading exponents of classical secularization theory include Bryan Wilson (1966; 1982; 1998) and Steve Bruce (1995; 1996; 2002). They both consider the theory has identified factors within modernization that are irreversibly determinative of the future non-viability of religion, at least in Europe. Wilson (1966) argued that religious revivals confirm secularizing trajectories; they arise in contexts where religious influence has been diminishing, they contribute to the privatization of religion, the religious intensity they esteem highly is both individualistic and unsustainable and they depend upon a shared context of religious assumptions (in Berger’s (1967) terms a ‘sacred canopy’) such that revival becomes an increasingly unlikely prospect as a dominant religious framework continues to decline. Wilson (2003) concurred with Durkheim that there was an historical connection between religion and social cohesion. He saw a declining sense of moral consensus as the logical consequence of the decline of religion. However, unlike Durkheim, Wilson (1966; 1982) saw no realistic opportunities within the confines of secularization for the emergence of socially significant new gods. Wilson identified five major arguments marshalled against the secularization thesis, and for each he proposed a robust rebuttal. First, critics of secularization claim that any account of a ‘golden age’ of religion from which there has been long-term attrition is claimed to be no more than a myth (1998, 53). Wilson riposted that the ‘myth of the golden age’ typically confuses secularization with de-Christianization (1998, 56). Citing high levels of superstition and recourse to supernatural explanations and assistance in the medieval period, notwithstanding bishops complaints of low levels of specifically Christian piety, Wilson concluded that, ‘if we take faith in the supernatural in general, rather than in Christianity in particular, we may

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Secularization and Its Discontents readily conclude that the contention that “there was never an age of faith” collapses’ (1998, 56). Second, critics identify rising levels of religiosity in the United States, which is the ‘most advanced of modern societies’ (1998, 54). Wilson notes that this approach narrows the debate to dechristianization, and that patterns of church attendance, church membership and the levels of Christian baptisms, marriages and funerals are no more than symptomatic of the wider decline of the significance of religion in the social system. He argues that a society could become more secularized in its organizing principles for public life, and yet church attendance could simultaneously increase. Wilson notes that church attendance is not a ‘unitary cultural phenomenon’, and so it may have markedly different socio-cultural significance in different societies, or within a single society in different generations. Moreover, he argues that church attendance in a wide variety of denominations functions entirely differently to attendance at a single unitary church in western Europe, whether Roman Catholic or State Protestant. Wilson therefore rejects the legitimacy of utilizing the statistical data of church attendance to confirm or refute any aspect of secularization theory. This sceptical position has not been found persuasive on either side of the debate, notably by Bruce (2001a; 2002) or Stark (Finke and Stark: 1992; Stark: 1999). Wilson’s case is overstated, as was his earlier assertion, for which he provided no supporting data, that ‘in America secularizing processes appear to have occurred within the church, so that although religious institutions persist, their specifically religious character has become steadily attenuated’ (1982, 152). Third, critics point to the rise of new religious movements, in Christian, Eastern, new age and ‘human potential’ forms, some of which have rapidly achieved global recognition (1998, 54). Wilson argues these movements are small and therefore marginal to the majority Western indigenous population. They hold a light or tenuous hold on adherents. Moreover, many forms of new age and human potential express what they claim to offer in scientific and rationalist categories, and so they are ‘thoroughly congruent with the rationalized, and hence secularized, procedures of the modern Western world’ (1998, 59). Wilson’s argument is characteristically forceful, and yet the inadmissibility of any evidence to the contrary, and therefore the exclusion of any possibility that the mutations of religion may result in mutations in secularization or even post-secularization, risks making his argument appear somewhat polemical, selective and one-sided. Although he proposes arguments that dismiss the counter-evidence, the exclusion of any possibility of such evidence or of any new modifications or refinements in the processes of secularization raises the

Classical Secularization Theory prospect that Wilson’s arguments are predetermined and theory-driven more than evidence-based. Fourth, the rising tide of fundamentalism across the world’s religions as a ‘counter movement to modernization’ is considered by critics to demonstrate that rationalized secularity has not achieved hegemonic dominance (1998, 54–5). Wilson defines fundamentalism as the assertion that the ‘original teachings of a faith (or what are claimed as original teachings) are literally true and timelessly valid’ (1998, 59–60). He then utilizes several arguments to demonstrate the marginality of hyper-conservative religion. First he claims that most instances are from the developing world, whereas secularization is primarily a process and condition of the developed world. Second, the social function of fundamentalism is the defence of a received culture that is threatened by processes of globalization and modernization: religion is utilized as a means of defending and absolutizing ‘cultural, ethnic, national, or ethical values’ that are essentially extrinsic to the religious frame (1998, 60). However loud the clamour, the ostensible claim for the priority of religion is not borne out by the ethnocentric orientation of such movements, in which religion is ultimately secondary. Third, fundamentalism is a reaction against the felt experience of secularization, both within the wider cultural locale and within the specifically religious context. Its upsurge is therefore nothing less than an evidence of the rising tide of secularization. Moreover, militant fundamentalism, rather than defending religious priorities with religious activities, characteristically and paradoxically utilizes rationalized and secular procedures: terrorist atrocities are therefore indicative of a reaction against secularization by those who are already secularized, rather than an unmodernized religious response confident in the supremacy of religious actions of piety and generosity. Far from being symptomatic of the possible overturn of the secularizing revolution, fundamentalism is a symbol of religion’s marginalization. Fifth, critics point to the persistent political vigour of Christian churches in the collapse of communism, notably in Poland and East Germany (1998, 55). However, Wilson argues from the Polish example that this represents a unique set of circumstances for the Roman Catholic Church, rather than a postsecularizing trend from which generalizations can be made that are applicable in other contexts. Thus, Poland has long been surrounded by non-Catholic countries – Orthodox, Protestant and Muslim – resulting in a long tradition of the mutual reinforcement of ethnic and religious identities. Then, under Soviet rule, the political elite was eliminated and political expression was denied. As a result, the priesthood was the ‘only indigenous educated leadership

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Secularization and Its Discontents stratum’ and ‘religion became surrogate politics’ (1998, 61). However, Wilson argues, although the church became the defender of Polish national identity, this was actually a secularizing process, resulting in church leaders expressing concern that it might neglect its specifically religious functions. The public prominence of the church and yet its secularization could thus occur simultaneously. Sixth and finally, Wilson identifies in order to rebut, critics argue that religion is ‘acquiring a new public role’, rather than being reserved entirely for the privatized sphere of personal religion and self-fulfilment, for example in campaigns against abortion and euthanasia and in defence of refugees (1998, 55). Wilson concedes that although the clergy have lost ‘their old social status and the legitimizing functions which they once performed for the state, the clergy have not abandoned their role as commentators on social affairs’ (1998, 62–3). However, he refutes the claim that this represents religion resisting privatization and returning to the public sphere. First, he argues, there is no unanimity among clergy on politicized moral issues, and those who do so are a minority. Second, the extent is unclear to which those clergy who are heard genuinely have the support of the laity or the church hierarchy. Third, Wilson claims that the rising stridency of social comment by clergy coincides with declining church attendance. Rather than evidence of a new confidence and assertiveness with which religion is returning to the public square, Wilson therefore interprets this activity as clergy in search of a cause, facing a crisis of confidence in the relevance and viability of Christianity in the western world (1998, 63). Having repudiated to his own satisfaction the critics of the secularization thesis, Wilson identifies four indicators of what appears to be conceived as a unilinear process of the marginalization and privatization of religion (1998, 64). First, the formal endorsement of a particular religion by the state tends to diminish. Second, there is an erosion of religion’s status as the provider of the normative moral framework of society. Third, the proportion of national expenditure devoted to specifically religious causes diminishes over time. And fourth, other institutions – governmental, financial, educational, political – with a secular frame of reference take over responsibilities previously understood to be within the domain of state-sponsored religion. For Wilson, ineluctably secularizing processes of structural change affect all modernizing societies. Nonetheless, he does not conclude that this means the extinction of religion. Stripped of the public function of legitimizing the political establishment, experiencing a ‘steady diminution of affluence and influence’ (1998, 62) a decline in adherents and an ageing ‘cadre of trained

Classical Secularization Theory officials’, the churches nonetheless have formidable resources of ‘welldistributed plant’. For Wilson, secularization in the public sphere does not necessarily mean the end of religion in the private sphere, even though the religious must now compete in the private with other providers of meaning, mystery and consolation, from psychotherapists to the movies. . . . long after the part that religion had once played in the activities of more specialised social institutions had diminished or altogether vanished, the likelihood was that religion might persist as an agency providing various functions for individuals . . . however, religion is today one choice among many. (Wilson: 1998, 62)

Bruce (2002; 2007) similarly argued that neither new religious movements nor New Age spiritualities provide any significant shift in the secularizing trajectories of modernity: they are peripheral activities, making no significant conceptual or participative impact upon the majority culture; new religious movements either die out or enter into the normal secularizing patterns of individual and private religion; and New Age spiritualities are commodified lifestyle choices, predominantly for middle aged women of the baby boomer generation, with no public or enduring consequences. In sum, even though Bruce claims his approach is not prescriptive, no upsurge in religion, Christian or other, can make a significant difference in the face of secularization’s juggernaut. His prediction is stark and definite: ‘Britain in 2030 will be a secular society’ (Bruce: 2003, 60). Quite clearly and undeniably, something seismic has happened to the condition of religion in the context of modernization in Western Europe. Secularization theory claims to provide nothing more than the most cogent theoretical explanation for these processes. Four substantive questions therefore arise. First, is secularization theory descriptive and specific to the European context, or prescriptive, whether in part or in full, and universally applicable to the condition of all religions in the context of modernization? Second, in the European context does secularization theory most plausibly articulate the decline of religion in general or of Christianity in particular? Third, with reference to Christianity, does secularization theory argue for the demise of Christendom, of public religion at least in its traditional forms, or of Protestantism as the inintentional promoter of secularity, whether established or nonconformist or both? Fourth, is secularization a unidirectional socio-cultural process, or can it be conceived, in any of its dimensions, to be reversible?

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Select Bibliography Anderson, Allan (2004) An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Berger, Peter L. (1967) The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, Garden City, NY Doubleday. Brierley, Peter W. (1991a) ‘Christian’ England: What the 1989 English Church Census Reveals, London, MARC Europe. Brierley, Peter W. (2000) The Tide Is Running Out: What the English Church Attendance Survey Reveals, London, Christian Research. Brierley, Peter W. (Ed.) (2001) Religious Trends 3, London, Christian Research. Brierley, Peter W. (2003) Turning the Tide, London, Christian Research. Brierley, Peter W. (2006) Pulling out of the Nosedive: A Contemporary Picture of Churchgoing – What the 2005 English Church Census Reveals, London, Christian Research. Brierley, Peter W., Deborah Davies and Boyd Myers (Eds) (1998) Religious Trends 1, London; Carlisle, Christian Research; Paternoster. Brierley, Peter W. and Georgina Sanger (Eds) (1999) Religious Trends 2, London, Christian Research; Harper Collins. Brown, Callum G. (2001) The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800–2000, London, Routledge. Bruce, Steve (1995) Religion in Modern Britain, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Bruce, Steve (1996) Religion in the Modern World: From Cathedrals to Cults, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Bruce, Steve (2001a) Christianity in Britain, R.I.P. Sociology of Religion, 62, 191–203. Bruce, Steve (2002) God Is Dead: Secularization in the West, Oxford, Blackwell. Bruce, Steve (2003) The Demise of Christianity in Britain. In Davie, G., P. Heelas and L. Woodhead (Eds) Predicting Religion. Aldershot, Ashgate. Bruce, Steve (2007) Secularization and the Impotence of Individualized Religion. The Hedgehog Review, 8, 35–45. Cahoone, Lawrence (Ed.) (1996) From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, Oxford, Blackwell. Chadwick, Owen (1966) The Victorian Church: Volume 1 1829–1859, Oxford, New York, A & C Black. Comte, Auguste (1830–46, ET 1896) The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte: Freely Translated and Condensed by Harriet Martineau, London, George Bell & Sons. Cox, Harvey (1996) Fire from Heaven, London, Cassell. Currie, Robert, Alan Gilbert and Lee Horsley (1977) Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Daily-News (1902–3) Census of London Church Attendances. Daily News. Darwin, Charles (1859, 1958) On the Origin of Species, New York, Mentor. Dawkins, Richard (2006) The God Delusion, London, Bantam Press.

Classical Secularization Theory Dobbelaere, Karel (1999) Towards an Integrated Perspective of the Processes Related to the Descriptive Concept of Secularization. Sociology of Religion, 60: 229–247. Durkheim, Emile (1912, ET 2001) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press. Durkheim, Emile (1897, ET 2002) Suicide: A Study in Sociology, London, Routledge. Feuerbach, Ludwig (1841, ET 1989) The Essence of Christianity, New York, Prometheus Books. Freud, Sigmund (1907) Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices. In Gay, P. (Ed.) The Freud Reader. London, Vintage. Freud, Sigmund (1913) Totem and Taboo. In Gay, P. (Ed.) The Freud Reader. London, Vintage. Freud, Sigmund (1927) The Future of an Illusion. In Gay, P. (Ed.) The Freud Reader. London, Vintage. Freud, Sigmund (1930) Civilization and Its Discontents. In Gay, P. (Ed.) The Freud Reader. London, Vintage. Gay, Peter (1995) The Freud Reader, London, Vintage. Gerth, H. H. and C. Wright Mill (Eds) (1991) From Max Weber, London, New York, Routledge. Gill, Robin (1993) The Myth of the Empty Church, London, SPCK. Gill, Robin (2003) The ‘Empty Church’ Revisited, Aldershot, Ashgate. Hadaway, C. Kirk and Penny L. Marler (1998) Did You Really Go to Church This Week? Behind the Poll Data. Christian Century, 472–5. Hegel, Friedrich (1807, ET 1979) Phenomenology of the Spirit, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Hughes, John A., Wes W. Sharrock and Peter J. Martin (2003) Understanding Classical Sociology, London, Sage. Hume, David (1993) Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) and the Natural History of Religion (1757), Oxford, Oxford University Press. Kant, Immanuel (1784, ET 1970) An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? In Cahoone, L. (Ed.) From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology. Oxford, Blackwell. Kant, Immanuel (1787, ET 1929) Critique of Pure Reason, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Kant, Immanuel (1788, ET 1997) Critique of Practical Reason, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel (1793, ET 1998) Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Laermans, Rudi, Bryan Wilson and Jaak Billiet (Eds) (1998) Secularization and Social Integration, Leuven, Leuven University Press. Lambert, Yves (2000) Religion in Modernity as a New Axial Age. In Swatos, William and Daniel Olson (Eds) The Secularization Debate, Oxford, Rowman & Littlefield. Lechner, Frank J. (1991) The Case against Secularization: A Rebuttal. Social Forces, 69, 1103–19. Locke, John (1870, written 1689–1693) Four Letters on Toleration, London, Alexander Murray. Mann, H (1853) Census of Great Britain, 1851: Religious Worship, England and Wales. Reports and Tables. Presented to Both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. London, Eyre and Spottiswoode for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Marler, Penny L. and C. Kirk Hadaway (1999) Testing the Attendance Gap in a Conservative Church. Sociology of Religion, 60: 175–186.

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Secularization and Its Discontents Martin, Bernice (1998) From Pre- to Post-Modernity in Latin America: The Case of Pentecostalism. In Heelas, P., D. Martin and P. Morris (Eds) Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity. Oxford, Blackwell, 102–146. Martin, David (2002) Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish, Oxford, Blackwell. McLellan, David (ed.) (2000) Karl Marx: Selected Writings, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels (1848, new edition 1992) The Communist Manifesto, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Mass-Observation (1947) Puzzled People: A Study of Popular Attitudes to Religion, Ethics, Progress and Politics in a London Borough, London, Victor Gollancz. Morrison, Ken (2006) Marx, Durkheim, Weber, London, Sage. Nietzsche, Friedrich (ET 1974) The Gay Science, New York, Vintage. Popper, Karl R. (1989) Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London, Routledge. Schultz, Kevin M. (2006) Secularization: A Bibliographic Essay. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 170–77. Snell, K. D. M. and Paul S. Ell (2000) Rival Jerusalems: The Geography of Victorian Religion, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Stark, Rodney (1997) The Rise of Christianity, San Francisco, CA, Harper Collins. Stout, Harry S (1991) The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Warner, Rob (2007) Reinventing English Evangelicalism 1966–2001: A Theological and Sociological Study, Carlisle, Paternoster. Weber, Max (1904–5, ET 1958) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York, Scribner’s. Weber, Max (ET 1948, 1991) Science as a Vocation. In Gerth, H.H. and C. Wright Mills (Eds) From Max Weber. London, New York, Routhledge. pp. 129–158. Whitefield, George (1960) George Whitefield’s Journals, London, Banner of Truth. Wilson, Bryan R. (1966) Religion in Secular Society: A Sociological Comment, London, C.A Watts. Wilson, Bryan R. (1982) Religion in Sociological Perspective, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Wilson, Bryan (1998) The Secularization Thesis: Criticisms and Rebuttals. In Laermans, R., B. Wilson and J. Billiet (Eds) Secularization and Social Integration. 45–65. Wilson, Bryan R. (2003) Salvation, Secularization and De-Moralization. In Fenn, R. K. (Ed.) The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion. Oxford, Blackwell.

Modified Secularization Theory

Chapter Outline 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6

Critiquing secularization theory Diverse European trajectories Believing without belonging Sectorizing secularization Differentiating types of religion, divergent viabilities Gendering secularization

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2.1 Critiquing secularization theory In a previous book I critiqued the late modern variant of classical secularization theory in the following terms. Unmodified, prescriptive secularization theory has faced several significant critiques. First, secularization theory is charged with offering a prescriptive model, in which societal advance results in the sloughing off of religion as primitive and irrational superstition. Thus, secularization theory can itself be interpreted as a totalizing, enlightenment meta-narrative, as coercive as Christendom. Second, secularization theory is Eurocentric, treating the European experience as normative and the summit of civilization to which other societies will ultimately ascend. Third, secularization theory is, in Popper’s terms, ‘unfalsifiable’ since for Wilson, Wallis and Bruce, any data that appear to contradict or modify secularization, including periods of church growth, or revival, or the prominence of religion in the United States, or the return of religion to the public square, are all subsumed within the secularization

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Secularization and Its Discontents paradigm and invariably utilized to reinforce their prescriptive orthodoxy. For Popper (1989), scientific theory is intentionally ‘falsifiable’, thus permitting modified hypotheses through the examination of new data, whereas an unfalsifiable theory – Popper’s prime targets were Marxism and Freudianism – is essentially pseudo-science. Fourth, secularization theory can have an implicit, or even explicit, ideological agenda: when Bruce writes a book entitled God is Dead (Bruce: 2002) he demonstrates a similar category confusion to Richard Dawkins (2006): neither sociological data nor evolutionary theory is capable of producing theological conclusions. Fifth, secularization offers a linear evolution that begins from a golden age of a Christianized monoculture, over-gilding Christendom and failing to offer an account of the original rise of Christianity (Stark: 1997). Sixth, secularization theory has not always distinguished adequately between the various dimensions of secularization, which may have diverse trajectories. Berger defined the ‘classical task of religion’ as ‘constructing a common world within which all of social life receives ultimate meaning binding on everybody’ (Berger: 1967, 134). This is dissolved through the process of secularization: ‘by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols’ (Berger: 1967, 107). Wilson defined secularization as the process whereby religious thinking, practice and institutions lose social significance (Wilson: 1966, 14). Developing Yves Lambert’s (2000) refinement of Berger, we can conflate Berger and Wilson’s definitions to identify four aspects of secularization – religious institutions, religious conceptual framing, religious practices and religious symbols. The West exhibits pervasive freedom from the old authority of religious institutions and interpretations. This is combined with autonomous abandonment or assent with regard to religious practices and symbols, neither being inevitable but the former predominant in Western Europe (Figure 2.1). The broad concept of secularization may be interpreted as the universal phenomenon of functional differentiation and rationalization applied to the religious sphere. This was previously interpreted eurocentrically as the death of religion because the diminished role of religion within multiple, voluntarist subsystems is inimical to the unitary culture of Christendom and to a Durkheimian view of the societal function of religion. Differentiation and rationalization may be conceived as inevitable processes at least within Western culture, but there is no necessary or universal correlation between these factors and the demise, resilience or even resurgence of religious symbols and practices, and this may even include church attendance (Adapted from Warner: 2007, 23–4).

Modified Secularization Theory

Religious institutions

} Freedom from old authorities

Religious interpretations upper pair’s decline an almost universal western, but not global, trend lower pair mostly abandoned in western Europe, but prominent globally Religious practices } Freedom to choose: from indifferent to devout Religious symbols

Figure 2.1 Diverse resilience in facets of secularization.

In this chapter I will consider a range of scholars who accept the broad contours of European secularization, but argue for a range of significant modifications to the classical theoretical framework.

2.2 Diverse European trajectories Various forms of modified secularization theory attempt to discriminate between different dimensions of secularization. This is done without denying the force of at least some aspects of secularization, particularly in the European context. For example, while the evidence from Europe indicates a combination of declining levels of church attendance and the declining influence of Christianity in public life, in the United States the constitutional separation of church and state – in part as Bellah (2006, 319–32) emphasized at the instigation of Baptists and Quakers and by no means solely promoted by non-Christian secularists – was combined with a period of growth in church attendance (Finke and Stark: 1992). Moreover, there is no absolute correlation between levels of church attendance and levels of personal religious belief. These three major dimensions – religious participation, religious influence in public life and personal faith – should not therefore be considered three dimensions of a process in which all necessarily decline at a similar rate in the context of modernization. Secularization is neither universal, nor uniform, nor predictable, nor even necessarily unilinear. In short, secularization theory needed to become complexified.

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Secularization and Its Discontents David Martin argued early in his academic career that the very term ‘secularization’ should be avoided (Martin: 1965). Since he later wrote two major studies, A General Theory of Secularization (1978) and On Secularization (2005), he evidently concluded that his original argument could not be won. In his General Theory, Martin applied a Durkheimian methodology to secularization in Europe. By examining the specifics of different countries in the Catholic South and Protestant North, Martin was able to identify significant variables in terms of secularization. Where the church had been particularly close to the power of the ancien regime, notably in France (Roman Catholic) and Sweden (Lutheran Protestant), the enlightenment saw a rigorous drawing of new boundaries between the newly constrained sphere of religion and the increasingly dominant secular sphere of public life. Education, politics, the arts, media and commerce all came to establish and enjoy an explicit liberation from the influence or domination of the church. The former ecclesiastical hierarchy of the spiritual over the secular was reconstructed into two separate domains: the secular now had freedom from, and even in some aspects dominion over, the diminished realm of the religious. With similar consequences, where the official church had resisted the legitimation of alternative forms of Christianity, Martin identified a tendency to an increased subsequent marginalization of Christianity from public life and more severely diminished levels of church attendance. By contrast, where alternative religious forms had been legitimated relatively early, and where the church had relinquished claims to monopolistic political power, the subsequent patterns of cultural marginalization of religion and decline in church participation had been relatively moderate. Martin was able to identify, within a general trend of secularization in Western Europe, several distinct patterns, dependent both on the political and ecumenical policies of the official church, whether Protestant or Catholic. He argued that the present-day condition of the church, patterns of national religiosity and access of the church to public life have all been socially constrained by the historic patterns of church-state and church-sect relations. Martin proposed a complex interaction between the dominant ‘patterns’ of Christianity (American, British, French, Latin, Russian, Calvinist and Lutheran), and the processes of individualism and pluralism. He concluded that different historical forms of religion in society have generated different trajectories for religious ethos, institutions and beliefs. Thus, for example, the United States and Britain have both experienced an erosion of religious ethos and yet the maintenance of amorphous religious beliefs. However, in the United States this

Modified Secularization Theory is combined with institutional expansion, whereas in the United Kingdom there has been prolonged institutional decline (Martin: 1978b, 1–10). The logic of Martin’s seminal study was not to contradict the trajectories of secularization, but to complexify them. Martin’s work made it more difficult to accept a homogeneous and undifferentiated form of secularization theory, in which modernization necessarily resulted in the marginalization of religion of all kinds from public life and the accelerating collapse in the case of Christianity of church attendance and religious beliefs. Just as Weber had argued for an integrally complex interaction between religion and society, mutually shaped and influenced, Martin proposed that the specific patterns of secularization were shaped by historical patterns of monopolistic religious power. Not that this subtle analysis overturned the dominant patterns and trajectories of Western Europe, in which the marginalization of the church had become unambiguous. However, Martin’s approach established the principle of descriptive studies of specific dynamics of secularization. Wilson worked with a pre-existent and inevitably prescriptive theory, with no further empirical data apparently capable of modifying the theory to any significant degree. In contrast, Martin’s methodology opened up the prospect of national, regional or local studies in which historical and cultural specifics could shift the focus from the general to the particular, from the metanarrative of grand theory to local narratives, without necessarily making possible the elaboration of universal theoretical frameworks. More recently Martin published research ‘towards a revised general theory’ (2005), in which he demonstrates a global grasp of the multiple trajectories of the secular and the religious. Whereas classical secularization theory proposed a unilateral process, consequent upon the enlightenment and the rise of modernity, Martin proposed ‘successive Christianizations’, each incurring inevitable costs, and each followed by a recoil and collapse (2005b, 3–6). In the European context, the first Catholic Christianization was the conversion of monarchs, leading to the conversion of their peoples. The inevitable cost was ‘assimilating faith to power, hierarchy, war compulsion and violence’, and ultimately a rising tensions between church and State. The second Catholic Christianization was the conversion of the medieval urban masses by the friars. The inevitable cost was the ‘division into the athletes of God and the also-rans’, the ‘celibate and spiritual’ above the ‘domestic and reproductive’ (2005b, 4). The first Protestant Christianization was the endeavour of the Reformation to ‘universalize the monastic ideal’ proposing a level playing field of religion

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Secularization and Its Discontents where everyone was included equally ‘by grace’. The inevitable cost was enforced perfectionism, in its Calvinist form with the elect of Geneva imposing ‘theocratic’ morality on all, or in the Anabaptist form in a segregated community. Martin argues that although heightened Protestant moralism have resulted in religious strife, civil war and eruptions of anarchy, in the longer term the tendency is to move towards ‘rationalistic moralism’. Moreover, the church becomes assimilated to the nation state, so that Christian ministry becomes another profession in service of the nation, and the nuclear family replaces the monastic community as the central locus of religious identity. The second Protestant Christianization is found in the evangelical, Pietist and Pentecostal waves of revivalist conversionism. These focus on what Martin calls ‘individual heartwork and inward feeling’ (2005b, 5). This new intensification of Christianity produces a subculture that ‘runs alongside modernization is a mutually supportive manner’ (2005b, 5), whether in Victorian Britain or in, for example, late twentieth century Brazilian favelas (shanty towns) and across Africa, Latin America and the Pacific Rim. Because the rise of evangelicalism ran in parallel with Romanticism’s return to nature, Martin argues that contemporary Western culture has inherited a combined legacy – ‘a pure inwardness derived residually from evangelical heartwork with a Romantic myth of the sacred environment’ (2005b, 5). The inevitable cost of the evangelical Christianization is that inclusivity becomes an impossible ideal: In practice one cannot convert everybody, which means that the idea of being a Christian comes to refer to a subcultural lifestyle not a whole society. (Martin: 2005b, 5)

Martin argues that evangelicalism in some ways has proved more durable than movements lacking all boundaries: for him liberal Protestantism has tended to be absorbed back into the prevailing culture in the twentieth century. However, he also identifies a self-limiting aspect to the elevation of ‘heartwork’ over ‘efficacious ritual and institutional mediation’. The evangelical subculture can become as sceptical of institutional religion as the secular. Furthermore, ‘receding Protestantism’ can leave a legacy of demythologized ‘neighbourliness and decent personal attitudes’. In sum the two phases of Protestant Christianization have tended to decline into an essentially secular respectability and individualized disregard for participation in religious institutions. All four eras of Christianization demonstrate for Martin variations on the theme of a perennial tension between inclusion and exclusion. Inclusion, such as the

Modified Secularization Theory baptism of ancient European kings, results in dilution, and yet exclusion dilutes Christianity’s missiological expansiveness. In the case of exclusion, Martin draws an intriguing contrast: . . . in the Catholic case the boundary or limit [that is of monastic orders] is accepted in principle, whereas in the case of Protestant denominations [specifically perfectionist communities or voluntary sects] it is painfully encountered in practice. Eager evangelists discover that the kingdom of God does not come either in the USA or in Britain, and recognize how membership may recede as well as expand. Optimism about expansion may then mutate into pessimism or selfflagellation about failure. (Martin: 2005b, 7)

Within this broad pattern of four eras of Christianization and subsequent types of reactive and consequent secularization, Martin identifies a specific phenomenon within modernity, when the decline of Christianity precipitates the rise of new religious quests. This is a secularization within institutional Christianity that produces a ‘religious frustration with an over-intellectualized and chronically moralistic Christianity’ (2005b, 130) which generates ‘a search for religious contents elsewhere’ (2005b, 6). In Martin’s view, sociology can provide an analytical context for theology, rather than functioning necessarily as its ideological and reductively secularist opponent (contra Milbank: 1990). His sociological analysis of successive eras of Christianization and secularization does not require a faith position, but informs his own. For Martin, therefore, ‘the dialectic continues’, the Christian tradition retains the capacity to be adaptive to new contexts and to new paradigms of socio-cultural authority. Martin therefore proposes an empirically informed, but primarily cyclical rather than unilaterally linear (and ultimately or even imminently terminal), account of the recurrent processes of secularization. This cyclical approach builds, according to Martin (2005b, 13), on the insights Troeltsch, Weber, and Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr. For Martin, therefore, secularization is a recurrent process that is shaped by the successive forms of the dominant framing of the interaction of Christianity with the prevailing culture. These various and rival forms of Christianity all reflect the religion’s inherent tensions: What Donald Davie called the Christian oxymoron, its fruitful, creative contradiction, occurs and recurs in every sphere, while also constantly mutating. I believe in that oxymoron: accepting but transforming, incarnate yet transcendent. It is the kingdom of heaven seeking to enlarge its colonies on earth. Those colonies are

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Secularization and Its Discontents located in the sacraments, in experiments in fraternity, in the universal speech of Pentecost, and in seeds of hope cast far outside the boundaries of the Church. (Martin: 2005b, 12)

This richly suggestive synthesis builds intriguing interdisciplinary bridges: history and sociology, philosophy and theology can all contribute to a subtle and complex analysis of the past and continuing interaction of religion and society. This intellectual confluence is indicated by the fact that Charles Taylor wrote the foreword to Martin’s On Secularization (2005), since Taylor’s own magnum opus, A Secular Age (2007), inhabits a similarly ambitious terrain. Martin’s General Theory introduced new complexity to the theory of secularization in modernity, locating the process differently in various European contexts. His revised general theory sets the religious disruptions of European modernity within two thousand years of Christianity, identifying dialectical processes that are inherent within the tradition and latent in a secularized church. Wilson considered church attendance ultimately of no consequence, since religion was necessarily marginalized from public life in modernity. Martin implicitly considers the imminent fate of any particular Protestant denomination in Western Europe to be ultimately inconsequential, since the historical dialectic indicates evolutionary reconfiguration of religion in previous eras of secularization. Martin concludes that there are five sustainable global metanarratives for the twenty-first century: liberal secularism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam and Pentecostalism. Islam has become increasingly ethno-religious and mono-cultural, whereas Pentecostalism flourishes with the opposite stratagems, culturally pluralistic and establishing communities of faith that are culturally adapted with pragmatic and missiological fluidity, but break the Durkheimian ethno-religious synthesis.

2.3 Believing without belonging Grace Davie has succeeded David Martin as the most influential Anglican Professor of the Sociology of Religion. Davie employed the phrase ‘believing without belonging’ as the subtitle to Religion in Britain since 1945 (1994). It rapidly achieved wide prominence as a way of articulating the dynamics of British and European religion, not only in academic discussions, but also in church debates and journalistic presentations. Building on Martin, Davie argued that the condition of religion in Western Europe was critically dependent on the reality of monopolistic utilities of official religion, whether

Modified Secularization Theory established Protestant in the North, or Catholic in the South. European religion therefore functions not in a religious free market, but in a context of a default religion of birth. In the analysis of contemporary religion, this general European framing is overlaid by the particular interconnections of official and normative religion with the current cultural context and the relationship of the state to the present or former religious establishment. Like Martin, Davie recognized obvious variables: Ireland is northern European geographically and yet Catholic, and has enjoyed until recently sustained high levels of religious participation. For the Irish, as indeed for the Poles, the preservation of ethnic identity in the face of a hostile and imperialistic neighbouring power was interwoven with Catholic religion; Catholic rites performed an alternative national identity over against British Anglicanism and Russian communism. The moment of vulnerability for this essentially Durkheimian role of religion is when this function of performing a marginalized ethnic identity has become less critical or even superfluous, after national independence has been secured. According to Davie, many Europeans retain a nominal sense of loyalty and identity towards these official forms of religion. Institutional religion has come to be considered a form of public utility, more or less ignored in everyday life but freely available at specific points of need. Of course, religious utilities of this kind require neither regular attendance nor informed creedal assent. Even when religious weddings have declined, religious institutions remain useful public utilities particularly in times of personal or public crisis and, of course, for funerals. This sense of loose but enduring affiliation is reflected in the hostility with which habitual non-attendees may rise up in protest against any proposed re-modelling of ‘our’ parish church: many who have no intention of taking any active part religious services evidently still believe that the church belongs to the community rather than to the congregation. ‘Believing without belonging’ makes a critical distinction between two dimensions of possible secularization, namely church attendance and personal belief. Wilson and Bruce argue that both facets operate within a secularization paradigm in which religion loses public significance. Davie’s approach, by contrast, emphasizes that diminished participation appears to have been accompanied by an enduring assent to underlying religious beliefs and moral values. This has, of course, been typically summed up by older British people who are not church attenders in the phrase, ‘You don’t have to go to Church to be a Christian’. Davie’s analysis leads to several important conclusions. First, if declining church attendance corresponds with other patterns of non-participation, the

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Secularization and Its Discontents significance of this trend should not be interpreted in narrowly religious categories. Second, if people are indeed in some measure continuing to believe without the practice of belonging, church attendance figures should not be considered coterminous with levels of belief. Third, Davie’s phrase indicates a complex relationship between the three major dimensions of secularization and religious change – church attendance, religious influence in public life and personal faith. Davie does not deny that a significant measure of secularization and church decline has taken place, but she seeks to complexify scholarly interpretation. The widespread adoption of ‘believing without belonging’ indicates that this epithet resonated as an important distinction between two aspects of religious faith and practice. Nonetheless, the phrase has been subject to diverse critiques. In Scandinavia, for instance, high levels of nominal church membership – associated with the government’s provision of Lutheran funding through a ‘church tax’ – are combined with high levels of rejection of formal Christian beliefs. This has led to the reverse formulation as descriptive of some Western Europeans – belonging without believing (Hervieu-Léger: 2004). In some kinds of church, perhaps particularly those with a strong emphasis on creedal assent or conversion, the reverse emphasis to Davie’s has emerged, stressing the importance of belonging before believing. This is seen, for example in the immensely popular Alpha programme (Warner: 2007, 115–37), where the provision of a meal-based experience of belonging prior to any invitation to profess faith prioritizes the opportunity to experience the attractive possibilities of a community of faith. Voas and Crockett (2005) provided a trenchant critique of Davie’s terminology. On their interpretation of the empirical data, measures of believing and belonging are ‘both declining generationally and at very similar rates’ (2005, 18). They conclude that it has become more accurate to describe the majority population as neither believing nor belonging. Davie (2007) acknowledged that the description is likely to represent a temporary and transitional phase, rather than a sustainable and enduring religious dislocation between these two aspects of a faith community. This is equally true within a process of continuing secularization or even within an era of resacralization. Indeed, as we shall explore later, secularization and resacralization, although ultimately and necessarily mutually exclusive, may nonetheless coexist at least in the short term as contrary trends within the flux of contemporary Western culture. We should however acknowledge at this stage that it is debatable whether the dramatic cultural shift of resacralization on the grand and public scale can any

Modified Secularization Theory longer be considered a genuine possibility after the long, cold secular winter of the twentieth century in Western Europe. If people are not socialized into a particular discourse of believing and behaving, in contexts where the supportive framework of belonging is no longer in place, then the demise of belonging may result within a generation or two in the full and final dissolution of believing. The decline in both adult church attendance and the disappearance of the former custom of nonchurchgoers regularly sending their children to Sunday School are both aspects of this demise of religious socialization. The same transition is evident in the emergence of essentially post-Christian school assemblies, which have become less frequent, less religious and no longer to any significant degree perform the function of introducing children to Christian hymns and liturgy, Bible readings and prayers. The process that is evidenced in these social changes can be designated unsustainable believing when no longer belonging. Like much of Tchaikovsky’s music, religion in the west may be concluding with a protracted but terminal diminuendo. Jamieson’s studies of a ‘churchless faith’ explored the motivations of church leavers in abandoning Sunday services and also the extent to which they continued to consider themselves Christian believers (Jamieson: 2002; Jamieson et al.: 2006). Although it might be expected that those who reject church involvement will in due course abandon their faith, Jamieson’s research team discovered that for many this was not the case. They also discovered that a high proportion of church leavers, at least from evangelical and Pentecostal churches, have previously been long-term participants and active in church leadership. It seems that a significant proportion of church leavers find church just as inconsequential or irrelevant as their expressly non-Christian contemporaries. They share a cultural predisposition to be suspicious of and even alienated from institutional religion – an incredulity not so much towards metanarratives (Lyotard: 1984) as towards bureaucratic religious institutions. This attitude was espoused by William James (1987) in his Gifford lectures of 1901–2, and appears to have become increasingly normative. Jamieson discovered that, even several years after giving up on church, many ‘church leavers’ in New Zealand remained surprisingly conventional in their faith formulations. However, most felt they had outgrown what he calls the ‘faith limiting’ environment of traditional churches, for which they had no further appetite. Of course, this may reflect the fact that the general cultural alienation from traditional and institutional religion has become so normative and self-evidently compelling that it is increasingly impacting churchgoers as well.

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Secularization and Its Discontents This may indicate that the impending priority for denominational survival in Western Europe will have to focus not upon churches seeking to reach the unreachable but rather their attempts to retain the disenchanted. Post-church may have become the condition not only of unbelievers, but also of a growing proportion of those who still claim to be in some sense distinctively Christian in belief and practice. Jamieson’s study therefore points to a further category of committed believing with no time for institutional belonging. Classical secularization theory anticipated the demise of both belonging and believing, not only in a traditional Western Christian sense, but more broadly in terms of the death of religion. Davie (2002; 2007) has more recently shifted her emphasis to what she describes as ‘vicarious religion’, in which non-participants rely on the devout and particularly the clergy to do the believing for them and provide appropriate religious functions and support in times of need. Davie argues that ‘vicarious religion’ represents a more precise description of the enduring pattern of western European religion. She defines this as: The notion of religion performed by an active minority but on behalf of a much larger number, who (implicitly at least) not only understand, but, quite clearly, approve of what the minority is doing. (Davie: 2006, 24)

Building on Danièle Hervieu-Léger’s exploration of religion as an enduring chain of cultural memories (1986; 1999; 2000), Davie argues that religion in Western Europe continues to function in terms of a public utility, an official provision of religion at the point of immediate need, most obviously funerals. She claims that the old model of ‘latent belief and nominal membership’ continues to be normative outside the major urban centres, where religion of choice predominates and is more consonant with the cosmopolitan marketplace. Hervieu-Léger had sought to demonstrate that although individuals now assemble idiosyncratic cocktails of beliefs, these are set within enduring cultural legacies. As a result, she argues, secular France remains more Catholic in many more underlying assumptions and symbols than might at first appear, but the post-religious symbolic belonging has dissolved the connection with any continuation of living faith. . . . it has also become possible to ‘belong without believing’, or more precisely while believing only in the continuity of the group for which the signs preserved from the traditional religion now serve as emblems . . . (Hervieu-Léger: 2000, 162)

Modified Secularization Theory Subsequently, Hervieu-Léger argued that Weberian ‘rational disenchantment’ does not ‘mark the end of religion’: . . . belief proliferates in proportion to the uncertainty caused by the pace of change in all areas of social life. But we also know that it sits less and less easily within the dogmatic frameworks offered by institutional religions. In societies that have adopted the autonomy of individuals as a principle, individuals create, in an increasingly independent manner, the small systems of belief that fit their own aspirations and experiences. (Hervieu-Léger: 2006, 59)

This subtle recognition that France is both post-Catholic and yet Catholic in symbolism, post-religious in terms of inherited, normative faith and yet newly religious in terms of experimentation with à la carte religion weaves a complex theoretical frame around the death of Christendom and yet the durability of personal, spiritual quests in post-modern Western Europe. Drawing on data from the 1999/2000 European Values Survey (Halman: 2001), Davie (2007) has also explored the emergence of an inverse relationship between believing and belonging. Among young adults, who represent the generation least participative in organized religion, levels of religious belief are actually higher, albeit not distinctively Christian, with increasing numbers affirming belief in the soul and life after death, in particular in northern Europe where the power of state-sponsored Protestantism has become notably weakened (Davie: 2007, 140). This indicates a further possibility: believing differently and belonging less. Davie’s work has therefore identified a significant and intriguing interface between believing and belonging, but their interaction has proven far more complex and contested than might appear from the rapid and widespread popularity of Davie’s beguiling original formula. Despite her continuing emphasis upon the underlying durability of culturally embedded religion, Davie recognizes that a fundamental shift is taking place in religious practice from ‘obligation to consumption’. Even in Europe, as Christendom finally falls into terminal disrepair, religion of birth is giving way to religion of choice. This is reflected in the growth of Anglican adult baptisms and confirmations, in contrast, though by no means at an equivalent level, with the decline in infant baptisms. While infant baptisms declined from 67.2 per cent of births in 1950 to 22.8 per cent by 1997, the total number of Anglican baptism of older people rose from 9,000 in 1950 to 49,000 in 1997 (Brierley and Sanger: 1999, 8.4). The rites, Davie observes, have therefore been responding to new patterns of religion. This is demonstrably the case, but it cannot mask the dominant trend of a marked decline in the use of traditional

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Secularization and Its Discontents religious rites of passage. Furthermore, the UK population rose in this period from around 50 to 58 million, and so these adult baptisms signify an intensified religiosity among a minority, alongside a rising tide of religious indifference in the general population. In British cities in recent years, two quite different forms of Christian religion have reported growing congregations – charismatic churches and cathedrals. (The data on cathedrals demonstrate rather limited growth. Adult Sunday attendance at cathedrals, excluding royal peculiars, grew from 14,300 in 1995 to 15,800 in 2006, and Christmas day communicants grew from 32,400 in 1995 to 41,000 in 2006 (http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/statistics/ cathedralsec2006.htm accessed 29 January 2010). This hardly represents stellar or ‘descularizing’ growth.) For Davie there is common ground, which resonates with wider cultural orientations, between these two quite different forms of religion: both provide opportunities to ‘experience the sacred’. One alternative explanation given off the record by clergy working for one cathedral was that most recent additions to their congregations may in fact not have been outsiders in search of the sacred but rather traditionalist churchgoers in search of a refuge, as increasing numbers of churches embrace modern liturgies and a smattering of contemporary songs – a charismatic lite that does little for those drawn to neo-Pentecostal experientialism, but alienates conventional churchgoers. Despite these modest growth trends, whether they represent new recruitment or recycling the faithful (Bibby: 1973), Davie concludes that vicarious religion continues to be the dominant European pattern, non-participative but not explicitly or fully repudiating the broadly Christian underlying religious tradition. She compares Britain with the United States, where there is no state church, the culture is more neo-liberal economically and religiously, religious ‘switching’ between local churches and denominations is far more common and there is a high degree of mobility in the religious market. By contrast, Davie identifies, in the context of a public religious utility and the still predominant patterns of vicarious Christianity, the ‘immobility of British religion’. There are effectively two religious economies in Europe, which run alongside each other. The first is an incipient market, which is emerging among the churchgoing minorities of most, if not all, European societies, and in which voluntary membership is becoming the norm, de facto if not de jure. The second economy resists this tendency and continues to work on the idea of a public utility, in which membership remains ascribed rather than chosen. In this economy opting out, rather than opting in, remains the norm and is most visible at the time of a death. Interestingly,

Modified Secularization Theory the two economies are in partial tension, but also depend upon each other—each fills the gaps exposed by the other. Exploring these tensions offers a constructive route into the complexities of European religion in the twenty-first century. (Davie: 2006, 33)

Religion endures in Western Europe, despite the predictions of classical secularization theory, but in highly distinctive forms, shaped by the history of state-sponsored monopolies and the underlying correlation of religion with ethnicity. In this context, in the analysis of Martin and Davie, there appears to be least hope for the free churches, who lack the cultural advantages of the previously monopolistic forms of Christian religion. It is Catholicism and state-church Protestantism that have produced the transitional patterns of believing without belonging and the enduring legacy of vicarious religion. In this prognosis Martin and Davie agree with Bryan Wilson, who stated that secularization was ‘even more to the disadvantage of Nonconformist denominations than to the Established church’ (1966, 14). We shall consider in a later chapter whether recent empirical evidence supports this sociological orthodoxy of the mid to late twentieth century.

2.4 Sectorizing secularization Both exponents and critics of classical secularization theory have attempted to develop models that sectorize secularization. Just as Martin identified variables dependent upon the previous power of the official or state-sponsored form of religion in various Western European countries, Dobbelaere and Casanova sought to delineate aspects of the interface of religion and society that were subject to diverse degrees of secularization. In both cases, they successfully complexify the processes and therefore problematize the more hegemonic, all-inclusive and prescriptive forms of secularization theory. Karel Dobbelaere (1981; 2002) proposed three distinct sectors within which secularization processes can be examined. The macro level refers to societal secularization, which he centres on the phenomenon of ‘functional differentiation’, that is, the subdivision of public life into separate spheres of expertise without an over-arching religious authority. The meso level refers to organizational secularization, in which he follows Berger (1967) in recognizing the secularizing aspects inherent in Judaeo-Christian religion, and Luckmann (1990) in identifying the ‘this worldly’ orientation of many new religious movements. In other words, religious organizations can develop an ‘inner

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Secularization and Its Discontents secularization’ (Furseth and Repstad: 2006, 83). The micro level refers to patterns of individual belief and religious practice: while traditional beliefs and practices have markedly declined in Western Europe, this model allows for their resurgence within a broader context in which secularization continues to prevail and even intensify at the macro and meso levels. This influential threefold sectorization has been found useful by other theorists (for example, Furseth and Repstad: 2006) as a framework for a sophisticated analysis of complex data, allowing for differing trends or differing force of trends at the various levels. Dobbelaere argued that this systematization represented a theoretical framework rather than a paradigm (1999, reprinted in Swatos and Olson: 2000, 37), which sought to be descriptive and required empirical testing through international comparative research utilizing empirical data. For Dobbelaere, the unambiguous component of secularization was grounded in the macro level, with meso and micro consequences: . . . the shrinking relevance of the values of institutionalized in church religion for the integration and legitimation of everyday life in modern society. (Dobbelaere: 1981, 5)

Nonetheless, the interaction between levels is dialectical rather than moving in a single direction (Dobbelaere: 1999, reprinted in Swatos and Olson: 2000, 37). He argued that although functional differentiation resulting in the marginalization of religion at the macro level may have the consequence of diminishing religious belief at the micro level, declining levels of personal religious belief could also produce a further wave of secularization in public life, as traditional Christian religion is perceived to be increasingly marginal, at least in contemporary Europe. Not that this means the end of religion at the micro level, but rather its reconfiguration, freed from the dominance of ecclesiastical authority: The loss of church authority, a more pluralistic religious market, and the growing individualization, have led to a religious bricolage, an individual patchwork or recomposition. The religious menu of the churches was not accepted, rather a ‘religion à la carte’ was individually constructed . . . In olden times, the churches were able to impose their doctrines, at least publicly. What people thought we may only guess, but they would never publicly proclaim a religion a la carte. Now bricolage is publicly accepted, notwithstanding the official opposition of the churches. Also new is the mixing of inspirations of diverse religions, notably oriental religions . . . (Dobbelaere: 1999, reprinted in Swatos and Olson: 2000, 31)

Modified Secularization Theory Jose Casanova (1994; 2006) identified three different aspects of secularization. First, it signifies the ‘decline of religious beliefs and practices’, often conceived as a universal and unilinear abandonment of religion in favour of rationality. Second, it indicates the privatization of religion, with the marginalization of religion from public life considered the inevitable consequence of the rise of liberal democracy. Third, it represents the incremental separation (or indeed progressive liberation) of various aspects of life – such as law and medicine, government departments, education and science – from the religious domain. Casanova argued that traditional European sociologists have tended to conflate the decline of the societal dominance of religion and the decline of personal religious beliefs as two aspects of a single process, demonstrable in Western Europe and, in some accounts, prescriptive for the rest of the world. For Casanova these three dimensions of secularization require discreet analysis, since the trends found within them are not necessarily uniform. Moreover, Casanova argued that the privatization thesis has been doubly overstated, since in almost all countries the removal of religion from public life has been no more than partial and, as he demonstrates, in many contexts the return of religion to private life can be traced in the 1980s. Wilson (1998) considered Casanova’s case an overstatement that failed to acknowledge the dominant trends within Western Europe and the demonstrable alignment of the various aspects of secularization. Casanova, however, questioned ‘the empirical as well as the normative validity’ (2006, 7) of the privatization of religion, and argued for the necessary rejection of any account of a homogenized process of secularization, in which all facets are necessarily intertwined and the ultimate destiny of Western Europe at least, and possibly the world, in ineluctably and irreversibly secular. Casanova (1994; 2006) emphasized the need to develop a global comparative perspective in the study of the complex dynamics of religion, modernization and privatization. In his more recent work he builds upon Asad’s critique of secularization which is conventionally conceived as an emancipation from ‘the controlling power of religion’. For Asad, this kind of analysis of ‘religion’ as a ‘universal globalized concept’ can be interpreted as a construct determined by Western secular modernity (Asad: 2003, 191–2). The concepts of religion and secularity need to be critiqued and even re-conceptualized in order to examine the multiple modernities and multiple functions of religion and secularity in globalized postmodernity. Particular articulations of secularity might otherwise become as imperialistic and hegemonic as some forms of religion. We can reasonably add that unfalsifiable and prescriptive secularization

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Secularization and Its Discontents theory can become a totalizing metanarrative of modernity, towards which Lyotard (1979, xxiv) argued, the condition of postmodernity has caused an increasingly common hermeneutic of incredulity. Casanova (2006) endorses Huntington’s (1996) insight that the most enduring forms of trans-national identity are often likely to be traditional and religious. However, Casanova argues that Huntington’s view is too static and territorial, leading him to over-state the ‘clash of civilisations’. Instead, according to Casanova, globalization provides new opportunities for world religions to articulate global perspectives freed from former territorial constraints, even as new threats to religion emerge in the form of ‘de-territorialization’, severing ‘the essential bonds between histories, peoples, and territories that have defined all civilizations and world religions’ (Casanova: 2006, 19). For Casanova, globalization and modernization provide new opportunities and threats to religion, but no necessary trajectory of secularization or exclusion from the public sphere.

2.5 Differentiating types of religion, divergent viabilities Within the broad framework of the declining social significance of religious belief and practice we have explored two modifications of secularization theory. Martin pioneered examination of socio-cultural variables, demonstrating that the former proximity to power of a state-sponsored church and the readiness with which it had tolerated alternative forms of religion both contributed to the relative degree of secularization in different Western European countries, both Protestant and Catholic. Davie further demonstrated, particularly through the complex interrelation of believing and belonging, that three dimensions of religious decline – public significance, church attendance and personal religious beliefs – require separate and nuanced rather than homogenized analysis, since they will not necessarily decline in parallel and to the same degree. The processes of secularization are thus complexified, and become descriptive of specific particularities of religion and society in the context of modernity rather than universally prescriptive. Woodhead and Heelas add a further layer of sophistication by identifying different types of religion – irrespective of the particular religion under consideration. They argue that the relative viability of different religious groupings can be predicted depending on their position among these ideal types. Type 1 religions emphasize the transcendent otherness of God. These include

Modified Secularization Theory traditional Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Reformed Protestantism, Fundamentalism and Islam. Calvin’s introductory comments to The Institutes are a prime example of this approach: he states a twofold focus of study, namely God and Man, but the divine is elevated as transcendent purity even as the human is brought low, or even decried, in terms of total depravity. Type 2 religions emphasize the proximity of God and humanity. Liberal Protestantism operates in these terms, which at their most heterodox agree with Feuerbach that the essence of theology is anthropology. Here the study of God collapses into the study – and indeed the elevation – of humanity. Type 2 religions have tended to work on the assumption that they serve the survival of religion by making religion more credible, stripped of superstition and transcendent superfluities. Type 3 religions bring the natural order fully into the equation of the spiritual, in a this-worldly holistic sensibility. New Age spiritualities very obviously correspond with this category (Heelas: 1996; 2008). Woodhead and Heelas further complexify their analysis by proposing that the first two types operate in two distinct forms: traditional and experiential. They observe that the non-experiential forms of religion, both type 1 and type 2, do least well in contemporary Western culture. This reflects liberalism’s critique of the increasing implausibility of pre-critical religion, and yet also indicates the unexpected failure of liberalism to construct a credible and accessible form of contemporary religion. Statistically, there is a direct correlation between the proportion of liberals in a denomination and the rate of decline of church attendance. The two most successful forms are type 3, representing the rising tide of New Age experimentation, and also the ‘experiential religions of difference’, among which charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity enjoy global prominence. Heelas and Woodhead conclude that Pentecostal growth has been unable to offset the decline in non-experiential Christianity. Moreover, they find that non-experiential religions of humanity are often the most averse to any affirmation or expression of religious experience. In a later study (Heelas et al.: 2005), Heelas and Woodhead cite Charles Taylor’s emphasis upon Western culture’s ‘massive subjective turn’ (Taylor: 1992). This subjectivity functions in two dimensions. First, the authority of the individual in religious matters has become so elevated that ‘what seems right to me’ (‘epistemological individualism’) is determinative of religious validity, and so institutional, creedal religion, priests and even gurus have diminishing influence. Second, personal experience has been elevated as a primary category of authentic religion: truth is constructed and validated through individual and experiential authentication.

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Secularization and Its Discontents Although Heelas and Woodhead’s account identifies five forms of religion, this ‘massive subjective turn’ may point towards a more decisive distinction. It could be that experiential religion finds niche markets in contemporary Europe, whether the outward expression is New Age, Christian or takes another form entirely. These experiential religions may have more in common than their subjectivity and relative success. Although ostensibly neo-Pentecostals and new agers inhabit entirely different religious and cultural worlds, both legitimate experiential authentication of religious teachings, the interpenetration of the material by the divine, and both tend to promote, by intention or by accident, autonomous religious consumption (Warner: 2010a). What is clear is that subjectivized religion is capable of enduring, even in the relatively secularized culture of Western Europe, at the very least as a minority interest. It is perhaps too early to say whether this represents a nostalgic last redoubt for religion or the beginnings of a cultural turn against the ‘iron cage’ of secularity. Nonetheless, this unmistakable degree of resurgent religion and spirituality has been by no means capable of counterbalancing the decline of religion evidenced in mainstream, institutional Christianity. The categorization developed by Heelas and Woodhead indicates where there are market opportunities for new mutations or experiments in religion, but these remain at the margins of a broadly secularized culture.

2.6 Gendering secularization Woodhead (2003) argued that classical secularization theory has typically been gender-blind, treating typical male experience as normative. It is, of course by no means the only area of academic (or religious) discourse to be guilty of this failing. Woodhead identified four significant lines of enquiry concerning women, religion and secularization. First, women have been the primary lay participants in Christianity, and are more likely to attend church, read the Bible, pray regularly and profess belief in God. More empirical research is required into what women in particular find appealing and beneficial in religion. One key attraction in traditional religion appears to be relationality, which is cited by women irrespective of the particular theological or denominational context in which they participate. Religious women generally tend to be oriented towards a God of ‘love, comfort and forgiveness’ (Woodhead: 2003, 79). Ammerman (1996) has emphasized women’s prioritization of relationality in terms of what is found important in

Modified Secularization Theory a local congregation. This priority is held in common, irrespective of their churches’ theological orientation. The same relational priority is apparent in the popularity, particularly among women, of religious home-based small groups (Wuthnow: 1996). Second, it appears that as more women enter the professional workplace, they become likely to adhere to religion. This could be as a result of the feminist critique of religion, or pressures of time. Or perhaps as they enter the workplace women become incarcerated with men in Weber’s ‘iron cage’. In the conventional public world of rationalization, bureaucracy and disenchantment, spiritual and relational priorities may tend to become diminished or even marginalized. Third, women who take time out from work for full- or part-time child care seem more likely to adhere to religion, even though some may feel excluded since their children have been born outside marriage. It may be that these women find in church a supportive and relational environment. Traditional religion may affirm the role of motherhood at a time when the prevailing culture has become suspicious of this role, almost as a selling out to patriarchy or to a financially unproductive lifestyle. Although some have decried such participation as the opiate of the female, a compensator for life’s deprivations, it evidently has enduring significance as a supportive lifestyle option for some women. Fourth, women are increasingly doing religion for themselves. On 14 November 2007, the Church of England announced that, for the first time during the previous year, more women had been ordained than men. The Kendal project identified an even greater prominence of women in holistic spiritualities; of both providers and participants 80 per cent were women (Woodhead: 2003). Grace Davie (2007) suggested that the debates concerning women and ordination or episcopacy may have overshadowed broader considerations of women and religion. Given the higher levels of participation by women in most forms of religions, Davie attempts to address the question whether women are more religious by nature or nurture. This is highly contentious, since for some third-wave feminists, any attempt to designate certain characteristics as biologically determined (intrinsically female) rather than socially constructed (culturally feminine) comes under suspicion as essentialist and ideologically driven. Nonetheless, Davie (2007) argues that women’s experiences give them a more immediate encounter with life in the raw: pregnancy and the awareness of the gift of life; childbirth and the proximity of death; motherhood and the

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Secularization and Its Discontents responsibility of child-rearing; the care of elderly dependents, which is mostly provided by women; and relational practices of volunteering and associational belonging within the local community, which are life patterns dominated by women. Davie argues that this exposure to the gift of life and mortality, mutual dependence and relationality attunes women to aspects of life that readily correspond with religious orientations. To this we might add that women frequently display a greater articulacy about and willingness to explore the inner life. Once again many women’s aptitudes and predispositions, whether by nature or nurture, appear to find a natural kinship particularly with the more subjectivized forms of religion and spirituality. Callum Brown (2001; 2006) argued that the ‘feminised’ values of Christianity have run aground in the ‘death of Christian Britain’. Women have always been the majority participants in UK Protestantism, and mothers have been considered the primary transmitters of moral and spiritual values. For Brown, this gendering of parenthood and religion was overturned by the 1960s revolution. The birth control pill diminished the significance of motherhood within the life experience of women of child-bearing age. Women entered the workplace with increasing expectations of a level playing field. And feminism produced consciousness raising among women that became increasingly critical of the sexual politics of the workplace, parental roles and religion. For Brown, this shift of priorities among women resulted inevitably in the decline of religion, and of Christianity in particular as the dominant religion of Western Europe. It took several centuries . . . to convert Britain to Christianity, but is has taken less than forty years for the country to forsake it. For a thousand years, Christianity penetrated deeply into the lives of the people, enduring Reformation, Enlightenment and industrial revolution by adapting to each new social and cultural context that arose. Then, really quite suddenly in 1963, something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people, sending organized Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significance. In unprecedented numbers, the British people since the 1960s have stopped going to church, have allowed their church membership to lapse, have stopped marrying in church and have neglected to baptize their children. Meanwhile, their children, the last two generations who grew to maturity in the last thirty years of the twentieth century, stopped going to Sunday School, stopped entering confirmation or communicant classes, and rarely, if ever, stepped inside a church to worship in their entire lives . . . Since then, a formerly religious people have entirely forsaken organized Christianity in a sudden plunge into a truly secular condition. (Brown: 2001, 1)

Modified Secularization Theory Whether participants in conservative and traditional religious institutions would react so quickly to a change in the zeitgeist is doubtful. Arguing from a much wider landscape of contributory factors to religious decline, long-term as well as specific to the 1960s, Hugh McLeod (2007) argued that what the 1960s saw the end of was not so much Christianity as Christendom, the unitary religious and ethical order that had dominated Western Europe for centuries. McLeod therefore considered Brown’s argument overstated and excessively grounded in the single factor of feminism. Nonetheless, the English church census revealed a significant change in the late 1990s, when women began leaving churches faster than men (Brierley: 2006). This later generation of women were more fully socialized into a feminist critique of traditional gender roles, and sensitized to unacceptable attitudes in the workplace. It would only be expected that this new consciousness would be carried over into their responses to religion. A plausible revision of Brown’s thesis is therefore to propose that the rise of feminist consciousness among post 1960s generations of women may have become a significant contributor to church decline in the 1990s. Utilizing European Values Survey data (Halman: 2001), David Voas (2005) proposed the following interpretation: Secularisation has its first impact on men, and variability rises as contrasts develop between the religious and the non-religious. Female religiosity then declines but with lower variability; women are socialized by the mean and are less likely than men to diverge towards the extremes. When secularization is at an advanced stage, male religiosity is low and not highly variable; dispersion is greater among women.

While Voas proposed that socialization is the determinant factor in higher levels of religiosity among women, Miller and Stark (2002) argued that the differential between men and women actually becomes greater as societies become less traditional. Unless female socialization changes little in the context of modernization, a new explanation is required. Miller and Stark argued that men are biologically determined to take greater risks, and this explains why men are more likely either to be fervent believers or fervent atheists. The fact of this gender difference in religious attitudes is undoubted, but the relative weight and specific nature of the social and biological causes remain contested, as does the significance of risk aversion and relational orientation. R. Stephen Warner (1993) emphasized that, from the early C19th, there were two separate spheres in American society. Men were specialists in

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Secularization and Its Discontents business and politics, while women became guardians of culture and morality. Warner observed the paradox that this essentialist division produced an unintended empowerment for some women, who took their ‘specialist domain’ back into the public sphere, particularly as moral campaigners. Warner identified ‘latent feminist currents’ in traditional religion, notwithstanding overt patriarchalism. He suggested that this pro-feminist tendency has become more prominent in recent decades as the more flexible religious traditions undergo new social construction in a rapidly changing culture. In other words, while Brown saw Christian Britain as essentially static and made increasingly obsolete in the context of cultural change, Warner saw religious America, predominantly Christian, to be capable of sustained self-reinvention, and a source of both an empowerment of women and yet, simultaneously and contradictorily, a reaction against the feminist paradigm shift. Although women’s departure from churches has accelerated over the last 15 years or so, the empirical data simultaneously reveal a counter-trend: women continue to be the majority participants in Western religion and are rapidly becoming the majority providers. Some women are experimenting with alternative forms of religion, others are developing inner-life spiritualities, others are continuing with Christianity, either in congregations or among the emerging majority of female ordinands. Among the women for whom Christianity continues to be the most compelling religious option, while some are reaffirming the conventional – perhaps particularly in terms of caring, moral education, relationality and motherhood – others show evidence of seeking to redefine traditional religion, rather than repudiating the institution and its doctrines as irredeemably patriarchal. In this complex context of contrary trends, the private–public and spiritual–secular dichotomies may no longer be sustainable. The growing presence of women in the workplace and public life has been accompanied by increasingly prominent concerns about work–life balance and the emergence of workplace training that includes aspects of New Age spirituality. The fact that women find it statistically harder than their male partners to escape or avoid domestic responsibilities may contribute to a new holism, in which, as women re-enter the public domain, spirituality and religion can no longer be credibly marginalized within the private sphere. The feminization of religion may be followed by the feminization of public life. Perhaps Weber’s ‘iron cage’ of disenchantment functioned most forcibly in the socially constructed ‘man’s world’ of public life of Western modernity. The rise of feminism, which has resulted in a new spiritual holism and the rejection of public–private dualism, may

Modified Secularization Theory even contribute, as an unintended consequence and contrary to Brown’s thesis, to the death of secularist Britain: the processes of secularization endure albeit in complexified variants, but the aspirations of strict secularism appear increasingly implausible.

Select Bibliography Ammerman, Nancy T. (1996) Congregation and Community, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. Asad, Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford, Stanford University Press. Aune, Kristin, Sonya Sharma and Giselle Vincett (eds) (2008), Women and Religion in the West: Challenging Secularization, London, Ashgate. Bellah, Robert (2006) Is There a Common American Culture? in Bellah, R. and S. M. Tipton (Eds) The Robert Bellah Reader. Durham, Duke University Press, 319–332. Beyer, Peter (1999) Secularization from the Perspective of Globalization: A Response to Dobbelaere. Sociology of Religion, 60: 289–301 Brierley, Peter W. (2000) The Tide Is Running Out: What the English Church Attendance Survey Reveals, London, Christian Research. Brierley, Peter W. (2003) Turning the Tide, London, Christian Research. Brierley, Peter W. (2006) Pulling out of the Nosedive: A Contemporary Picture of Churchgoing – What the 2005 English Church Census Reveals, London, Christian Research. Brown, Callum G. (2001) The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800–2000, London, Routledge. Brown, Callum G. (2006) Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain, Harlow, Longman. Brown, Callum G. (2007) Gendering Secularization: Women and the Transformation of Religion in Britain since 1960. unpublished paper given to Workshop on Religion and Political Imagination at King’s College, Cambridge, July 2007. www.dundee.ac.uk/history/research//cbrownpre-circulatedpaper.pdf (accessed 10 January 2010). Casanova, Jose (1994) Public Religions in the Modern World, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Casanova, Jose (2006) Rethinking Secularization: A Global Comparative Perspective. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 7–22. Davie, Grace (1994) Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging, Oxford, Blackwell. Davie, Grace (2000) Religion in Modern Europe: A Memory Mutates, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Davie, Grace (2002) Europe: The Exceptional Case, London, Darton, Longman & Todd. Davie, Grace (2006) Is Europe an Exceptional Case? The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 23–34. Davie, Grace (2007) The Sociology of Religion, London, Sage.

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Secularization and Its Discontents Finke, Roger and Rodney Stark (1992) The Churching of America, 1776–1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. Halman, Loek (Ed.) (2001) The European Values Study: A Third Wave, Tilburg, Tilburg. Heelas, Paul (1996) The New Age Movement, Oxford, Blackwell. Heelas, Paul, Linda Woodhead, Benjamin Seel, Bronislaw Szerszynski and Karin Tusting (Eds) (2005) The Spiritual Revolution – Why Religion Is Giving Way to Spirituality, Oxford, Blackwell. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (1986) Vers Un Nouveau Christianisme? Paris, Cerf. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (1999) Le Pèlerin Et Le Converti: La Religion En Mouvement, Paris, Flammarion. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (2004) Religion Und Socialer Zusammenhalt in Europa. Transit: Europaische Revue, 26, 101–19. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (2006) In Search of Certainties: The Paradoxes of Religiosity in Societies of High Modernity. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 59–68. Huntington, Samuel P. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York, Simon & Schuster. Ipsos MORI. (2007) Schott’s Almanac Survey on Belief. Jamieson, Alan (2002) A Churchless Faith: Faith Journeys Beyond the Churches, London, SPCK. Jamieson, Alan, Jenny McIntosh and Adrienne Thompson (2006) Church Leavers: Faith Journeys Five Years On, London, SPCK. Martin, David (1965) Towards Eliminating the Concept of Secularization. In Gould, J. (Ed.) Penguin Survey of the Social Sciences. Harmondsworth, Penguin. Martin, David (1978b) A General Theory of Secularization, Oxford, Blackwell. Martin, David (2002) Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish, Oxford, Blackwell. Martin, David (2005a) Does the Advance of Science Mean Secularization? Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Martin, David (2005b) On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory, Aldershot, Ashgate. McLeod, Hugh (2007), The Religious Crisis of the 1960s, Oxford: OUP. Miller, Alan S. and John P. Hoffman (1995) Risk and Religion: An Explanation of Gender Differences in Religiosity. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34, 63–75. Miller, Alan S. and Rodney Stark (2002) Gender and Religiousness: Can Socialization Explanations Be Saved? American Journal of Sociology, 107, 1399–1423. Putnam, Robert D. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York, Simon & Schuster. Swatos, William H. (undated) Implicit Religion. Catholic Studies http://home.adelphi.edu/~catissue/ ARTICLES/SWATOS97.HTM. Swatos, William H. and Kevin J. Christiano (1999) Secularization Theory: The Course of a Concept. Sociology of Religion. 60: 209–228 Voas, David (2005) The Gender Gap in Religiosity: Evidence from European Surveys. Religion and Gender Conference (11–13 April 2005) of the Sociology of Religion Study Group of the British Association of Sociology. University of Lancaster.

Modified Secularization Theory Voas, David, V. A. Daniel Olson and Alasdair Crockett (2002) Religious Pluralism and Participation: Why Previous Research is Wrong, American Sociological Review 67(2): 212–30. Voas, David and Alasdair Crockett (2005) Religion in Britain: Neither believing nor belonging, Sociology 39(1): 11–28. Warner, Rob (2007) Reinventing English Evangelicalism 1966–2001: A Theological and Sociological Study, Carlisle, Paternoster. Warner, R. Stephen (1993) Work in Progress toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 98, 1044–93. Wilson, Bryan R. (1966) Religion in Secular Society: A Sociological Comment, London, C.A Watts. Woodhead, Linda (2003) Feminism and the Sociology of Religion: From Gender-Blindness to Gendered Difference. In Fenn, R. K. (Ed.) The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion. Oxford, Blackwell. Woodhead, Linda and Paul Heelas (Eds) (2000) Religion in Modern Times, Oxford, Blackwell. Wuthnow, Robert (1996) Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community, New York, London, The Free Press.

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American Rejections of Secularization Theory

Chapter Outline 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

Towards a new paradigm American empirical data Rational choice theory Peter Berger and Euro-secularity

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3.1 Towards a new paradigm R. Stephen Warner wrote perhaps the most seminal American article in the sociology of religion in the past two decades – ‘Work in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociology Study of Religion in the United States’ (Warner: 1993, 22; reprinted with a new critical introduction in Warner: 2005). It was a magisterial overview of recent American scholarship that demonstrated the emergence of a paradigm shift in understanding the dynamics of secularization. This conceptual approach drew implicitly upon Kuhn (1962), who argued that a new paradigm represents not the formal repudiation of an existing theory, but a new way of seeing. To the extent, as significant as it is incomplete, that two scientific schools disagree about what is a problem and what a solution, they will inevitably talk through each other when debating the relative merits of their respective paradigms . . . each paradigm will be shown to satisfy more or less the criteria that it dictates for itself, and to fall short of a few of those dictated by its opponent. (Kuhn: 1962, 110)

American Rejections of Secularization Theory Warner argued that the intellectual elite in the United States was sympathetic to the secularization paradigm and inclined to view religion as inconsequential, marginal, and of diminishing social significance. However, the continuing high levels of church attendance – particularly in middle America, in contrast with the post-religiosity of the metropolitan elite – the rise of the New Religious Right, the public theology of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the frequently avowed faith commitments of the majority of leading figures in American politics, Democrat as well as Republican, all pointed to dimensions of religion in America that did not conform readily to the classical European paradigm. Warner therefore concluded: ‘That the reigning theory does not seem to work has become an open secret’ (2005, 21). Warner’s starting point overturns European sociological orthodoxy: in the context of the United States, ‘societal modernization went hand in hand with religious mobilization’ (Warner: 2005, 22). In the United States, industrialization, urbanization and disestablishment were all contexts in which more Americans became active participants in religion. When Berger, in his earlier theorizing, used economic imagery (with scarcely disguised overtones of distaste) to describe the American religious context, he intended to delineate the collapse of the sacred canopy and the demise of religion: ‘religious institutions become marketing agencies and the religious traditions become consumer commodities’ (Berger: 1967, 138). For the new paradigm, after two centuries of what Warner calls an ‘open market’, such approaches to religion in America have become normative and have proven remarkably successful. For a rising tide of American scholars, to study a spiritual quest culture in entrepreneurial and democratized categories does not necessarily require adherence either to an over-arching narrative of secularization, or to the eventual or even imminent demise of religion in general or Christianity in particular. (See for example: Roof and McKinney: 1987; Wuthnow: 1988; 1992; 1996; 1998; Greeley: 1989; Hatch: 1989; Roof: 1999.) In Butler’s memorable phrase, America is ‘awash in a sea of faith’ (Butler: 1992). In the American context, Warner argued persuasively that the study of religion no longer had to conform to the grand narrative of Eurocentric classical secularization theory. In the European context, secularization, at least in modified forms, continues to be the dominant paradigm, although even in those heartlands of religious decline and marginalization it is no longer necessarily the whole story. In both continents micro studies of particular congregations or religious organizations and meso studies of religious practices across

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Secularization and Its Discontents a town or region have become increasingly prominent (Ammerman: 1996; Ammerman et al.: 1998; Guest et al.: 2004; Cameron et al.: 2005). This has been described as the congregational turn in the study of religion, where the particular predominates over the universal. In a subsequent article, Warner summed up this new empirical turn in the sociology of religion, in which the consequences of phenomena identified in Europe were to the advantage of religious vibrancy: ‘. . . religion in the United States is disestablished, culturally pluralistic, structurally adaptable, and often empowering’ (Warner: 2005, 63). He emphasized that a new paradigm does not mean that secularization is replaced by sacralization, inverting previous emphases. Instead, the data are interpreted in a new framework: . . . an alternative that expected ‘traditional’ religions to flourish in modern society, expected diversity to invigorate rather than demoralize religious communities, expected religious innovation and religious commitment to go hand in hand, and did not suppose that the decline of mainline Protestantism was the decline of religion. (Warner: 2005, 67)

Warner produced a ‘schematic comparison of new and old paradigms’. This was suggestive yet elliptical and would have benefited from further elaboration, and grounding in empirical studies. Further research is still required to explore the development and refinement of the new paradigm and its applicability in the European context. Nonetheless, the table is included here because it represents a succinct representation of the two paradigms as distinctive ideal types. As Warner argued, for most Europeans the old paradigm serves as a default orientation in their conception of Christianity and thence of the prospects for religion in general, in a context that has tended to take for granted forms of secularization theory that function as a prescriptive and predictive metanarrative. This institutional and Eurocentric conception of Christianity and its future prospects has tended to predominate not only in the sociology of religion, but also in church history and Christian theology, and in the media (Figure 3.1). Adam Smith, in the late eighteenth century, was perhaps the first to recognize that economic liberalism will tend to advantage voluntarist forms of religion. He argued that clergy whose livelihood was not directly related to the viability of their congregation lacked urgency of motivation. He further suggested that as free churches migrate towards respectability their ministers become more interested in ‘learning and indolence’ and neglect the ‘art of popularity’ in their preaching. Larger congregations no longer represent a

American Rejections of Secularization Theory

New

Old

Paradigmatic situation

Competition

Monopoly

Best historical fit

Second Great Awakening

Medieval Catholicism

Place and time

United States, early nineteenth century

Europe, 500–1500 CE

Master narrative

Revival and routinization

Linear secularization

Secularity threatens

Irksome demands

Implausible beliefs

Elite prototype

Entrepreneur

Prebendary

View of pluralism

Constitutive

Degenerative

Social base

Social groups

Whole society

Typical organization

Denomination, congregation

Universal Church, parish

Function of religion

Solidarity, morale

Explanation, meaning

Identity

Contested

Taken for granted

Recruitment

Emergent, achieved

Primordial, ascribed

Today’s figures

Stark, Finke, Greeley

Berger, Lechner, Hunter

Classic texts

Protestant Sects Elementary Forms

Protestant Ethic Division of Labour

Figure 3.1 Schematic comparison of new and old paradigms (R. Stephen Warner: 2005, 24).

secure livelihood and more souls saved, but rather generate a greater burden of pastoral care. Smith therefore proposed an explanation of why free churches in their early days have greater convertive energy, but also developed a cyclical theory, in which the inertia of respectability encumbrances ageing free churches, with the result that new experiments in voluntarist religion are likely to take their place. Smith thought there would be significant advantage to society in the encouragement of a free market in religion – the proliferation of religious diversity would prevent any one form of religion becoming too powerful an influence upon the state: . . . provided those sects were sufficiently numerous, and each of them consequently too small to disturb the public tranquillity, the excessive zeal of each for its particular tenets could not well be productive of any very hurtful effects, but, on the contrary, of several good ones: and if the government was perfectly decided both to let them all alone, and to oblige them all to let alone one another, there

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Secularization and Its Discontents is little danger that they would not of their own accord subdivide themselves fast enough, so as soon to become sufficiently numerous. (Adam Smith: 1776, Wealth of Nations, bk. 5, ch. 1, pt. 3, art. 3)

Although Smith has been cited as an authoritative antecedent by Rational Choice Theory (RCT), he provided a much broader analysis of the dynamics of religious innovation and the law of the attrition of religious zeal through the rise of learning and respectability. He also proposed that an open religious market and financial incentives were a significant basis for the earnest advancement of religious market share. Adam Smith is therefore more precisely understood as a precursor, not of the over-elaborate and high contested assertions of RCT, but of the broader new paradigm that explores the implications of a free market in religion and contests the Eurocentric presupposition that religious pluralism necessarily entails the decline of religious beliefs, practices and social significance. The institutions for the instruction of people of all ages are chiefly those for religious instruction. This is a species of instruction of which the object is not so much to render the people good citizens in this world, as to prepare them for another and a better world in a life to come. The teachers of the doctrine which contains this instruction, in the same manner as other teachers, may either depend altogether for their subsistence upon the voluntary contributions of their hearers; or they may derive it from some other fund to which the law of their country may entitle them; such as a landed estate, a tythe or land tax, an established salary or stipend. Their exertion, their zeal and industry, are likely to be much greater in the former situation than in the latter. In this respect the teachers of new religions have always had a considerable advantage in attacking those ancient and established systems of which the clergy, reposing themselves upon their benefices, had neglected to keep up the fervour of faith and devotion in the great body of the people; and having given themselves up to indolence, were become altogether incapable of making any vigorous exertion in defence even of their own establishment. The clergy of an established and well-endowed religion frequently become men of learning and elegance, who possess all the virtues of gentlemen, or which can recommend them to the esteem of gentlemen; but they are apt gradually to lose the qualities, both good and bad, which gave them authority and influence with the inferior ranks of people, and which had perhaps been the original causes of the success and establishment of their religion. Such a clergy, when attacked by a set of popular and bold, though perhaps stupid and ignorant enthusiasts, feel themselves as perfectly defenceless as the indolent, effeminate, and full-fed nations of the southern parts of Asia, when they were invaded by the active, hardy, and hungry Tartars of the North. Such a clergy, upon such an emergency, have commonly no other resource than to call upon the civil magistrate to

American Rejections of Secularization Theory persecute, destroy, or drive out their adversaries, as disturbers of the public peace. It was thus that the Roman Catholic clergy called upon the civil magistrate to persecute the protestants; and the church of England, to persecute the dissenters; and that in general every religious sect, when it has once enjoyed for a century or two the security of a legal establishment, has found itself incapable of making any vigorous defence against any new sect which chose to attack its doctrine or discipline. Upon such occasions the advantage in point of learning and good writing may sometimes be on the side of the established church. But the arts of popularity, all the arts of gaining proselytes, are constantly on the side of its adversaries. In England those arts have been long neglected by the well-endowed clergy of the established church, and are at present chiefly cultivated by the dissenters and by the methodists. The independent provisions, however, which in many places have been made for dissenting teachers, by means of voluntary subscriptions, of trust rights, and other evasions of the law, seem very much to have abated the zeal and activity of those teachers. They have many of them become very learned, ingenious, and respectable men; but they have in general ceased to be very popular preachers. The methodists, without half the learning of the dissenters, are much more in vogue. (Adam Smith: 1776, Wealth of Nations, bk. 5, ch. 1, pt. 3, art. 3)

3.2 American empirical data Finke and Stark’s (1992) study of the history of the American religious market built upon the observation that the formal separation of church and state and the processes of modernization had occurred alongside continuing growth in church allegiance (see also Hatch: 1989). Contrary to many European accounts that identify urbanization as an aspect of modernization that undermined previous and traditional religious allegiance, Finke and Stark argued that in the United States ‘the growth of cities increased religious participation’ (1992, 204). Not only was this growth unexpected within the European paradigm, but the American religious market proved continually buoyant and yet volatile. From 1776 to 1850, the institutional forms of Christianity that had enjoyed privileged status in the pre-independence colonies saw a decline in market share, or more precisely a precipitous crash, from 55 per cent to 19.1 per cent. (Congregationalists declined from 20.4 per cent to 4 per cent; Episcopalian from 15.7 per cent to 3.5 per cent; Presbyterians from 19 per cent to 11.6 per cent.) Catholic market share in 1850 was merely 14 per cent, but grew significantly in the coming decades as a result of waves of Catholic immigration, rising to 26 per cent in 1890 and 28 per cent by 1926. The main beneficiaries of this shift in market share were the Methodists and Baptists. In 1850 Methodists enjoyed 34.2 per cent of the Christian

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Secularization and Its Discontents religious market, and Baptists 20 per cent. Finke and Stark examined the changing fortunes of these two forms of free church. Measuring adherents per 1,000 of the population, in 1776 there were 4 Methodists and 28 Baptists. At this time the Methodists were newcomers as a religious movement, and a tiny minority, founded in the eighteenth century by John Wesley (1703–91) and his brother Charles (1707–88). By 1850, the numbers per thousand were 117 Methodists and 70 Baptists. The older Baptist sect, that could trace its English speaking origins back to the early seventeenth century, as a late product of the Protestant reformation, had also enjoyed revival-generated growth in voluntarist religion, but nothing like as much as the newly emergent Methodists, whose growth had been explosive, making them the largest denomination. By 1926, however, Methodists had fallen back from their peak to 101, whereas Baptists had enjoyed continued growth to 106. If the 1920s were a period of near parity, the trajectories continued to move apart. By 1980 there were 74 Methodists per 1,000 of the population, but 142 Baptists. Analyzing American market share from 1940 to 1985 demonstrates the very high degree of divergent trends for different kinds of Christian denomination. Several suffered dramatic decline, including Congregationalists (−56 per cent), Presbyterians (−49 per cent) and Episcopalians (−38 per cent). In striking contrast to their early nineteenth century boom, the United Methodists suffered decline to a similarly severe extent (−38 per cent). Roman Catholics continued to grow (+12 per cent), particularly as migrant communities continued to bring their faith with them, Hispanic Catholic immigration supplanting Italian and Irish in the second half of the twentieth century. The Southern Baptists continued to grow (+32 per cent), but not as fast as the Nazarenes (+42 per cent). However, these rates of growth pale into insignificance beside the Assemblies of God (+371 per cent). To interpret these divergent data, Stark and his colleagues build upon church-sect theory. However, we should emphasize two points here. First, these scholars repudiate Kelley’s (1972) claim that non-evangelical churches began to decline in the 1960s. On the contrary, they argue, institutional churches were losing ground to evangelical voluntarists from the early decades of the nineteenth century. (This critique also has implications for Brown’s (2001; 2006) account of the death of Christian Britain, which overstates the significance of the 1960s by downplaying patterns of decline in the previous hundred years, as well as subsequent waves of decline beyond this transitional decade.) Finke and Stark emphasize that, in a free religious market, no denomination is intrinsically exempt from this natural tendency towards respectability and

American Rejections of Secularization Theory decline. The more the Methodists conformed to the ethos of the older denominations, the more fully they entered into a similar pattern of decline. Of course, this principle applies to a denomination in general: individual congregations may buck the trend, without overturning the denominational trajectory. As Finke and Stark concluded provocatively, ‘. . . the mainline bodies are always headed for the sideline’ (Finke and Stark: 1992, 275). Marler and Hadaway (1998; 1999; 2005) reinforced this analysis by demonstrating that actual church attendance in the United States has declined for mainline denominations. They estimated (2005) that actual weekly church attendance in the United States was around 20 per cent, rather than the 40 per cent reported by pollsters. In 2003–4, virtually all American churches that had been founded from 1810 to 1960 declined in attendance. (The only exceptions were those founded in the 1920s, which appears to be a statistical anomaly.) Decline in American churches is therefore not only an experienced reality for many, but this process has been no respecter of denominations: there are no privileged exceptions. The evidence therefore indicates that American church attendance is sustained not by loyalty to existing local churches, or the religious and social capital accrued by longstanding and respectable denominations, but rather by establishing new churches with contemporary cultural alignment, whether within or, in the American case, more often outside of the existing denominations. Marler and Hadaway’s research further indicates that particular forms of local church or denomination, at least within an open religious market and particularly within Protestantism, have a subcultural life expectancy. It seems reasonable to propose that the faster the rate of change in the dominant culture, the shorter the life expectancy of individual churches. In other words, churches not only have an inherent tendency towards respectability that tends to move them towards decline, but may also have, at least in the free market of the American religious economy, a built-in obsolescence. In other words, just as most businesses have a shelf life, and few companies continue to enjoy success over more than a few decades, the same is true for ‘religious providers’. Continued religious vibrancy in the United States is therefore constantly dependent upon innovative entrepreneurialism, repackaging faith for new cultural and consumer contexts. If this is a long-term cultural phenomenon, it seems reasonable to conclude that the life expectancy of any particular local church or culturally specific variant of religion will normally diminish in an era of accelerating cultural change. It is not only personal computers and MP3 players, but churches too, that have to innovate with increasing rapidity

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Secularization and Its Discontents to retain market share. To institutionalize is to embrace the ineluctable logic of cultural obsolescence and declining social significance. Bellah et al. (1996) argued that entrepreneurialism was a primary American mode of discourse. However, when applied to religion it can seem thoroughly alien or distasteful to many Europeans, religious and non-religious alike. Those accustomed to vicarious religion (Davie: 2002; Davie: 2007) delivered through quasi-nationalized utilities may feel it is somehow improper to analyze religious participation in terms of market share and denominational life expectancy. Nonetheless, the empirical data presented by Finke and Stark convey several provocative insights: z

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Protestant denominations that have remained dominant in Europe have been in decline in the United States for over 150 years. The American religious market is volatile, and dependent upon continued supply side innovation to remain stable, let alone grow. Thanks to this culture of voluntarist innovation, church attendance is sustained at what are by European standards remarkably high levels, even though older denominations continue to decline. However, high levels of church allegiance are no guarantee of future viability for any existing congregations and denominations. In fact the normative American tendency is eventual decline for any particular religious provider, and this cycle of growth and decline is probably accelerating in line with the general rate of cultural change. New religious providers are therefore likely to operate with increasingly short-term shelf lives, even if this is alien to the rhetoric of ultimacy that often characterises new religious movements, Christian and non-Christian alike. (Adapted from Finke and Stark: 1992)

The similarities and contrasts with the UK church attendance data are striking. In both contexts, there has been well over a century of sustained decline for the institutional providers of religion. In both contexts, Methodism surged rapidly to a position of market prominence. However, in marked contrast with the United States, once Methodism entered a phase of institutional decline, UK voluntarists failed to sustain post-Methodist reinvention. This twentieth century European inability or unwillingness to utilize the American model of sustained religious innovation raises a number of intriguing questions where further research is required. z

If American church attendance is now falling, albeit from a much higher level than in Western Europe, could this represent the emergence of late-onset decline, and a vindication of secularization theory? This might indicate that a free market in

American Rejections of Secularization Theory

z

z

z

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religion can delay but cannot ultimately overturn the dominant trend of secularization. In the European context, to what extent did Methodism’s evolution out of Anglicanism enable it to bypass to some degree the subcultural marginality experienced by older forms of dissent? This might have made it, for a significant proportion of the population, the socially acceptable form of religion beyond Anglicanism, and so assisted its rapid growth. On the other hand, did Methodism’s strongly Anglican origins intensify the gravitational pull from charisma to bureaucracy, from high tension to low tension, from enthusiastic conversionism towards institutional respectability? The close association with the dominant church might explain not only Methodism’s rapid ascent but also its transition within a few generations from being the fastest growing to one of the fastest declining denominations. What was it about Western European culture, or perhaps the distinctive religious capital of a state church, that appears to have inhibited sustained post-Methodist reinventions of voluntarism? It seems plausible that some of the most resourceful voluntarist leaders, who in the United States would probably have founded their own churches, in England have probably migrated into, or indeed stayed within, Anglican ministry, with the attendant benefits of greater social status, educational opportunity and ecclesiastical advancement. Within Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, do Adam Smith’s insights continue to resonate in terms of institutional inhibitors that restrain sustained experimentation in the re-imagining of church? Smith’s account needs significant modification to explain why many twentieth and twenty-first century reinventions have in fact taken place within Anglicanism, which has been the settled church context for many originators and adopters of ecclesiastical innovation, for example charismatic renewal, alternative worship, Alpha and Fresh Expressions. Finally, to what extent might a severely attenuated state church or official religion lose the capacity to control the religious market and thereby lose the remaining capacity to inhibit the emergence of new religious providers, both Christian and non-Christian? If northern Europe really is becoming ‘post-Protestant’, as Martin proposed (2005b, 32), and if southern Europe has also entered into postChristendom, it would seem likely that a tipping point would be reached, perhaps imminently, beyond which the decline in the social and religious capital of the established churches would begin to dissolve the cultural inhibitors to religious innovation beyond their domain.

3.3 Rational choice theory We have indicated some implications for further research in the European context that arise from the new paradigm. This has been explored before we

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Secularization and Its Discontents turn to RCT to emphasize R. Stephen Warner’s argument (2005) that the new paradigm does not require acceptance of the specifics of RCT, which was developed as a highly elaborated alternative theoretical framework to classical secularization (Stark and Bainbridge: 1985; Stark and Bainbridge: 1987; Stark and Finke: 2000). RCT comprises four elements: an exploration and interpretation of the New World empirical data that, it is claimed, do not readily conform to the old paradigm of Eurocentric secularization theory; a critique of the old paradigm; a deductive extrapolation of the new theoretical framework; and projections derived from the new theory. Stark’s critique of the old paradigm argued that secularization built upon the myth of modernization’s inherent incompatibility with religion. This was compounded by the myth of a past golden age of Christendom, from which religion had suffered long-term decline. Stark accepted that religion might one day wither, but not as a direct result of modernization: After nearly three centuries of utterly failed prophesies and misrepresentations of both present and past, it seems time to carry the secularization doctrine to the graveyard of failed theories, and there to whisper, ‘Requiescat in pace’. (Stark and Finke: 2000, 79)

The developed theorems of RCT (Stark and Bainbridge: 1985; Stark and Bainbridge: 1987; Stark and Finke: 2000) are found by many to be overelaborate and unconvincing (Young: 1997; Swatos and Olson: 2000; Christiano et al.: 2002). Nonetheless, the arguments are original and provocative, and offer insights into the empirical realities of religion in the United States. RCT emphasizes the supply side of the religious market, arguing that the religious demand is more or less constant in all cultures. The European religious market by contrast with the United States continues to be distorted by the legacy of state-sponsored religious monopolies. Without coercion, the natural condition of the religious market is one of numerous competing faiths and organizations. But for the greater part of recorded history, societies have been guided by dominant religions that have achieved near monopolies through serving the needs of the state and receiving coercive support in return. (Stark and Bainbridge: 1987, 316)

Stark and Bainbridge identify ‘the circular process of the birth of sects, their eventual transformation into churches (if they remain viable), and the subsequent generation of new sects, whereupon the cycle repeats’ (1987, 278).

American Rejections of Secularization Theory Religious providers in a free market become self-marginalized, through moving towards a position of low tension and high respectability with reference to the prevailing culture, and this process of assimilation leads inexorably to decline. As a result, responding to demands that are unmet by current bureaucratic and respectable forms of religion, new religious sects emerge in high tension with the dominant culture, alongside innovative cults outside the existing religious framework. The supply side is therefore critical to sustained religious activity: religious buoyancy is continually dependent upon entrepreneurial creativity within the religious market. What RCT emphasizes is not necessarily a consumer-driven, demand-led commodification of religion, but rather the critical importance of a continuing flow of supply side innovations for sustained religious vitality in any society. Pluralism rather than contributing to secularization as a consequence of relativizing competing religious convictions, which for Berger fatally fractured the sacred canopy (Berger: 1967), is considered instead to be a decisive factor in facilitating and enhancing religious vibrancy. It is when the religious market is free enough to offer several brands of religion, at several levels of tension with the sociocultural environment, that the greatest proportion of the population receives appropriate compensators and responds with firm religious commitment . . . Thus religious diversity along the tension axis in a single tradition does not undercut the value of general compensators at all. Rather it strengthens the general compensators by combining them with different sets of specific compensators designed to fit the various needs of many classes in society. (Stark and Bainbridge: 1987, 149)

As a consequence, the future of religion is conceived to be cyclical – a repeated pattern of the rise and fall of successive innovations in religion – and the linear inevitability of classical secularization theory is repudiated. The repudiation of Weber’s concept of an ‘iron cage’ is implicit but unmistakable in the second sentence of the Stark and Bainbridge’s predictive conclusions: In the future, as in the past, religion will be shaped by secular forces but not destroyed . . . Secularization has unchained the human spirit, not stifled it in a rationalized bureaucratic outbox . . . Secularization has meant a decisive change in the religious life of liberal democracies, however. We doubt that any religious organization will ever enjoy the degree of monopoly held by the state churches of Europe generations ago, or even the hegemony achieved by some denominations for a time in the United States. Final separation of church and state will be healthy for religion, for what it loses in coercive power it will gain in spiritual virtue. When

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Secularization and Its Discontents the religious market is fully free, people will still be at liberty to commit themselves utterly to one particular religion and join the community of a permanent congregation. But many will prefer lives of spiritual quest and sacred adventure, paralleling careers of secular mobility, experiencing one religious involvement after another. It would be wrong to imagine that all such folk are unsuccessful chronic seekers or trivial dabblers and false to conclude the religions that serve them are nothing but inconsequential consumer items. (Stark and Bainbridge: 1985, 527–9)

We should note several strands to this argument. First, Stark and Bainbridge use the term ‘secularization’ in several ways: they refer to the impact of modernity upon religious hegemony in Europe, which corresponds with at least an aspect of the linear use of the term in classical secularization theory; second, in contrast, they claim that secularization of this kind is to the advantage of the religion, since a monopoly is broken; third, they refer to the cyclical pattern of the rise and fall of particular forms of religion in which secularization is a recurrent rather than a linear or historically specific phenomenon. These multiple uses may indicate a complex and multi-dimensional concept, but risk confusion and a lack of terminological consistency. Second, Stark and Bainbridge indicate a Reaganite (or from a British perspective neo-liberal or Thatcherite) post-Keynesian sublime confidence in the free market that is confidently expected to enable religious and well as commercial vitality: market-responsive religion is expected to become vibrant and buoyant rather than marginalized or obsolete. Third, they consider the European model – Protestant as well as Catholic – of Christendom and its state churches to function as a suppressor of religious vitality. The impact of modernity is understood not to be the marginalization of religion per se, but rather to generate a sociocultural endgame for Christendom that has become unsustainable in Europe and definitively non-viable wherever the free market prevails. Fourth, at least in the context of a relatively free market in religion, they are optimistic about enduring religious vitality, although not necessarily the durability of any particular form of religion. Religious mobility, with an attendant active pursuit of the spiritual, is presented both as a virtue and as a growing trend, without individuals necessarily remaining loyal to any particular religious tradition. This is entirely contrary to Bruce’s account (2002) of a rising tide of indifference to religion in all its forms. ‘Switchers’ are given positive esteem within RCT, as a logical consequence of the free market and symptomatic of a lively and open spiritual quest. Critics of RCT fall into three camps. First there are those who argue that RCT is merely one way of exploring the possibilities of the new paradigm for

American Rejections of Secularization Theory the study of resilient religion. Warner argued that RCT tends to overstate the economic interpretative frame and remains over-dependent upon Kelley’s (1972) ‘strictness theory’ as the decisive determinant of congregational viability. For example, Warner (2005) has studied the growth of Metropolitan Community Churches that espouse a strongly pro-gay agenda; such numerical success does not conform to high tension or strictness theory. Warner is clearly concerned that the thunder of the ‘new paradigm’ he proposed has been stolen by a voluble minority variant that is ultimately less compelling. Although Warner’s critique of RCT is muted, the logic of his position appears to be that the repudiation of RCT, far from leading to the abandonment of the ‘new paradigm’, is precisely the necessary and preparatory move required to clear the way for the development of the ‘new paradigm’ on a more persuasive, compelling and enduring basis. . . . as I understand the new paradigm, rational choice theories contribute to it but do not define or constitute it. (Warner: 2005, 66)

Second, some argue that, just as RCT makes sense of American empirical data, secularization theory, albeit in modified form, makes better sense of the Western European context (Davie: 2007). After all, according to RCT Western Europe should be a hotbed of new religious sects and cults, given the severe decline of traditional, institutional religion. And this is plainly not the case. While this appears to refute RCT, this knock-down argument fails to take account of the market inhibitors in the European context, where the residual echoes of Christendom still cast a hermeneutic of suspicion over all alternative forms of religious, Christian and non-Christian alike. In the United States, on the other hand, there is clear resonance between the theory and the constant flow of supply side innovations in religion. The third and most trenchant criticism of RCT is exemplified by Bruce, who expressed exasperation at the ‘malign influence of a small clique of US sociologists of religion’ (1999, 1). For Bruce, the theory is doubly wrong. First, in its assumptions, RCT presumes a rational and economic explanation of religious behaviour. However, in the area of religious convictions people are highly unlikely to make dispassionate rational choices, and may feel, particularly in the context of an established church or a religious monoculture, that the very notion of religious choice is inappropriate and superfluous. Second, in its conclusions, RCT claims that secularization is a self-limiting cycle that creates opportunities for religious innovators to emerge. For Bruce it is selfevident that religious activity has declined in Europe, not merely because there

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Secularization and Its Discontents has been a failure on the supply side, but because religion has receded to the margins. It has moved from a default, normative, life-shaping and inherited condition (‘religion of birth’) to an optional lifestyle accessory to which most younger Europeans have become more or less indifferent. This is the cancer of choice. To the extent that we are free to choose our religion, religion cannot have the power and authority necessary to make it any more than a private leisure activity. Far from creating a world in which religion can thrive, diversity and competition undermine the plausibility of religion. (Bruce: 1999, 186)

Paradoxically, the rival theories of RCT and classical secularization are both true to some degree. Aspects of secularization are clearly linear and closely intertwined with the impact of modernity, even though a direct and necessary link between modernity and European secularization in all its aspects is an over-simplification. At the same time a cyclical process can credibly be identified, in which the routinization of charisma within a particular religious organization – from voluntarist enthusiasm to institutional bureaucracy – constitutes the inevitable decline of that particular form of religion rather than a simultaneous and universal decline of religion in general. We can also identify a double impact of religious choice – on the one hand choice subverts the absolutism of a religious monopoly, but on the other hand it does not necessarily lead to an absolutist relativism, in which all religious claims are subject to a hermeneutic of scepticism. Beyond the dying embers of the residual domain of Christendom, religious choice appears often to enhance opportunities for religious participation and activism. Indeed, the rise of Christianity across Europe required the overthrow of previously dominant religions, but this transition did not entail the absolute and definitive undermining of the ‘plausibility of religion’. RCT and Bruce both claim too much: if RCT was an accurate and reliable account of the rebirth of religion, given the decline of Christendom there should be much more evidence of spiritual experimentation in Western Europe; however the logic of Bruce’s argument would require not merely the imminent death of Christianity in Europe, but religion would have long since expired, wherever the territory of an indigenous religion was invaded for the first time by an alternative religion that successfully invited people to change their religion by making the choice of personal conversion. RCT and classical seclarization theory both presume a greater certainty than they can deliver, even as both contribute enduring insights. Neither can claim universal validity at the expense of the other. The overelaborate systematization of RCT is not sustainable, but the unfalsifiable

American Rejections of Secularization Theory prescriptive tendency of some adherents to secularization theory is an overdogmatic distraction from the logical coherence of many aspects of the typically European analysis. Incredulity towards metanarratives (Lyotard: 1979; 1984) should be extended both to prescriptive forms of secularization theory and to RCT as an over-cooked variant of the new paradigm. My own conclusion is that a new synthesis is required between non-prescriptive secularization theory and the ‘new American paradigm’.

3.4 Peter Berger and Euro-secularity In Berger’s earlier work he argued that a sacred canopy provided a society’s homogeneous religious framework (Berger: 1967). This was unsettled for Christendom by the secularizing tendencies expressed in Protestantism that were inherent in the Old Testament critiques of religion but subsequently underplayed in medieval Catholicism. Moreover, the proliferation of Protestant sects introduced a plurality of religious options that further eroded the sacred canopy by introducing a measure of relativism between diverse religious convictions and also elevated personal conviction and choice in religion. This was to the detriment of the monopolistic provider of religion and ultimately to the public credibility and authority of religion in all its forms, resulting inevitably in the diminished public significance of religion and declining levels of personal religious activity and belief. Protestantism, in David Martin’s phrase, has an intrinsic sociological non-viability. These dynamics require religions to create plausibility structures to shore up the increasing intellectual implausibility of their beliefs and doctrines. Thus far, Berger was true to his European and Lutheran roots. From this perspective, the secularizing trajectories of Europe are considered normative, while the continued buoyancy of American religion is the exception. In 1968, Berger’s prognosis was definite and bleak: 21st century . . . religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture. (Berger: 1968, 3)

Much more recently, in a complete volte-face, Berger has become an unexpected contributor to the paradigm shift in the sociology of religion (Berger: 1999; Woodhead: 2001). In global terms, he came to recognize that the world had unambiguously continued to be ‘furiously religious’. He observed that a European scholar could readily recognize consonance between secularization

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Secularization and Its Discontents theory and the condition of Christianity in Western Europe. Moreover, international conferences within the Academy’s normatively secular milieu were likely to reinforce this consensus. However, Berger suggested that many European scholars were likely to be considerably surprised when attending a conference in the United States, by the high levels of contemporary religiosity, both in terms of the levels of church attendance on Sundays and the time given to religious issues and religious political lobbyists in the media. Berger concluded that the empirical data refuted any prescriptive form of secularization theory and demonstrated that it had become fallacious, unsustainable and untenable. In reality, it was Europe that had to be understood, as Davie (2002) had argued, as the exceptional case. Berger: Much earlier than the 90s – I would say by the late 70s or early 80s – most, but not all, sociologists of religion came to agree that the original secularization thesis was untenable in its basic form, which simply said modernization and secularization are necessarily correlated developments. (Matthewes: 2006, 152)

Naturally Steve Bruce rebutted this recantation, arguing that it was quite unnecessary (Bruce: 2001b). For Bruce, the continuing presence of religion in more individualized and privatized forms merely serves to emphasize that religion has continued to lose public significance (Bruce: 2007). Despite Bruce’s robust riposte and evident disquiet at the unsettling of the secularization consensus, Berger’s reversal of emphasis was symptomatic of a fundamental shift in sociological theory. While modernization might generate some secularizing tendencies, Europe had been alone in experiencing simultaneous high levels of decline in religious beliefs, religious practices and in the influence on religion in public life. Euro-secularity required an explanation that took sufficient account of the specific historical and cultural factors that had contributed to the late twentieth century alienation from religion. However, neither the European close correlation of modernity and multi-dimensional religious decline nor the normative convictions of secularized intellectuals concerning what has been widely regarded as the self-evident and almost certainly terminal marginalization of religion justified the retention of a universal and prescriptive theory of secularization. I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization and

American Rejections of Secularization Theory modernity go hand in hand. With more modernization comes more secularization. It wasn’t a crazy theory. There was some evidence for it. But I think it’s basically wrong. Most of the world today is certainly not secular. It’s very religious. So is the U.S. The one exception to this is Western Europe. One of the most interesting questions in the sociology of religion today is not, How do you explain fundamentalism in Iran? but, Why is Western Europe different? (Berger: 1997, 974)

For Berger as for R. Stephen Warner, a decisive paradigm shift has occurred. As a result, it would be entirely inadequate and inappropriate merely to attempt to refute or modify secularization theory in particular aspects. New theoretical frameworks are required to explore and explain the continuing resilience of religion, particularly in its voluntarist and innovative forms. Berger: I would say America is less religious than it seems because it has a cultural elite which is heavily secularized, which, if you will, is Europeanized. The cultural elite is the minority of the population, but it has great influence through the media, the educational system, and even the law to some extent. Europe is less secular than it seems because of the kind of thing that Davie has been writing about, believing without belonging . . . It’s certainly useful to understand that religion is not about to disappear. The belief is still quite prevalent among intellectuals – secular intellectuals – that religion is a kind of backwoods phenomenon that with rising education will increasingly disappear. That’s not happening. It’s not going to happen. (Matthewes: 2006, 155–157)

This extraordinary and emphatic reversal of position, faced with the resilience of western as well as global religion, asks serious questions of the secularization thesis. Perhaps secularization is proving to be a process that is not capable of completing the journey into a fully secular society. Secularization may even be a self-limiting process, which tends beyond a certain point to provoke a resurgent appetite for a spiritual or religious quest. On the other hand, contemporary spirituality may have evolved into a mere lifestyle accessory, with religion commodified as yet another form of life enhancement to be selected according to personal taste, like organic food, vitamin supplements or gym membership. The resilience of religion may in fact be more apparent than enduring, a passing phase of the reassertion of the traditional before universal secularity covers all. The debate is finely balanced. In the next chapter we turn to the question of emergent spiritualities: is there really evidence that Europe is now experiencing a spiritual revolution, consonant with the resilience of religion in the rest of the contemporary world? Or, to use a phrase popularized

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Secularization and Its Discontents during the credit crunch of the early twenty-first century, recent uplift in religious participation might signify not a bottoming out, let alone a recovery from long-term and precipitate decline, but merely a dead cat bouncing.

Select Bibliography Ammerman, Nancy T. (1996) Congregation and Community, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. Ammerman, Nancy Tatom, Jackson W. Carroll, Carl S. Dudley and William McKinney (Eds) (1998) Studying Congregations, Nashville, Abingdon Press. Bellah, Robert Neelly, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton (Eds) (1996) Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, Berkeley, University of California Press. Berger, Peter L. (1967) The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, Garden City, NY, Doubleday. Berger, Peter L. (1968) A Bleak Outlook Is Seen for Religion. New York Times. New York, 25 April, 1968, p.3 Berger, Peter L. (1997) Epistemological Modesty: An Interview with Peter Berger. Christian Century, 29 October 1997, pp. 972–8. Berger, Peter L. (Ed.) (1999) The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, Washington, DC; Grand Rapids, MI, Ethics and Public Policy Center. Berger, Peter L., Grace Davie and Effie Fokas (2008) Religious America, Secular Europe? Aldershot, Ashgate. Brown, Callum G. (2001) The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800–2000, London, Routledge. Brown, Callum G. (2006) Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain, Harlow, Longman. Bruce, Steve (1999) Choice and Religion, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Bruce, Steve (2001b) The Curious Case of the Unnecessary Recantation: Berger and Secularization. in Woodhead, L. (Ed.) Peter Berger and the Study of Religion. London, Routledge, 87-100 Bruce, Steve (2007) Secularization and the Impotence of Individualized Religion. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 35–45. Cameron, Helen, Philip Richter, Douglas Davies and Frances Ward (Eds) (2005) Studying Local Churches, London, SCM. Chaves, Mark (1995) On the Rational Choice Approach to Religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34, 98–104. Christiano, Kevin J., William H. Swatos and Peter Kivisto (2002) Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments, New York, Oxford, Altamira Press. Davie, Grace (2002) Europe: The Exceptional Case, London, Darton, Longman & Todd. Davie, Grace (2007) The Sociology of Religion, London, Sage.

American Rejections of Secularization Theory Demerath, N (1995) Rational Paradigms, A-Rational Religion, and the Debate over Secularization. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34, 105–12. Finke, Roger and Rodney Stark (1992) The Churching of America, 1776–1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. Greeley, Andrew M. (1989) Religious Change in America, Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Guest, Matthew, Karin Tusting and Linda Woodhead (Eds) (2004) Congregational Studies in the UK, Aldershot, Ashgate. Hadaway, C. Kirk and Penny L. Marler (1998) Did You Really Go to Church This Week? Behind the Poll Data. Christian Century, 6 May 1998, pp. 972–8. Hatch, Nathan O. (1989) The Democratization of American Christianity, New Haven, Yale University Press. Iannaccone, Laurence R. (1995) Voodoo Economics? Reviewing the Rational Choice Approach to Religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34, 76–88. Iannaccone, Laurence R. (1998) Introduction to the Economics of Religion. Journal of Economic Literature, 36, 1465–95. Kuhn, Thomas (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, Chicago University Press. Lechner, Frank J. (1997) The ‘New Paradigm’ In the Sociology of Religion: Comment on Warner. The American Journal of Sociology, 103, 182–92. Marler, Penny L. and C. Kirk Hadaway (1999) Testing the Attendance Gap in a Conservative Church. Sociology of Religion, 60: 175–186. Marler, Penny L. and C. Kirk Hadaway (2005) How Many Americans Attend Worship Each Week? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44, 307–23. Matthewes, Charles T. (2006) An Interview with Peter Berger. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 152–61. Roof, Wade Clark (1999) Spiritual Marketplace, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Roof, Wade Clark and William McKinney (1987) American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press. Sharot, Stephen (2002) Beyond Christianity: A Critique of the Rational Choice Theory of Religion from a Weberian and Comparative Religions Perspective. Sociology of Religion 63, 427–54. Smith, Adam (1776, new edition 1998) Wealth of Nations, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Sommerville, C. John (2002) Stark’s Age of Faith Argument and the Secularization of Things: A Commentary. Sociology of Religion, 63, 361–72. Stark, Rodney (1999) Secularization, R.I.P. Sociology of Religion, 60 249–73. Stark, Rodney (2000) Secularization, R.I.P. In Swatos, William and Daniel Olson (Eds) The Secularization Debate. Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield. Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge (1985) The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation, Berkeley, University of California Press. Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge (1987) A Theory of Religion, New York, Peter Lang. Stark, Rodney and Roger Finke (2000) Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion, Berkeley; London, University of California Press.

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Secularization and Its Discontents Swatos, William and Daniel Olson (2000) The Secularization Debate, Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield. Warner, R. Stephen (1993) Work in Progress toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 98, 1044–93. Warner, R. Stephen (2005) A Church of Our Own, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press. Woodhead, Linda (Ed.) (2001) Peter Berger and the Study of Religion, London, Routledge. Wuthnow, Robert (1988) The Restructuring of American Religion, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Wuthnow, Robert (1992) Rediscovering the Sacred: Perspectives on Religion in Contemporary Society, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Wuthnow, Robert (1996) Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community, New York, London, The Free Press. Wuthnow, Robert (1998) After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press. Young, Lawrence A (Ed.) (1997) Rational Choice Theory and Religion, New York, London, Routledge.

Is There a Spiritual Revolution?

Chapter Outline 4.1 From life-as religion to spiritualities of life 4.2 Theoretical engagement with subjective spiritualities and neo-paganism 4.3 Critiques of the alleged revolution 4.4 The reconfiguration of religion 4.5 Globalization and public religion

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4.1 From life-as religion to spiritualities of life When a team from Lancaster University studied patterns of religious participation in Kendal (www.kendalproject.org.uk), they entitled the resultant book, The Spiritual Revolution (Heelas et al.: 2005). Their measurement of church attendance on Sundays replicated and confirmed the low levels found in Brierley’s UK church attendance surveys that we considered previously. A far more surprising result was what they considered a significantly high level of involvement in emergent spiritualities. Heelas’ definition of spirituality articulates the essence of the holistic milieu – ‘life itself – the “life force” or “energy” that sustains life in this world, and what lies at the heart of subjective life – the core of what it is to be truly alive’ (Heelas: 2006, 46). We have seen previously that Woodhead and Heelas (2000) identified ‘spiritualities of life’ as the form of religion most consonant with contemporary culture and therefore most likely to prosper. In order to attempt to quantify participation in alternative spiritualities in Kendal, which was taken to be a

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Secularization and Its Discontents rather typical English provincial town, rather than an epicentre of alternative spiritualities, the researchers treated as spiritual every activity which was self-designated in such terms by its providers (Heelas et al.: 2005). The alternative would have been to work from an independently compiled list of such activities. They also included as participants everyone who took part once over the course of a week in activities within five miles of Kendal. This ensured the data included Loop Cottage and Rainbow Cottage – two holistic centres to which people from Kendal need to travel for many of these activities. The resultant list was extensive and highly diverse: Acupressure, Acupuncture, Alexander technique, Aromatherapy, Art therapy, Astrology, Buddhist groups, CancerCare group, Chinese College of Physical Culture, Chiropractice, Circle dancing, Counselling, Craniosacral therapy, Energy management workshop, Flower essences therapy, Foot massage, GreenSpirit group, Healing/Spiritual healing groups, Herbalism, Homeopathy, Hypnotherapy, Indian head massage, Inter-faith group, Iona group, Kinaesiology, Massage, Meridian therapy, Metamorphic technique, Naturotherapy, Nutritional therapy, Osteopathy, Pagan activities, Palm readings, Play therapy, Psychic consultancy, Psychotherapy, Psychosynthesis, Rebirthing, Reflexology, Reiki, Relaxation therapy, Sai Baba group, Sea of Faith group, Shiatsu, Spinal touch therapy, Tai chi/Chi kung, Taizé singing, Tarot card reading, True Vision group, Universal Peace dancing, Vision therapy, Wild Women group, Women’s spirituality group, yoga. (Heelas et al.: 2005, 156–7)

The researchers found that in 2001 there were 2,207 in church on a typical Sunday and 600 participated in the therapies and practices listed above. Kendal’s population in 1999 was 37,150, and so this means that 7.9 per cent of the population were found in churches on a Sunday, while 1.6 per cent were reported to be taking part weekly in alternative or holistic spiritualities. In Kendal, at least, the Christian churches and the new spiritualities inhabit two distinct worlds, with little blurring of the boundaries and few participants engaging in both domains. Since the 1970s, the Lancaster academics argue, the holistic milieu has been growing, even as congregational participation has declined. This milieu is now bigger in Kendal than every denomination except Anglicanism, which as we have seen, has suffered severe and prolonged decline. Projecting from these trends, the Kendal project predicted that, in 40 years time, there would be about 3–4 per cent in the congregational domain. The religious type they designate ‘religion of humanity’, which is non-experiential liberal Christianity, can be expected to decline to 1 per cent, and this will only be partly counterbalanced by fairly stable numbers, and in some cases moderate growth, in Christian experientialism (charismatic and Pentecostal). As for

Is There a Spiritual Revolution? the holistic milieu, current growth patterns suggest that in 40 years time they will enjoy a similar level of participation, at 3–4 per cent of Kendal’s population. The combination of current data and these projections generated for the Kendal team a provocative question: perhaps the future of religion was not extinction, but a dramatic reconfiguration. Survey after survey shows that increasing numbers of people now prefer to call themselves ‘spiritual’ rather than ‘religious’ . . . A cursory glance around the local bookshop or a stroll around the shopping centre leaves little doubt that Christianity has a new competitor in ‘the spiritual marketplace’ . . . Though it is still important to attend to the decline of traditional religion in western societies, we can no longer evade the challenge of assessing and explaining the growth of such ‘spirituality’. What exactly is it? How significant is its growth? Is it altering the whole shape of the sacred landscape in the West? Are we living through a spiritual revolution? (Heelas et al.: 2005, 1)

Heelas and Woodhead argue that the kind of religion that is doing least well, that is liberal Christianity, pays least attention to unique subjectivities. The forms of Christianity that do best in the contemporary West address unique subjectivities, but they continue to function within a ‘life-as’ or ‘role-enforcing’ frame. By ‘life-as’ Heelas and Woodhead mean that this kind of religion is understood to require conformity to external obligations – submission to God and perhaps to the church, together with a duty to serve the poor. Even in its experiential forms, traditional Christianity is oriented to duty. Moreover subjectivization – individual charismatic or mystical experiences – is moderated and interpreted in the light of the authoritative teachings of Scripture and/or tradition, combined with this call to service. Experiential religion is set within a framework of predetermined givens for how the believer’s life should be conducted. The contrast that Heelas and Woodhead propose with life-as religion is subjective life spirituality. The holistic milieu emphasizes holistic well-being, drawing upon an ‘inner life force’ rather than a transcendent ‘God out there’. The approach is experiential and therapeutic, esteeming wholeness rather than sacrifice. The orientation therefore corresponds with client-centred approaches that have become normative in Western culture – learner-centred education, patient-centred treatments, customer-focussed railway services (allegedly) and so on. Heelas and Woodhead contrast role-enforcing emphases in traditional religion with freedom-affirming priorities in the new spiritualities. Where experiential forms of traditional religion prefer to normativize

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Secularization and Its Discontents subjectivities, locating individual experience within a standardized interpretative framework, the holistic milieu affirms a ‘sacralization of unique subjectivities’. This series of contrasts indicates, according to Heelas and Woodhead, why organized religion is giving way to individual spirituality. They further identify several cultural shifts. First, following Charles Taylor there has been a ‘massive subjective turn’ in contemporary culture (Taylor: 1992; 2002; Heelas et al.: 2005, 2–5). Individualized epistemology – it seems right or true to me – has taken centre stage in much popular discourse concerning ethics and religion. This is accompanied by the individualized validation of religious convictions through spiritual experiences. Personal judgment and experience are the primary arbiters of spiritual validity. A clear cultural parallel can be drawn with Philip Hammond’s (1992) study of American Christianity, in which he argued that a novel emphasis upon personal autonomy has become the dominant force in religious beliefs and practices, overturning the parish or community of faith as the centre of gravity. A religion of personal choice has replaced a religion of communal givens. In line with his analysis of the rising tide of individualism in Western culture, this trend was anticipated by Durkheim: And not only are these individual religions very common historically, some people today wonder if they are not likely to become the dominant form of religious life, and if some day the last remaining cult will be the one that each person freely practises for himself within his own conscience. (Durkheim: 1912, ET 2001, 44)

A prime example of this new mood of openness to spiritual wisdom, while retaining autonomous control, is Jonny Wilkinson, quoted in The Times shortly before the Rugby Union World Cup Final in 2007. Wilkinson’s perspective is indicative of the extent to which a spiritual quest culture is no longer solely for the quirky, but has become mainstream. The key for me, therefore, was understanding that the mind is something you have to gain control over . . . Some of my reading was business-related, about the principles of successful living, some of it is understanding the brain and how it works and quite a lot has been more philosophical. I have, for example, learnt a lot from the doctrines of Buddhism. Don’t get me wrong. Don’t think: ‘Jonny’s now a Buddhist’. I am not. I have just been finding a direction, learning different ways of looking at life and taking bits I could use and discarding bits I could not. It has taken me everywhere. I’m trying to think for the moment right now. (The Times, 20 October 2007)

Is There a Spiritual Revolution? Second, there has been a rejection of associational religion: the new spiritualities represent an à la carte range of commodified options for the individual religious consumer. This decline in associational behaviour is a broadly social rather than a specifically religious phenomenon, which was studied by Robert Putnam (2000) through the metaphor of American men ‘bowling alone’ rather than joining bowling teams. Putnam argues that social capital is in decline when intensifying individualism discredits associational values. As people become less inclined to join clubs or churches, they also become less likely to participate as volunteers in their local community. Membership of charities and political parties also shifts its focus: ‘mail order members’ join because of a fashionable project or a charismatic personality, but all too readily lose interest. Committed participation for life appears to have become an obsolete concept, perhaps in part because of time pressures, in part because identity itself has become more provisional and transitory – what Giddens (1991) has called the ‘reflexive project of the postmodern self ’. The rejection of associational religion therefore represents a broader social transition with religious consequences. This is particularly problematic for the traditional free churches, for whom participative membership is a primary generator of religious capital. It is these congregations, for example the Methodists and URC, which have the highest age profile of current membership (English average: 45; Methodist and URC: 55) and therefore face the prospect of the most rapid decline in the coming decades. Third, a hermeneutic of suspicion has emerged towards organized religion, its institutions, creeds and dogmas. The holistic milieu expressly favours individual spirituality, experience and intuition. This orientation found an early twentieth century champion in William James (1987). In his ground-breaking Gifford lectures first published in 1902, James argued that the authentic intensity of direct religious experience deserved study in its own right as the primary data that are inevitably diluted and distorted through the power-broking of religious institutions. Inevitably James’ account of religion has been criticized (Taylor: 2002) as one-sided, hostile to systematic theology and religious tradition, and failing to recognize the communal aspects of religion – both the internal dynamics of the community of faith and the religious orientation to compassionate service and social justice. However valid the critique of James’ work, it remains true that his prioritization of the individual and his diminution of the institutional and doctrinal have come of age in the holistic milieu. What James proposed as an innovative orientation has become second nature

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Secularization and Its Discontents in the prevailing culture of postmodernity. For participants in the holistic milieu, self-constructed spirituality is esteemed, while ‘pre-packaged’ religion is viewed with suspicion. Fourth, as we discussed previously, women have always been the primary participants in religion. However, in the context of feminism and the rise of alternative spiritualities, women are increasingly doing religion for themselves. The Kendal Project estimated that women constitute 80 per cent of active participants and 80 per cent of practitioners in the holistic milieu. It remains to be seen whether the feminist revolution has its primary religious impact in the context of the holistic milieu. Now that more women are being ordained in the Church of England than men, it seems inconceivable that the church will not increasingly encounter a religious revolution of its own.

4.2 Theoretical engagement with subjective spiritualities and neo-paganism Prior to the Kendal Project, Paul Heelas wrote a highly respected study of New Age spiritualities (Heelas: 1996. See also Heelas: 2008). He traced the origins of the movement in exhaustive detail, but what is of most significance for this present chapter is his account of distinctive New Age emphases. Where previous studies had described a smorgasbord of diverse beliefs and practices, Heelas claimed that an underlying continuity could be detected. He described New Age as a variety of forms of ‘self-spirituality’, concerned with transforming the inner life by unlocking spiritual potential. This immanent force within is often variously considered to be constrained by the ego, with echoes of Freud, or by capitalist dehumanizing excess, echoing Marx. The authority of the self is affirmed, with a strong emphasis on detraditionalization. The liberation of untapped higher potential is conceived as self-discovery and enhancement, rather than operating with any sense of repentance and salvation as divine gifts from outside the human self. The long shadows cast by Augustine over Western European religion – the inescapability of human sinfulness, salvation as a gift from God to the undeserving, no salvation outside the church, submission to God as true rest and freedom – have been swept aside by the new dawn of self-spirituality. Participants are able to achieve selfimprovement through voluntary experimentation on various spiritual paths.

Is There a Spiritual Revolution? What appeals to Heelas is the emergence of a positive, life-affirming, eco-aware, feminist-conscious spirituality that insistently refuses to succumb to the iron cage of constrictive materialism. . . . the argument is that the ‘turn’ to the autonomous self and its subjectivities . . . favours those forms of spirituality which resource one’s subjectivities and treats them as a fundamental source of significance, and undermines those forms of religion which do not . . . As the assumptions, beliefs, and values of the autonomous self oriented toward the subjective life become more widespread in Western cultures, there are progressively fewer traditionalists, conformists, or conservatives who are willing to remain with places of religious worship, let alone to start attending. (Heelas: 2006, 58)

When I have examined New Age promotional literature and magazine with groups of students, some have shared Heelas’ appreciation for the romantic and counter-cultural assertion of transcendent values. Others have been more inclined to dismiss New Age as a plethora of pseudo-scientific assertions combined with a narcissistic, self-indulgent, superficial spirituality. Both aspects are frequently prominent, sometimes within a single publication. Christopher Partridge (2004a; 2004b, 2 vols) produced a similarly ambitious study of neo-paganism. He employs the phrase ‘re-enchantment of the West’ to signify the end of Weberian modernity as an age of ‘disenchantment’. Partridge argues for the emergence of a new popular culture, influenced by the occult – an ‘occulture’ in his terminology. For Partridge, ‘occult’ signifies not a specific emphasis on Satanism, but a broad openness to transcendental realities. This, he argues, represents a decisive cultural turn for the West, in which ancient spiritual resources of Western paganism are synthesized with Eastern spiritualities and contemporary emphases on feminism and eco-spirituality. According to Partridge, while the middle aged gravitate to New Age spiritualities, young adults are drawn more often towards neo-paganism. Occulture, alternative spiritualities and ‘soft religion’ will increase in significance in the West. That this is so will become more evident as the twenty-first century progresses. (Partridge: 2004a, 188)

Partridge critiques Steve Bruce, arguing that classical secularization presents a prescriptive account of the necessary demise of religion. Partridge observes that while Bruce denies that his analysis is linear and prescriptive, in reality both charges are legitimate. He draws, by contrast, upon Stark’s redefinition of

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Secularization and Its Discontents secularization as a cyclical continuum rather than a linear, monolithic and specifically derived from modernization: . . . we argue that secularization is nothing new, that it is occurring constantly in all religious economies. Through secularization, sects are tamed and transformed into churches. Their initial otherworldliness is reduced and worldliness is accommodated . . . thus we regard secularization as the primary dynamic of religious economies, a self-limiting process that engenders revival (sect formation) and innovation (cult formation). (Stark and Bainbridge: 1985, 429–30)

Stark and Bainbridge undoubtedly identify a recurrent trend among religious organizations, which had previously been recognized by Weber in terms of the ‘routinization of charisma’. However, it is misleading or even sententious to describe this form of institutional ossification as ‘secularization’. This suggests that the entire process of religious decline can be understood in these cyclical terms, and fails to acknowledge the acute pressures and transitions that religion has faced in the context of modernity, particularly in Western Europe. In reality, there is a cyclical pattern of institutional decline and religious innovation that runs in parallel with the impact of rationalization, structural differentiation and individualization. This new openness to the spiritual, whether in terms of a spiritual quest culture, paranormal realities or a pan-entheistic emphasis upon the divine inter-penetration of the material world, is, for Partridge, an undeniable reality of contemporary popular culture. The study of religion and popular culture has become a significant centre of academic enquiry in recent years, notably in the work of Gordon Lynch (Lynch: 2004; Lynch: 2007a; 2007b). In particular, Partridge examines popular culture as the locus of re-enchantment – music, TV and movies all provide instances of the rising tide of occulture. Some of this is accidental: the producer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer considered himself an ‘angry atheist’, but the series opened up a new interest in the paranormal, particularly among its young adult viewers (Partridge: 2004a). A return of the gods is not the same as a revitalization of Christianity. For Partridge the Christian faith has become, in the West, too closely aligned with the power centres of the fading culture of early modernity to achieve new popularity and influence in the context of the rising occulture. Even though Christianity has lost much of its former establishment status, it has become ‘fair game’ and a legitimate target of denigration. This is reflected, Partridge argues, in the changing emphasis of vampire films. In the early to mid-twentieth century, the mere brandishing of a wooden cross was enough to make Count

Is There a Spiritual Revolution? Dracula quail. By the late twentieth century, the Christian symbols were considered impotent or obsolete in any conflict with the forces of darkness. The new openness to spirituality is often accompanied by an emphatic dismissal of the value or authentic spiritual significance of institutional Christianity. Partridge concluded that the evidence he had accrued of an occultural re-enchantment of the West provides no basis for any reasonable expectation of Christian revival.

4.3 Critiques of the alleged revolution We begin this account of those sceptical of the alleged spiritual revolution by turning to the methodological critique of the Kendal Project. First, the study failed to compare like with like: Sunday attendance is hardly an equivalent measure of participation to visiting a holistic practitioner once a week. To be sure, the Project recognized that monthly church attendance tends to exceed weekly figures by a multiplier of 1.5 (Heelas et al.: 2005, 47), but midweek religious activities often encompass a significant number who do not attend on Sundays, typically including women’s groups for various age groups, youth groups and elderly lunch clubs. On this basis, every user of a religious activity (however loosely defined) throughout the week at the local churches should have been included in the survey, since the providers, just like providers in the holistic milieu, will have defined these activities as Christian or religious. Second, the holistic milieu was given such a loose definition that, in the list cited above, a number of more or less mainstream therapies, such as osteopathy, were designated part of the milieu simply on the basis that the practitioners chose to describe them as in some sense ‘spiritual’. This tells us more about the evolving meaning of ‘spiritual’ – indicating a positive assertion of therapy for the whole person – rather than specifically the breadth of new spiritualities. This is reflected in the fact that 55 per cent of participants did not describe their activities as ‘spiritual’. It seems difficult to argue for a spiritual revolution when more than half of all the participants reject the very notion that anything spiritual is going on (Bruce: 2006). These criticisms indicate that the Kendal Project was unable to establish an incontestable comparison of relative levels of attendance in the two domains. On the one hand, according to Woodhead, it probably underestimated the level of participation in the new spiritualities which may have been nearer

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Secularization and Its Discontents 3 per cent. On the other hand, the Project almost certainly underestimated the reach and durability of the pervasive cultural influence of Christianity in the form, in Davie’s phrase, of vicarious religion. In particular, the cultural penumbra of a state church in Western Europe extends far wider into society than the head-count of Sunday congregations might suggest. For example, there remains a very large number who still opt for a Christian funeral. The 1999/2000 European Values Survey (Halman: 2001) indicated that 78.5 per cent in Britain thought it important to hold a religious service to mark a funeral. This compared with 58.9 per cent for rites of birth and 68.6 per cent for rites of marriage, and the European average for funerals of 82.3 per cent. However, the Church of England’s own data reveal that the church conducted 46 per cent of all funerals in 2000 and this declined to 41 per cent by 2007.1 Even though this evidence demonstrates evident decline even in Christian funerals, we can still build on Davie and Hervieu-Léger and argue that the continuing wider cultural penetration of the churches in England, and still above all the Church of England, was significantly underestimated by the Kendal Project. It is very difficult, of course, to quantify and determine the significance and durability of this wider circle of those who in some sense believe without belonging, or perhaps in some cases, belong without believing. In recognizing the wider impact of the Christian church, beyond its Sunday congregations, we should be careful not to neglect the wider impact, similarly difficult to quantify, of the holistic milieu. The Kendal Project may therefore have underestimated the oblique and extended reach of both traditional Christianity and the new spiritualities. There is undoubtedly a penumbra to the holistic milieu, comprising all who have been imperceptibly but increasingly influenced the post-secular zeitgeist, and the rise of the holistic milieu appears to be continuing. This remains the case, even though Heelas and Woodhead faced an intractable methodological impasse in attempting to compare the relative proportions of weekly participants in Christianity and the holistic milieu, and Partridge failed to provide sufficient quantitative data by which to measure the enduring wider impact of what he claims to be the emergent occulture within the mass media. A further critique of the holistic milieu is that it appears primarily to be a single generational phenomenon. 75 per cent of participants in Kendal were 45 and over, with just 1 per cent in their 20s. In short we may be seeing not only the ageing of the New Age (Heelas and Seel: 2003), which is described by Bruce as a failed experiment in re-enchantment (Bruce: 2002, ch. 4, ‘The Failure of

Is There a Spiritual Revolution? the New Age’, 75–105), but also the ageing of the holistic milieu among the younger non-affiliating neo-pagans who have no desire to identify with the increasingly passé label ‘New Age’. New spiritualities could be interpreted as an activity unique to the baby boomer generation – a return in midlife to the spiritual quest that the hippies and other baby boomers shelved at the end of the 1960s. On the other hand, this could indicate an age-related phenomenon rather than one confined to the single generation of ageing hippies, with people having more time for spirituality in midlife, when the pressures of parenthood and their first career have eased. Jung certainly claimed that religious enquiry became more prominent for many adults in the second half of life: During the past thirty years, people from all the civilized countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients . . . Among all my patients in the second half of life – that is to say, over thirty-five – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook. This of course has nothing whatever to do with a particular creed or membership of a church. (Jung: 2001, 234)

What does seem clear is that New Age and the broader and possibly more durable holistic milieu face two particular limitations because of their emphasis upon intense individualism. First, there is a crisis of socialization. Sustainable religions need to incorporate adult converts and transmit the faith to the children of participants through activities that perform the faith and enact a sense of social or sub-cultural cohesion. Where the individual is elevated at the expense of the communal, it is reasonable to anticipate two problems: tentative adopters of holistic spiritual practices may find it easy to drop out, because there is no social structuring to sustain involvement; and the children of these participants, validating individual choice above tradition and institution, may be socialized to leave rather than continue to utilize the forms of the holistic milieu in which their parents participate. Second, precisely because the New Age and subsequently emergent holistic milieu provide commodified spiritual resources for individual consumers, there is little prospect of an impact in public life. Bruce has drawn a stark contrast between nineteenth century evangelicalism in Britain and contemporary New Age.

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Secularization and Its Discontents It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the civilization of industrial society owes a great deal to committed Christians. The ending of slavery, limitations on the use of women and children in factories, controls on exploitation of workers, the construction of decent housing for workers, improvements in prisons, penny savings banks, mutual insurance, workers’ educational institutes, public schooling for the poor – all of these were the result of philanthropic activity by people who were driven by the related ideas that we could hardly expect the poor to be concerned about their souls when their bodies were sore oppressed and that a society that claimed to be Christian could not also be barbarous. Against that example, the social impact of New Age seems trivial . . . (Bruce: 2007, 43)

While Heelas, Woodhead and Partridge interpret the rise of new spiritualities in terms of a revolution or re-enchantment that overturns the secular paradigm, Bruce (2002; 2007) argues that the data permit an entirely different interpretation. Since the holistic milieu provides religion strictly for the individual and in the private sphere, it can be interpreted as the repositioning of marginalized religion precisely within the confines that secularism dictates. If religion cannot be entirely eliminated, at least it can function in private, between consenting adults, in forms that are inclined neither to intrude upon others with a call to salvation, nor to press for the public adoption of its moral convictions. Far from a spiritual revolution, this could be described as the spiritual residue of secularized religion in terminal decline, individualized, detraditionalized, desocialized, commodified and privatized to the point of being no more than a marginal and residual presence in the wider culture. Occultural themes may have returned to popular television, but no culture has ever been more indifferent to the teachings of world religions in general and Christianity in particular. We have identified several different possibilities for the holistic milieu. It may be a single generational phenomenon, on the way to extinction. It may indicate an emergent spiritual revolution that has begun to gather momentum. It may be an interstitial phase in the re-enchantment of the West, to be surpassed perhaps by forms of eco-feminist neo-paganism. It may represent a Jungian return to religious discourse in midlife, in a newly pluralistic and commodified form. Or it may represent a spiritual residue, the marginal interest in the non-material found around the edges of a culture that, on the whole, has found it remarkably easy to become quickly indifferent not only to the demands, warnings and offers of salvation, but also to the holistic lifestyle aspirations promoted in the contemporary religious marketplace. More research is required to clarify the enduring significance, if any, of the holistic milieu.

Is There a Spiritual Revolution?

4.4 The reconfiguration of religion The new terminology of ‘spiritual revolution’ and ‘re-enchantment’ indicates a growing level of dissatisfaction with classical secularization theory. This is no longer the case solely in the context of the new American paradigm of religion or global studies that identify Euro-secularity as the consequence of one particular form of modernity in reaction against the previous power of the dominant churches of Christendom. Among British and European scholars there is a growing conviction that classical secularization theory was too dogmatic, too prescriptive and may even have been a totalizing metanarrative of modernity, often with a subtextual preference for secularity. Heelas, Woodhead and Partridge all affirm the continued resilience of religion, albeit reconstituted as self-spiritualities, even though they conclude that the future of religion in Western Europe is likely to be increasingly post-Christian. The question inevitably arises, does this represent a theoretical shift grounded in empirical data, or does it represent a passing academic fashion of reaction against the former consensus, which still retains the greater credibility? The terminology is diverse and overstated. To speak of a spiritual revolution is surely hyperbole. If there has been a revolution in the past 150 years, it has been secular. Likewise, to speak of the sacralization or re-enchantment of the West is to exaggerate the degree of cultural change. Berger (1999), in recanting his former allegiance to the secularization thesis, argued that only in Western Europe and the Western Academy did the world seem post-religious. He therefore concluded that the secularization thesis, at least in it hard, prescriptive form, falsified reality. Stark and Bainbridge (1985) proposed that secularization is a self-limiting process: it is only possible for a culture to move so far in this direction before innate religious instincts resurface. This has been critiqued in Western Europe because the long-term decline of the Christian churches should theoretically have made Europe long-since a hotbed of innovative religious cults. It may be that we do not yet have a sufficiently sophisticated model to take account of the interplay of the various dynamics: the secularizing tendencies for public life inherent in modernity; the degree of alienation from organized religion in Western Europe that has resulted from the previous dominance of the official churches; the hostility to religion caused by religious ethical conservatism in the context of a new morality that is feminist and pro-gay; increased scepticism towards religion generated by the globalized pluralism of the world religions that are now present in Western Europe with greater prominence than ever before; heightened suspicion of all

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Secularization and Its Discontents religious dogmatism, and even of all religion in the context of the ‘new atheism’ (Stenger: 2009), generated by the Islamist terrorism of 9/11 and 7/7, and perhaps also by George Bush’s crusading rhetoric, which is often read in Europe as the unreflexive imperialism of Christian – or indeed Evangelical – America. For Berger and Stark, as for Jung, there is an intrinsically religious dimension to human existence. Perhaps Weber’s wistfulness faced with the iron cage of modernity and the disenchantment of the world reflected something irretractable in the human condition: a quest for ultimacy, significance, meaning and hope that cannot be fulfilled within the confines of rationalistic modernity or sublimated lifelong by the latest innovations in consumer capitalism. None of these possibilities legitimises the rather grandiose language of revolution and re-enchantment. Nonetheless, perhaps Comte was right to recognize that secular positivism was insufficient to replace what religion had previously supplied, even if his solution of creating an atheistic church of positivism was both eccentric and unsustainable. The rise of alternative spiritualities certainly suggests that Durkheim was right to observe that new gods will emerge as old ones die, even if in post-Durkheimian multi-culturalism no single ‘new god’ would be able provide social cohesion across the proliferating and hybridizing market place of many religions and none. It seems clear that the holistic milieu represents for participants a reaffirmation of the spiritual quest, the intuitive and the priority of religious experience over dogma, even if at least at its margins the world of alternative spiritualities exemplifies the irrational excesses of postmodernity. Perhaps there may be a spiritual revolution in due course, but it is surely premature to make any such claim. The European Values Survey (Halman: 2001) provides invaluable insights into contemporary European morality and religious orientations. Throughout the survey there are fascinating national variations, and in the following data I will refer to Great Britain as a relatively religious northern European country, making comparisons with France which has a longstanding history of secularity and Poland as a country where national and religious identities have continued to be relatively closely intertwined, but where hostility to the former Communist government will have coloured social ethics in ways that are in tension with loyalty to Catholic teaching. The following data represent what people in Great Britain think that many or almost all of their compatriots do: 64 per cent cheat on tax (European average: 64.7 per cent, France: 39.7 per cent, Poland: 69.2 per cent).

Is There a Spiritual Revolution? 63.3 per cent take marijuana (European average: 33 per cent, France: 30.95 per cent, Poland: 36.5 per cent). 75.7 per cent drop litter (European average: 60.9 per cent, France: 45.7 per cent, Poland: 80.7 per cent). 76.7 per cent speed in built-up areas (European average: 63.2 per cent, France: 64.1 per cent, Poland: 49 per cent). 67.7 per cent have casual sex (European average: 47.4 per cent, France: 32.8 per cent, Poland: 32.6 per cent).

Although these results could of course mean that British respondents are either more honest or more inclined to exaggerate, at face value the rise of ethical autonomy means that, notwithstanding the higher than average European rates of CCTV surveillance and imprisonment, Britons are significantly more inclined to disregard legal restrictions on individual behaviour. We perceive ourselves to be a nation with much higher levels, compared with other Europeans’ self-perceptions, of speeding, littering, drug taking and casual sex. When it comes to religious concepts, 77.4 per cent of Europeans believe in God, compared with 71.8 per cent in Great Britain, 97.3 per cent in Poland and 61.5 per cent in France. 53.3 per cent believe in life after death (58.3 per cent in Great Britain, 80.4 per cent in Poland and 44.7 per cent in France). 46.3 per cent believe in heaven (55.8 per cent in Great Britain, 79.8 per cent in Poland and 31.2 per cent in France). However, only 33.9 per cent believe in hell (35.3 per cent in Great Britain, 65.6 per cent in Poland and 19.6 per cent in France), whereas reincarnation is believed in by 24.1 per cent. When asked to define the nature of the transcendent, 40.7 per cent opted for a personal God, 33.2 per cent for a spirit or life force, 10.9 per cent for no spirit or life force and 15.1 per cent did not know. This compares with the following ratings for a personal God (Great Britain: 31 per cent, Poland: 82.7 per cent, France: 21.9 per cent), a spirit or life force (Great Britain: 40.1 per cent, Poland: 10.1 per cent, France: 32.1 per cent) and no spirit or life force (Great Britain: 10.2 per cent, Poland: 1.7 per cent, France: 20.1 per cent). 66.7 per cent described themselves as ‘religious’ (Great Britain: 41.6 per cent, Poland: 94.4 per cent, France: 46.6 per cent) and 5.1 per cent considered themselves ‘convinced atheists’ (Great Britain 5 per cent, Poland: 1.2 per cent, France 14.9 per cent). As for religious practices, 60.6 per cent make time for prayer, meditation or contemplation (49.8 per cent in Great Britain, 87.1 per cent in Poland and 41 per cent in France). Horoscopes are consulted at least once a month by 40.4 per cent, and 19 per cent have a lucky charm. 57.8 per cent find comfort

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Secularization and Its Discontents and strength from religion (37.4 per cent in Great Britain, 82 per cent in Poland and 34.7 per cent in France). When asked to rate the importance of God in their lives on a scale of 1 (not at all important) to 10 (very important), the European mean was 5.98 (4.92 in Great Britain, 8.39 in Poland and 4.4 in France). Several striking points can be drawn from these data. First, religious beliefs show high levels of resilience, not merely in Poland but even in France. Second, there is evidence to support the emergence of post-Christian rather more than specifically non-atheistic patterns of belief: absolute atheism remains a minority conviction, but belief in a personal God has lost ground to belief in a transcendent life force. Third, while individual religious practices remain fairly high, comfort and strength is only found from religion by just over a third of the population in Great Britain and France, where God is not rated as particularly important in people’s lives. In sum, the data indicate the shaping force of secularization, the continued resilience of traditional religious beliefs and practices, the limited foothold of absolutist atheism and the emergence of post-Christian or post-theist spiritualities and attendant convictions. These contrary indicators point to the fact that Europe is presently in a transitional or hybridizing condition, in which it is implausible to adhere to any single metanarrative: Western Europe has not yet shown a convincing appetite for an absolute secularity; shows no prospects of a resacralization in terms of Christendom despite the continued residual resilience of inherited beliefs and practices; and yet nor is there compelling evidence for the birth of new gods or a widespread embrace of the holistic milieu that would make claims for a present-day spiritual revolution to be persuasive rather than hyperbolic. It is certainly premature to suggest that the Christian church will necessarily play no significant part in the future configurations of religion in the Western world, even if the writing is on the wall for some of its more institutionalized forms. Of all the world religions, Christianity and Buddhism have proved most capable of mutating into indigenized forms: Buddhism because of the ‘two-truths theory’ and ‘skillful means’, Christianity because of the central tenets of the incarnation, equal standing for all ‘in Christ’, and the universal gift of the Holy Spirit. Christianity is the most globalized of all the world religions – see for example the surging growth of indigenous African Pentecostalism – and Buddhism is presently the most accessible form of Easternized religion for post-theist Westerners. The rise of the new atheism may appear to contradict claims for the resilience of religion. Ludovic Kennedy’s (1999) farewell to God preceded the

Is There a Spiritual Revolution? new century ascent of atheism in the bestseller lists, but even then the main lines of argument were familiar and long-standing, retracing ground that had been pioneered by David Hume’s scepticism (1748; 1779) , Immanuel Kant’s repudiation of the philosophical proofs of God (1781; 1793), Bertrand Russell’s (1927) rejection of Christianity, A. J Ayer’s (1948) logical positivism that a priori excluded the metaphysical as beyond empirical verification and Anthony Flew’s (Feinberg: 1968) critique of the unfalsifiability of claims for the existence of God. However, it was after 9/11 that atheism became more emphatic in its polemics against both fundamentalism and faith. This in part reflected a moral panic that far from functioning as a Durkheimian source of social cohesion, religion in the global village of divergent social priorities had become a decisive source of conflict and legitimated of global terror. Sam Harris (2004; 2006) led the way with a post 9/11 denunciation of religion as the enemy of reason and followed this with a letter to America inviting the nation to leave behind its Christian identity. For Harris moderate religion and religious tolerance both require rejection, since they give space and opportunity to militant fundamentalism. . . . religious moderates are the bearers of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others. I hope to show that the very ideal of religious tolerance – born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God – is one of the principle forces driving us toward the abyss. (Harris: 2004, 15)

Jason Long (2005) targeted what he termed ‘biblical nonsense’, dismissing as folly any claim that the Bible could possibly be an authoritative book of divine revelation. Daniel Dennett (2006) argued that the phenomenon of religion was entirely intelligible without any reference to God or divine revelation. Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (2006), which had sold a remarkable 8.5 million copies by the end of 2009, built on his longstanding defence of Darwinism against its religious despisers (1986) to target the irrationality of faith. The God Delusion has more than one target, moving between faith in general, fundamentalism in particular, and even the theology faculty at Oxford. Published the following year, Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007a) – in the UK edition the subtitle was the more muted ‘The Case Against Religion’ – reached number two on the Amazon.com bestseller list within a week of publication and topped the New York Times bestseller list within a month. It is an uncompromising attack on religion as the

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Secularization and Its Discontents source of all fundamentalism and the inspiration of much human excess. In the same year Hitchens (2007b) also published a popular anthology of atheist writings. Victor Stenger took up the cause, insisting that the new atheism repudiates religion because of its fundamental conflict with science and reason, since the hypothesis of God is not merely incapable of empirical verification but ‘science shows that God does not exist’ (Stenger: 2007). Continuing this rising tide of publications, John Loftus (2008) and Dan Barker (2008) described how they moved from being Christian preachers to atheism, and 50 Voices of Disbelief presented leading academics and novelists accounts of their personal atheistic conclusions (Blackford and Schuklenk: 2009). Stenger sums up the clarion call of the new atheism that, like many religions, is convertive, confident in its certainties and exclusive in its claims: Faith is absurd and dangerous and we look forward to the day, no matter how distant, when the human race finally abandons it . . . . Religion is an intellectual and moral sickness that cannot endure forever if we believe at all in human progress . . . If you are a theist or other believer, throw off your yoke and join us. If you are an agnostic, look at the evidence and see that we do in fact know that God does not exist and join us. If you are an atheist who thinks we should work with moderate believers, look at the consequences of irrational thought and join us. (Stenger: 2009, 244)

Responses to the new atheism have been prolific, but have not struck the same heights in the bestseller lists or achieved the same acclamation from the metropolitan press. Alister McGrath claimed to have identified the ‘twilight of atheism’ (2004), and denounced the ‘Dawkins delusion’ and ‘atheist fundamentalism’ (2007; see also his dialogue with Dennett, Stewart: 2008). Keith Ward (2008) defended the probability of God and invited a hermeneutic of doubt towards Dawkins. Tina Beattie (2007) wrote of the war on religion and the twilight of reason, calling instead for a constructive dialogue between those who disagree. David Berlinski (2008) attacked the new atheism’s scientific pretensions as over-confident and over-dogmatic, and argued that belief in God is perfectly rational, even though without faith himself. And in surprising contrast with the confident knock-down arguments of the new atheism, Anthony Flew (2007) published his philosophical volte-face, and now argued in favour of theism. A sociology of the new atheism should begin by recognizing that much of this new phenomenon is unyieldingly dogmatic and vehemently hostile to

Is There a Spiritual Revolution? religion in all its forms and not merely to fundamentalism. In part this may reflect an entirely understandable ideological hardening in the aftermath of 9/11. A moral panic about the negative social capital of religion may have contributed to the extraordinarily high popularity of these books. It is too early to say whether dogmatic atheism will spread like wildfire or take its place in the marketplace of religious and non-religious ideas. What is striking is that the new atheism shares with fundamentalism an authoritarian dismissal of alternative views and a suspicion of dialogue or compromise. This may reflect the frustration of absolutist secularists faced with the resilience of religion and the rise of post-secularity. The European Values Survey (Halman: 2001) points to all these trends. The new atheism is a significant phenomenon in the religious and post-religious landscape of the early twentieth century. Like the holistic milieu, it is too early to determine whether this is a single generation phenomenon or the emergence of a lasting trend. Thus far, however, it is too early to declare with any certainty either an atheistic or a spiritual revolution. The religious marketplace of the twenty-first century seethes with contrary trends. Western Europeans seem generally content to have freed themselves from the inherited obligations of a monolithic, state-sponsored religion. But they do not yet seem to have settled for permanent and thoroughgoing dogmatic secularity. Perhaps it would be more precise in the present context, notwithstanding the clarion call of the new atheism, to designate the New Age milieu and the return of the spiritual to popular culture as symptomatic experiments in post-secularity. If dogmatic Euro-secularism can be interpreted as a Western reaction to the politico-ethnic construct of Christendom, a new culture may be emerging that is inclined to reject both forms of dogmatic certitude – enforced religion and imposed secularity.

4.5 Globalization and public religion In the final section of this chapter I want to indicate the possibility of a different form of spiritual revolution. We have recognized three forms of secularization: the decline in religious beliefs, the decline of religious practices and the decline of religion in public life. Their inter-relation is complex, sometimes with surprising results. Thus, while the American Constitution required the separation of church and state, American Presidents habitually utilize the language of faith. North American sociologists of religion may therefore take for

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Secularization and Its Discontents granted both this separation, and yet the presence of religious influences in public life. In the United Kingdom, by contrast, the presence of an established church is combined with a recent but overt suspicion of religion in public life, such that Tony Blair was expressly told by Alastair Campbell, his public relations supremo, ‘We don’t do God.’ After his retirement as Prime Minister, Blair stated in a BBC interview in November 2007 that British people generally view with suspicion politicians who talk publicly about their personal, religious commitment. Such talk is likely to generate scepticism or even cynicism, rather than be considered a credible indicator of genuine motivation for public service. From a British perspective, the decline in church attendance and the marginalization from public life seem two aspects of a single phenomenon. In the United States, the formal separation of church and state preceded an era of major growth in church affiliation, and has not resulted in the marginalization of the churches from public life. The current ambiguous connection between religion and public life was exemplified in two recent Prime Ministers. After the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher was allegedly furious when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, refused to make the official service an act of flag-waving patriotic triumphalism. For Thatcher, the church’s role in public life was apparently to conform unswervingly to the Government’s priorities. After Diana’s death, when Tony Blair expressed his sense of shock and loss, he assumed, whether spontaneously or with foresight, a quasi-high priestly role of articulating the feelings of the nation. It was a unifying expression of civic religion that no religious leader seemed any longer equipped to deliver. The British negotiation of religion and politics is a moderate version of a pattern repeated across Europe. Enlightened governments, sometimes explicitly republican, broke with the ancien regime and the previous power of the church. This is seen at its most rigorous in the French policy of laïcité, under which private religion has no entitlement to continued expression in public life. On the whole, British religious leaders have kept out of party politics, and it has usually been left to the Roman Catholics and evangelicals to take the lead on abortion, euthanasia and blasphemy. The Church of England has perhaps enjoyed greatest influence in recent decades when it has pressed for greater political efforts in inner city regeneration. Two problems have become prominent. First, the churches’ contribution has often seemed negative or repressive faced with the prospect of lifeenhancing medical technologies or the principles of freedom of speech and tolerance. Second, the churches’ contribution has been increasingly sullied

Is There a Spiritual Revolution? by the prolonged debates within Anglicanism about the ordination of women and gay clergy. Since these debates have long since been settled in the majority population, legally excluding all discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation, the church has appeared increasingly out of touch and reactionary. Religious people have often appeared to claim the authority of God to endorse antiquated moral convictions – patriarchal, misogynistic and homophobic. The continuing scandals of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, particularly where this has then been covered up by the church authorities, have added to the credibility gap of the church in public life. It hardly matters that the churches are by no means united in policies that are anti-women, anti-gay, anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia. The public impression is of the church in particular, and perhaps religions in general, as inevitably reactionary or even repressive institutions. These factors indicate a deepening rift between participants in traditional religions and contemporary morality, which may even result in a further diminished role for religion in public life. Privatized religion receives further support from those who understand religion in New Age terms as an essentially private and individualized spiritual quest, from which nothing should be imposed on anyone else. The continuing impact of Islamic fundamentalism appears to have further alienated secularized Westerners, not merely from religious terrorism or fundamentalism, but from religion in all its forms. The percentage of Britons who think that religion is intrinsically harmful stood in 2007 at 42 per cent – 35 per cent of women, 50 per cent of men (YouGov: 2007). In this context, some secular liberals will conclude that the toxic dogmas of religion are best kept as far away from power and public life as possible. Four lines of contrary argument can be developed to claim that religion may be making a return to public life. Casanova (1994) argued that religion has refused to accept an absolutist public–private dichotomy and from the 1980s there have been various notable renegotiations across the world seeking to re-assert a substantive public contribution. He studied examples of Protestants and Catholics in countries as diverse as Brazil, Spain, Poland and the United States, from liberation theology and Solidarity to the American Christian Right. Indeed, nineteenth century social reforms in Britain instigated by evangelicals demonstrate that a religious contribution in the public square can provide significant benefits to society. Such initiatives demonstrate that public religion has a great deal more to offer than mere sectarian selfinterest and attempted enforcement of sexual repression.

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Secularization and Its Discontents A cluster of episodes in February 2010 demonstrate the reassertion of religion in the British public sphere. On 1 February 2010 in a speech at the Vatican to bishops from England and Wales, the Pope condemned Harriet Harman’s proposed new Equality Law because ‘it actually violates the natural law.’ The next day Harman hit back by insisting that religious organizations should be required by law to comply fully with anti-discrimination policies in appointing to all posts except the ordained clergy. However, on 4 February she backed down from any further attempt to tighten legislation with reference to churches and other religious bodies. With Parliamentary time running out before the Spring election, and the Pope due to visit Britain in September 2010, Harman’s cabinet colleagues appeared to have over-ruled her and insisted this was not a time to court conflict with religious voters. On 5 February Pope Benedict XVI pressed further this traditionalist public theology, urging Scottish Roman Catholic bishops to resist the ‘increasing tide of secularism in your country’. He also affirmed ‘faith schools’ as a powerful contributor to social cohesion, and condemned Scottish initiatives to legalize assisted suicide. On 6 February, Tom Wright, then the Bishop of Durham which is the fourth most senior post in the Church of England, claimed that the anti-religious ‘myth’ of the Enlightenment had resulted in recent decades in a ‘lurch in a sea of amoralism’ and an unaccountable Prime Minister who had become an ‘absolute monarch’. Although he suggested the decline had begun under Margaret Thatcher, he condemned new Labour for erasing God from public life (The Times, 6 February 2010). On 10 February, the Church of England governing body, the General Synod, debated TV coverage of religion. The original motion had singled out the BBC, claiming that its TV schedule had ignored Good Friday in 2009, that its religious programming lacked innovation and marginalized religion in the schedule and that the BBC was alert to the inclusion of various minorities but was moving towards the exclusion of religion. This singling out of the BBC was rejected by Synod who then voted (267 to 4) to express ‘deep concern about the overall reduction in religious broadcasting across British television in recent years’.2 The BBC initially responded by claiming it had increased its coverage in recent years and Channel 4 asserted that religious programmes were ‘at the heart of its schedule’. However, the Daily Telegraph (13 February 2010) reported, ‘Output has fallen from 177 hours of religious programming on BBC television in 1987/88 to 155 hours in 2007/08 – a period during which the overall volume of programming has doubled.’ Aaqil Ahmed, the first Muslim head of religion at the BBC, who was appointed in 2009, claimed that in the ‘broader broadcasting ecology . . . everybody is

Is There a Spiritual Revolution? turning their back on religion, but we live in a time when the BBC isn’t doing that’.3 However, Ahmed accused the Church of England of living in the past and rejected any suggestion that the BBC should give preferential treatment to Christianity (Daily Telegraph, 6 February 2010). This cluster of incidents indicate a new assertiveness in European Christianity faced with the rising tides of secularization and secularism: Christendom strikes back. Notwithstanding Harman’s climbdown, forced by real politik, the church is unlikely through these forays to have changed new Labour’s religious attitudes, shifted BBC policy or influenced public opinion against assisted suicide, voluntary euthanasia or equal rights for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people. In fact this kind of reassertion of Christendom in public life is probably as effective as the occasional high profile conservative evangelical campaigns against a pornographic or allegedly blasphemous film. The general population as well as the metropolitan and intellectual elite are more than likely to be confirmed in their conviction that religious people in general and Christians in particular are prone to be reactionary, authoritarian and completely out of touch with the liberal secularity that prevails in contemporary Britain and Europe. In other words, although this cluster of events are symptomatic of the church’s attempts, assertive albeit clumsily impolitic, to recolonize the public square, just as Casanova argued, the impact among the majority population may actually be the reverse, inciting a more widespread distrust of church contributions to public life and a growing desire to resist any deprivatizaion of religion, preferring to see the church and all forms of religion excluded much more definitively from the public sphere. It would of course be quite wrong to suggest that all public theology is reactionary and authoritarian. That is simply not the case. My point is to indicate that these highly publicized incidents of deprivatization, while conforming in the short term to Casanova’s thesis, may actually result not in a reframing of public life but rather in a further marginalization of religion, considered unworthy or incapable of entering into contemporary inclusive and pluralistic public discourse as one voice among many. Casanova concluded that it is neither logical nor achievable any longer to exclude religion from the public square. He further proposed that disestablishment is the appropriate means of repudiating ecclesiastical claims of ‘monopolistic rights over a territory or particular privileges’ (Casanova: 2006, 21). Casanova (2006) later played down his argument for disestablishment as a personal preference rather than a logical and necessary consequence of a commitment to liberal and democratic pluralism.

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Secularization and Its Discontents A recent survey of English religious opinions (YouGov: 2007) found that 28 per cent thought that having an established church was a good thing (men: 25 per cent, women: 30 per cent, young adults, 18–29: 19 per cent), and 17 per cent thought it a bad thing (men: 22 per cent, women: 12 per cent, 18–29: 15 per cent). Perhaps most revealing, 46 per cent considered an established church a ‘matter of indifference to me’ (men: 46 per cent, women: 47 per cent, 18–29, 51 per cent). The fact that around half the population are indifferent suggests that disestablishment is even more unlikely that Christian revival. It seems that most people have not actively repudiated their inherited faith, they have merely drifted into indifferent disregard. Second, globalization has brought the world’s religions to the West. . . . what is certainly new in our global age is the simultaneous presence and availability of all world religions and all cultural systems . . . often detached from their temporal and spatial contexts, ready for flexible or fundamentalist individual appropriation. (Casanova: 2006, 18)

Secular Europeans may assume the public–private dichotomy as a given, an agreed separation of powers, which gives freedom of religion in the private sphere and freedom from religion – or at least freedom from excessive religious influence – in the public. Thus, for Europeans, critiquing religious excess through cartoons is legitimate behaviour. It may entail a juvenile assertion of freedom from old religious authorities, but it also enacts cultural priorities of freedom of speech and freedom to criticize and reject religion. The European settlement of church and state anticipates that religious leaders can be expected to criticize such a critique, but with moderation. In the case of the Danish cartoons of Mohammed (Jyllands-Posten, September 2005), the reproduction of the cartoons in various European countries represented a defiant assertion of freedom of speech and religion: hard-won cultural priorities were asserted against what was seen as an intimidatory over-reaction. For many Muslims, with no cultural history of a separation of the public and private or religion and the state, religion holds sway over a unified culture. The Danish cartoons therefore represented yet another anti-Islamic and blasphemous act. Apologies were demanded, death threats were made. The Danish flag appeared on the streets in many Islamic countries, in order to be burned by protesters. The clash of cultures was unmistakable. Similar tensions were apparent in November 2007, when a British teacher in Sudan, Gillian Gibbons, without any apparent thought for the possible

Is There a Spiritual Revolution? consequences, allowed her class to name a teddy bear ‘Mohammed’. She was arrested, threatened with the lash and imprisoned for 15 days for inciting religious hatred and insulting the Prophet. On 30 November Sudanese crowds took to the streets after Friday prayers, demanding a more severe punishment, some even declaring she should be killed. David Milliband, the UK Foreign Secretary, was at pains to emphasize Britain and Sudan’s mutual respect for one another’s religions and cultures. It was therefore left to the newspapers to state that, from a Western perspective, the arrest and trial were a grotesque over-reaction to what, in Archbishop Rowan Williams’ words, amounted to an unintentional ‘faux pas’. In contrast with a context where there is no division between the secular and sacred, the public and private, many Westerners will breathe a sigh of relief that here no religion has the power to impose its standards any longer with the force of law. Nonetheless, in the context of globalized Europe, religions that refuse to assent to post-enlightenment Western dualism are likely to become more assertive, and at least the more conservative forms of Christianity are sure to follow suit. We are witnessing the de-privatisation of religion in the modern world . . . religious traditions throughout the world are refusing to accept the marginal and privatised role which theories of modernity as well as theories of secularization had reserved for it. (Casanova: 1994, 6)

It will certainly not be possible in the coming years to ignore the various religious lobbies on sensitive issues. Some will doubtless propose a postcolonial critique of Euro-secularity as no more than one among many possible resolutions of the relationship of religious organizations and the state. This new assertiveness of religious interests in public life may exact an unintended price. Where British multiculturalism has thus far tended to affirm difference among the ethnic minorities, there is a rising concern to ensure that common values of British identity and citizenship are held by all and articulated within ethnic minorities by their religious leaders. As the public–private duality comes under stress, the government appears to be taking a greater interest in what religious organizations teach in private. Tolerant pluralism has been presented as prerequisite to the return of religion to the public square. Third, although the intense individualism and relativism of the holistic milieu have precluded coherent mobilization in the political sphere, the postenlightenment cultural shift with a new openness to the spiritual and nonrational has made a significant impact in terms of holistic approaches in

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Secularization and Its Discontents non-religious specialisms. Hospitals have developed inclusive policies for complimentary therapies; above all, women have persistently demanded more sympathetic approaches to childbirth, modifying the technology-driven ethos of labour wards. Educational institutions have commonly developed policies that state their commitment to promote the development of the whole person, including the spiritual dimension. Corporate training programmes have developed emphases on work–life balance, meditation as stress management and visualization techniques for a more profitable future. The language and ethos of the holistic milieu are penetrating the culture and subverting the separation of religion from the domains of education, medicine, business and politics. Religion may no longer have the power it once enjoyed (and some Christians, of course, were in the forefront of critiquing that power, even as others fought to hold onto it), but holistic and spiritual influence appear increasingly pervasive. Spirituality has re-permeated the public sphere, but in primarily individualistic and subjective categories. It is no longer reserved for the private domain, but this particular kind of return of public religion is likely to be self-limited and unable to make a significant contribution to political debate and the formation of public policy. Fourth, there is a sting in the tail of pluralism. Secular pluralism has affirmed the voice of the marginal, valuing difference. Ethnic minority religions have therefore been affirmed; many schools celebrate Diwali and Eid as well as Christmas. However, if religions are truly legitimated within a pluralistic context, they may quite reasonably claim a voice in public life, particularly if their culture or religion rejects the public–private dichotomy of secular modernity. Moreover, when other religions are offered this kind of respect – which is undoubtedly a critical factor in successful multiculturalism – the same respect will logically come to be extended to Christianity. At present, Christianity has for some comedians become the soft target of anti-religious jokes from those who dare not risk causing offence elsewhere. Pluralism may relativize the convictions of diverse religions, but it also validates minority voices in public life, including the Christian churches. This qualified rehabilitation to the public sphere is attended by new constraints. The European Values Survey (Halman: 2001) identified significant scepticism about the contribution of the churches, together with concern to limit their influence in public life. In Great Britain, 67.4 per cent think the churches are failing to give adequate answers to the moral problems and needs of the individual (France: 64.3 per cent, Poland: 35.5 per cent). 70 per cent

Is There a Spiritual Revolution? think the churches fail to address adequately problems of family life (France: 72.2 per cent, Poland: 36.1 per cent). 73 per cent think the churches fail to give adequate answers to contemporary social problems (France: 78.8 per cent, Poland: 60.8 per cent). Even in giving adequate answers to contemporary spiritual needs the churches are found wanting by 41.9 per cent in Great Britain (France: 44.6 per cent, Poland: 17.2 per cent). Given this high level of dissatisfaction with the churches’ social policies and spiritual provision, it is hardly surprising that the majority want to restrict religious leaders’ political influence. In Great Britain 69.6 per cent agree or agree strongly that religious leaders should not influence how people vote in elections (France: 86.2 per cent, Poland: 85.7 per cent). Similarly 65.2 per cent in Great Britain agree or agree strongly that religious leaders should not influence government decisions (France: 81.5 per cent, Poland: 80.9 per cent). These responses indicate that the levels of dissatisfaction with churches social policy and spiritual provision are similarly high in Great Britain and France, but the Poles are generally much more favourable towards their church, except concerning its contribution to contemporary social problems. However, approval for the separation of church and state, long embedded in France, is now found in Poland at almost exactly the same levels, despite the very significant contribution of the Polish Roman Catholic Church to the fight for Polish independence. In Great Britain the levels of opposition are lower, but two-thirds still want the churches to keep silent in elections and restrained from influence on government policy: if this conviction was enacted there would presumably be no place for bishops, or other religious leaders, in the House of Lords. Casanova has identified a return of religious to the public square, which could be interpreted as either a process of deprivatization or even a questioning of the privatization thesis. However, these data reveal that, at least in the European context, public opinion wants the contribution of religious leaders in the public square to be carefully circumscribed. The levels of esteem for the churches’ public policies are extremely low, and there are also high levels of dissatisfaction with their spiritual provision. Europe may not be unreservedly secularist, but there remains a crisis of credibility for religions, both in the public square and in their contribution to personal spirituality, individual needs and family life. Religion in Europe is not yet necessarily in a terminal condition, but the socio-cultural terrain is far from conducive to desecularization. Of course, as Casanova argued, public religion requires a negotiated return. The religious leaders whose influence extends successfully into public life will

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Secularization and Its Discontents need to have grounded their ethical and socio-political convictions in persuasive arguments as one perspective among many, rather than decreeing with authority from on high (see Habermas: 2006). The most persuasive contribution of religion in a pluralistic public square would therefore take the form of a ‘wisdom tradition’: articulating insights derived from religious convictions in such a way as to maximize accessibility and intelligibility to those outside one’s religious tradition. In the British context, this has perhaps been achieved most successfully by the Chief Rabbi (Sacks: 2003; 2005). Self-appointed leaders from the Religious Right may, whatever their religion, be the least adept at understanding and negotiating the opportunity for becoming a legitimated public voice. They are likely to be reluctant to re-conceive themselves as one voice among many, in the context of the new multiculturalism. Once again there is a logical paradox: pluralism re-validates the religious voices in the public square, even as it relativizes their perspectives. It can reasonably be proposed, moreover, that the logic of pluralism appears to require the abolition of the blasphemy law, which is inextricably tied to a single religion that can no longer claim exclusive rights over the British people. Neither the enforcement of allegiance to a religion nor prohibition of disrespect for any religion’s doctrinal tenets should be in the hands of an essentially secular state in a multi-faith society. The holistic milieu may be symptomatic of post-secular experimentation in the religious sphere, even as the emphasis on holistic approaches in the caring professions and even in some parts of the business world may be inculcating a post-enlightenment and post-secular synthesis. In political and public life, the nature and validity of religious contributions are much contested, but the public–private dichotomy appears to be breaking down and in need of reformulation. Western culture has recently been encountering several simultaneous trends: a resurgence of religions’ claims to legitimate access to the public square, combined with an increased openness to their presence in some quarters, and a hardening resistance in others to their disruptive intrusions and reactionary ethics. One thing has become clear: it is no longer possible to ignore religions in the public square (Davie: 2007). In this, to be sure, there has been a post-secular transition. This will inevitably not be universally welcomed, but this resilience and reassertion have proven to be beyond elimination, even if claims of ‘desecularization’ are excessive. The death of religion has been greatly exaggerated, but talk of a spiritual revolution is decidedly premature.

Is There a Spiritual Revolution?

Select Bibliography Berger, Peter L. (Ed.) (1999) The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, Washington, DC Grand Rapids, MI, Ethics and Public Policy Center. Bruce, Steve (2002) God Is Dead: Secularization in the West, Oxford, Blackwell. Bruce, Steve (2006) Secularization and the Impotence of Individualized Religion. The Hedgehog Review, 8, 35–45. Casanova, Jose (1994) Public Religions in the Modern World, Chicago; London, University of Chicago Press. Casanova, Jose (2006) Rethinking Secularization: A Global Comparative Perspective. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 7–22. Davie, Grace (2007) The Sociology of Religion, London, Sage. Durkheim, Emile (1912, ET 2001) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press. Giddens, Anthony (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge, Polity. Halman, Loek (Ed.) (2001) The European Values Study: A Third Wave, Tilburg, Tilburg. Hammond, Phillip E. (1992) Religion and Personal Autonomy: The Third Disestablishment in America, Columbia, University of South Carolina. Heelas, Paul (1996) The New Age Movement, Oxford, Blackwell. Heelas, Paul (2006) Challenging Secularization Theory: The Growth of ‘New Age’ Spiritualities of Life. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 46–58. Heelas, Paul (2008) Spiritualities of Life: New Age Romanticism and Consumptive Capitalism, Oxford, Wiley Blackwell. Heelas, Paul and Benjamin Seel (2003) An Ageing New Age? In Davie, G., P. Heelas and L. Woodhead (Eds) Predicting Religion: Christian, Secular and Alternative Futures. Aldershot, Ashgate, 229–247 Heelas, Paul, Linda Woodhead, Benjamin Seel, Bronislaw Szerszynski and Karin Tusting (Eds) (2005) The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion Is Giving Way to Spirituality, Oxford, Blackwell. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (2000) Religion as a Chain of Memory, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press. James, William (1987) William James: Writings 1902–1910, New York, Library of America. Jung, Carl (2001) Modern Man in Search of a Soul, London, Routledge. Lynch, Gordon (2004) Understanding Theology and Popular Culture, Oxford, Blackwell. Lynch, Gordon (Ed.) (2007a) Between Sacred and Profane: Researching Religion and Popular Culture, London, Tauris. Lynch, Gordon (2007b) New Spirituality: An Introduction to Belief Beyond Religion, London, Tauris. Partridge, Christopher H. (2004a) The Re-Enchantment of the West: Volume 1, London, T & T Clark. Partridge, Christopher H. (2004b) The Re-Enchantment of the West: Volume 2, London, T & T Clark.

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Secularization and Its Discontents Putnam, Robert D. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York, Simon & Schuster. Sacks, Jonathan (2003) The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations, London, Continuum. Sacks, Jonathan (2005) To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility, London, Continuum. Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge (1985) The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation, Berkeley, University of California Press. Stenger, Victor J. (2009) New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason, New York, Prometheus Books. Taylor, Charles (1992) The Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Taylor, Charles (2002) Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Woodhead, Linda and Paul Heelas (Eds) (2000) Religion in Modern Times, Oxford, Blackwell. Wuthnow, Robert (1992a) Rediscovering the Sacred: Perspectives on Religion in Contemporary Society, Grand Rapids, MI Eerdmans. YouGov (2007) Religion in Britain Survey. for John Humphrys.

The Durability of Conservative Religion – American and European Perspectives

Chapter Outline 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

Theories of durability The fundamentalist turn Bifurcating trends Moderate traditionalism

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5.1 Theories of durability It is an empirical reality, across the Western world, that conservative churches do better in terms of recruitment and resistance to trends of decline. This can be perplexing to those who have embraced the liberal agenda of ‘religions of humanity’ (Woodhead and Heelas: 2000). Since the whole purpose of liberalism, from Schleiermacher (1799) to Robinson (1963), was to engage critically with the Christian tradition in order to construct a form of reflexive religion that was intelligible and viable in the context of contemporary rationality, this contradiction between intentions and results demands an explanation. Peter Berger (1967) proposed the concept, within his broader theory of a ‘sacred canopy’, of a ‘sheltered enclave’. While a religion that achieves dominance in a society forms a homogeneous sacred canopy, a consensus framework of religious and ethical givens, a sub-cultural plausibility structure is sustained within a traditional community that withdraws to some extent from modernity. This has sometimes been termed a ‘sacred umbrella’. The implication is that religious forms that have become non-viable within the wider culture retain the capacity to endure, at least on a temporary basis, as a social

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Secularization and Its Discontents construct within a community that functions as a sheltered haven from cultural change that has become corrosive to religious convictions or values. This remains a useful perspective from which to study certain forms of enduring traditional religion. However, it does suggest a means of temporary survival, rather than a strategy for future growth. Dean Kelley (1972), writing from within mainstream liberal and ecumenical Christianity, recognized that conservative churches showed much greater growth capacity. He proposed a theory of ‘traits of strictness’. Dogmatic beliefs, conformist behaviour and authoritarian leadership cohered in a seamless robe of religious certainty and exclusivity. These ‘traits of strictness’ convey a sense of security and confidence both to insiders and potential recruits, even though alienating to free-thinkers. While Kelley’s account specifically applied to conservative Protestants, it is not difficult to extend the theory to aspects of Roman Catholicism and Islam. For Kelley, heightened conservatism is advantageous, with the clear implication that uncompromising fundamentalists can be expected to do much better than moderate and charismatic evangelicals. J.D. Hunter (1983; 1987) utilized Kelley’s strictness theory to interpret new empirical data that demonstrated American evangelical churches were modifying both their doctrine and ethics. Hunter described this negotiation with the prevailing culture as ‘cognitive bargaining’. Rather than choosing the isolation of a sheltered enclave, it appeared that evangelicals were moderating. This was not only occurring in their churches, but appeared to be influenced by studying at many evangelical colleges. A growing distance was found between them and fundamentalists. Hunter therefore concluded that those evangelicals who were becoming more moderate were necessarily dissolving their traits of strictness. According to Hunter, the price of becoming more socially acceptable within the wider church and culture was that evangelicals would lose their immunity to religious decline. Although Penning and Smidt (2002) have repeated Hunter’s quantitative studies and were able to refute his claims of growing evangelical moderation, their conclusions are contestable. It may be that they have studied precisely those segments of American evangelicalism that were in the process of being left behind after the cognitive bargaining that Hunter identified had generated moderate migration towards and even into the cultural mainstream. Finke and Stark (1992) rejected Kelley’s claim that evangelical growth arose in the 1960s alongside liberal decline. On their account, American voluntarism

The Durability of Conservative Religion had grown and institutional religion had declined for two centuries. Rational Choice theorists argue that religious choices are made like any other consumer choices, on the basis of cost-benefit analysis (Stark and Bainbridge: 1985; Stark and Bainbridge: 1987; Stark and Finke: 2000). That is, consumers look to maximize rewards and minimize costs. Religious compensators (present and eternal) are weighed against this-worldly distress and the lifestyle demands made by the religion. Utilizing the continuum of high-tension sects and low-tension churches, RCT theorists argue that high tension voluntarism characteristically combines high demands – in terms of time, money and behaviour – with the promise of high rewards. Low tension liberalism, conversely, makes much lower demands but is much less certain about the available rewards. Consequently, according to RCT, liberal churches offer insufficient rewards even for the low level of commitment they require. The exceptions to this are when someone is already inculturated within a lowtension church, or when someone migrates towards a liberal environment having been converted among conservatives. RCT offers a plausible account for why evangelical churches seem more successful at conversion than retention and why more liberal churches sometimes become safe havens for ‘recovering evangelicals’. Iannaccone’s ‘elitist theory’ (1992) is a synthesis and variant of RCT and ‘strictness theory’. Iannaccone argued that traditional churches welcome what he termed ‘free riders’. That is, people who make high demands but offer very little contribution in return. These people sap the energy of the religious community, and reduce the capacity for recruitment and socialization of new converts. Iannaccone argued that high tension churches screen out dependent people. This represents an additional trait of strictness, in which capacity to contribute to resourceful activism is a precondition of full participation. This theory provides a possible account of a particular kind of enclave rather than an expansive form of religion. It is, however, questionable whether empirical data demonstrate that conservative religion really is characterized by screening out free riders. It may, however, give a clue to the distinctive patterns of some forms of predominantly middle class religion that screen out or at least minimize the presence of the socially undesirable – naturally without ever explicitly acknowledging such a policy. Thurow has provided a recent restatement of ‘disinherited theory’, in terms of economic displacement:

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Secularization and Its Discontents Those who lose out economically or who cannot stand the economic uncertainty of not knowing what it takes to succeed in the new era ahead retreat into religious fundamentalism. (Thurow: 1996, 232)

This assertion raises more problems than answers. First, the economically marginalized are mainly male, manual workers in post-industrial economies, but they seem largely immune to the appeal of conservative or any other kind of religion. Second, there is no empirical evidence that evangelicals particularly represent the economically disinherited either in the United States or the United Kingdom. Third, if it did previously apply in the United States, in some pre-industrial rural backwaters, it represents merely a refinement of Berger’s theory, in which the enclave is not merely sheltered, but economically marginalized. Finally, there is the problem that some of those who turn to militant fundamentalism come from the economically advantaged, notably the Islamic medical doctors who participated in the Glasgow airport bombings, 30 June 2007. In contrast with economic displacement theory, Marsden’s (1980; 1991) account of specifically religious disinheritance is perhaps more widely plausible and applicable, at least in the United States. Marsden concluded that American fundamentalism grew out of nineteenth century revivalism, which had been displaced from centre stage by changes in the intellectual and religious culture of middle America. It can readily be argued that Pentecostalism derived from the same roots (Synan: 1971; 1997; Anderson: 2004), albeit without the explicit dependence upon the conservative Calvinism of Old Princeton (Murphy: 1996; Harris: 1998), and with a quite different trajectory (Cox: 1996). Although Marsden’s historical analysis identifies the genealogy of fundamentalism, this does not explain the greater success of more moderate forms of conservative religion. Zygmunt Bauman (1998) proposed that fundamentalism holds an appeal for some as a sheltered enclave from post-modernity. A lifestyle of proliferating choices produces for some an existential crisis in which life becomes unbearably provisional and unstable and the vast array of incidental daily decisions becomes almost overwhelming. Fundamentalism provides security by freeing participants from the burden of indecision. Bauman offers no empirical data to demonstrate the extent to which this is an actual dynamic within fundamentalism. Moreover, it fails to account for the pre-postmodern rise of fundamentalism. Indeed, if it is true that fundamentalism emerged as a reactive form of modernity, and if it is also the case that modified

The Durability of Conservative Religion conservatism is more viable in postmodernity than unreconstructed fundamentalism, Bauman’s approach provides only marginal utility.

5.2 The fundamentalist turn A further explanation of evangelical resilience is that it may be symptomatic of a global turn to traditional forms of religion that is combined in some settings with an ideological and militant opposition to the prevailing culture that is articulated in exclusivist religious terms. The fundamentalists have turned against modernity. There appears to be a global anti-modern mobilization in traditional religion, seen not only in North American fundamentalist Protestantism, but in the assertive traditionalism of the present Pope and his remarkably charismatic predecessor, and also in some forms of Islam. However, several cautions need to be voiced: z

z

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‘Fundamentalism’ is a pejorative term, often employed to marginalize and denigrate rather than to analyse with precision. Traditional religion and fundamentalism should not be considered coterminous. There is a danger of neo-colonial dismissal of traditional religion if the label ‘fundamentalist’ is applied too casually. ‘Fundamentalism’ was originally a Christian, Protestant term, a self-designation for those who fought a Canute-like battle in defence of their understanding of pre-critical orthodoxy. To extend the term to other groupings with precision requires precise definitions. It has therefore become customary to refer to many ‘fundamentalisms’, rather than suggest that there is a single form of militant traditionalism found in all the world religions. Finally, if dogmatic and intolerant exclusivity is deemed a central facet of fundamentalism, this allows for the possibility of a fundamentalist secularism as well as fundamentalist forms of religion.

We will consider the sociological and theological dynamics of fundamentalism by exploring the extent to which ‘evangelical’ and ‘fundamentalist’ are essentially synonymous identities. For Percy most evangelicals are fundamentalists (Percy: 1996; Percy and Jones: 2002). For Harris, many evangelicals retain a fundamentalist mindset despite their highly experiential and personal approach to faith (Harris: 1998). Both the primary connotations of the term and the groups whom it accurately classifies are matters for debate. The unreservedly negative connotations of the term ‘fundamentalist’ are immediately apparent. Fundamentalists are, by definition, dogmatic in their

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Secularization and Its Discontents illiberal convictions, fierce in their promulgation, unthinking in their implementation and totalitarian in their use of power. In short, fundamentalism, whatever the religious context, is a mindset deeply and uncompromisingly opposed to the prevailing trinity of contemporary Western European culture: pluralism, relativism and liberalism. In a world of sophistication and tolerance, militant fundamentalism is seen as a throwback to the dark ages – simplistic and dogmatic. Fundamentalism is seen to brook no diversity, accept no ambiguity, permit no dissent. In an age when tolerance has become the last ethical absolute, fundamentalism is the one mindset that cannot be tolerated. In the post-Marxist era, when the old twin insults of ‘fascist’ and ‘communist’ have lost their bite, to describe someone as ‘fundamentalist’ is to condemn them out of hand. Herein lies not only the danger of fundamentalist movements, but also the power of labelling someone as fundamentalist: if the label sticks, any so designated become guilty until proven innocent. Just as fundamentalist movements are dangerous in their reactionary intensity, anti-fundamentalist rhetoric runs the risk of damning without analysing. Islamic leaders have increasingly complained that the Western media suffer from Islamophobia, dismissing as fundamentalist, and therefore dangerously fanatical, any expression of Islam that is alien to Western cultural values. Even so, the capacity of the term ‘fundamentalist’ to damn a movement of which we disapprove, coupled with the imprecision of its use, means that it can lend a smear to any organization holding a set of convictions or championing an ethical framework more conservative than our own. Thus, ‘fundamentalist pro-life Christians’ may signify right wing Protestants, but it may equally dismiss as beneath serious consideration Roman Catholics who are defending their church’s anti-abortion edict, which being absolutist is necessarily more restrictive than the policy of many moderate evangelical Protestants. There has been much debate as to what inspires this worldwide fundamentalist tendency (Barr: 1977; 1984; Marty and Appleby: 1991; 1993a; 1993b; 1994; 1995; Murphy: 1996; Percy: 1996; Harris: 1998; Heelas et al.: 1998; Armstrong: 2000; Bruce: 2001a; Partridge: 2001; Percy and Jones: 2002). Armstrong (2000) argued that fundamentalism is a modern religious experiment which confuses the mythos of their religion with logos – pragmatic and scientific rational thought – either by insisting that their dogmas are scientifically true (American Christian fundamentalists), or by transforming their complex mythology into a streamlined ideology (Muslim and Jewish fundamentalists). In part at least, these various fundamentalisms represent a desire

The Durability of Conservative Religion to retain or recover the timeless certainties of a former age, not only in religious doctrine but also in public ethics, seeking to repudiate what is considered the immorality and decadence of our irreligious era. Fundamentalism is characterized by dogmatism and authoritarianism in its internal organization and in any attempted contribution to public life. These things are nothing new. The Reformation provides many instances among both Roman Catholics and magisterial reformers of extreme dogmatism and authoritarianism that imposed religious conformity upon the masses and did not shrink from capital punishment for ‘heretical’ dissenters. What typifies these late twentieth century fundamentalisms is their selfconscious opposition to the prevailing culture, and resistance to the loss of traditional religious identities under the onslaught of pluralism and globalization. Fundamentalism therefore casts itself as the implacable religious enemy of twentieth century modernity. Inasmuch as it defines itself in opposition to its own cultural context, while claiming to defend and champion timeless truths, it necessarily becomes a child of its times. Fundamentalism is essentially pre-modern orthodoxy, recast in authoritarian and uncompromising hostility to the spirit of the age. Ironically, as the anti-spirit of the age, it locks itself into temporal specificity as the polar opposite of modernity, its antithetical twin. Therefore, twentieth century fundamentalism, as a reactionary counter culture, commits itself unintentionally to built-in obsolescence. When the culture it opposes undergoes further transposition, fundamentalism becomes not merely oppositional and negative but outmoded and increasingly irrelevant. The self-styled Christian fundamentalists emerged through the publication of an influential series of booklets The Fundamentals by American and British authors, 1910–15. In 1910, the General Assembly of the Northern Presbyterian Church affirmed five essential doctrines that were considered under attack – the infallibility of Scripture, the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection and the historicity of biblical miracles. These were reaffirmed in 1916 and 1923, by which time they were designated the ‘fundamentals of the faith’. The World’s Christian Fundamentals Association, founded in 1919, emphasized the second coming rather than miracles, and some, but not all, preferred to make dispensational pre-millennarianism the fifth fundamental. The first use of ‘fundamentalist’ may have been in 1920, by Curtis Lee Laws in the Baptist Watchman-Examiner. During the early 1920s it quickly became the standard American term, among proponents and opponents alike, for ardent defenders of these ‘fundamentals of the faith’.

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Secularization and Its Discontents During the 1920s, fundamentalists attempted to take control of existing denominations. Failing in this, they established new denominations in the north, including the Independent Fundamental churches of America (1930), the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (1932), the Bible Presbyterian Church (1938) and the Conservative Baptist Association of America (1947). In the south, fundamentalists came to dominate the Southern Baptist Convention, the Southern Presbyterian Church and the independent churches. Increasingly, fundamentalists made a connection, not present in their foundational writings, between purity of doctrine and separatism, and so ‘fundamentalism’ came to designate specifically those conservative Christians outside the historic, northern denominations, comprising the Presbyterians, pre-fundamentalist Baptists, Methodists and Episcopalians. They also readily embraced the long-standing patriotic rhetoric of American Christianity, with its uncritical connections between America and the new Jerusalem, Christian morality and the American way of life (Marsden: 2001). In the United Kingdom, fundamentalism never attained the same level of influence, although some mainline denominationalists suspected that Anglican conservative evangelicals were essentially fundamentalists with an Oxbridge accent. Packer’s Fundamentalism and the Word of God (1958) demonstrates the assiduous care with which the post war generation of conservative evangelicals in England guarded their backs against any association with fundamentalist extremism. Nonetheless, the title of the book was strangely impolitic, since to the non-evangelical it would appear at first sight that Packer’s defence of the Bible as the inspired Word of God and the supreme authority for the church was also a defence of American Fundamentalism. Packer rejected the term ‘fundamentalist’ as a smear word, of modern origins in contrast to the ancient provenance of ‘evangelical’, and because fundamentalists suffered from excesses not intrinsic to evangelicalism (Packer: 1958, 30–40). Packer was, however, sufficiently realistic to acknowledge that some British evangelicals suffered from fundamentalistic excesses: It would not be right to leave this point without a frank acknowledgment that Evangelicals in this country have on occasion reproduced some of those features of ‘Fundamentalism’ which Machen most regretted – distrust of reason, shoddy apologetics, cultural barrenness, eccentric individualism, indifference to churchmanship. . . . British Evangelicals also have been heard sneering at ‘the critics’, making a virtue of theological ignorance, belittling scholarship and opposing ‘reason’ to ‘simple faith’ . . . One reason why Evangelicals are regarded by some as obscurantist is that, in fact, they sometimes are. (Packer: 1958, 36)

The Durability of Conservative Religion Early twentieth century English evangelicals were often and avowedly anti-intellectual and obscurantist, at least when it came to theology. Most of the CICCU men who took theology seriously became liberal and were lost to the cause. Those who survived, with a few notable exceptions, were people who laughed their way through the course . . . (Barclay and Horn: 2002, 105)

The sources of Christian fundamentalism have been much debated. It cannot be dismissed as an unfortunate mutation, a short-term aberration, without clear precedent, for the connections with previous expressions of evangelicalism are many. For Marsden, fundamentalism is best interpreted as a ‘subspecies of American revivalism rather than as an outgrowth of movements espousing millennarianism or inerrancy’ (Marsden: 1980, 223). Marsden argued that, whereas British evangelicals in the nineteenth century belonged to a ‘respectable minority that had learned over the course of centuries to live with religious diversity’, in the United States, revivalism had enjoyed a nineteenth century dominance of religious culture, shaping ‘the distinctive characteristics of American religious life’. Thus, while fundamentalism gave new prominence to premillennialism and scriptural infallibility, it was from revivalism that fundamentalism drew its emphases upon biblicism, primitivism, conversionism and supernaturalism. And it was revivalism that faced a traumatic displacement with the rapid adoption of a scientific worldview, thus provoking the reactionary posture of fundamentalism. Rennie emphasized fundamentalists’ preoccupation with premillennialism and infallibility and argues that ‘Twentieth century American fundamentalism had its roots in nineteenth century British evangelicalism’ (Rennie: 1994, 333). For Rennie, British proto-fundamentalism began to surface in the 1820s among the Recordite section of the Evangelical party in the Church of England. Anglican evangelicals and the Brethren became the two most influential evangelical groupings in England, and continued to be so until the Brethren’s late twentieth century decline. Both the Anglican evangelicals and the Brethren increasingly emphasized not only verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, but also premillennialism. What full-blown fundamentalism added was bellicose separatism, for Rennie acknowledges that, in the United Kingdom ‘denominational loyalty was largely sacrosanct’ (Rennie: 1994, 340). Nonetheless, English evangelicals exhibited towards Christian organizations a fissiparous and schismatic tendency or, depending on one’s perspective, a faithfully biblical refusal to compromise, even though their denominational

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Secularization and Its Discontents identity was treated as a theological, or perhaps more precisely a cultural given. In 1910, the Keswick trustees declined an official side meeting for the SCM, the Student Christian Movement, with an international membership of 152,000, because of an unacceptable doctrinal shift. In the same year, CICCU, the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, comprising 250 members who were inevitably almost all Anglicans, dissociated itself from SCM. In 1919, evangelical witness in Oxford was relaunched, having collapsed before the war, and in December that year, on the occasion of the Inter-Varsity Rugby match, the first Inter-Varsity conference was held in London. The Inter Varsity Fellowship was eventually founded in 1928, and later became the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship. For the next 50 years, IVF/UCCF could reasonably claim to be the dominant influence in English pan-evangelicalism, providing intellectual leadership and activist vigour. Not until its late twentieth century failure to encompass charismatic renewal, combined with a shift of focus from evangelical inclusivism to calvinistic exclusivism, did its influence wane (Warner: 2007). A third origin of fundamentalism was proposed by McGrath, for whom the ultimate source of fundamentalism, in its thoroughgoing separatism, was the Anabaptists (McGrath: 1994, 29). From McGrath’s perspective, the magisterial reformers appear to provide the last cogent word on church-state relations and theological identity, to which the only alternative is the Anabaptists, and thence fundamentalism. For McGrath, the triumph of the new evangelicals over the fundamentalists was nothing less that re-runs of the triumph of the magisterial reformers. This is too simplistic and partisan, ignoring the extent to which the theological precursors of many aspects of fundamentalism are found among nineteenth century Anglican evangelicals. This curiously anachronistic and polemical perspective fails to understand and nuance the development of free church identities, not least the emergence of the European Baptists, only in part influenced by the Anabaptists, and the principled Protestant defence of the separation of church and state that became the primary model of Protestant churchmanship, not only in the United States but across the developing world. Any magisterial evangelical who draws the same line as McGrath must make a critical distinction not between fundamentalists and evangelicals but, according to the logic of his own argument, between magisterial evangelicals and all other Protestants, including Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals and Independents, who should be understood not so much as free churches, but as quasi-fundamentalists. Anachronistic magisterial imperialism will not do. Since outside Western Europe the believer baptizing denominations and non-magisterial denominations

The Durability of Conservative Religion dominate evangelicalism, McGrath’s magisterialism distances him considerably not only from the fundamentalists but from the majority of non-fundamentalist evangelicals who belong to non-magisterial denominations. The evidence of widespread Anglican willingness to cooperate with the majority Protestant groupings in the world suggests that most Anglicans are not willing to accept the implicit sectarianism of McGrath’s argument. A fourth origin of fundamentalism was proposed by Barr, whose uncompromising approach has been widely repudiated by evangelicals. Pinnock observed that ‘the people Barr is sharply and vehemently criticizing, the British evangelicals, do not like the term being applied to them because they are not, in fact, fundamentalists’ (Pinnock: 1990: 40–1). McGrath dismissed it as ‘abusive and polemical’, ‘tired, outdated and politically incorrect’ because it failed to make any distinction between evangelical and fundamentalist (McGrath: 1994, 33). Although Tidball also rejected Barr’s critique as ‘flawed’ and expressed in language ‘less temperate than one would expect from a scholar’ (Tidball: 1994, 26), he was more willing to accept the pertinence of at least aspects of Barr’s critique. Notably, Tidball conceded Barr’s charge that an emphasis upon inerrancy tends to lead to harmonization and an a priori concern to defend historicity, thus blurring the analysis of any particular text and making conservative evangelical scholarship rather unimaginative, defensive and predictable. Preconceived inerrancy thus obtrudes upon direct engagement with the actual biblical text. Similarly, Barr targeted previous evangelical generations’ enthusiastic dependence upon the Scofield reference Bible – in 1911 when the American, R. A. Torrey led the CICCU mission, Scofield Reference Bibles were given to those professing conversion (Barclay and Horn: 2002, 85). For Barr the use of Scofield indicated a preoccupation with evangelical received opinion that imposed a particular theological system as an interpretative grid upon the Scriptures, thence prevented from speaking for themselves in their innate diversity. Tidball accepts that Barr exposes the naïveté and rigidity of some evangelicals. Nonetheless, he argues that Barr overstates the significance of premillennialism and underplays the contribution of evangelical scholars who fail to fit his stereotype of unremitting hostility to contemporary scholarship. For Barr, fundamentalism is a form of religious rationalism, hostile to modern theology and biblical criticism and insistent upon the extra-biblical doctrine of biblical inerrancy: The fundamentalist conception of truth is dominated by a materialistic view, derived from a scientific age. (Barr: 1977, 93)

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Secularization and Its Discontents Barr makes hay with the standard academic texts of conservative evangelicalism, demonstrating a rationalistic mindset and a partisan dogmatism behind their insistent historicism. While he cannot assail Guthrie’s New Testament Introduction with the same vigour, describing it as ‘conservative . . . irenic and understanding throughout’ (Barr: 1977, 140), Barr notes that R.K. Harrison’s Old Testament Introduction is ‘full of special pleading and the burning personal antagonism of the writer against the critical approach is evident throughout’ (Barr: 1977, 141). Barr observes that, while conservative New Testament scholars have moved towards the critical consensus, for example concerning the synoptic problem, for Harrison, source critical deconstruction of the Pentateuch is repudiated with ‘anti-critical vehemence’ (Barr: 1977, 143). This divergence indicates two contemporaneous yet distinct traditions in what Barr loosely describes as ‘fundamentalism’. In Harrison, a defensive, rearguard tradition, that instinctively opposes the mainline conclusions of biblical criticism and theological scholarship. And in Guthrie, a cautiously open approach that maximizes conservative conclusions while drawing upon the full range of the tools of biblical criticism. The first type, Barr designates ‘total fundamentalists’. The second are ‘maximal-conservatives’, who leave open ‘a line of retreat towards a more critical position, which is “less probable” but nevertheless remains possible’ (Barr: 1977: 126). Barr identifies a third group, mildly conservative in their theological conclusions and ‘somewhat doubtful about the more radical trends in biblical criticism’. Barr suggests this third grouping have repudiated ‘any absolute polemical stance against critical scholarship’ but they tend to avoid, when writing for conservative publications, expressing their ‘substantial disagreement with the established fundamentalist line’ (Barr: 1977, 126). This telling analysis leads Barr to the conclusion that these ‘equivocations are likely to lead to tensions within conservative evangelical religion in the long run’ (Barr: 1977, 126). Barr’s analysis raises an acute critique, namely that, in reaction against the modernist context, fundamentalism unconsciously embraced rationalistic presuppositions and became, paradoxically, a variant form of enlightenment reductionism, as culturally constrained as the reductionist forms of liberalism it opposed. When the self-styled new evangelicals emerged in the United States in the mid-twentieth century, they initially provided critiques of fundamentalism from within, but then distanced themselves from its excesses, including antiintellectualism, intolerance, divisiveness and indifference to socio-political issues. The American Council of Christian Churches, founded in 1941, was separatist and fundamentalist in principle, whereas the National Association

The Durability of Conservative Religion of Evangelicals, founded in 1942, included orthodox Protestants irrespective of their denomination. McIntire argues that the two groups had much in common in the 1950s and 60s: . . . both adhered to the traditional doctrines of Scripture and Christ; both promoted evangelism, . . . and a personal morality against smoking, drinking, theatre, movies, and card-playing; both identified American values with Christian values; both believed in creating organizational networks that separated themselves from the rest of society. (McIntire: 1984, 435)

However, as McIntire observes, fundamentalists considered themselves more faithful to the Bible, more militant against apostasy, communism and personal immorality, more indifferent to social and intellectual respectability. As for the neo-evangelicals, there was not only a theological distancing, but also a growing willingness to work with non-evangelicals that was completely unacceptable to the fundamentalists. Billy Graham, who began his ministry within fundamentalism, was by the late 50s already willing to work with liberal and Catholic Christians in his city wide missions (Graham: 1997, 302ff). This represented an unambiguous departure from the exclusive world of the fundamentalists. English evangelicals have assiduously delineated the distinctions between themselves and fundamentalists. In his published dialogue with David Edwards (Edwards and Stott: 1988), itself indicative of a non-fundamentalist openness towards other traditions, Stott identified eight tendencies of the fundamentalist mindset. He acknowledged that not all fundamentalists exhibit all eight, but asserted that all eight are rejected by evangelicals as ‘extremes and extravagances’. 1) A general suspicion of scholarship and science, which sometimes degenerates into a thoroughgoing anti-intellectualism; 2) A mechanical view or ‘dictation theory’ of biblical inspiration, with a consequent denial of the human, cultural element in Scripture and therefore of the need for ‘biblical criticism’ and careful hermeneutics; 3) A naive, almost superstitious, reverence for the Authorised (King James’) Version of the Bible, warts and all, as if it were quasi-inspired, which leads to a neglect of textual criticism; 4) A literalistic interpretation of all Scripture (‘the interpretation of every word of the Bible as literal truth’ – Collins English Dictionary), leading to an insufficient recognition of the place of poetry, metaphor and symbol; 5) A separatist ecclesiology, together with a blanket repudiation of the Ecumenical Movement and the World Council of Churches;

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Secularization and Its Discontents 6) A cultural imprisonment, whose evil consequences have included racial prejudice and prosperity teaching; 7) A denial of the social implications of the gospel, except for philanthropy and some extreme right-wing political concerns; and 8) An insistence on eschatology, with a rather dogmatic contemporary interpretation of prophecy, including an uncritical espousal of Zionism. (Edwards and Stott: 1988, 90–1)

Notwithstanding his reputation for courtesy towards those with whom he disagrees, Stott took no prisoners in his emphatic dissociation of evangelicals from fundamentalists. However, while a series of legitimate distinctions can be drawn, the border between evangelicalism and fundamentalism remains blurred and contentious. There is no agreement concerning the point on the evangelical continuum where sufficient of these eight positions have been embraced to constitute a transition into unambiguous fundamentalism. Stott’s account represents not so much a definition of fundamentalism as a categorization of fundamentalist tendencies of which he disapproves and from which he wants to distance mainline evangelicalism, in order to establish that it is unjustifiable to treat evangelicalism and fundamentalism as synonymous. Stott’s account of early twentieth century fundamentalists is tendentious. The first American fundamentalists were not de facto racist and right wing, did not espouse prosperity teaching and were not necessarily Zionist. Stott is more concerned with establishing a contemporary distinction that legitimizes evangelicalism than an accurate description of early fundamentalism. This tacitly acknowledges that some evangelicals remain susceptible to fundamentalist trajectories. Indeed much of the pre-critical and proto-fundamentalist nineteenth century evangelical tradition undoubtedly tended to be antiintellectual, mechanical, literalistic, by late twentieth century standards was often racist, was sceptical of social reform as against philanthropy and revered the Authorized Version. Many nineteenth century evangelicals would probably have placed themselves in Stott’s fundamentalist column. Early twentieth century fundamentalism may therefore be interpreted at least in part as an anachronistic shoring up of the bastions and unexamined assumptions of mid-nineteenth century, pre-critical, populist evangelicalism. Tidball sought to detach evangelicals from the fundamentalist label: ‘Whilst all fundamentalists are evangelical, not all evangelicals are fundamentalist’ (Tidball: 1994, 17). English evangelicals are evidently zealous not to be confused with fundamentalists and yet, unlike Stott, many assiduously avoid burning all bridges to their narrower cousins. This may represent an irenic

The Durability of Conservative Religion generosity; or a legacy of fear from the days when fundamentalists were inclined to denounce their ‘half-brothers’ as semi-evangelical; or an attempt to leave open a point of access for fundamentalists to cross into the broader evangelical world. Marsden identified a non-theological distinctive of North American fundamentalism: A fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something . . . They are conservatives who are willing to take a stand and fight. (Marsden: 1991, 1)

Marty characterized this as ‘oppositionalism’ (Marty: 1992, 3), a siege mentality for ‘conservative or traditional movements’ who are experiencing a sense of threat. Hunter described fundamentalism as ‘orthodoxy in confrontation with modernity’ (Hunter: 1990: 57). Bruce emphasises ‘the construction of a single enemy from a large number of separate irritants’ (Bruce: 2001a, 52). Ammerman, in her study of the triumph of fundamentalism among the Southern Baptists, offers a well-honed definition, reflecting the conclusions of the Fundamentalism Project as ‘a movement in organized opposition to the disruption of a previously accepted orthodoxy’ (Ammerman: 1990, 149, see also Marty and Appleby: 1991). Wells identifies mutually exclusive priorities, which demarcate what he considered to be the increasingly unambiguous border between late twentieth century evangelicalism and fundamentalism. Fundamentalism always had an air of embattlement about it, of being an island in a sea of unremitting hostility. Evangelicalism has reacted against this sense of psychological isolation. It has lowered the barricades. It is open to the world. The great sin in fundamentalism is to compromise; the great sin in evangelicalism is to be narrow. (Wells: 1993, 129)

Oppositionalism indicates two distinctive elements of fundamentalism: a self-consciously counter-cultural approach in which it defines itself over against the prevailing cultural norms of society, church and theology, and also a self-justifying negativity, in which the instinctive response to outsiders is more likely to be suspicious, hostile, arrogant and denunciatory, rather than dialogical, appreciative, willing to learn or open to correction. A third aspect of oppositionalism is found in both American and Islamic fundamentalism, namely a synthesis of national or ethnic identity with traditional religious convictions. This synthesis is not unique to fundamentalisms: Polish Catholicism fulfilled a similar role under communism, as did Irish Catholicism under

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Secularization and Its Discontents British rule. The distinctively fundamentalistic synthesis entails an inflamed militancy against the Great Satan of modernity, whether that is conceived as liberal theology, Darwinism and secular humanism or the capitalist West. Apocalyptic writing in the Hebrew Scriptures is found mainly in the book of Daniel, and this tradition is notably developed in the New Testament in the mini-apocalypse of Mark 13 and the Apocalypse (or Revelation). This style of writing seeks to make sense of troubled times to the devout by means of an allusive symbolism. The underlying message is typically that in a period of persecution that is highly troubling to believers, there is a divinely determined sense of destiny, and this will lead ultimately to the vindication of the good and the destruction of evil. The underlying themes concern divine sovereignty – God is control, even when his hand is hidden, and teleological – there is an ultimate and positive end to human existence, despite present upheavals. The details of the symbolism are elaborately drawn, vivid and concrete, and this can lead the uninitiated into misplaced allegorical literalism, searching for elaborate specifics where none were intended and developing detailed timetables of ‘end-time events’. The fact that this kind of interpretation is entirely alien to the genre of the original text is beside the point and probably unintelligible to the advocates and consumers of apocalyptic religion. There is a long tradition of apocalyptic Protestantism, where literal minded believers seek solace from naïve eschatological timetables. Edmund Gosse (1907) described his parents, who were Plymouth Brethren, as possessing ‘a rigid and iconoclastic literalness’ (p. 50). A respected marine biologist, Henry Gosse treated the Bible as the definitive source of infallible religious data. He decoded the Apocalypse to calculate the ‘coming of the Lord’, producing assured schedules of the ‘last days’ that were then subject to recalculation when expectations failed to materialize. In particular, Henry and his wife, Emily, traced clear references to the Pope, the enemy of true religion, and Napoleon III, the enemy of England. In the 1970s, the leading exponent of apocalyptic literalism was Hal Lindsey, whose most successful bestseller was The Late Great Planet Earth (Lindsey and Carlson: 1971). For Lindsey, writing during the cold war, the great enemy to be found on the pages of the Apocalypse was the Soviet Union (never Napoleon III, of course), manifestly dedicated to seeking the destruction of Israel. (Lindsey like many fundamentalists was an uncritical Zionist) and the overthrow of Christian America. One Anglican Bishop told me that he visited the United States at the height of Lindsey’s influence, and found that the

The Durability of Conservative Religion European Union was drawn into American decoding of biblical apocalyptic: one preacher explained, ‘If you doubt that this refers to Europe, just see what the Common Market is doing to the American economy’. Lindsey presented the cold war in terms of an apocalyptic last battle, in which religious revival would provide the crusading confidence for a new era of American military expansionism, to which the alternative was military and economic decline. The military capability of the United States, though it is at present the most powerful in the world, has already been neutralised because no one has the courage to use it decisively. When the economy collapses so will the military. The only chance of slowing up this decline in America is a widespread spiritual awakening. (Lindsey and Carlton: 1971, 184)

Lindsey fell into disrepute after appearing to declare that the second coming was assured for the 1980s, and the mantle was taken up from the mid-1990s by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ 16 novels in the Left Behind series. Viewed from the outside as pulp religion, trashy novels without literary or theological merit, this series has sold, according to the publisher, an astonishing 63 million copies and so has clearly resonated beyond the confines of fundamentalist America.1 The novels are premillenial – the return of Christ precedes his rule on earth for a thousand years – and pre-tribulational – the faithful will be removed from the earth (‘raptured’) prior to seven years of tumult that immediately precede the second coming. ‘I’m not crazy! See for yourself! All over the plane, people have disappeared’. ‘It’s a joke. They’re hiding, trying to--‘ ‘Ray! Their shoes, their socks, their clothes, everything was left behind. These people are gone!’ (LaHaye and Jenkins: 1995, from ch. 1)

LaHaye and Jenkins give voice to the anxieties of a conservative religious subculture, both about its own diminishing influence and about American national security and prominence in the world. Expressed in terms of a ‘oneworld government, a one world religion and a one world economy’, these conservative American anxieties are centred upon the demise of the religious right, the power of the United Nations, and the diminution of American economic power. There are also echoes of the acute anxieties previously expressed by LaHaye (1980) about the cultural dominance of secular humanism and the consequent increasing marginalization of religion. The fundamentalist

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Secularization and Its Discontents hyperbole around this series was summed up by Jerry Falwell, founder of Moral Majority, who stated: In terms of its impact on Christianity it’s probably greater than that of any other book in modern times, outside the Bible. (Time Magazine, 7 February 2005)2

A sociology of apocalyptic religion can readily identify common themes in these intermittent eruptions of anxiety laced with hope. A religious culture feels itself and a wider sense of national security to be under threat, a secret code is unlocked in the sacred text, hope and conquest are assured in the face of apparent imminent disaster, determinism and destiny are found to be on the side of the faithful and in the assured ‘coming of the Lord’ they will rise up to rule the earth. It is not difficult to anticipate a continuing ‘clash of civilizations’ (Huntington: 1996) – whether actual of perceived – generating a further wave of Christian apocalyptic, in which Islam replaces the Soviet Union as the focal point of national and religious anxieties, although global warming, Chinese economic power and Iran becoming a nuclear power are also likely to audition for the part. Traces of apocalyptic religion can be found in the rhetoric of Iran’s leaders and Al Qaeda: the Great Satan of America imposes tyranny and bloodshed upon faithful Muslims, but their divinely appointed destiny is to rise up in jihad and usher in the global Caliphate that will bring the whole world under Shari’ah. For as long as naïve and literally minded believers seek comfort from codes that unlock the positive determinism of the ‘end-times’, revealed in Scripture and yet hidden from unbelieving eyes, new waves of apocalyptic religion will hawk spurious schedules to the gullible. Fundamentalism was self-condemned to the same cultural captivity to rationalism that it condemned in liberal modernity (Murphy: 1996). Its failure to be self-critical and its refusal to engage with wider biblical and theological scholarship were sure to leave it beached as a reactionary, intellectually isolated ideology, specific to a particular cultural and historical moment. Like many self-styled ‘radical movements’, it proved incapable of receiving constructive criticism from beyond its borders, since the criticism of outsiders was considered necessarily to vindicate the insiders’ status quo: if they are against us, we are surely on the right tracks. In the era when North American ‘new evangelicals’ were still breaking free from the grip of a fundamentalist consensus, Edward Carnell excoriated oppositionalism when he described fundamentalism as ‘orthodoxy gone cultic’ (Carnell: 1959, 113). Carnell avoided any explicit parallel with the contemporary political malaise of communist witch-hunts.

The Durability of Conservative Religion Nearly half a century later, we may conclude, albeit anachronistically, that, in its absolute certainty, destructively negative excesses, and pervasive suspicion of others, fundamentalism is a religious militant tendency; it is traditional, voluntarist Protestantism gone McCarthyite. We conclude this analysis by identifying five theological fallacies found not only among self-styled fundamentalists but also among evangelicals who endorse, however unknowingly, a fundamentalizing trajectory. Harris argues that evangelicals demonstrate a tension between the ‘highly experiential nature of their faith’ and the ‘extreme rationalism and evidentialism’ of a fundamentalist apologetic (Harris: 1998, 321). An inerrantist theory of revelation, derived from Warfield, combined with a fear of subjectivism, produces a ‘fundamentalist mentality’ in Barr’s sense among those who do not participate in the ‘cultural-linguistic’ way of life examined by Percy (1996, 11). (Percy argues persuasively for a broader, cultural-linguistic conception of fundamentalism over against Barr’s narrowly noetic approach. Both dimensions are integral to the phenomenon. Like Barr, Percy conflates analysis with polemic: in support of his thesis that Wimberism is a type of fundamentalism as a religion of power, when Wimber is reticent, Percy quotes the Pentecostal healer-revivalist Morris Cerullo to provide exotic totalizing hyperbole.) Thus, Harris argues, many evangelicals endorse a fundamentalist conception of Scriptural authority, without being thoroughgoing fundamentalists. The epistemological fallacy moves from a God of truth to an infallible human authority. In particular, the American neo-evangelicals, notably Carl Henry (1976), in disavowing fundamentalism retained an enlightenmentconditioned rationalistic epistemology and concept of biblical inspiration. (For neo-evangelicalism’s dependence upon Princeton, see Barr: 1977; Knight: 1997; Dorrien: 1998; Harris: 1998; Grenz: 2000; Webber: 2002.) Knight identifies the origin of this approach in Scottish common sense realism as mediated by Old Princeton: . . . the Bible was understood to be a book of divinely given facts . . . accessible to human reason and understandable to any unbiased reader. The Princetonian theologians thus believed Scripture to be an accurate representation of external reality, unaffected by the point of view of the authors. (Knight: 1997, 26)

This epistemology produces an unyielding dogmatism beguiling to the subculture’s participants: God is truth; God reveals truth; the Scripture is truth; conservative interpretation is truth; therefore inasmuch as anyone disagree with approved dogma, they unavoidably depart from the truth. With these

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Secularization and Its Discontents syllogisms, fundamentalist leaders developed quasi-papal authority. Certainties multiply, with no place for disagreement, debate or negotiation: the foundationalist assumptions are unambiguously totalizing. William Abraham concluded that this preoccupation with epistemology unintentionally but inevitably evicts soteriology from the centre stage of Christian theology (Abraham: 2003, 19. See also Abraham: 1981, ch. 1). Dorrien draws a similarly damning conclusion that ‘verbal inerrancy replaced the resurrection of Christ as the basis of Christianity’ (Dorrien: 1998, 120–1). The historicist fallacy assumes that truth and facticity are synonymous. Therefore the validity of the Bible is always and necessarily grounded in the events it records. The reconstruction of those events and the defence of their historicity therefore assumes primacy over the theological text as we have it. An a priori commitment to historicism subverts exploration of genre and nonhistoricist intent in the text, which may be connected only loosely to historic events. The exhumation of the past through historical reconstruction, and the defence of presumed textual facticity, sometimes by tortuous means, becomes more important than an actual interpretation of the text itself. The systematic fallacy presumes that the Scriptures are not fully understood and valued until codified into a systematic theology. This systematized meaning is then considered the hermeneutical key to the text itself, which it serves to interpret. The canon’s complex diversity, even self-combative and paradoxical, of literary genres and theological perspectives is dissolved and overridden by the a priori privileged theological system, in the case of evangelicals and fundamentalists predominantly Augustinian and Calvinist. The semiotic fallacy presumes that the essential purpose of the Scriptures is to provide propositional revelation. Therefore meaning can be construed with an algebraic certainty from the pre-Wittgensteinian objective meaning of words. (Thus the anachronistic but regular recurrence of word for word translations promoted by the more conservative evangelicals, as if such an approach could credibly be supposed to deliver the meaning of the original idioms.) Narrative, metaphor, poetic evocations of encounter with God and the inherent imprecision, fluidity and ambivalence of language are all presumed secondary to the theological propositions extracted from the text. Thus, the theological meaning a parable is said to be ‘about’ becomes more important than the imaginative and open-ended narrative. In propositionalism the poetry is lost. As Rorty argues, a post-Wittgensteinian concept of language and a postKuhnian concept of scientific paradigms dismantles the platonic ‘epistemicoontological hierarchy topped by the logical, objective and scientific’ (Rorty:

The Durability of Conservative Religion 1999, 180). Abandoning the analytic tradition’s aspiration to set philosophy on the secure terrain of rigorous scientific method, Rorty concludes that the most appropriate conversation partners of philosophy lie elsewhere – ‘auxiliary to the poet rather than the physicist’ (Rorty: 1989, 8). An equivalent approach to theology would be entirely inimical to fundamentalism. The hermeneutical fallacy leads to a literalistic dogmatism. When twentieth century sectarians make unqualified claims to interpret precisely and represent exactly first century Christianity, it is impossible for them to be rigorously self-critical. This is problematic both in exploring the key hermeneutical issues that preclude any simplistic imposition of the presumed meaning and contemporary implications of the biblical text, and in analysing the diverse cultural origins and influences within evangelicalism’s own development and diversification. For fundamentalists, of course, since their particular brand of theological conviction is untaintedly biblical and authoritative, it can only be other Christians who suffer from cultural conditioning or even cultural captivity. Stott and Thiselton particularly contributed to the development of a new hermeneutic among late twentieth century evangelicals, recognizing the complex inter-relationship between gospel and culture (Thiselton: 1977; 1980; Coote and Stott: 1981). Stott, while accepting the culture-bound context of both author and interpreter, follows the traditionalist Hirsch in asserting the objective authority of authorial intent. – ‘. . . a text means what its author meant’ (Hirsch: 1967, 1; Stott: 1992, 214–5). Neither Stott nor Hirsch would have any sympathy with the death of the author espoused by Derrida (1974) and Fish (1980). Thiselton followed Gadamer in affirming that meaning always exceeds authorial intent, there is no presuppositionless interpretation and meaning is always open, incomplete and can only be determined in an open, iterative process, within which textual understanding is always creative and not merely reproductive (Thiselton: 1980, 300–26). In contrast with Thiselton and Gadamer, Stott’s conservatism leans too heavily upon an anachronistic and overstated conception of the objective authority of authorial intent and thus still exhibits a degree of conservatism that indicates residual fundamentalizing tendencies. Harris charged self-designated non-fundamentalist evangelicals with a ‘trivial’ and ‘often disingenuous’ use of phenomenological hermeneutics that is only allowed to inform the application, not reconstruct the meaning (Harris: 1998, 279–312). In this way evangelicals retain an authoritative Scripture alongside freedom to reinterpret culturally inconvenient texts.

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Secularization and Its Discontents The acid test may arise when more evangelicals question whether their hermeneutical methodology that has legitimized a shift in gender understanding – which Stott defended (1992, 202–4) – might also produce a new acceptance of practicing homosexuals – which Stott strenuously opposed (1992, 205–6). Organized fundamentalism had little lasting impact in the United Kingdom. However, as a mindset, fundamentalist tendencies have proved alluring to populist evangelicalism, offering havens of certainty in a world of increasing ambiguity and perplexity, a last redoubt for unreconstructed conservatism. Most evangelicals are not full-bodied, self-designated fundamentalists, but many exhibit fundamentalizing tendencies. Repudiation of these presuppositional fallacies – epistemological, historicist, systematic, semiotic and hermeneutical – together with enlightenment cultural captivity and militant oppositionalism would liberate the moderate evangelical tradition from its inherent, fundamentalizing trajectories. Hunter (1983; 1987) demonstrated that centrist evangelicals in the late twentieth century were moderating their convictions and distancing themselves from fundamentalism. He applied ‘strictness theory’ to predict the subsequent demise of evangelical exceptionalism. Marsden (1987) demonstrated that this bifurcation was part of a long-standing trend within American conservative religion. Warner (2007) has demonstrated a similar bifurcation within late twentieth century English evangelicalism. Just as many forms of traditional religion will inevitably need to make major conceptual adjustments to come to terms with globalized pluralism and postmodernity, fundamentalisms will be dogmatically and non-negotiably opposed to these cultural transitions.

5.3 Bifurcating trends Contrary to Hunter’s (1983; 1987) projections, Smith (1998; 2000) in the United States and Warner (2007) in England have demonstrated that moderate evangelicals have shown greater resilience than unreconstructed fundamentalists. Tamney (2002) has similarly argued that there is a greater socio-cultural resonance within the United States, and therefore a greater likelihood of resilience or growth, for religion that combines moderated conservatism with experiential immediacy, that is neo-Pentecostalism. This reflects Davie’s (2006) observation that in Britain the two most successful forms of contemporary Christianity are cathedrals and charismatics: despite their obvious differences,

The Durability of Conservative Religion both provide access to experiences of the sacred. We can sum up the consensus of recent studies in two axioms: 1 There is growing evidence of a bifurcation between moderate evangelicalism and sectarian fundamentalism. 2 Moderate evangelicalism, particularly in charismatic forms, has proven more resilient and accessible than unreconstructed fundamentalism.

A heuristic device that can be utilized to explore the heightened viability of moderate evangelicalism is to identify two ideal types. Fundamentalism is very high tension (in terms of church-sect theory) and instinctively antimodern. Moderate evangelicalism is fairly high tension, but combines traditional beliefs with a willingness to embrace cultural change. (As I was told when visiting a liberal Anglo-Catholic theological college in 2006, ‘PowerPoint is very new here; we don’t have many evangelical students’.) Fundamentalism and highly conservative evangelicalism tend to be rationalistic, emphatically traditional, resistant to experiment and ecclesiastical change, insistent upon pervasive ethical absolutism and suspicious of modernity let alone postmodernity (Barr: 1977; Partridge: 2001). Moderate evangelicalism tends towards detraditionalized esteem of the contemporary, is experiential and therapeutic, prizes early adoption of new technology and musical idioms, shows signs of a diminishing ethical absolutism and expresses an experimental openness to postmodernity (Watt: 1991; Warner: 2007). The acute contrasts between these two types explains the bewildering contradictions that can be discovered between different kinds of self-designated evangelical, particularly in the British context where most fundamentalists prefer to describe themselves as evangelicals. In many towns, there will be evangelicals who oppose ecumenism, reject women’s ministry and leadership, seem indifferent to social justice, dismiss religious experience and whose Sunday services are deeply resistant to culture-driven change; there will also be other evangelicals – often a significantly larger number – who reject all these positions as obsolete preoccupations of entrenched conservative traditionalism. While moderates emphasize engagement, openness and reflexivity in an iterative self-critical reconstruction of their tradition, hardliners emphasize separation, freedom from compromise and unchanging verities. The bifurcation is exemplified in the fact that, while in the mid-nineteenth century the primary opponent of evangelicals was Roman Catholicism (and also AngloCatholicism in the English context), and in the early twentieth century the

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Secularization and Its Discontents primary opponent was Protestant liberalism, by the turn of the new millennium the primary opponent of fundamentalism was the moderate evangelicals, who had become ‘the enemy within’ (Warner: 2007). This is not to deny the presence of implicit ‘fundamentalizing tendencies’ among many evangelicals (building upon Harris: 1998). Indeed the claim could be extended to apply to traditional Catholics and traditional participants in other religions. Nonetheless, it is neither profitable nor precise to treat traditional religion and fundamentalism as synonymous or coterminous. To do so is to prefer pejorative dismissal to precise delineation. What we can conclude, however, is that strictness theory and its derivatives fail to account for the greater resilience of moderate traditionalism. As Smith observed: . . . pluralistic modernity can promote the vitality of culturally well-equipped traditional religions. Far from necessarily undermining the strength of orthodox faith, modernity creates the conditions in which traditional religion may thrive. (Smith: 1998, 218)

In 2007 I conducted a small research project with 50 undergraduate students (24 male, 25 female) from the Christian Union at the University of York. This was a preliminary exploration of evangelical students’ beliefs and values that paved the way for a substantial research project funded under the AHRC/ ESRC Religion and Society programme. The larger project intends to begin publishing results from 2011. The preliminary study revealed some significant emphases among younger self-designated evangelicals. Although the number involved in the study is too small to warrant reliable generalizations, the results are indicative of some fascinating conflictual and moderate tendencies. 86 per cent said that at least one of their parents had been a practising Christian, and a further 8 per cent were unsure. 30 per cent said they had always believed, and a further 39 per cent came to faith before they were 16. Only one student had come to faith after the age of 19. Of the 70 per cent who had not always believed, 51 per cent said conversion was a slow process and only 16 per cent identified an event of sudden conversion. In sum, the vast majority of these student evangelicals were from Christian families, came to faith before they were 16 and did not have a sudden conversion experience. On the assumption that Christian Unions really were at one time places where students were successfully evangelized and converted, this reputation appears now to have become a myth. At the very least we can state that this particular Christian Union in this particular year had become a place where students

The Durability of Conservative Religion from Christian families sustained their faith, with minimal convertive influence on the beliefs of outsiders. In the application of scholarship to their beliefs, these evangelicals were consistently moderate. 74 per cent were positive about biblical scholarship in general, with only 14 per cent wanting to restrict themselves to the insights of evangelical publications. Only 8 per cent considered the Bible should be taken literally, whereas 61 per cent thought that the Bible’s meaning for today could only be discovered in dialogue with the insights of contemporary culture. 13 per cent believed that Genesis disproves Darwin, but 54 per cent accepted Darwinian evolution without hesitation. 4 per cent considered preaching to be the sole mode of divinely appointed proclamation in the church, whereas 65 per cent considered it merely one mode among many, and 2 per cent thought preaching had become culturally obsolete. 2 per cent opposed theologically mixed denominations (a classic fundamentalist position), whereas 69 per cent were positive about them. Those who restricted themselves to working with Protestants were just 4 per cent, with another 2 per cent working only with evangelicals, while the rest embraced ecumenical partnership with Catholics. 18 per cent believed the mission of the church was mainly evangelism, 6 per cent believed mainly social action and 71 per cent were committed to evangelism and social action as equal partners. 6 per cent thought that women should not hold any leadership role in local churches, whereas 61 per cent thought there should be absolutely no gender-based restrictions on leadership and ministry. 8 per cent saw no place for homosexuals in the church, whereas 68 per cent thought non-practising homosexuals should be allowed to be ordained and 12 per cent thought sexually active homosexuals should be allowed to be ordained. In sum, these student evangelicals were considerably more mainstream and less fundamentalist than the reputation of Christian Unions might lead us to expect. There was, however, a different face to their doctrinal convictions. In three aspects – the atonement, hell and the Bible – they were more emphatically conservative. On the atonement, 4 per cent were critical of evangelical preoccupation with penal substitution, and 4 per cent considered it one among many biblical metaphors, whereas 16 per cent considered it the central biblical model and 69 per cent considered it the only appropriate way to comprehend the atonement. Similar proportions were found concerning hell: 8 per cent were near universalist, 4 per cent believed in the annihilation of the lost, 20 per cent believed in a non-literal hell alongside eternal punishment, whereas

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Secularization and Its Discontents 63 per cent believed in a literal hell. On the Bible, 24 per cent were committed to inerrant or infallible authority. However, 49 per cent preferred the more moderate position of ‘supreme and unique authority’, and 27 per cent preferred to speak of the Bible as the ‘primary, authoritative witness to Christ, the Word of God’ which relocates the centre of Christian revelation in the person of Jesus Christ, rather than in a holy book or propositional abstractions. The fact there is not a theology department at the University of York might have influenced these strongly conservative positions. What is immediately striking is that students who hold relatively liberal positions concerning biblical interpretation, preaching, women’s ministry, gay ministry, ecumenism and Darwinism are far more conservative faced with these three classic defining points of conservative evangelical identity. Clearly this strongly retained conservatism has not percolated through their other doctrinal convictions as a controlling or defining centre of beliefs. My explanation is that the students had been told very clearly what to believe in these specifics, which had become symbolic boundaries for their distinctive evangelical identity. They allowed other aspects of belief to be interrogated by contemporary insights and expertise and then their religious convictions were adapted and remodelled. These symbolic and residual certainties had been kept exempt from external scrutiny, whether from scholarly or cultural perspectives. This may be an indirect consequence of structural differentiation: here were convictions compartmentalized away from non-evangelical expertise, protected from scrutiny and re-evaluation as definitive and authoritative within the subculture, with outsiders’ perspectives delegitimized. Turning to ethical issues, 100 per cent thought the church should take a stand against all kinds of racism, 84 per cent wanted the cancellation of third world debt, 75 per cent favoured environmental action and 71 per cent thought there was no place for any kind of sexism in the church. These responses indicate a fairly high commitment to the contemporary liberal consensus. The lower level of rejection of sexism reflects the minority who still oppose the ordination of women. On abortion, 42 per cent thought it should be restricted to exceptional circumstances, 26 per cent disagreed and the remaining third were unsure. On film and TV censorship, 43 per cent wanted more restrictions, 24 per cent disagreed and the remaining third were unsure. 39 per cent wanted divorce to be made much more difficult, 20 per cent were unsure and 41 per cent disagreed. In each of these areas, evangelical opinions were deeply divided, which suggests that the former ethical absolutism and resultant homogeneity

The Durability of Conservative Religion have been breaking down. The dogmatic literalism that would be expected from unreconstructed fundamentalists and mid-twentieth century conservatives was evidently fracturing among these students. Faced with two ethical issues and two national issues a much higher degree of consensus emerged. On legalizing marijuana, 12 per cent agreed, whereas this was opposed by 78 per cent. On preventing under-age teenagers’ access to contraception, 12 per cent agreed, whereas this was opposed by 63 per cent. This suggests that opposing the use of marijuana functions as a symbolic ethical boundary for these students, many of whom also emphasized that they avoided getting drunk and this marked them out from the majority of their undergraduate peers. However, there was realism with regard to contraception, which was clearly considered to be intrinsically beneficial rather than immoral. Two issues of national politics were explored, the established church and the monarchy. 66 per cent considered an established church ‘invaluable to the spiritual well-being of the nation’, with 10 per cent disagreeing and 24 per cent not sure. 20 per cent supported the abolition of the monarchy, with 22 per cent unsure, but 57 per cent were convinced monarchists. If these convictions are sustained in adult life, the future church of these evangelicals would probably have women bishops and sexually active gays in ordained ministry. This church would take a strong public position against racism and in support of the developing world. It would affirm biblical authority, the objective atonement and the reality of hell, but would not hold a sectarian attitude towards non-Christian scholarship or other churches. It would not oppose Darwinian evolution, and would want to work closely with all other churches, including Roman Catholics. Clear differences of opinion on censorship, abortion and divorce, and a fairly relaxed and realistic attitude towards the wide availability of contraception, would cause this church to have long since abandoned ethical absolutism, and so it would not be approved by the American Religious Right, nor indeed by the Pope. The church would only be mildly monarchist, so would not make a habit of singing the national anthem on a regular basis, but soft drugs would be banned from the premises. These fascinating data indicate that a fairly moderate evangelicalism was predominant in this particular Christian Union in this particular year. A much wider sample would establish whether such opinions are typical. A series of studies would provide the longitudinal data needed to determine whether undergraduate evangelicals’ doctrinal and ethical convictions are evolving and softening. Anecdotally this would appear to be the case, since many university

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Secularization and Its Discontents lecturers and clergy expect a far more comprehensive fundamentalism than is revealed in these data. What is clear, at least in the case of this indicative snapshot, is that Christian Unions are no longer, if once they were, hot-beds of coercive evangelistic fervour, where students are converted in large numbers and recruited into unmodified, anti-intellectual and militant fundamentalism. On the contrary, in the words of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Adams: 1979), these student evangelicals appear to be ‘mostly harmless’. Of course, participants in traditional forms of religion are always likely to articulate its validity in terms of holding fast to essential truths. However, a social scientific consideration of relative viability will attempt to identify plausible correlations between a religious constituency and the wider cultural context. Resilience in a particular setting cannot be generalized into a universal durability. This is exemplified in the pendulum swings of popularity and influence within Anglicanism between high and low church, traditional and modern articulations of the faith. Jamieson (2002) has argued that conservative and charismatic evangelicalism share an appetite for dogmatic certainties. As a result, and notwithstanding their relative success in the late twentieth century, they may increasingly be perceived as faith-inhibiting, to participants as well as the uninitiated, in the context of post-modernity, where provisionality becomes a primary virtue and dogmatic certainty is considered almost universally to be a fallacious cognitive straitjacket.

5.4 Moderate traditionalism Smith (2000) expressed the evangelical trend towards ethical moderation in terms of the paradox of ‘voluntaristic absolutism’. His quantitative data indicated that, while many evangelicals instinctively emphasize moral absolutes and certainties, their primary ethical orientation is towards freedom of conscience. Because they prioritize respect for personal convictions, this relativizes the impact of their residual ethical absolutism. As a result, Smith found ‘what evangelicals really want’ to be considerably more moderate, generous and tolerant than their self-appointed spokespersons. (This is all the more surprising given the tenor of some opinions expressed by the fervent in any religious setting . . .) The broad evangelical constituency therefore cannot reliably be described in terms of the hectoring negativity of those who make strident and self-publicizing headlines on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Durability of Conservative Religion Smith (1998; 2000) and Bramadat (2000) both identified among evangelicals a capacity to be distinct from and yet engaged with modernity, a combination of high tension convictions and high integration practices. Smith contrasted this with fundamentalism’s ‘defensive separatism’. Bramadat, in a participant-observation ethnographic study of the members of a Canadian Student Christian Union, identified a combination of fortress and bridging strategies. Smith and Bramadat both identify the implicit need to mediate unchanging convictions in a liberal and pluralistic culture. The cognitive bargaining of moderate evangelicalism, to recall Hunter’s phrase, is driven not primarily by engagement with the academy, but rather through the desire to connect evangelistically with the prevailing popular culture. While it is undoubtedly the case that some academics from the evangelical tradition have engaged with academic discourse in the conceptual reconfiguration of their tradition, the primary drivers are missiological enterprise and popular culture. Of course, such a synthesis may be unstable: neo-conservatives characteristically complain that moderate evangelicals dissolve essential convictions in the quest for cultural consonance; at the same time, some postmodern pioneers question whether post-evangelicalism (or even post-Christianity) may prove the only coherent consequence of their journey into cultural re-engagement (Tomlinson: 1995; Lynch: 2003). A paradox becomes apparent. On the one hand, moderate evangelicalism’s capacity for self-reinvention has enabled it to mutate into forms that have proven more accessible and durable in the late twentieth century. Hunter was therefore wrong to conclude that diminished traits of strictness would necessarily result in diminished viability. On the other hand, sustained cognitive and cultural bargaining may result in forms of religion that no longer fit the framework of enlightenment-conditioned evangelicalism. The combination of fortress and bridging strategies may result in a fortress faith with ineffectual bridges, which ultimately does little more than ‘recycling the saints’ (Bibby and Brinkerhoff: 1973; Bibby and Brinkerhoff: 1983). On the other hand, some may find the bridging strategies so compelling that they become alienated from their former fortress; the plausibility of excessive and unmodified certainties may begin to collapse, even for insiders (Jamieson: 2002). Experiments in ‘Fresh Expressions’ and ‘Emerging Church’ may become a means of exploring postmodern spirituality within the evangelical tradition for some, and for others a postmodern means of departing from evangelicalism.

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Secularization and Its Discontents Since the prerequisite of sustained missiological viability is appropriate enculturation, these experiments in religion may yet produce some sustainable forms of Christianity (as well as many dead ends), whether or not they remain identified with the evangelical tradition. The combination of fortress and bridging strategies is intrinsic to moderate evangelicalism. My analysis of late twentieth century English evangelicals identified two motivational orientations that energize these twinned priorities with a distinctive entrepreneurial drive (Warner: 2007). First, evangelicals retain a convertive optimism, confidently expecting new opportunities and growth. While fundamentalists may develop a remnant mentality that writes off ‘the world’, moderate evangelicals, like Wesley, consider the world their parish. This leads to characteristic excesses: for example a collective amnesia about past disappointments as evangelicals hasten from one mission initiative to the next; a late-modern preoccupation with mechanical techniques that are allegedly guaranteed to deliver imminent growth; and an inclination to ‘vision inflation’ that anticipates success in inverse proportion to the impact of secularization. This optimistic resilience may at times degenerate into the unreality associated with ‘cognitive dissonance’ (Festinger: 1957; Festinger et al.: 1964). Festinger studied a UFO cult, and when their predictions failed, he anticipated disarray. In fact some participants experienced intensified faith rather than disillusion. Disappointment resulted in a delusional intensity rather than an abandonment of falsified faith. Notwithstanding these excesses and exaggerated, even potentially delusional, enthusiasms, evangelicals’ convertive optimism is particularly resistant to fatalism or defeatism, even after 150 years of religious decline in Britain. In a previous study, I demonstrated that in the late twentieth century British evangelicals were inclined to combine convertive optimism with a determined disregard for the dynamics of secularization, resulting in a tendency in their public rhetoric for ‘vision inflation’ (Warner: 2007). Second, and equally importantly, evangelicals exhibit a determined missiological pragmatism. While fundamentalists characteristically exhibit a cultural inflexibility, in their bridging strategies evangelicals are positive and energetic in their experimentation. What to fundamentalists is an addiction to trivial cultural accommodation, replacing traditional religious formality with mere enthusiasm and entertainment is for moderate evangelicals an emphatic provisionality in ecclesiology and missiology. (For a Roman Catholic pioneer of incarnational experimentalism in cross-cultural missiology, see Donovan (1982).)

The Durability of Conservative Religion However trivial, short-lived and implausible many evangelical experiments, these two emphases combine to generate a dynamic of sustained high expectations and a willingness to re-imagine church. Moderate evangelicals exhibit an entrepreneurial drive seen more typically in commerce than in the church. It is a combination that makes durability more likely. The resultant experimentalism also increases the chances of discovering forms of Christianity that are more viable in a culture that in its religious orientations has become increasingly post-institutional, but not necessarily post-spiritual. The market leaders in the entrepreneurial re-conceptualization of religion are the providers of holistic spiritualities (Heelas: 1996). New Age correlates closely with cultural preoccupations, emphasizing epistemological individualism, a detraditionalized menu of religion à la carte, an affirmation of selfimprovement and spiritual authenticity and freedom from any obligation to be loyal to dogma or a religious institution. The accessible contemporaneity of new spiritualities has much to teach Western European Christianity. However, like many other religious traditions Christianity sets the individual believer within a community of faith and entails social responsibility that encompasses the wider society. As Bellah (2006) argued in a plenary address to the American Academy of Religion (22 November 1997), Protestant individualism was historically set within a context of communal identity and responsibility. This he contrasted with contemporary atomized individualism, which finds its religious formulation in ‘Sheila-ism’ (Bellah et al.: 1996); the construction of customized self-help religion according to the whims of personal preference. The re-imagining of the Christian church, and more broadly of organized religion is the West, is yet to take sufficient account of post-Christendom as well as the emergent indicators of a possible post-secularity. However, no authentic re-imagining of pre-secular religion is possible without giving adequate expression to communal identity and civic responsibility. In this, Durkheim (1912, ET 2001), Bellah (1996; 2006) and the Christian tradition are in undoubted agreement. Kelley’s ‘traits of strictness’ may describe twentieth century fundamentalism, but the theory fails to give an adequate account of 200 years of voluntarism’s ascendancy over institutional religion in the United States. It is the combination of fortress and bridging strategies, both in Roman Catholicism and in moderate evangelical Protestantism, particularly in its charismatic and Pentecostal forms, that is more likely to generate viable and durable forms of the Christian religion in postmodernity. And the same dynamics are likely to be found in all world religions, less alarming but

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Secularization and Its Discontents ultimately more durable than the strident and militant voices resounding from the various fundamentalisms.

Select Bibliography Anderson, Allan (2004) An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Barr, James (1977) Fundamentalism, London, SCM. Bauman, Zygmunt (1998) Postmodern Religion? in Heelas, P., D. Martin and P. Morris (Eds) Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity. Oxford, Blackwell, 55–78. Bellah, Robert (2006) Is There a Common American Culture? In Bellah, R. and S. M. Tipton (Eds) The Robert Bellah Reader. Durham, Duke University Press, pp. 319–32. Bellah, Robert Neelly, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton (Eds) (1996) Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, Berkeley, University of California Press. Bellah, Robert and Steven M. Tipton (Eds) (2006) The Robert Bellah Reader, Durham, Duke University Press. Berger, Peter L. (1967) The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, Garden City, N.Y, Doubleday. Bibby, Reginald and Martin Brinkerhoff (1973) The Circulation of the Saints: A Study of People Who Join Conservative Churches. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 112, 273–85. Bibby, Reginald and Martin Brinkerhoff (1983) Circulation of the Saints Revisited: A Longitudinal Look at Conservative Church Growth. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 22, 253–62. Bramadat, Paul (2000) The Church on the World’s Turf: An Evangelical Christian Group at a Secular University, New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Cox, Harvey (1996) Fire from Heaven, London, Cassell. Davie, Grace (2006) Is Europe an Exceptional Case? The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 23–34. Donovan, Vincent J. (1982) Christianity Rediscovered: An Epistle from the Masai, London, SCM. Durkheim, Emile (1912, ET 2001) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press. Festinger, Leon (1957) A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press. Festinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter (1964) When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World, New York; London, Harper & Row. Finke, Roger and Rodney Stark (1992) The Churching of America, 1776–1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. Harris, Harriet A. (1998) Fundamentalism and Evangelicals, Oxford, Clarendon.

The Durability of Conservative Religion Heelas, Paul (1996) The New Age Movement, Oxford, Blackwell. Hunt, Stephen (2001a) Anyone for Alpha? Evangelism in a Post-Christian Society, London, Darton, Longman & Todd. Hunt, Stephen (2004) The Alpha Enterprise, Aldershot, Ashgate. Hunter, James Davison (1983) American Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Quandary of Modernity, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press. Hunter, James Davison (1987) Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation, Chicago, Ill.; London, University of Chicago Press. Iannaccone, Laurence R. (1992) Sacrifice and Stigma: Reducing Free-Riding in Cults, Communes, and Other Collectives. Journal of Political Economy, 100, 271–91. Jamieson, Alan (2002) A Churchless Faith: Faith Journeys Beyond the Churches, London, SPCK. Kelley, Dean M. (1972) Why Conservative Churches Are Growing: A Study in Sociology of Religion, New York, Harper & Row. Lynch, Gordon (2003) Losing My Religion: Moving on from Evangelical Faith, London, Darton, Longman & Todd. Marsden, George M. (1980) Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925, New York, Oxford University Press. Marsden, George M. (1987) Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Marsden, George M. (1991) Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Murphy, Nancey (1996) Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda, Valley Forge, PA, Trinity Press International. Partridge, Christopher H. (Ed.) (2001) Fundamentalisms, Carlisle, Paternoster. Penning, James M. and Corwin E. Smidt (2002) Evangelicalism: The Next Generation, Grand Rapids, MI, Baker. Percy, Martyn (1996) Words, Wonders and Power: Understanding Contemporary Christian Fundamentalism and Revivalism, London, SPCK. Poloma, Margaret M. (2001) The Millenarianism of the Pentecostal Movement. In Hunt, S. (Ed.) Christian Millenarianism: From the Early Church to Waco. Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Ritzer, George (1993) The Mcdonaldization of Society: An Investigation into the Changing Character of Contemporary Social Life, Thousand Oaks; London, Pine Forge. Ritzer, George (1998) The Mcdonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions, London, Sage. Smith, Christian (1998) American Evangelicals: Embattled and Thriving, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Smith, Christian (2000) Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want, Berkeley; London, University of California Press. Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge (1985) The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation, Berkeley, University of California Press. Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge (1987) A Theory of Religion, New York, Peter Lang.

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Secularization and Its Discontents Stark, Rodney and Roger Finke (2000) Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion, Berkeley; London, University of California Press. Synan, Vinson (1971, 1997) The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Tamney, Joseph B. (2002) The Resilience of Conservative Religion: The Case of Popular, Conservative Protestant Congregations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Thurow, Lester C. (1996) The Future of Capitalism: How Today’s Economic Forces Will Shape Tomorrow’s World, New York, W. Morrow & Co. Tomlinson, Dave (1995) The Post-Evangelical, London, Triangle. Ward, Pete (1998) Alpha – the Mcdonaldization of Religion. Anvil, 15, 279–86. Warner, Rob (2007) Reinventing English Evangelicalism 1966–2001: A Theological and Sociological Study, Carlisle, Paternoster. Watt, David Harrington (1991) A Transforming Faith: Explorations of Twentieth-Century American Evangelicalism, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. Wimber, John and Kevin Springer (1985) Power Evangelism: Signs and Wonders Today, London, Hodder & Stoughton. Wimber, John and Kevin Springer (1987) Power Healing, London, Hodder & Stoughton. Woodhead, Linda and Paul Heelas (Eds) (2000) Religion in Modern Times, Oxford, Blackwell. Wuthnow, Robert (1992) The World of Fundamentalism. Christian Century, 22 April 1992, pp. 426–9.

Resilient Religion – Emerging Transatlantic and Global Trends

Chapter Outline 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

Entrepreneurial and experiential-therapeutic religion Autonomous religious consumption The Tearfund churchgoing survey, 2006 The ascent of Pentecostalism The emergent religious market

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6.1 Entrepreneurial and experientialtherapeutic religion Entrepreneurial religion American statistical data demonstrate that in an open religious market continuing entrepreneurial innovation is essential for any type of religion to sustain market share. Robert Bellah et al. (1996) observed that the entrepreneur was one of the two dominant life-frames in contemporary America. R. Stephen Warner (1993) argued that the new paradigm was learning to interpret religious leadership in entrepreneurial categories. It is no coincidence that many well-known American religious leaders who have become regular visitors to the United Kingdom have established their own churches or organizations: for example, Billy Graham, John Wimber, Bill Hybels and Rick Warren. They are, in effect, evangelical CEOs of religious corporations with an international reach.

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Secularization and Its Discontents Familiar characteristics of the entrepreneurial ethos include the following: z z z z z z z z

Clear and compelling vision Measurable, annual goals Focus upon a defined, target audience who are the primary market Marketing that defines a brand, and secures and sustains public profile Adaptive management structures that are open to change Rapid adoption of new technologies, harnessed to the vision Charismatic leadership, conveying vision and empowering the team A determined drive towards increasing heights of achievement.

Grace Davie (2007), by contrast, defined the dominant European religious idiom in terms of the centuries old parish church, immobility, and, by implication a lack of, or suspicion, distaste or even abhorrence for religious entrepreneurialism. Similar characteristics can be found in diverse forms of entrepreneurial religion, most obviously in New Age spiritualities, American mega-churches and global neo-Pentecostalism. At its worst, entrepreneurial religion descends into the vacuous hype of snake oil salesman or into the delusions of cognitive dissonance and vision inflation (Festinger: 1957; Festinger et al.: 1964; Warner: 2007a). Nonetheless, entrepreneurial religion, even in the context of the United Kingdom, can enjoy rapid and exceptional growth. I have previously examined this phenomenon in the first decade of Alpha – the most popular current evangelism programme based on discussion groups – and also at Spring Harvest – the most popular current evangelical annual conference or ‘Bible week’ (Warner: 2007a).

Experiential-therapeutic religion Bellah’s second dominant contemporary category was the therapist (Bellah et al.: 1996). An increasing therapeutic orientation in Western culture finds expression in many alternative therapies. The quest for wholeness has combined with a perceived need for emotional healing. Counselling has become a normative support strategy, moving from a privilege of the elite to an integral part of disaster response teams and many medical services. Counselling therapies have also become increasingly intrinsic to religious provision, not only in the holistic milieu but also as part of a reconfiguration of many forms of traditional religion. Therapeutic spirituality finds expression in tactile therapies (massage and touch), sensual therapies (aromatherapy, incense and

Resilient Religion candles) and counselling and prayer therapies that make explicit claims to provide or contribute to healing. Even though some forms of therapeutic spirituality are almost inevitably no more than fantasy or hype, this aspect of contemporary religion undoubtedly reflects the underlying cultural appetite for holism (Heelas: 1996; 2008). Integrated with this therapeutic orientation is the subjective turn we considered previously in the context of New Age (Heelas et al.: 2005). Subjectivization is by no means a novelty of postmodernity. A major cultural precursor was the reaction of romanticism to the enlightenment. This typically entailed not a repudiation of rationality, but a refusal to accept that human existence can adequately be interpreted solely in rationalistic categories. For the Wesleys (Jeffrey: 1987), the ‘felt Christ’ of inner experience was understood to authenticate the preaching of the forgiving love of God. For Wordsworth and Coleridge, sublime experience was centred on sensing the divine in nature. For Schleiermacher (1799 – ET 1988), the transcendent sentiment was the religious feeling of dependency on the transcendent Other. The rise of European Romanticism in the wake of the Enlightenment therefore generated both liberal and evangelical forms of a new elevation of religious sentiment and experience. Particularly since the 1960s, this romantic experiential orientation has acquired increasing contemporary intensification, in the context of what Giddens (1991) designated the ‘reflexive project of the postmodern self ’. When identity has become fluid, contingent, provisional and experimental, experience has been ascribed self-authenticating and authoritative significance: ‘What feels right for me, right now, is right’. Experientialism takes many forms and unites many different kinds of religious or quasi-religious practice. Some feel the divine, encounter the sacred or experience the ultimate in the beauty of nature, often among high mountains or swimming with dolphins. This experience is sometimes described in explicitly pantheistic or pan-entheistic terms, encountering the universal or indwelling sacred presence. For some, cathedral worship delivers a sense of the transcendent in the context of high culture. For others, personal meditation – often in the past quarter century utilizing the approaches of a westernized Buddhism – expresses a quest for the higher self, oneness and tranquillity. For still others, charismatic worship is the focus of experiential spirituality: many popular songs emphasize the immediacy of the Holy Spirit and universally available experiences of intimacy with God; repetition of simple songs becomes a means of focus upon and access to the divine; the eucharist and

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Secularization and Its Discontents prayer ministry both become moments of assured or expectant encounter. Contemporary eucharistic experientialism contrasts profoundly with the Zwinglian reduction to a mere memorial which has, ever since the Reformation, been highly influential in some forms of Protestantism. A doctrinally informed sober memorial has been displaced by a living and celebratory encounter: real presence is encountered not in the transformed physical elements but rather in experiential contact with the divine and imminently available Holy Spirit. These two orientations, the experiential and the therapeutic, readily synthesize. Experiential-therapeutic forms of religion have become common not only in the holistic milieu (Heelas et al.: 2005) but also in the less conservative forms of charismatic renewal (Warner: 2007b; 2010). This pervasive experientialism represents a departure from the rationalistic ‘iron cage’ of Weberian disenchantment. As Heelas and Woodhead observed (Woodhead and Heelas: 2000; Heelas et al.: 2005), those Christian traditions most dependent upon the enlightenment – liberalism and fundamentalism (Murphy: 1996; Harris: 1998) – generally have least sympathy with the subjective turn, and are therefore least able to utilize the emerging appetite for a spiritual quest in therapeutic and experiential categories. A prime example of moderate evangelicalism that has been self-reinvented in the context of convertive optimism and missiological pragmatism is Alpha (Hunt: 2001a; Hunt: 2004; Warner: 2007a). On the one hand, Alpha exemplifies evangelical traditionalism: the unreconstructed apologetic is taken from the conservative evangelical ‘Bash camps’ of the mid-twentieth century, utilizing many arguments that have been unchanged for decades and seem indifferent, or even ignorant of, theological and philosophical critiques. Nonetheless, this unreflexive, pre-critical conservatism is combined with creative marketing techniques: it exemplifies the McDonaldization of evangelism (Ritzer: 1993; Ritzer: 1998; Ward: 1998). This astute entrepreneurial packaging is combined with assurances of imminent advance, both for the local church that adopts Alpha and for the re-Christianization of Britain. This missiological pragmatism in terms of method, re-imagining the marketing as well as the practice of local church evangelism, is further combined with a Wimberist thaumaturgy (Wimber and Springer: 1985; 1987; Percy: 1996). It is the experience of God on the Holy Spirit weekend, rather than the propositional content of the conservative apologetic, that is characteristically understood to be most likely to ‘clinch the deal’. The Christian mystical tradition has always affirmed the possibility of divine encounter, but has never

Resilient Religion presumed to articulate God’s immediate, imminent and more or less automatic availability, other than mediated through the Eucharist. This emphasis on the individual’s authenticating experience that affirms the validity of religious truth-claims is entirely familiar within the individualistic epistemology of New Age spirituality, but is really quite novel to Christianity. In particular, those forms of the Christian tradition most influenced by the enlightenment – that is mainstream liberalism, propositional conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism – have proven to be the most resistant to and sceptical of this experientialism, and therefore least likely to join the Alpha bandwagon. The advocates of Alpha have found little support among the Calvinist exclusivists of Reform, the neo-fundamentalist wing of Anglican evangelicalism. By combining religious experience with individualism and instant spirituality, Alpha is a child of its time. It exemplifies the convertive optimism and missiological pragmatism of moderate and acculturating evangelicalism. Alpha also exhibits unintentional cultural hybridity, having commonality not only with conservative evangelicalism and charismatic renewal, but also, more surprisingly and wholly unintentionally, with the new spiritualities. The Kendal project proposed two alternative and mutually exclusive religious options. Heelas and Woodhead (2005) argued that the congregational domain emphasized ‘role enforcing’ values, emphasizing law, submission and generic gender and generational roles; the holistic milieu on the other hand was ‘life affirming’ emphasizing grace, freedom and opportunities for personal development. What appears to be emerging is more of a continuum in the social construction of new forms of religious and spiritual voluntarism, not only in the context of holistic spiritualities as identified in the Kendal project, but also in aspects of the reconfigured congregational domain. While some entrepreneurial experientialists within the congregational domain may be strictly conventional in ‘role enforcing’ terms, others indicate a much greater willingness to explore experimental synthesis with practices or emphases more familiar within the holistic milieu.

6.2 Autonomous religious consumption The holistic milieu prioritizes the individual’s right of private judgment, just as epistemological individualism privileges personal choice and experience over the wisdom of traditions and gurus (Partridge: 2004a; 2004b). Hammond

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Secularization and Its Discontents (1992) identified the rise of personal autonomy as a decisive factor in the continuing reconfiguration of American religion and the declining influence of the institutional parish. Contrary to Bruce (2002; 2007), Hammond interpreted this transition not as inherently secularizing but rather producing a corresponding re-orientation in the dominant patterns of religious practice, from the givens of parish identity and obligation to autonomous choice. Roof (1999) explored how American baby boomers have transposed the familiar patterns of non-religious consumer capitalism into a synchronous ‘spiritual quest culture’, primarily in terms of innovative expressions of Christianity. Not only has religion of birth been increasingly supplanted by religion of choice (Davie: 2007), but a growing number more precisely have begun to explore religions of choice. Distancing themselves from alignment with an inherited religion and adherence to official dogma, more religious consumers now reserve the right to explore a self-constructed synthesis of spiritualities. Some decide to become active participants in a particular form of religion, while others have become habitual migrants, constructing an individualized religious bricolage (Hervieu-Léger: 1999; 2000). Autonomous consumption has become a cultural norm (Putnam: 2000; Warner: 2007a; 2010). This trend was explored in the American context by Putnam (2000), who considered the shift from joining bowling teams to ‘bowling alone’ to be symptomatic of a crisis of non-participative individualism, as a result of which the civic fabric of America was at risk of being undermined. Greenpeace enjoyed spectacular growth that proved transient, tripling its North American membership from 1985 to 1990, followed by a collapse of 85 per cent by 1998 (Bosso, 1999a, cited in Putnam 2000: 156–8). Putnam endorsed Bosso’s conclusion that supporters of ‘mail order organizations’ are less ‘members’ than ‘consumers’ of a cause (Bosso: 1999b, 467; Putnam: 2000, 158), providing what has been termed mere ‘cheque book affiliation’ (Fowler and Shaiko: 1987, 490). With declining membership of political parties and trade unions, Britain has experienced similar trends. Charity donations have become geared to a particular project, rather than expressing a lifelong allegiance to a single charity. Brand loyalty and supermarket loyalty have broken down, so that purchasing patterns have become more fluid. For example, new Labour reached a peak of 405,000 members in 1997, the year Tony Blair became Prime Minister. However, at the end of 2007 the Labour Party reported to the Electoral Commission a membership of just 176,891. In 2006, Jon Cruddas MP claimed that the party was losing a member every 20 minutes and if that rate continued

Resilient Religion the party would have no members left by April 2013. Activists dismissed Cruddas’ hyperbole, reminiscent of some theorists’ attempts to pinpoint the date of extinction of Christianity in the United Kingdom, and claimed there was no convincing evidence to demonstrate that the party was in inexorable decline. Nonetheless, this trend is indicative of the extent to which British people now sign up to a short-term project rather than a lifelong affiliation. At the same time, consumerism has become a means of buying self-worth or constructing a new identity: as relationships and employment have ceased for many to be lifelong, and the self has become provisional and subject to reinvention, all allegiances that generate a socialized sense of self become more prone to transience in life’s passing and often unpredictable phases. Decline in participation in churches is therefore symptomatic of broader social changes in how people participate in voluntary organizations – on a provisional and temporary basis – and cannot reasonably be interpreted solely as a consequence of post-religiosity. In this context, religious consumption is inevitably and increasingly shaped by the normative societal patterns of commodified identity-building. The autonomous spiritual consumer purchases existential-therapeutic commodities from the holistic milieu, without necessarily identifying as a cardcarrying participant in any particular spirituality. This tendency is also seen in neo-Pentecostalism where congregational mobility appears to have increased as denominational identity has declined (Warner: 2007b; 2010). At large and influential Christian conferences, notably Spring Harvest, the proliferating range of options within the programme tends to affirm this cultural norm of individual freedom of choice and creates what has been termed the paradox of ‘autonomous conformism’ (Warner: 2008a). A Roman Catholic Professor asked me: ‘Why did my friends stop being Catholic, just because they didn’t like the new priest?’ The answer is the same: autonomous religious consumption subverts denominational loyalty and identity. From the post Reformation settlement – eius regio, cuius religio (the religion of the monarch determines the religion of the state) – we have moved into a new era where the individual religious consumer has become queen or king (Warner: 2006; 2010). As a result of autonomous religious consumption, congregations are increasingly becoming customers. The consequences are inevitable: religious providers, from Christian clergy to holistic therapists, are competing in a religious marketplace that is becoming increasingly fluid. Loyalty is eroding and has begun to give way to spiritual shopping around.

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Secularization and Its Discontents In order to maintain or develop market share, religious providers will need to develop culturally appropriate emphases and skills. They will need to address prominent felt needs – experiential and therapeutic – and they will need to acquire something of the orientation and aptitudes of entrepreneurial leadership. Davie observes that in some rural contexts the old pattern of believing without belonging still endures (Davie: 2007), although even here it is surely breaking down as a result of commuter villagers and parish re-organizations on an ever larger scale. In the cities and suburbs, but also in market towns as ostensibly traditional as Kendal (Heelas et al.: 2005), an increasingly open religious market is emerging. Unless shored up for the interim by central denominational subsidies or local benefactors, the viability of any particular form of religion is likely to become increasingly market dependent (Finke and Stark: 1992; Carrette and King: 2004; Miller: 2006). In a neo-liberal culture, autonomous religious consumption can be expected to intensify. This will not only facilitate new experimentation in the holistic milieu, but is also likely to transform the configuration of the congregational domain.

6.3 The Tearfund churchgoing survey, 2006 The Tearfund churchgoing survey (Ashworth and Farthing: 2007) was conducted in 2006 among 7,000 UK adults. Tearfund is a relief and development agency that, for nearly 40 years, has worked with Christian churches to combat poverty and injustice. They are therefore not a disinterested party and this is reflected in a tendency within the published report to interpret their data in ways that emphasize the continuing strength of the Christian churches in the United Kingdom. The report found that 53 per cent claimed to be Christian and 6 per cent are aligned with other faiths, but 39 per cent describe themselves as having no religion. 7.6 million claim to attend church monthly, with another 5 million claiming to attend annually, meaning that 26 per cent of UK adults attend once a year. The report argues that ‘given competing demands for time it is reasonable to equate monthly attendance with a commitment to regular churchgoing’ (2007, 5). This assumption allows for a headline claim that 15 per cent of UK adults are ‘regular’ church attenders, which is the highest figure that can reasonably be claimed. Although asserting the highest plausible total of ‘regular’ churchgoers, the report acknowledged that 66 per cent of adults (32.2 million) have no

Resilient Religion connection with Christian churches or any other religion. 16.2 million have never attended, while 16 million have attended in the past. The report described this sector as the ‘secular majority’ of whom 29.3 million have no interest in attending church. Of those designated ‘closed non-attenders’, 13.7 million used to attend but have dropped out, while 15.6 million have never attended, apart from weddings, baptisms and funerals. This leaves 6 per cent (2.9 million) who say they are open to the possibility of attending church, and are described by the report as ‘likely to go in future’. These are subdivided into the ‘open non-churched’, who have never attended (900,000), and the ‘open-dechurched’ (2.3 million) who have dropped out of churchgoing, but have not ruled out a possible return. The report contains few surprises: 19 per cent of women attend at least monthly compared with 12 per cent of men, 22 per cent attend among over 55 year olds and 21 per cent among professional and managerial social groups (‘AB’ in UK government terminology). 45 per cent attend ‘regularly’ in Northern Ireland, compared with 18 per cent in Scotland, 14 per cent in England and 12 per cent in Wales. Nearly 1 million attend ethnic minority churches, including 48 per cent among those of black ethnicity. The dominant denominations among ethnic minorities are Pentecostals (23 per cent), Roman Catholics (23 per cent) and Anglican (19 per cent). For many readers the biggest surprise is likely to be the fact that London is the most religious city in England: 20 per cent participate in other world faiths, which is higher than anywhere else in the United Kingdom, and 22 per cent are regular Christian churchgoers, which is higher than everywhere except Northern Ireland. Whereas the English Church Census reported church attendance of 6.1 per cent, the Tearfund survey reports claimed attendance of 9.1 per cent. The report sums up this difference by stating ‘around a third of the adults saying they attend at least weekly were not in church on the weekend of the 2005 Church Census’ (2007, 46). This is ambiguous: it could mean their asserted attendance was an exaggeration, or that these people do attend normally but attendance levels were exceptionally low that particular weekend. The report makes a distinction between the census’s ‘snapshot’ and the Tearfund data on ‘typical’ attendance. However, Marler and Hadaway’s study (1998) has established that people find it hard to answer religious questions reliably, and are inclined to exaggerate their frequency of attendance. The report compares churchgoing levels with the data in the 2002 European Social Survey and the 2004 British Social Attitudes Survey. These reported at least monthly levels of church attendance in the United Kingdom of 18.6 per cent

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Secularization and Its Discontents and 16.4 per cent respectively, compared with this report finding 15.3 per cent in 2006. Steady and continued decline is therefore apparent, even utilizing this unreliable and impressionistic means of measurement. Despite the positive tone of the report, and the willingness to extend the definition of ‘regular’ churchgoing to encompass monthly attendance, the dominant theme is the marginalization of religion. On the one hand 26 per cent of the UK population have an annual link with churches, and 53 per cent still call themselves Christian. On the other hand, ‘regular’ attendance appears to have shifted within a quarter century from twice a Sunday to monthly, and this indicates what I designate a ‘hybridisation of the faithful’. There is inevitably a diminishing influence of organized religion upon those whose attendance is increasingly occasional, since they swim more often in other socio-cultural streams. This contrasts profoundly with the early to mid-twentieth century, when many churches provided an all-encompassing lifestyle and monocultural socialization, with attendance expected twice on Sundays, one or more midweek evening, plus a range of other religious and social activities, from prayer groups and pastoral activities to religious versions of the majority culture, such as football teams and coffee mornings. This socio-cultural hybridization and diminution of the influence of religion from mono-cultural dominance to one influence among many will have presumably contributed to the continuing decline in total monthly attendance between 2002 and 2006. Moreover the fact that the majority of the population has no interest in attending church demonstrates a secularized and post-Christian phenomenon equally present among those who have never attended and those for whom a former practice of church attendance has become surplus to requirements. Nonetheless, the high levels of active church allegiance among the black ethnic groupings represent a modest countertrend. Even more significant is the evidence for London’s high levels of religiosity, despite being by far the largest, most multi-faith, most international and therefore the most detraditionalized and pluralistic city. Metropolitan postsecularity, of course, runs totally counter to the prognoses of Durkheim, Weber and classical secularization theory. In sum, the Tearfund survey, notwithstanding the methodological problem of accurate answers to questions about religion, is further evidence of three trends that are moving in contrary directions: resilience, secularity and postsecularity. The legacy of inherited religion still shows fairly high levels of resilience rather than imminent collapse; the secular majority now shows indifference towards the Christian religion; Pentecostalism has now become

Resilient Religion the ‘third force’ in Christianity in Britain, alongside Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, with significant growth among ethnic minority Christians; and obscured from the gaze and typically secular assumptions of the metropolitan media and elite, London has become the most religious city in mainland Britain. In a period of profound and rapid cultural change, such contrary trends should not be surprising. There are now more atheists in Britain than ever before, and the same is true of Pentecostals.

6.4 The ascent of Pentecostalism A century after ecstatic eruptions in a prayer meeting in Azusa Street Los Angeles in 1906 that represent one of its most celebrated archetypes and origins, Pentecostalism is finally coming of age as the rising force in global Christianity. (For overviews, see Synan: 1971; 1997; Cox: 1996; Martin: 1990; 2002; Anderson: 2004; Kay and Dyer: 2004.) David Martin’s study of global Pentecostalism (2002) examined the burgeoning growth of this recent and rampant form of Christianity. It has rapidly taken root in indigenized forms across the developing world, and has proven particularly attractive where people have faced rapid cultural migrations from pre to post-modernity. However, Martin concluded that there was no evidence that Western Europe had proven a fertile ground for classical Pentecostalism, other than in ethnic minority churches. Jenkins (2002; 2006) emphasized the shifting balance of power in global Christianity, which is increasingly a non-white religion of the southern hemisphere enjoying vibrant advance. Miller and Yamamori (2007) argued that global Pentecostalism cannot be characterized as self-absorbed pietism, but rather is developing new forms of social engagement. My own encounters with Pentecostalism, although limited, have extended across five continents. In Latin America, I visited and was researching Brazilian Baptists, a predominantly middle class form of religion at least among those with whom I had contact. They were conventional and western in idiom, with strong and obvious cultural dependence upon American Southern Baptists and indications of attendant financial support. A small number of Baptists were supporting impressive social initiatives in the favelas, the shanty towns that litter the urban landscape to which the rural poor have flocked in search of riches. In desperately poor communities, where shacks were made from debris, electricity was stolen from overhead cables and the most likely career prospects appeared to be prostitution and drug dealing, these Baptists

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Secularization and Its Discontents were building sewers and providing pre-school education. However, they readily pointed out the dominant Christian presence in the favelas, claiming that no sooner did new encampments spring up than the Assemblies of God opened a church. Indeed, Berryman noted that between 1990 and 1992, 710 new Protestant churches were established in Rio de Janeiro, of which 91 per cent were Pentecostal (1995, 109). Pentecostalism has become the thriving religion of choice among the Brazilian underclass. This corresponded, albeit with a heightened rate of growth, to the North American pattern, where Pentecostalism had found fertile ground among the urban poor who were deracinated from their previous connectedness in settled rural communities and alienated from the unfamiliar surroundings of the city. When Pope Benedict XVI visited Brazil in May 2007, Cardinal Hummes warned that a million Catholics become Pentecostals every year. The Pope criticized Pentecostals as a problem for Catholicism, condemning ‘the aggressive proselytizing of sects’. The Pew Forum (2006) reported that although Latin America is home to nearly half the 1.1 billion Catholics in the world, in Brazil the number of Catholics fell from 89 per cent to 74 per cent between 1980 and 2000. Less than 60 per cent of Brazilian city dwellers considered themselves to be Catholics. Meanwhile Pentecostals had grown to represent 15 per cent of the population and over 70 per cent of all Protestants. Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum, identified two critical factors in the rise of Brazilian Pentecostalism: the spiritual appeal was generating ‘a living and personal sense of communion with God’; and the social appeal was providing ‘a sense of community’ for the displaced poor.1 The impact of expressive subjectivism is not confined to the favelas. 34 per cent of Brazilian Catholics now identify with the charismatic movement. Moreover, the Baptists whom I was researching freely described their sense of threat and fascination faced with the growth of middle class Pentecostalism, a rising tide that was unmistakably and irresistibly seen to be invading the turf of more traditionalist and staid forms of Americanized voluntarist Protestantism. Brazilian Pentecostalism has therefore not only become increasingly the religion of choice for the urban dispossessed, it is also capable of mutating into forms apposite to the aspirational middle classes who are culturally attuned and inclined to the globalized orientation in favour of subjective, therapeutic and entrepreneurial religion. In South Korea I spent a week in Spring 2009 on Yeoido Island in Seoul. Opposite my hotel room was the Yoido Full Gospel Church, widely known as

Resilient Religion the largest church in the world. Five years after the Korean War, the church began with a congregation of six on May 18 1958. It rapidly outgrew a series of tents (some of which appear from the display of photographs in the building, to have been American military surplus) moved to a permanent building in Seo-dae-mun in 1961–2, and then bought land on Yeoido Island, where the auditorium was completed in 1973. This purchase was particularly opportune, since the island was undeveloped at the time, but has since become the central commercial, banking and political district in Seoul, and the location of the National Assembly Building. The church reports that it had 500 members in 1962, 8,000 by 1968, 18,000 by 1973, 100,000 by 1979, 500,000 by 1985 and 700,000 by 1992.2 Since then the church has emphasized establishing satellite churches, aiming for an additional 5,000 between 2000 and 2010. By any standard these are staggering numbers, and to Western European eyes almost incomprehensible. I was able to observe the massed ranks of well-dressed Koreans forming orderly queues to await entry to some of the seven Sunday services (7 a.m., 9 a.m., 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m., 5.30 p.m. and 7.30 p.m.), with uniformed and white gloved church parking attendants standing across the urban highway and marshalling the waiting lines of cars. I was also able to observe the beginning (9.30 p.m.) and end (4.00 a.m.) of the weekly all night Friday prayer meeting. If these events are insufficient for the devout, there is a daily all night prayer service (11 p.m.–3 a.m.); two daily dawn prayer services (5 a.m. and 7 a.m.); Wednesday services at 10.30 a.m., 2 p.m. and 7.30 p.m.; a Thursday praise service at 6:30pm and a Saturday prayer service at 3 p.m. This is by no means all: there is an extensive ‘Bible education’ programme, many prayer activities and frequent ‘cell groups’. This is not church as a Sunday service, but as a total life experience. The hospitality was exceptional and generous: I was taken to outstanding restaurants and collected for a Sunday service in Seo-dae-mun in a top of the range Korean limousine, the Ssangyong Chairman. This is a culture and religion of deference and honour, in which Pentecostal church leaders can become financial VIPs, and this seems neither anomalous nor in any way inappropriate to either the ministers or the faithful. In contrast with the favela Pentecostalism that offers aspirations to the marginalized, this form of religion celebrates aspirations attained, even though in typical South Korean style ever-restless to achieve more. If the Chairman of the Board deserves financial recognition and social status, middle class Pentecostal Koreans reason, how much more should the CEOs of the Kingdom of God be highly esteemed and generously renumerated.

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Secularization and Its Discontents David Yonggi Cho, the founder-pastor, is evidently an exceptional leader and it remains to be seen whether the church will be able to sustain these extraordinary numbers when, after several failed attempts, he eventually insists on retirement or dies in harness. His recognition is international – he was the first non-American Chair of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship (1992– 2000). 1996 saw the publication of 21 volumes of his sermons, preached during 40 years of ministry, and this event was celebrated at a reception attended by a former Prime Minister, a former Deputy Prime Minister and a University Vice Chancellor. The church’s website explains its exponential growth by emphasizing Pastor Cho as a ‘mighty man of God’, but also their collective ethos of persistent prayer, impassioned preaching and miraculous healings. Immediately striking is the close alignment between the culture of the church and that of the surrounding mega-city, home to over 10 million people. Seoul is one of the world’s largest cities, a city that never sleeps, a city where everyone seems is in a hurry and where multi-lane highways running through the city-centre are jammed with traffic seven days a week. The post-Korean war economic miracle has been fast-paced and urgent. The post-war American turn of South Korea’s culture and religion has in many ways caused them to out-America the United States, in economic growth, urban expansion and in the late twentieth century surge of voluntarist religion. The capitalist hyperactivity of the city corresponds with the devout hyperactivity of its leading Pentecostal church. Just as Koreans work hard, Yoido Full Gospel Christians pray hard, worship and witness hard. Capitalist growth and Pentecostal growth have gone hand in hand; with the Sunday services translated into 16 languages, and 50,000 overseas visitors a year to its prayer centre (‘Osanri Prayer Mountain’) the church has even become a significant international export alongside the other global industries with headquarters on Yeoido Island. Dr Cho and his church teach a ‘threefold blessing’3, proclaiming that the Cross of Christ provides salvation from sin, healing from sickness, and release into divine blessing, which is considered to be life-encompassing and to include material prosperity. Here is a contemporary re-enactment of Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958). Even as South Korea entered into global capitalism, indigenized Korean Pentecostalism provided a metanarrative of positive believing, determined effort in a rigorously self-disciplined lifestyle and confidence in the divine favour of material prosperity. At one and the same time this Pentecostalism is typical yet specific, global yet unmistakably South Korean, individual and voluntarist yet profoundly concordant with national aspirations and ethos.

Resilient Religion From Africa I had the opportunity to spend some time with William Kumuyi, a quietly spoken man with an avowed dependence on the Methodist holiness tradition and the traditional evangelical prioritization of thoughtful biblical exposition. Kumuyi was a lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Lagos in 1973, when his non-denominational student Bible study group began to grow rapidly. In 1983 this became the Deeper Life Church, which had attracted 50,000 members by 1988 and over 120,000 by 2010. The Deeper Life movement has also planted over 5,000 churches in Nigeria and 3,000 overseas. The total Nigerian membership of the movement in 2009 was estimated to be over 800,000.4 The Deeper Life website accepts the designation ‘post-denominational’, but the Pentecostal framing of this ethos is unmistakable. Central to Kumuyi’s ministry is biblical exposition, and Alan Isaacson described the inclusive impact of this preaching: Poor street traders who can barely read sit next to university professors, all equally captivated by the way Scripture becomes suddenly relevant to them.5

Kumuyi combines an evangelical high view of the Bible with a Wesleyan call to holiness and a Pentecostal emphasis on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the importance of healing miracles in the growth of the church. There is a distinctive restraint in Kumuyi’s account of the Pentecostal dimension of the church’s growth: God, in the growth of Deeper Life Bible Church, has strategically and prudently used miracles to ‘make all men come to Him’ (John 3:26). We take Christian living and holiness seriously.6

Kumuyi’s ministry is emphatically Nigerian, presenting a version of Christianity that is indigenized rather than captive to a Western mono-cultural export system, a home-grown articulation of Christian faith and practice. Nonetheless he is critical of Nigerian customs and behaviour: he explicitly rejects the validity within Christianity of polygamy, and he has publicly called on senior politicians to root out corruption. He is also highly critical of what he considers excesses of Christian showmanship: There are no theatrics in our church, because from my background, I don’t like anything that is turned into a show or drama. Some pastors like the drama rather than the results. I want the results rather than the drama. I have also looked at the

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Secularization and Its Discontents ministry of Jesus Christ, and I want as much as possible to follow the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. So in the relationship and interaction with people, and the life I live, I want it to be the life of Christ. I want the Jesus type of ministry. I don’t want anything fake.7

The trajectory of this ministry is not to import a form of Christianity from the West to Nigeria, but to export an authentic contemporary Christianity from Nigeria to the world. In London I interviewed Matthew Ashimolowo, the larger than life ‘President and Senior Pastor’ who founded in 1992 the church that has become the Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC). The church now claims congregations of 12,000 every Sunday, and describes itself as ‘the fastest growing church in Europe’8 and ‘the largest church in Europe’9. KICC now has a 9.5 acre site under development in Walthamstow, a branch in Birmingham, and owns KICC TV, which is described as the first church-owned TV channel in the United Kingdom. This company produces Ashimolowo’s ‘Winning Ways’ TV and radio programme, which is aired daily in the United Kingdom and also broadcast in Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe and elsewhere. The rhetoric is emphatically upbeat: the church building is called ‘The Land of Wonders’; the TV programme is called ‘Winning Ways’; the annual women’s conference, hosted by Mrs Ashimolowo, is called ‘Winning Women’; a men’s event comprises a ‘dynamic group of leaders and visionaries’ who meet at a ‘Breakfast for Champions’; the annual congress, described as Europe’s Premier Christian Conference, is entitled the ‘International Gathering of Champions’ (IGOC), which is claimed to be ‘renowned for equipping Christians with the insightful and practical knowledge they need to lead successful lives’.10 The rhetoric of IGOC is unrelentingly upbeat: ‘Take charge of your future’, ‘No more limits’, ‘Rise to a new dimension’, ‘All things are ready’, ‘Empowered to Prosper’, ‘Being the best’ and ‘Finding financial freedom’. The women’s groups at the church include ‘Mothers in waiting’ who are ‘wives believing God for babies’, ‘Successful wives’ who are married with children and ‘Ladies in waiting’ who are single. Feminism and understatement evidently make no significant impact on KICC. When the church opened a new building in 1998, the preacher was the ‘renowned Christian leader Morris Cerrullo’11. Cerullo is an American telePentecostal, who is not without controversy. In the mid-1990s Cerullo was criticized by British mainline churches for the brash tone and content of the advertising for his London ‘healing crusades’. Of the headline international

Resilient Religion speakers at IGOC 2009, four were from the United States and three, including Ashimolowo, from Africa. A Nigerian Muslim by birth, Ashimolowo demonstrates a multi-cultural orientation that synthesizes American and African Pentecostalism. Ashimolowo’s own account of KICC’s success is in conventional Pentecostal and church growth terms. He is fully persuaded that the natural condition of Christianity is conversion growth, so that the weakness of the church in Western Europe is primarily explained by the failure of the church to utilize its own capacity for expansive expectations and assured advance. He is unambiguously entrepreneurial and unreservedly Pentecostal, embodying global capitalism with an African twist. If there is one ingredient singularly missing from Ashimolowo’s cultural hybridity, it is English irony. For many British and European eyes, much of the rhetoric will seem insufferably over the top, strident and even absurd. Ashimolowo is described on his website as ‘an inspiring visionary’ and as a ‘pastor, teacher, evangelist and businessman’.12 He promises a destiny of abundant wealth to his followers. The Charity Commission investigated KICC’s finances 2002–5, and concluded there was ‘serious financial misconduct’ (Charity Commission, Report on The King’s Ministries Trust, (Registered Charity No. 1014084). 6 October 2005). Ashimolowo was required to repay £200,000 after authorizing payments and benefits to himself and his wife of £384,000, receiving an £80,000 Mercedes, using the Charity’s Visa card to purchase a Florida timeshare apartment for £13,000 and receiving several hundred thousand pounds in payments to his private companies that were run from church property. The external managers appointed by the Charity Commission withdrew in 2005 once they were satisfied that the church was being managed in full compliance with Charity law. Thereafter KICC’s finances have gone from strength to strength. In April 2009 The Guardian reported that KICC had filed company accounts reporting a profit of £4.9 million over the previous 18 months and had assets of £22.9 million,13 which, the newspaper stated, is more than three times the assets of the foundation responsible for St. Paul’s Cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren’s iconic London building for the Church of England. The Guardian reported Ashimolowo’s annual salary to be £100,000 and quoted from his preface to the accounts: The last 18 months have been a period of incredible journey in the life of KICC. It has been very exciting to see God move the ministry from one level to another as we witness the increased manifestation of His glory.

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Secularization and Its Discontents A prolific author of more than 70 books, in 2007 Ashimolowo published What is Wrong with Being Black? General Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria, provided an enthusiastic commendation: I commend Pastor Matthew for writing this seminal book that not only celebrates the past achievements of people of colour, . . . I heartily recommend this book to all, and especially to politicians, business leaders and academics – those who have a key role to play in effecting change.14

This book represents in Ashimolowo’s ministry a significant synthesis of religion and ethnicity in the context of populist preaching. Did you know that the black people built the first civilisation? That black people built the pyramids of Egypt? That black people were the first people to know and teach arithmetic, geometry and astrology? Did you know that the black people discovered the use of iron, that black people invented modern cannons, flying missiles, ship propellers, gas motors and automatic hammers?15

Ashmiolowo not only celebrates the African cultural legacy and critiques colonialism and racism, but argues in favour of a kind of Pentecostal black pride, convinced that it is ultimately through Christian conversion that black Africans can fulfil their destiny and potential. The KICC website states that Ashimolowo ‘is considered a Christian thought leader, Biblical scholar and media commentator on a variety of issues that have left indelible marks on modern society’.16 What is undoubtedly clear is that Ashimolowo is a remarkable phenomenon of global and African Pentecostalism. His church is more exuberant than Kumuyi’s or Cho’s, his promises of wealth and his enthusiasm for entrepreneurial capitalism are emphatically assured. White European Christianity has probably never generated such levels of financial advantage since the high Middle Ages. Ashimolowo’s synthesis of positive thinking, capitalist endeavour, a reaffirmed black identity and Pentecostal religion is deeply alienating or even incomprehensible to the majority Western European culture, where the default assumption is that healthy religion is identified by a disregard for money and a critical scepticism before the allure of consumer capitalism. For many white Europeans, the authenticity of religion is in inverse relationship to the salaries of its professional exponents. Nonetheless, Ashimolowo’s ministry clearly resonates with a significant minority, legitimating the aspirations of the congregation that flocks to his

Resilient Religion church. It plainly exemplifies one kind of religion that has found a ready market in multicultural London. And the congregation is evidently and enthusiastically willing to reward him with not only with acclaim and admiration but with considerable personal wealth. Prosperity teaching is readily interpreted from the outside as the exploitation of the vulnerable and gullible, but for the insiders it evidently represents a narrative of hope that guarantees inclusion in the majority Western experience of economic opportunity and progressively rising standards of living. It is the American dream re-articulated in terms of one specific sub-set of African Pentecostalism. It is not possible to generalize from Kumuyi or Ashimolowo – quite different as they are from one another – to the character of African, let alone global, Pentecostalism. Ogbu Kalu (2008) referred only glancingly to Kumuyi’s Deeper Life, before turning to more dispersed forms of African Pentecostalism. This reflects his thesis that African Pentecostalism not only makes space for the spirit world of traditional African culture, in contrast with Westernized Christianity, but is also embedded in rural communities. According to his analysis, African Pentecostalism has evolved as a synthesis of African indigenous religions and encultured responses to Christianity. Therefore, he argues, Western accounts of Pentecostalism as a religion that mainly thrives among new migrants to urban centres, culturally disrupted and materially disadvantaged, is inadequate in Africa. Kalu concludes that African Pentecostalism has become authentically indigenized and is no longer dependent upon or shaped by non-African funding, non-African denominational authorities or nonAfrican idioms of expressive religion. According to this analysis, African Pentecostalism is a locus of post-colonial cultural hybridity (Bhabha: 1994), in which the dialogue with Western Christianity is continued, but in an emergent context of reasserted religious and cultural autonomy. For Kalu, ‘African Pentecostalism is daring to recover identity through religious power’ (2008, 291). Kalu interprets the ascent of Pentecostalism as a second coming of African Christianity: . . . African theologians shaped the doctrine, polity, liturgy, and ethics of the early Jesus movement. African scholars such as Origen, Augustine, and Tertullian were in demand throughout the Christian world. (Kalu: 2008, 291)

Kalu’s citation of early theologians – particularly Augustine – is a quiet reminder that Western Christianity was formed by north Africans long before the dominance of European Christendom. Christianity was first a non-white

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Secularization and Its Discontents religion, and has become predominantly non-white once again in the twenty-first century, in particular due to the ascent of Pentecostalism. A quite different form of neo-Pentecostalism emerged in my recent study of new congregations in the English city of York (Warner: 2007b). Until I began my interviews, I had assumed that the sociological consensus was probably correct, and that the future prospects for religion in Britain were marginal for the free churches in general and for Pentecostalism in particular. To my surprise, it became quickly apparent that since the 1990s there has been a proliferation of neo-Pentecostal churches across the city. The two classical Pentecostal churches have reinvented themselves and enjoyed significant growth after decline in the mid to late twentieth century: the Assemblies of God has rebranded as ‘The Rock Church’, emphasizing loud and energetic contemporary music and a dance studio, while the Elim remodelled its services as a ‘café church’ moved from the city centre to near the university, and repositioned itself as the natural church home for international students. Add to that more than 14 neo-Pentecostal churches, almost all established or reinvented since the 1990s, and the neo-Pentecostals claimed by 2006 a combined Sunday attendance of over 1,200. This is small beer by the standards of global Pentecostalism, but taking into account the 800 attending the city centre charismatic Anglican church (St Michael le Belfrey), there are now more than 2,000 neo-Pentecostals in the city of York, out of a population of just over 180,000. Their rate of growth appears to have been increasing in the past 20 years, even as the traditional churches, Catholic and Protestant, have suffered accelerating decline. The prevailing ethos is far from the Pentecostalism of the Brazilian favelas, the aspirational citizens of globalized Seoul, the diverse urbanites of Nigeria and the prosperity hungry Africans of London. And yet it is apparent that a quieter but nonetheless distinctively Pentecostal form of Christian religion has been moving towards centre stage among the predominantly white population of the English city of York. Turning to a global perspective, I am more persuaded by Martin’s conclusion that Pentecostalism is ‘economically entrepreneurial’ than by his claim that it is ‘implicitly democratic’ (2005, 42). Pentecostal proclamation of the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit in all believers clearly has democratizing impulsion, however this risks being overwhelmed by Pentecostalism’s frequent preoccupation with a ‘mighty man of God’. Martin is on more secure ground when he concludes that there are five sustainable meta-narratives in the global context: Islam, liberal secularity, ‘some variant of Buddhism’, Catholicism and also Pentecostalism (2005b, 152). The omissions from Martin’s

Resilient Religion list are significant: he implicitly sees no durable future in the global context for Christian fundamentalism in conservative evangelical form, nor for conventional Protestantism, either in its state church or dissenting forms. In the global context, Martin anticipates diminishing returns for the Anglican, Lutheran and Reformed Churches, and also for the Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Salvation Army and sundry diverse and proliferating sects. The empirical data from the United States and Western Europe confirm this projection: the Age of Christendom has passed, and so has the Protestant Age. For Martin, while Islam is ‘increasingly ethno-religious and mono-cultural’ the ascent of Pentecostalism derives from the precisely opposite emphases. As our micro-studies have indicated, it is highly adaptable in expression, capable of indigenizing in diverse cultures and classes, lacking any specific ethnic orientation and consistently prioritizing religion of choice rather than tribal or inherited religion. Global Pentecostalism is energized by a restlessly pragmatic impulse to experimental indigenization, combined with a missiological urgency that is emphatically and robustly optimistic. Donald Dayton identified a ‘whole range of Pentecostalisms’ (Dayton: 1987) and Allan Anderson argued that it has become ‘possible to speak at the same time of “Pentecostalism” and “Pentecostalisms”’ (2004, 286). Pentecostalism has taken root on every continent, and has demonstrated a confident adaptivity and a remarkable fluidity of acculturation that are capable of developing substantive indigenization and de-Westernization. And yet in all its pluriform and proliferating diversity, global Pentecostalism shares a common grammar of Christocentricity and ecstatic expressivism. To adapt Jon Butler’s memorable phrase (1992), the world is increasingly awash in a sea of Pentecostal faith.

6.5 The emergent religious market Brierley’s (2006a; 2006b) English church attendance surveys for the past three decades reveal significant shifts in market share, and we now turn to a reappraisal of these data to consider the patterns underlying the immediately apparent narrative of sustained decline. The Times stated in a front page headline on 15 February 2007: Catholics set to pass Anglicans as Leading UK Church. This, a recent Cambridge report had claimed, was the direct result of the high levels of internal EU migration, with many Eastern European Catholics coming to Britain. However, the newspaper headline was more than 30 years too late. In the mid-twentieth century, UK

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Secularization and Its Discontents Roman Catholicism was more resistant to decline than Protestantism. In 1979 English church attendance data indicated a market share that was Anglican 30.71 per cent, Roman Catholic 36.59 per cent; in 1989, Anglican 26.7 per cent, Roman Catholic 36.18 per cent; and in 1998 Anglican 26.4 per cent, Roman Catholic 33.14 per cent. Roman Catholicism had evidently been more deeply embedded as a religion of birth, so that children in Catholic families had been more effectively socialized with an intrinsic and deeply embedded sense of Catholic identity and loyalty. (A ‘lapsed Catholic’ is typically self-defined in terms of their former religion, which tends not to be true of most Protestants. I have never met someone self-designated as a ‘lapsed Protestant’, although some post-conservatives now refer to themselves as ‘recovering evangelicals’.) Polish and other Eastern European migrant Catholics are likely to continue to be a hugely significant factor in the coming decades. However, the credit crunch and recession from 2008 revealed that if job prospects become better in the emerging East European economies these economic migrants are capable of leaving Britain as quickly as they had arrived. Preceding this surge of Eastern European migration, which may yet prove to be highly volatile and temporary, it is clear that around the turn of the century Roman Catholic decline accelerated rapidly. In 2005 Anglican market share was 27.5 per cent and Roman Catholic 28.21 per cent. Relative to Anglicans, therefore, Roman Catholic decline that had previously been slower was now happening at a faster rate. This could be explained in terms of late-onset decline – stronger defences against normative secularizing trends eventually being overwhelmed by post-Christian pressures from the prevailing culture. Other factors may have contributed: a new openness to ecumenism had begun to soften traditionalist exclusivism; the laity’s widespread rejection of the church’s teaching on birth control had relativized the former ethical absolutism; and a series of high profile sex abuse scandals had inevitably alienated some from their church of birth. The growth in market share of the Church of England since 1998 does not, of course, indicate an increase in size of Anglican congregations, but rather a slightly slower rate of decline than Methodists, URC and Roman Catholics. Classical secularization theorists were clear that religious prospects in Western Europe had become the least promising for the minority sects. For Berger, free churches were less capable of shoring up plausibility churches than state churches. Wilson argued that the impact of secularization was disproportionate: ‘. . . even more to the disadvantage of Nonconformist denominations

Resilient Religion than to the Established church’ (Wilson: 1966, 14). Similarly, Martin observed that Western Europe had become essentially ‘post-Protestant’ (2005b, 32) and had proven unresponsive to the global growth of Pentecostalism (2002; 2005). Davie (1994; 2000; 2002) concluded that ‘believing without belonging’ and ‘vicarious religion’ tend chiefly to generate dynamics of durability in Western European Christianity among state-sponsored Protestants and Catholics. Gill (1993) likewise saw an increasingly marginalized future for the free churches. This strong consensus can at least partly be explained by the significance of ‘religious capital’. Bourdieu (1984) developed the concept of ‘cultural capital’ examining the interaction of the creators of art, the purchasers of art and the critical intermediaries whose judgments determine current tastes and thereby ascribe financial value to particular works. Thornton (1995; Gelder and Thornton: 1997) applied this concept to subcultures in terms of the ‘subcultural capital’ that is required to sustain viable micro-communities. This approach can be extended in terms of the ‘religious capital’ that is accrued within any denomination or local religious activity that sustains a sense of identity among participants and their children. From the 60s to the 90s, Roman Catholic religious capital in Britain proved more durable in the face of mid-twentieth century secularizing tendencies. However, Roman Catholic subcultural religious capital was breaking down in the late twentieth century, resulting more recently in a dramatic acceleration in the rate of decline in Catholic attendance at weekly services. The predominant form of religious capital in England is naturally associated with the state church. For many generations it has remained the default and residual religious identity, the religion of birth. The traditional English self-designation on hospital forms as ‘Church of England’, even by those who never darken the door of a church, is indicative of the substantial legacy of Anglican religious capital. It has also been the religion of privilege, so that the professional classes are disproportionately represented in its ranks and it has tended since the Victorian heyday of the free churches to recruit a number of the more successful and socially mobile children from their families. Prospective church leaders who in the United States might well establish new churches have been more likely in England to gravitate towards Anglican ministry (Warner: 2006). The ‘religious capital’ of the established church generates a perspective of abiding normativity and superiority – social, cultural and intellectual as well as religious. This tends to be the case not only for church leaders and congregations, but also academics and the media, participants in

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Secularization and Its Discontents other denominations and religions, and many with no particular religious outlook of their own. Classical secularization theory has in common with the dominant forms of religious capital in Western Europe the assumption that if there is a future for European religion it will be primarily Roman Catholic or state-sponsored Protestantism. However, the recent English church attendance data reveal a return to growth in free church market share. In 1851 census, the free church market share was 47.41 per cent, but this preceded Roman Catholic immigration. In Brierley’s surveys this sector shows a steadily rising market share: 1979, 32.51 per cent; 1989, 36.87 per cent; 1998, 39.54 per cent; 2005, 42.93 per cent. Despite the significant presence of Roman Catholicism in twentieth and twenty-first century England, the free churches have almost returned to their mid-nineteenth century level of market share: 43 per cent in 2005 compared with 47 per cent in 1851. This is all the more surprising given that Methodist and URC decline has been at least as severe in the past 30 years as that suffered by Anglicans and Catholics. The URC and Methodists have an aggregate decline of 54.54 per cent, Roman Catholics 55.14 per cent and Anglicans 49.9 per cent. This closely correlated rate of severe decline in England is paralleled in the United States (Finke and Stark: 1992). From 1940 to 1985, the American rates of decline were: Congregationalists (−56 per cent), Presbyterians (−49 per cent) and Episcopalians (−38 per cent), and United Methodists (−38 per cent). The only American exception in these comparisons is Roman Catholicism which actually grew in this period by 12 per cent, as a result of continuing high levels of Hispanic Catholic immigration. In analysing his data, Brierley divided Protestants into two sectors: his ‘institutional churches’ include all denominations that have state church privileges somewhere in the world, including the URC therefore as a Reformed sister church of, for example, the Church of Scotland; his other sector comprises all other Protestant churches, including Methodists. In recent church-sect theory, ‘institutional’ and ‘voluntarist’ churches – using Troeltsch’s (1911; 1992) alternative terminology to Weber’s ‘church and sect’ – are understood to function on a continuum. Voluntarist churches tend to gravitate over time towards heightened institutionalism (Stark and Bainbridge: 1985; Finke and Stark: 1992). This is obviously related to Weber’s (ET 1948, new edition 1991) concept of the routinization of charisma, whereby the charismatic authority of a founding figure is transposed into a religious bureaucracy. Once Brierley’s data are re-categorized in accordance with church-sect theory,

Resilient Religion a previously hidden sub-text is revealed. Beneath the narrative of severe decline in church attendance there is a counter-narrative of the increasing significance of voluntarist churches. This echoes precisely what can be demonstrated from American data ever since the institutionalization of Methodism: there is a consistent pattern of voluntarist reinvention and growth, even as institutional forms of Christianity have continued their inexorable decline (Finke and Stark: 1992). The rate of decline of institutional churches, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist and URC, is in marked contrast with the trend among voluntarist churches. The aggregated decline of attendance within the English institutional sector in 1979–2005 was 51.59 per cent. In the same period the voluntarist churches actually grew their congregations by 17.13 per cent. This raises the possibility of a significant weakening, under the duress of secularization, of the reserve of religious capital that has sustained the prolonged and normative dominance of the established church. Measured in terms of market share in 1979–2005, Anglicans declined slightly from 30.71 per cent to 27.5 per cent; Roman Catholics declined from 36.59 per cent to 28.21 per cent; and institutional Protestants declined from 18.28 per cent to 14.28 per cent. The voluntarists on the other hand increased their market share from 14.23 per cent to 28.65 per cent. This is quite extraordinary and entirely without precedent in the history of Christianity in Britain. For the first time in the history Christianity in England, in 2005 there were more people in voluntarist churches on a Sunday than in Anglican or Roman Catholic churches. It confounds the expectations and perceptions of establishment church leaders, sociologists of religion and the media. This is far more significant than the collective prominence of the free churches, since this 28.65 per cent does not include the Methodists, who in 1851 were unambiguously the dominant English free church (Figure 6.1). Given the contrasting age profiles, these trajectories are likely to diverge still further in the coming decades. In 2005 the average of the English population was 45: Anglicans averaged 49, Roman Catholics 44 and both Methodists and URC 55. However, the average age in new churches was 34 and among Pentecostals just 33 (Brierley: 2006a). As elderly clergy retire and unsustainable churches expire, the congregational domain can be expected to undergo further and more rapid change in market share. In the Anglican context, where there is a growing crisis of limited numbers coming forward for ordination, the parish structure may prove increasingly unsustainable, with clergy spread

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Secularization and Its Discontents 2500000

2000000

1500000

Anglican Roman Catholic

1000000 Institutional dissent 500000 Voluntarist dissent 0

Figure 6.1 English church attendance, 1979–2005.

more and more thinly across multiple parishes. According to the logic of Adam Smith (1776), non-stipendiary clergy may help maintain the status quo in the short-term, but are insufficiently incentivized and obligated to sustain entrepreneurial leadership and change. It remains to be seen whether the Anglican and Methodist Fresh Expressions initiatives (www.freshexpressions.org.uk) that seek to ‘re-imagine the mission-shaped church’ will be able to generate significant levels of new religious participation. They may yet prove to be less of a recruitment opportunity than an exit strategy for those already alienated from the more traditional forms of church. Particularly in the case of Methodism, new initiatives look increasingly likely to be too little, too late. The dynamics within the voluntarist sector are complex and allegiances appear increasingly provisional, even volatile. The Baptists have been fairly static in recent decades after significant decline through most of the twentieth century, with some churches growing fairly rapidly while many have known only shrinking congregations. This is in contrast with the rapid decline of old institutionalism and the rise of the new voluntarists. The late twentieth century new churches (originally known as ‘house churches’) grew rapidly from the 70s to the 90s, but more recently have as a sector (notwithstanding the continued growth of some groups) declined significantly. This is entirely to be expected, in accordance with Weberian routinization and Stark and Bainbridge’s (1985; 1987) concept of cyclical secularization. British ‘new churches’ described themselves in terms of a restorationist ecclesiological ultimacy that was recovering the biblical master plan for the all-conquering Church of Christ: a combination of biblical literalism, separatist dogmatism

Resilient Religion and late modern mechanical theories of methodologically guaranteed success (Walker: 1985; Warner: 2007a). By contrast, leading American experiments in voluntarist forms of Christianity typically combine missiological pragmatism and convertive expectancy to claim culturally apposite yet biblically faithful contemporaneity (Miller: 1997). The greatest surprise in Brierley’s data is the very recent acceleration of neo-Pentecostal growth. 81 per cent of Pentecostal growth is in London, which has become the epicentre within a broader but milder neo-Pentecostal turn in the religious market (Warner: 2007b) (Figure 6.2). Even if those self-designated as ‘new churches’ are treated as a separate category, the classical and new Pentecostals have now overtaken the Baptists as the largest section of the voluntarists, and the only sub-sector enjoying growth. If the new churches are considered as a sub-section of neo-Pentecostalism, increasingly absorbed within the broader tradition, the Baptist component will become increasingly marginal within voluntarism. Recent English neo-Pentecostal growth, despite the continuing and extensive penumbra of state church religious capital, may yet prove to be an anomalous moment: it is too early to say with certainty. However, if these trends are sustained a tipping point could well have been reached, when the historic cultural preference for the state-sponsored and previously monopolistic church begins to give way to an emerging socio-cultural appetite for and orientation towards voluntarist forms of religion. Voluntarism is inevitably the innate orientation of liberal capitalism and the open religious market (Warner: 2006). Of course, if this trend is sustained it will have significant implications not only for religious practitioners and scholars, but also for media coverage of

350000 300000 250000 200000 150000 100000 50000 0

Figure 6.2 Major English voluntarist sectors, 1979–2005.

Baptist Pentecostal New Church

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Secularization and Its Discontents Christianity and accounts of Christianity in schools. At present the new voluntarists are often almost invisible or treated as if entirely subsumed within the polemical and distorting category of fundamentalism. However, while many Pentecostals have fundamentalizing tendencies, as Cox observed, Pentecostal experientialism ‘shatters the cognitive packaging’ (Cox: 1996, 71). We previously contrasted the sustained innovations of American voluntarism with the failure of English voluntarism to generate similarly successful successors to Methodism, but neo-Pentecostalism may now have begun to achieve what proved beyond the limited innovative capacity and acculturating fluidity of the Baptists and classical Pentecostals. It is not only the holistic milieu that is generating experiments in entrepreneurial religion, emphasising an experiential-therapeutic orientation and legitimating autonomous religious consumption: similar approaches show signs of emerging within the new wave of British neo-Pentecostalism (Warner: 2007b; 2008a; 2008b; 2010). Euro-secularity could yet prove to be an ultimately self-regulating phenomenon. Secularization may not only have had an enhanced impact as a result of the former power and recent demise of Christendom in Western Europe (Martin: 1978b; 2005b). It subsequently appears to have weakened the monopolistic churches to the point where the religious market becomes more open and space is made for supply-side innovation in culturally apposite forms of religion. In a parallel with the American pattern of evolution in the religious market, this will not only create greater cultural space for the growth of neo-Pentecostalism and holistic spiritualities, but also for neo-paganism and radical experiments in eco-feminist and pro-gay forms of Christianity and, quite possibly, other major world religions. In a period of rapid cultural upheaval, religion has proven more durable and more diverse than the institutional, official churches of Christendom. Even so, the future remains contested. For Bruce, Britain will have become a secular society by 2030 (2001a; 2002; 2003). Several scholars have concluded that Christian revival is no longer a realistic, current prospect in Britain (Warner: 2003; Partridge: 2004a; 2004b; Heelas et al.: 2005). For Heelas, the future will increasingly see the congregational domain give way to the holistic milieu. Heelas sees a durable future for religion in some forms, but little hope for Christianity: . . . autonomous selves are unlikely to participate in forms of worship that require living by an order of things not of their own making, rather than by something from within their own (not dependent) life. (Heelas: 2006, 58)

Resilient Religion For Berger, the patterns of belief are not significantly changed. Accepting the paradigm shift proposed by R. Stephen Warner (1993), Berger has rejected his earlier model of residual plausibility structures for the majority churches that previously generated a sacred canopy (Berger: 1967; 1968; 1997; 1999, Matthewes: 2006). Berger: What I did not understand when I started out . . . is that what has changed is not necessarily the what of belief but the how of belief . . . What pluralism and its social and psychological dynamics bring about is that certainty becomes more difficult to attain. That’s what I mean by the how of belief. It’s more vulnerable. (Matthewes: 2006, 153)

Religious beliefs and practices have mutated, have become less certain and absolutist, more contingent and provisional, less defined by birth or life-long denominational adherence, and are more profoundly shaped by a range of inescapable social realities, both secularizing and post-secular: z z z z z z

z

rationalization and structural differentiation globalized religious options pathological fundamentalisms entrepreneurial and experiential-therapeutic innovations the rise of autonomous religious consumption a strong association of traditional religious allegiances with ethnic identities, from Irish and Polish Catholics to Pakistani Muslims to black African Pentecostals, with the possibility of late-onset decline as a result of second or third generation cultural assimilation the majority, indigenous white European population increasingly untouched by forms of religious resilience that are culturally inaccessible because they appear ethnically specific.

Religion in the twenty-first century has become more contested, complex, diverse and inclined to subjectivized hybridities. The processes of secularization have profoundly changed the power and significance of religion. Nonetheless, religious convictions, religious practices and religion in the public square no longer resemble, except in the eyes of the remaining defenders of unreconstructed classical secularization theory, an entirely endangered species. It is almost certainly the case that some forms of institutional religion may within a few decades have become extinct. However, global religion in all its proliferating diversity appears to be in vibrant good health, rapidly evolving and recruiting, in Asia, Africa, Latin America and North America. Even in

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Secularization and Its Discontents Europe, the condition of religion can no longer be deemed necessarily terminal. We can therefore conclude that sociology of religion has not become an academic specialism writing its own epitaph. Although it is extremely unlikely that any one Christian church will ever again dominate Western lives, reports of the death of religion have been greatly exaggerated – even in Western Europe.

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Secularization and Its Discontents Matthewes, Charles T. (2006) An Interview with Peter Berger. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 152–61. Miller, Donald E (1997) Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium, Berkeley, Los Angeles, University of California Press. Miller, Vincent J (2006) Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture, London, Continuum. Murphy, Nancey (1996) Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda, Valley Forge, PA, Trinity Press International. Niebuhr, H. Richard (1929) The Social Sources of Denominationalism, New York, Henry Holt. Partridge, Christopher H. (2004a) The Re-Enchantment of the West: Volume 1, London, T & T Clark. Partridge, Christopher H. (2004b) The Re-Enchantment of the West: Volume 2, London, T & T Clark. Putnam, Robert D. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York, Simon & Schuster. Roof, Wade Clark and Mary Johnson (1993) Baby Boomers and the Return to the Churches. In Roozen, D. A. and C. K. Hadaway (Eds) Church and Denominational Growth: What Does (and Does Not) Cause Growth or Decline. Nashville, Abingdon Press. Roof, Wade Clark (1999) Spiritual Marketplace, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Roozen, David A. and C. Kirk Hadaway (Eds) (1993) Church and Denominational Growth: What Does (and Does Not) Cause Growth or Decline, Nashville, Abingdon Press. Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1799 – ET 1988) On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Smith, Adam (1776, new edition 1998) Wealth of Nations, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge (1985) The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation, Berkeley, University of California Press. Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge (1987) A Theory of Religion, New York, Peter Lang. Thornton, Sally (1995) Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, Cambridge: Polity. Troeltsch, Ernst (1911, 1992) The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, Louisville, KY, Westminster/John Knox Press. Walker, Andrew (1985, 1989) Restoring the Kingdom: The Radical Christianity of the House Church Movement, London, Hodder & Stoughton. Warner, R. Stephen (1993) Work in Progress toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 98, 1044–93. Warner, Rob (2003) Ecstatic Spirituality and Entrepreneurial Revivalism. In Walker, A. and K. Aune (Eds) On Revival: A Critical Examination. Carlisle, 2003, 221–38. Warner, Rob (2006) Pluralism and Voluntarism in the English Religious Economy. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 21: 389–404. Warner, Rob (2007a) Reinventing English Evangelicalism 1966–2001: A Theological and Sociological Study, Carlisle, Paternoster. Warner, Rob (2007b) York’s Evangelicals and Charismatics – an Emergent Free Market in Voluntarist Religious Identities. In Kim, S. and P. Kollontai (Eds) Community and Identity: Perspectives from Theology and Religious Studies. Aldershot, Ashgate, 183–202.

Resilient Religion Warner, Rob (2008a) Autonomous Conformism: The Paradox of Entrepreneurial Protestantism. In A. Day (Ed.) Religion and the Individual. Aldershot, Ashgate, 151–178. Warner, Rob (2008b) The Evangelical Matrix: Mapping Diversity and Postulating Trajectories in Theology and Social Policy. Evangelical Quarterly, 80, 33–52. Weber, Max (ET 1948, new edition 1991) The Sociology of Charismatic Authority. In Gerth, H. H. and C. Wright Mill (Eds) From Max Weber. London, New York, Routledge. Wilson, Bryan R. (1966) Religion in Secular Society: A Sociological Comment, London, C.A Watts.

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Notes Chapter 1 1. http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/statistics/churchstats2007/statisticspg13a.htm accessed 29 January 2010. 2. http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/statistics/churchstats2007/ accessed 29 January 2010.

Chapter 4 1. http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/statistics/churchstats2007/statisticspg13b.htm accessed 29 January 2010. 2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8507403.stm news story dated 10 February 2010, accessed 10 February 2010. 3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8507403.stm news story dated 10 February 2010, accessed 10 February 2010.

Chapter 5 1. http://www.tyndale.com/x_products/details.php?isbn=978-0-8423-2911-8 accessed 1 February 2010. 2. http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101050207/photoessay/15.html accessed 1 February 2010.

Chapter 6 1. http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=1337 accessed 8 February 2010. http:// pewresearch.org/pubs/459/pope-brazil-visit accessed 8 February 2010. 2. http://english.fgtv.com/yoido/history.htm accessed 8 February 2010. 3. http://www.fgtv.or.kr/n_english/theology/the_yfgc3.asp accessed 10 February 2010. 4. http://www.dclm.org/AboutUs/PastorWFKumuyi/tabid/56/Default.aspx accessed 10 February 2010.

Notes 5. http://www.williamkumuyi.org/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx accessed 10 February 2010. 6. http://www.williamkumuyi.org/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx accessed 10 February 2010. 7. http://www.elifeonline.net/elife12-may-june/interview-kumuyi.htm accessed 10 February 2010. 8. http://www.kicc.org.uk/Church/History/tabid/38/Default.aspx accessed 10 February 2010. 9. http://www.igoc.org.uk/#host accessed 10 February 2010. 10. http://www.kicc.org.uk/Conferences/IGOC2009/tabid/174/Default.aspx accessed 10 February 2010. 11. http://www.kicc.org.uk/Church/History/History1998/tabid/43/Default.aspx accessed 10 February 2010. 12. http://www.igoc.org.uk/#host accessed 10 February 2010. 13. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/11/kingsway-international-christian-centre accessed 10 February 2010. 14. http://www.whatswrongwithbeingblack.com/endorsement.php accessed 10 February 2010. 15. http://www.pastormatthew.tv/details.php?productid=147&catid=1 accessed 10 February 2010. 16. http://www.kicc.org.uk/Leadership/PastorMatthew/tabid/56/Default.aspx accessed 10 February 2010.

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Thematic and General References Thematic Bibliography Methodological issues Ammerman, Nancy Tatom, Jackson W. Carroll, Carl S. Dudley and William McKinney (Eds) (1998) Studying Congregations, Nashville, Abingdon Press. Arweck, Elisabeth and Martin D. Stringer (Eds) (2002) Theorizing Faith: The Insider / Outsider Problem in the Study of Ritual, Birmingham, University of Birmingham Press. Bryman, Alan (2004) Social Research Methods, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Creswell, John W. (2002) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches, London, Sage. Denzin, Norman and Yvonna S. Lincoln (2005) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, London, Sage. Guest, Matthew, Karin Tusting and Linda Woodhead (Eds) (2004) Congregational Studies in the UK, Aldershot, Ashgate. Lincoln, Bruce (1996) Theses on Method. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 8/3, 225–7. McCutcheon, Russell T. (Ed.) (1999) The Insider / Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion, London, New York, Cassell. Robson, Colin (2002) Real World Research, Oxford, Blackwell. Sapsford, Roger (1999) Survey Research, London, Sage. Silverman, David (2004) Doing Qualitative Research: A Practical Handbook, London, Sage. Spradley, James P. (1980) Participant Observation, New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Yin, Robert K. (2003) Case Study Research: Designs and Methods, London, Sage.

Introductory anthologies and readers Beckford, James and N Demerath (Eds) (2007) The Sage Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, London, Sage. Davie, Grace, Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead (Eds) (2003) Predicting Religion, Aldershot, Ashgate. Dillon, Michelle (Ed.) (2003) Handbook to the Sociology of Religion, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Thematic and General References Fenn, Richard (Ed.) (2001) The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion, Oxford, Blackwell. Woodhead, Linda and Paul Heelas (Eds) (2000) Religion in Modern Times, Oxford, Blackwell.

Introductions to the sociology of religion Aldridge, Alan (2007 2nd edition) Religion in the Contemporary World: A Sociological Introduction, Cambridge, Polity. Davie, Grace (2007) The Sociology of Religion, London, Sage. Furseth, Inger and Pal Repstad (2006) An Introduction to the Sociology of Religion, Aldershot, Ashgate. Hamilton, Malcolm B. (2001, 2nd edition) The Sociology of Religion: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives, London ; New York, Routledge. Zuckerman, P. (2003) An Invitation to the Sociology of Religion, London, Routledge.

Modernity and postmodernity Cahoone, Lawrence (Ed.) (1996) From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, Oxford, Blackwell. Harvey, David (1990) The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Cambridge, MA; Oxford, Blackwell. Heelas, Paul, David Martin and Paul Morris (Eds) (1998) Religion, Modernity, and Postmodernity, Oxford, Blackwell.

Social theory (including Marx, Durkheim and Weber) Bailey, G. and N. Gayle (Eds) (2003) Social Theory: Essential Readings, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Morrison, Ken (2006) Marx, Durkheim, Weber, London, Sage.

General introductions to the study of religion Connolly, Peter (Ed.) (1999) Approaches to the Study of Religion, London, Cassell. Hinnells, John R. (Ed.) (2005) The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, London, Routledge. Pals, Daniel L. (1996) Seven Theories of Religion, New York, Oxford University Press. Thrower, James A. (1999) Religion: The Classical Theories, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.

Subcultural theory Gelder, Ken and Sarah Thornton (Eds) (1997) The Subcultures Reader, London, Routledge. Muggleton, David and Rupert Weinzierl (Eds) (2003) The Post-Subcultures Reader, Oxford, New York, Berg.

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General Reference Abraham, William J. (1981) The Divine Inspiration of Scripture, Oxford, OUP. Abraham, William J. (2003)The Logic of Renewal, London, SPCK. Adams, Douglas (1979) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, London, Pan. Adler, Patricia A. and Peter Adler (1994) Observational Techniques. In Denzin, N. and Y. S. Lincoln (Eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research. Newbury Park, Sage, 377–92. Agar, M. (1980) The Professional Stranger, New York, Academic Press. Aldridge, Alan (2007 2nd edition) Religion in the Contemporary World: A Sociological Introduction, Cambridge, Polity. Ammerman, Nancy Tatom (1990) Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. Ammerman, Nancy T. (1996) Congregation and Community, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. Ammerman, Nancy Tatom, Jackson W. Carroll, Carl S. Dudley and William McKinney (Eds) (1998) Studying Congregations, Nashville, TN, Abingdon Press. Anderson, Allan (2004) An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Armstrong, Karen (2000) The Battle for God : Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, London, Harper Collins. Arnold, David O. (Ed.) (1970) The Sociology of Subcultures, Berkeley, Glendessary Press. Arweck, Elisabeth and Martin D. Stringer (Eds) (2002) Theorizing Faith: The Insider / Outsider Problem in the Study of Ritual, Birmingham, University of Birmingham Press. Asad, Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Stanford, Stanford University Press. Ashimolowo, Matthew (2007) What is Wrong with Being Black? Celebrating Our Heritage, Confronting Our Challenges, London, Destiny Image. Ashworth, Jacinta and Ian Farthing (2007) Churchgoing in the UK: A Research Report from Tearfund on Church Attendance in the UK, Teddington: Tearfund. Aune, Kristin, Sonya Sharma and Giselle Vincett (Eds) (2008), Women and Religion in the West: Challenging Secularization, London: Ashgate. Ayer, A. J. (1948) Language, Truth and Logic, London, Victor Gollancz, 1948. Bailey, G. and N. Gayle (Eds) (2003) Social Theory: Essential Readings, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Barclay, Oliver R. and Robert M. Horn (2002) From Cambridge to the World: 125 Years of Student Witness, Leicester, IVP. Barker, Dan (2008) Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists, Berkeley, CA, Ulysses Press. Barker, Eileen (Ed.) (2008) The Centrality of Religion in Social Life, Aldershot, Ashgate. Barr, James (1977) Fundamentalism, London, SCM. Barr, James (1984) Escaping from Fundamentalism, London, SCM.

Thematic and General References Baudrillard, Jean (2001) Selected Writings, Oxford, Polity. Bauman, Zygmunt (1991) Modernity and Ambivalence, Cambridge, Polity. Bauman, Zygmunt (1997) Postmodernity and Its Discontents, Cambridge, Polity. Bauman, Zygmunt (1998) Postmodern Religion? In Heelas, P., D. Martin and P. Morris (Eds) Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity. Oxford, Blackwell, 55–78. Bauman, Zygmunt (2000) Liquid Modernity, Cambridge, Polity. Beattie, Tina (2007) The New Atheists: The Twilight of Reason and the War on Religion, London, Darton, Longman & Todd. Bebbington, D. W. (1989) Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, London, Unwin Hyman. Bebbington, D. W. (1994) Evangelicalism in Its Settings: The British and American Movements since 1940. In Noll, M. A., D. W. Bebbington and G. A. Rawlyk (Eds) Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles and Beyond. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 365–388. Bebbington, D. W. (2005) The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody, Leicester, IVP. Beckford, James and N. Demerath (Eds) (2007) The Sage Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, London, Sage. Bell, Daniel (1976) The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, New York, Basic Books. Bellah, Robert (2006) Is There a Common American Culture?. In Bellah, R. and S. M. Tipton (Eds) The Robert Bellah Reader. Durham, Duke University Press. Bellah, Robert and Steven M. Tipton (Eds) (2006) The Robert Bellah Reader, Durham, Duke University Press. Bellah, Robert Neelly, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton (Eds) (1996) Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, Berkeley, University of California Press. Bennett, Andy and Keith Kahn-Harris (Eds) (2004) After Subculture, London, Palgrave Macmillan. Berger, Peter L. (1961) The Noise of Solemn Assemblies: Christian Commitment and the Religious Establishment in America, Garden City, NY, Doubleday. Berger, Peter L. (1967) The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, Garden City, NY, Doubleday. Berger, Peter L. (1968) A Bleak Outlook Is Seen for Religion. New York Times. New York, 25 April, 1968, p.3. Berger, Peter L. (1970) A Rumour of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, London, Allen Lane. Berger, Peter L. (1979) The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation, New York, Doubleday. Berger, Peter L. (1997) Epistemological Modesty: An Interview with Peter Berger. Christian Century, 972–8. Berger, Peter L. (Ed.) (1999) The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, Washington, DC; Grand Rapids, MI, Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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Thematic and General References Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann (1966) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, New York, Doubleday. Berger, Peter L., Grace Davie and Effie Fokas (2008) Religious America, Secular Europe? Aldershot, Ashgate. Berlinski, David (2008) The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, New York, Crown Forum. Berryman, P. (1995) Is Latin America Turning Pluralist? Recent Writings on Religion, Latin American Research Review, Vol. 30, No. 3. 107–22. Beyer, Peter (1999) Secularization from the Perspective of Globalization: A Response to Dobbelaere. Sociology of Religion. Beyer, Peter (2006) Religions in Global Society, London, Routledge. Bhabha, Homi K. (1994) The Location of Culture, London, New York, Routledge. Bibby, Reginald (1987) Fragmented Gods: The Poverty and Potential of Religion in Canada, Toronto, Irwin. Bibby, Reginald and Martin Brinkerhoff (1973) The Circulation of the Saints: A Study of People Who Join Conservative Churches. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 112, 273–85. Bibby, Reginald and Martin Brinkerhoff (1974) When Proselytizing Fails: An Organizational Analysis. Sociological Analysis, 35, 189–200. Bibby, Reginald and Martin Brinkerhoff (1983) Circulation of the Saints Revisited: A Longitudinal Look at Conservative Church Growth. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 22, 253–62. Billings, Alan (2004) Secular Lives, Sacred Hearts: The Role of the Church in a Time of No Religion, London, SPCK Blackford, Russell and Udo Schuklenk (Eds) (2009) 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, Oxford, Wiley Blackwell. Bosso, Christopher J. (1999a) The Color of Money: Environmental Groups and the Pathologies of Fund Raising. In Cigler, A. J. and B. A. Loomis (Eds) Interest Group Politics. Washington, Congressional Quarterly Press. Bosso, Christopher J. (1999b) Review of the Protest Business? Mobilizing Campaign Groups by Grant Jordan and William Maloney. American Political Science Review, 93, 467. Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Bramadat, Paul (2000) The Church on the World’s Turf: An Evangelical Christian Group at a Secular University, New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Brierley, Peter W. (1991a) ‘Christian’ England: What the 1989 English Church Census Reveals, London, MARC Europe. Brierley, Peter W. (1991b) Prospects for the Nineties: All England: Trends and Tables from the English Church Census, with Denominations and Churchmanships, London, MARC Europe. Brierley, Peter W. (1998) Religion in Britain 1900–2000, London, Christian Research. Brierley, Peter W. (2000) The Tide Is Running Out: What the English Church Attendance Survey Reveals, London, Christian Research. Brierley, Peter W. (Ed.) (2001) Religious Trends 3, London, Christian Research. Brierley, Peter W. (2003) Turning the Tide, London, Christian Research.

Thematic and General References Brierley, Peter W. (2006a) Pulling out of the Nosedive: A Contemporary Picture of Churchgoing – What the 2005 English Church Census Reveals, London, Christian Research. Brierley, Peter W. (2006b) Religious Trends 6, London, Christian Research. Brierley, Peter W. (2008) Religious Trends 7, Leicester, IVP. Brierley, Peter W. and Georgina Sanger (Eds) (1999) Religious Trends 2, London, Christian Research; Harper Collins. Brierley, Peter W., Deborah Davies and Boyd Myers (Eds) (1998) Religious Trends 1, London, Carlisle, Christian Research; Paternoster. Brown, Callum G. (2001) The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800–2000, London, Routledge. Brown, Callum G. (2006) Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain, Harlow, Longman. Brown, Callum G. (2007) Gendering Secularization: Women and the Transformation of Religion in Britain since 1960. Unpublished paper given to Workshop on Religion and Political Imagination at King’s College, Cambridge, July 2007. www.dundee.ac.uk/history/research//cbrownprecirculatedpaper.pdf (accessed 10 January 2010). Brown, Callum and Michael Snape (Eds) (2010) Secularization in the Christian World. Aldershot, Ashgate. Bruce, Steve (1989) God Save Ulster, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Bruce, Steve (Ed.) (1992) Religion and Modernisation, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Bruce, Steve (1995) Religion in Modern Britain, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Bruce, Steve (1996) Religion in the Modern World: From Cathedrals to Cults, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Bruce, Steve (1999) Choice and Religion, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Bruce, Steve (2001a) Christianity in Britain, R.I.P. Sociology of Religion, 62, 191–203. Bruce, Steve (2001b) The Curious Case of the Unnecessary Recantation: Berger and Secularization. In Woodhead, L., P. Heelas and D. Martin (Eds) Peter Berger and the Study of Religion. London, Routledge. Bruce, Steve (2001c) Fundamentalism, Malden, MA, Polity. Bruce, Steve (2002) God Is Dead : Secularization in the West, Oxford, Blackwell. Bruce, Steve (2003) The Demise of Christianity in Britain. In Davie, G., P. Heelas and L. Woodhead (Eds) Predicting Religion. Aldershot, Ashgate. Bruce, Steve (2006) Secularization and the Impotence of Individualized Religion. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 35–45. Bruyn, Severyn (1966) The Human Perspective in Sociology: The Methodology of Participant Observation, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall. Bryman, Alan (2004) Social Research Methods, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Buber, Martin (ET 1958, new edition 2000) I and Thou, New York, Scribner. Butler, Jon (1992) Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People, Harvard, Harvard University Press. Butler, Samuel, The Way of All Flesh. (1903, Penguin Modern Classic, 2006) Harmondsworth, Penguin. Cahoone, Lawrence (Ed.) (1996) From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology, Oxford, Blackwell.

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Thematic and General References Calvin, John (ET 2001) Institutes of the Christian Religion (2 Vols), Louisville, Philadelphia, Westminster John Knox Press. Cameron, Helen, Philip Richter, Douglas Davies & Frances Ward (Eds) (2005) Studying Local Churches, London, SCM. Campbell, Ted A. (1991) The Religion of the Heart, Columbia, University of South Carolina Press. Carnell, Edward John (1959) The Case for Orthodox Theology, Philadelphia, Westminster Press. Carrette, Jeremy and Richard King (2004) Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion, London, Routledge. Casanova, Jose (1994) Public Religions in the Modern World, Chicago; London, University of Chicago Press. Casanova, Jose (2006) Rethinking Secularization: A Global Comparative Perspective. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 7–22. Cavanaugh, William (2004). Church. In P. Scott and W. T. Cavanaugh (Eds) The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, Oxford: Blackwell, 393–406. Chadwick, Owen (1966) The Victorian Church: Volume 1 1829–1859, Oxford, New York, A & C Black. Chadwick, Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century: The Gifford Lectures in the University of Edinburgh for 1973–4, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Chaves, Mark (1995) On the Rational Choice Approach to Religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34, 98–104. Cheney, David (2004) Fragmented Cultures and Subcultures. In Bennett, A. and K. Kahn-Harris (Eds) After Subculture. London, Palgrave Macmillan. Christiano, Kevin J., William H. Swatos and Peter Kivisto (2002) Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments, New York, Oxford, Altamira Press. Cohen, Albert K. (1955) Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang, Glencoe, IL, Free Press. Coleman, Simon (2000) The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Comte, Auguste (1830–46, ET 1896) The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte: Freely Translated and Condensed by Harriet Martineau, London, George Bell & Sons. Connolly, Peter (Ed.) (1999) Approaches to the Study of Religion, London, Cassell. Coote, Robert and John R.W. Stott (Eds) (1981) Down to Earth : Studies in Christianity and Culture – The Papers of the Lausanne Consultation on Gospel and Culture, London, Hodder & Stoughton. Cox, Harvey (1996) Fire from Heaven, London, Cassell. Creswell, John W. (2002) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches, London, Sage. Crouch, Colin (1999) Social Change in Western Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Currie, Robert, Alan Gilbert and Lee Horsley (1977) Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles since 1700, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Daily-News (1902–3) Census of London Church Attendances. Daily News. Darwin, Charles (1859, 1958) On the Origin of Species, New York, Mentor.

Thematic and General References Davie, Grace (1994) Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging, Oxford, Blackwell. Davie, Grace (2000) Religion in Modern Europe: A Memory Mutates, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Davie, Grace (2002) Europe: The Exceptional Case, London, Darton, Longman & Todd. Davie, Grace (2006) Is Europe an Exceptional Case? The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 23–34. Davie, Grace (2007) The Sociology of Religion, London, Sage. Davie, Grace and Linda Woodhead (2009). Secularization and Secularism. In L. Woodhead, H. Kawanami and C. Partridge (Eds) Religions in the Modern World: Traditions and Transformations. London: Routledge, 523–34. Davis, Francis, Andrew Bradstock and Elizabeth Paulhus (2008). Moral but no Compass: Government, Church and the Future of Welfare. Chelmsford: Matthew James Publishing. Dawkins, Richard (1986) The Blind Watchmaker, London, Penguin. Dawkins, Richard (2006) The God Delusion, London, Bantam Press. Dayton, Donald W. (1987) Theological Roots of Pentecostalism, Metuchen, Scarecrow Press. D’Costa, Gavin (2005). Theology in the Public Square: Church, Academy and Nation, Oxford: Blackwell. de Tocqueville, Alexis (1965) Democracy in America, New York, Harper & Row. Demerath, N. (1995) Rational Paradigms, A-Rational Religion, and the Debate over Secularization. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34, 105–12. Dennett, Daniel C. (2006) Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, London, Allen Lane. Denzin, Norman K. (1970) The Research Act in Sociology: A Theoretical Introduction to Sociological Methods, London, Butterworths. Denzin, Norman K. (1989) Interpretative Interactionism, Newbury Park, Sage. Denzin, Norman and Yvonna S. Lincoln (2005) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, London, Sage. Derrida, Jacques (1974) Of Grammatology, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press. Dews, Peter (Ed.) (1992) Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with Jurgen Habermas, London, Verso. Dillon, Michelle (Ed.) (2003) Handbook to the Sociology of Religion, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Dobbelaere, Karel (1981) Secularization: A Multi-Dimensional Concept. Current Sociology, 29, 1–213. Dobbelaere, Karel (1999) Towards an Integrated Perspective of the Processes Related to the Descriptive Concept of Secularization. Sociology of Religion. Reprinted in Swatos & Olson (2000), 21–39. Dobbelaere, Karel (2002) Secularization: An Analysis at Three Levels, Oxford, Peter Lang. Donovan, Vincent J. (1982) Christianity Rediscovered : An Epistle from the Masai, London, SCM. Dorrien, Gary J. (1998) The Remaking of Evangelical Theology, Louisville, KY, Westminster John Knox Press. Duffy, Eamon (1992) The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England C.1400-C.1580, New Haven; London, Yale University Press. Durkheim, Emile (1912, ET 2001) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press. Durkheim, Emile (1897, ET 2002) Suicide: A Study in Sociology, London, Routledge.

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Thematic and General References Edwards, David L. and John R. W. Stott (1988) Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue, London, Hodder & Stoughton. Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. (1965) Theories of Primitive Religion, Oxford, Clarendon Press. Fenn, Richard (Ed.) (2001) The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion, Oxford, Blackwell. Fenn, Richard (2009) Key Thinkers in the Sociology of Religion, London, Continuum. Festinger, Leon (1957) A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press. Festinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter (1964) When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World, New York; London, Harper & Row. Feuerbach, Ludwig (1841, ET new edition 1989) The Essence of Christianity, New York, Prometheus Books. Finke, Roger and Rodney Stark (1992) The Churching of America, 1776–1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. Fish, Stanley (1980) Is There a Text in This Class? Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Fischer, Claude (1975) Towards a Subcultural Theory of Urbanism. American Journal of Sociology, 80, 1319–41. Flanagan, Kieran (1992) Sociology and Milbank’s City of God. New Blackfriars, 73, (861), June 1992, 333–414. Flanagan, Kieran (2007) Sociology in Theology: Reflexivity and Belief, Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan. Flanagan, Kieran and Peter C. Jupp (Eds) (2007) A Sociology of Spirituality, Aldershot, Ashgate. Flannery, Austin (Ed.) (1975, 1981) Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, New York, Costello Publishing. Flew, Anthony, ‘Theology and Falsification,’ University, 1950–51. In Joel Feinberg (Ed.) (1968) Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy, Belmont, CA., Dickenson Publishing Company Inc. 48–9. Flew, Anthony and Roy Abraham Varghese (2007) There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, London, HarperOne. Foucault, Michel (1984) The Foucault Reader, New York, Pantheon Books. Fowler, James W. (1981) Stages of Faith, New York, Harper Collins. Fowler, Linda L. and Ronald G. Shaiko. (1987) ‘The Grass Roots Connection: Environmental Activists and Senate Roll Calls’. American Journal of Political Science 31: 484–510. Freud, Sigmund (1907) Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices. In Gay, P. (Ed.) The Freud Reader. London, Vintage. 429–36 Freud, Sigmund (1927) The Future of an Illusion. In Gay, P. (Ed.) The Freud Reader. London, Vintage. 685–722. Freud, Sigmund (2001 [1913]) Totem and Taboo, London, Routledge. Freud, Sigmund (2002 [1930]) Civilization and Its Discontents, Penguin, London. Furseth, Inger (2006) From Quest for Truth to Being Oneself: Religious Change in Life Stories, Oxford, Peter Lang. Furseth, Inger and Pal Repstad (2006) An Introduction to the Sociology of Religion, Aldershot, Ashgate. Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1975) Truth and Method, London, Sheed & Ward.

Thematic and General References Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1976) Philosophical Hermeneutics, Berkeley, University of California Press. Garnett, Jane, Matthew Grimley and Alana Harris (Eds) (2007) Redefining Christian Britain: Post 1945 Perspectives, London, SCM. Gay, Peter (1995) The Freud Reader, London, Vintage. Gee, Peter and John Fulton (Eds) (1991) Religion and Power, Decline and Growth: Sociological Analyses of Religion in Britain, Poland and the Americas, London, British Sociological Association, Sociology of Religion Study Group. Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures, New York, Basic Books. Gelder, Ken and Sarah Thornton (Eds) (1997) The Subcultures Reader, London, Routledge. Gerth, H. H. and C. Wright Mill (Eds) (1991) From Max Weber, London, New York, Routledge. Giddens, Anthony (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge, Polity. Giddens, Anthony (2006 (5th edition)) Sociology, Cambridge, Polity. Gilbert, Alan D. (1980) The Making of Post-Christian Britain: A History of the Secularization of Modern Society, London, Longman. Gill, Robin (1993) The Myth of the Empty Church, London, SPCK. Gill, Robin (1995) A Textbook of Christian Ethics, London, New York, T & T Clark. Gill, Robin (1996) Theology and Sociology, London, Cassell. Gill, Robin (1999) Churchgoing and Christian Ethics, Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University Press. Gill, Robin (2001) The Future of Religious Participation and Belief in Britain and Beyond. In Fenn, R. (Ed.) The Blackwell Companion to Sociology of Religion. Oxford, Blackwell, 279–91. Gill, Robin (2002) Changing Worlds, Edinburgh, T & T Clark. Gill, Robin (2003) The “Empty Church” Revisited, Aldershot, Ashgate. Goffman, Erving (1956) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh Social Sciences Research Centre. Gold, R. L. (1958) Roles in Sociological Field Observation. Social Forces, 36, 217–23. Gordon, Milton, M. (1947) The Concept of the Sub-Culture and Its Application. Social Forces, 26, 40–2. Gosse, Edmund (1907, Penguin Modern Classic 1949, reissued 1970) Father and Son, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Graham, Billy (1997) Just as I Am : The Autobiography of Billy Graham, London, Harper Collins. Graham, Elaine (2007) What We Make of the World: The Turn to Culture in Theology and the Study of Religion. In Gordon Lynch (Ed) Between Sacred and Profane: Researching Religion and Popular Culture. London: I.B. Tauris, 63–81. Graham, Elaine (2008). Rethinking the Common Good: Theology and the Future of Welfare. Colloquium, 40(2): 133–56. Graham, Elaine and Lowe, Stephen (2009) What Makes a Good City? Public Theology and the Urban Church. London, DLT. Greeley, Andrew M. (1989) Religious Change in America, Cambridge, Harvard University Press. Grenz, Stanley (2000) Renewing the Center : Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era, Grand Rapids, MI, Baker.

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Thematic and General References Guest, Matthew (2002) ‘Alternative Worship’: Challenging the Boundaries of the Christian Faith. In Arweck, E. and M. D. Stringer (Eds) Theorizing Faith – the Insider / Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion. Birmingham, University of Birmingham Press. Guest, Matthew, Karin Tusting and Linda Woodhead (Eds) (2004) Congregational Studies in the U.K., Aldershot, Ashgate. Habermas, Jürgen (2006). Religion in the Public Sphere. European Journal of Philosophy, 14.1, 1–25. Habermas, Jurgen and Joseph Ratzinger (2007) The Dialectics of Secularizaton: On Reason and Religion, Fort Collins, CO, Ignatius Press. Hadaway, C. Kirk and Penny L. Marler (1998) Did You Really Go to Church This Week? Behind the Poll Data. Christian Century, 472–5. Hadaway, C. Kirk and David A. Roozen (1993) The Growth and Decline of Congregations. In Hadaway, C. K. and D. A. Roozen (Eds) Church and Denominational Growth: What Does (and Does Not) Cause Growth or Decline. Nashville, Abingdon Press, 127–34. Hall, Stuart, David Held and Tony McGrew (Eds) (1992) Modernity and Its Futures, Cambridge, Polity. Halman, Loek (Ed.) (2001) The European Values Study: A Third Wave, Tilburg, Tilburg. Halman, Loek and Ole Riis (2002) Religion in Secularizing Society: The Europeans’ Religion at the End of the 20th Century, Leiden; Boston, Brill. Hamilton, Malcolm B. (2001, 2nd edition) The Sociology of Religion: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives, London; New York, Routledge. Hammond, Phillip E. (1992) Religion and Personal Autonomy: The Third Disestablishment in America, Columbia, University of South Carolina. Harris, Harriet A. (1998) Fundamentalism and Evangelicals, Oxford, Clarendon. Harris, Sam (2004) The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, New York, W.W. Norton. Harris, Sam (2006) Letter to a Christian Nation, New York, Knopf. Harvey, David (1990) The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Cambridge, MA; Oxford, Blackwell. Hastings, Adrian (2001) A History of English Christianity 1920–2000, London, SCM. Hatch, Nathan O. (1989) The Democratization of American Christianity, New Haven, Yale University Press. Hebdige, Dick (1979) Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London, Methuen. Heelas, Paul (1996) The New Age Movement, Oxford, Blackwell. Heelas, Paul (2006) Challenging Secularization Theory: The Growth of ‘New Age’ Spiritualities of Life. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 46–58. Heelas, Paul (2008) Spiritualities of Life: New Age Romanticism and Consumptive Capitalism, Oxford, Wiley Blackwell. Heelas, Paul and Benjamin Seel (2003) An Ageing New Age? In Davie, G., P. Heelas and L. Woodhead (Eds) Predicting Religion: Christian, Secular and Alternative Futures. Aldershot, Ashgate, 229–247. Heelas, Paul, David Martin and Paul Morris (Eds) (1998) Religion, Modernity, and Postmodernity, Oxford, Blackwell.

Thematic and General References Heelas, Paul, Linda Woodhead, Benjamin Seel, Bronislaw Szerszynski and Karin Tusting (Eds) (2005) The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion Is Giving Way to Spirituality, Oxford, Blackwell. Hegel, Friedrich (1807, ET 1979) Phenomenology of the Spirit, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Henry, Carl F. (1976) God, Revelation, and Authority, Waco, TX, Word Books. Herberg, Will (1955) Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology, Garden City, NY, Doubleday. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (1986) Vers Un Nouveau Christianisme? Paris, Cerf. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (1999) Le Pèlerin Et Le Converti: La Religion En Mouvement, Paris, Flammarion. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (2000) Religion as a Chain of Memory, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (2004) Religion Und Socialer Zusammenhalt in Europa. Transit: Europaische Revue, 26, 101–19. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (2006) In Search of Certainties: The Paradoxes of Religiosity in Societies of High Modernity. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 59–68. Hinnells, John R. (Ed.) (2005) The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, London, Routledge. Hirsch, E. D. (1967) Validity in Interpretation, Yale, Yale University Press. Hitchens, Christopher (2007a) God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, New York, Twelve. Hitchens, Christopher (Ed.) (2007b) The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer, Cambridge, MA, Da Capo Press. Hughes, John A., Wes W. Sharrock and Peter J. Martin (2003) Understanding Classical Sociology, London, Sage. Hume, David (1993) Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) and the Natural History of Religion (1757) Oxford, Oxford University Press. Hume, David (2000 (1748)) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Hunt, Stephen (2001a) Anyone for Alpha? Evangelism in a Post-Christian Society, London, Darton, Longman & Todd. Hunt, Stephen (Ed.) (2001b) Christian Millenarianism: From the Early Church to Waco, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Hunt, Stephen (2004) The Alpha Enterprise, Aldershot, Ashgate. Hunter, James Davison (1983) American Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Quandary of Modernity, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. Hunter, James Davison (1987) Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation, Chicago, IL; London, University of Chicago Press. Hunter, James Davison (1990) Fundamentalism in Its Global Contours. In Cohen, N. J. (Ed.) The Fundamentalist Phenomenon : A View from within; a Response from Without. Grand Rapids, MI., Eerdmans, 56–72. Hunter, James Davison (1991) Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, New York, Basic Books. Huntington, Samuel P. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York, Simon & Schuster.

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Thematic and General References Iannaccone, Laurence R. (1992) Sacrifice and Stigma: Reducing Free-Riding in Cults, Communes, and Other Collectives. Journal of Political Economy, 100, 271–91. Iannaccone, Laurence R. (1995) Voodoo Economics? Reviewing the Rational Choice Approach to Religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34, 76–88. Iannaccone, Laurence R. (1998) Introduction to the Economics of Religion. Journal of Economic Literature, 36, 1465–95. Ipsos MORI. (2007) Schott’s Almanac Survey on Belief. Accessed 1/12/07. http://www.ipsos-mori.com/ polls/2007/schottsalmanac2.shtml Irwin, John (1970) Notes on the Present Status of the Concept Subculture. In Arnold, D. O. (Ed.) The Sociology of Subcultures. Berkeley, Glendessary Press, 164–70. Isaacson, Alan (1990) Deeper Life: The Extraordinary Story of the Deeper Life Bible Church in Nigeria, London, Hodder & Stoughton. James, William (1987) William James: Writings 1902–1910, New York, Library of America. Jamieson, Alan (2002) A Churchless Faith: Faith Journeys Beyond the Churches, London, SPCK. Jamieson, Alan, Jenny McIntosh and Adrienne Thompson (2006) Church Leavers: Faith Journeys Five Years On, London, SPCK. Jeffrey, David Lyle (Ed.) (1987) English Spirituality in the Age of Wesley, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Jenkins, Philip (2002) The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Jenkins, Philip (2006) The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South New York, Oxford University Press. Jinkins, Michael (1999) The Church Faces Death: Ecclesiology in a Post-Modern Context, New York ; Oxford, Oxford University Press. Johnson, Benton (1963) On Church and Sect. American Sociological Review, 28, 539–49. Johnstone, Ronald L. (2007 (8th edition)) Religion in Society: A Sociology of Religion, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Pearson Prentice Hall. Jung, Carl (2001) Modern Man in Search of a Soul, London, Routledge. Kalu, Ogbu (2008) African Pentecostalism: An Introduction, New York, Oxford University Press. Kant, Immanuel (1781, ET 1929) Critique of Pure Reason, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Kant, Immanuel (1783, ET 2004) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel (1784, ET 1970) An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? In Cahoone, L. (Ed.) From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology. Oxford, Blackwell. Kant, Immanuel (1788, ET 1997) Critique of Practical Reason, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel (1793, ET 1998) Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Kay, William K. (2000) Pentecostals in Britain, Carlisle, Paternoster. Kay, William K. and Anne E. Dyer (Eds) (2004) Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies, London, SCM. Keenan, W. (2002). Post-Secular Sociology: Effusions of Religion in Late-Modern Settings. European Journal of Social Theory, 5 (2): 279–90.

Thematic and General References Kelley, Dean M. (1972) Why Conservative Churches Are Growing: A Study in Sociology of Religion, New York, Harper & Row. Kennedy, Ludovic (1999) All in the Mind: Farewell to God, London, Hodder & Stoughton. Knight, Henry H. (1997) A Future for Truth, Nashville, Abindgon Press. Kuhn, Thomas (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, Chicago University Press. Kurtz, Lester R. (2007) Gods in the Global Village: The World’s Religions in Sociological Perspective, Thousand Oaks, CA, Pine Forge Press. Laermans, Rudi, Bryan Wilson and Jaak Billiet (Eds) (1998) Secularization and Social Integration, Leuven, Leuven University Press. LaHaye, Tim (1980) The Battle for the Mind. Grand Rapids, MI, Baker Book House. LaHaye, Tim and Jerry Jenkins (1995) Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days, Carol Stream, Il., Tyndale House Lambert, Yves (2000) Religion in Modernity as a New Axial Age. In Swatos, William & Daniel Olson (Eds) The Secularization Debate. Oxford, Rowman & Littlefield. Lechner, Frank J. (1991) The Case against Secularization: A Rebuttal. Social Forces, 69, 1103–19. Lechner, Frank J. (1997) The “New Paradigm” In the Sociology of Religion: Comment on Warner. The American Journal of Sociology, 103, 182–92. Lewis, Donald M. (Ed.) (2004) Christianity Reborn: The Global Expansion of Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Lincoln, Bruce (1996) Theses on Method. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 8/3, 225–7. Lindsey, Hal and Carole C. Carlson (1971) The Late Great Planet Earth. London, Lakeland. Locke, John (1870, written 1689–1693) Four Letters on Toleration, London, Alexander Murray. Loftus, John L. (2008) Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, New York, Prometheus Books. Long, Jason H. (2005) Biblical Nonsense: A Review of the Bible for Doubting Christians, Bloomington, INI, Universe.com. Luckmann, T. (1990) ‘Shrinking Transcendence, Expanding Religion?’ Sociological Analysis (50):127–38. Lundskow, George (2008) The Sociology of Religion: A Substantive and Transdisciplinary Approach, London, Sage. Lynch, Gordon (2003) Losing My Religion: Moving on from Evangelical Faith, London, Darton, Longman & Todd. Lynch, Gordon (2004) Understanding Theology and Popular Culture, Oxford, Blackwell. Lynch, Gordon (Ed.) (2007a) Between Sacred and Profane: Researching Religion and Popular Culture, London, Tauris. Lynch, Gordon (2007b) New Spirituality: An Introduction to Belief Beyond Religion, London, Tauris. Lyotard, Jean Francois (1979, 1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester, Manchester University Press. Machin, G. I. T. (1998) Churches and Social Issues in Twentieth Century Britain, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

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Thematic and General References MacIntyre, Alasdair (1964) Is Understanding Religion Compatible with Believing? In Hick, J. (Ed.) Faith and Philosophers. London, Macmillan, 115–33. MacLaren, Duncan (2003) Precarious Visions: A Sociological Critique of European Scenarios of Desecularization. PhD thesis, King’s College, London University. MacLaren, Duncan (2004) Mission Implausible: Restoring Credibility to the Church, Carlisle, Paternoster. Malinwoski, Bronislaw & Robert Redfield (1948) Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays 1948, Glencoe, ILL, The Free Press. Mann, H. (1853) Census of Great Britain, 1851: Religious Worship, England and Wales. Reports and Tables. Presented to Both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty., London, Eyre & Spottiswoode for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Mannheim, Karl (1936) Ideology and Utopia, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. Marler, Penny L. and C. Kirk Hadaway (1999) Testing the Attendance Gap in a Conservative Church. Sociology of Religion, 60: 175–186. Marler, Penny L. and C. Kirk Hadaway (2005) How Many Americans Attend Worship Each Week? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44, 307–23. Marler, Penny L. and David A. Roozen (1993) From Church Tradition to Consumer Choice: The Gallup Surveys of the Unchurched Americans. In Roozen, D. A. and C. K. Hadaway (Eds) Church and Denominational Growth: What Does (and Does Not) Cause Growth or Decline. Nashville, Abingdon Press, 253–277. Marsden, George M. (1980) Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925, New York, Oxford University Press. Marsden, George M. (1984) Evangelicalism and Modern America, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Marsden, George M. (1987) Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Marsden, George M. (1990, 2001 2nd edition) Religion and American Culture, San Diego, CA, London, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Marsden, George M. (1991) Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Marsden, George M. and Bradley J. Longfield (1992) The Secularization of the Academy, New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Marsh, Clive (1997). Film and Theologies of Culture. In C. Marsh and G. Ortiz (Eds) Explorations in Theology and Film. Oxford: Blackwell. 21–34. Martin, Bernice (1998) From Pre- to Post-Modernity in Latin America: The Case of Pentecostalism. In Heelas, P., D. Martin and P. Morris (Eds) Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity. Oxford, Blackwell, 102–146. Martin, David (1965) Towards Eliminating the Concept of Secularization. In Gould, J. (Ed.) Penguin Survey of the Social Sciences. Harmondsworth, Penguin. Martin, David (1978a) The Dilemmas of Contemporary Religion, Oxford, Blackwell. Martin, David (1978b) A General Theory of Secularization, Oxford, Blackwell.

Thematic and General References Martin, David (2002) Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish, Oxford, Blackwell. Martin, David (2005a) Does the Advance of Science Mean Secularization? Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Martin, David (2005b) On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory, Aldershot, Ashgate. Marty, Martin E. (1992) What Is Fundamentalism? Theological Perspectives. In Kung, H. and J. Moltmann (Eds) Fundamentalism as an Ecumenical Challenge. London, SCM, 3–13 Marty, Martin E. and R. Scott Appleby (Eds). (1991) Fundamentalisms Observed, Chicago; London, University of Chicago Press. Marty, Martin E. and R. Scott Appleby (Eds). (1993a) Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family and Education, Chicago ; London, University of Chicago Press. Marty, Martin E. and R. Scott Appleby (Eds). (1993b) Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies and Militance, Chicago ; London, University of Chicago Press. Marty, Martin E. and R. Scott Appleby (Eds). (1995) Fundamentalisms Comprehended, Chicago ; London, University of Chicago Press. Marty, Martin E. and R. Scott Appleby (Eds). Fundamentalism Project. (1994) Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements, Chicago, London, University of Chicago Press. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels (1848, new edition 1992) The Communist Manifesto, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Mass-Observation (1947) Puzzled People: A Study of Popular Attitudes to Religion, Ethics, Progress and Politics in a London Borough, London, Victor Gollancz. Matthewes, Charles T. (2006) An Interview with Peter Berger. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 152–61. Maurice, Frederick D. (1853) Concluding Essay: Eternal Life and Eternal Death, in Frederick D. Maurice, Theological Essays, London, MacMillan and Co, 335–62. McCutcheon, Russell T. (Ed.) (1999) The Insider / Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion, London, New York, Cassell. McGrath, Alister E. (1994) Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity, London, Hodder & Stoughton. McGrath, Alister E. (2004) The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World, London, Rider & Co. McGrath, Alister E. (2007) The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine, London, SPCK. McIntire, C.T. (1984) Fundamentalism In Walter A. Elwell (Ed.) Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle, Baker, Paternoster. 435. McLellan, David (Ed.) (2000) Karl Marx: Selected Writings, Oxford, Oxford University Press. McLeod, Hugh (2007) The Religious Crisis of the 1960s, Oxford: OUP. Micklethwait, John & Adrian Wooldridge (2009) God is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith is Changing the World, London, Penguin. Milbank, John (1990) Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, Oxford, Blackwell.

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Thematic and General References Miller, Alan S. and John P. Hoffman (1995) Risk and Religion: An Explanation of Gender Differences in Religiosity. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 34, 63–75. Miller, Alan S. and Rodney Stark (2002) Gender and Religiousness: Can Socialization Explanations Be Saved? American Journal of Sociology, 107, 1399–423. Miller, Donald E. (1997) Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium, Berkeley, Los Angeles, University of California Press. Miller, Donald E. and Tetsuano Yamamori (2007) Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press. Miller, Vincent J. (2006) Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture, London, Continuum. Mitchell, Jolyon (2005) Theology and Film. in D.F. Ford and R. Muers (Eds) The Modern Theologians (3rd Edition). Oxford: Blackwell, 736–59. Moore, James R. (Ed.) (1988) Religion in Victorian Britain, Vol 3 Sources, Manchester, Manchester University Press. Morris, J. N. (1992) Religion and Urban Change: Croydon, 1840–1914, [London] ; Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY, Boydell Press for The Royal Historical Society : Boydell & Brewer. Morrison, Ken (2006) Marx, Durkheim, Weber, London, Sage. Muggleton, David and Rupert Weinzierl (Eds) (2003) The Post-Subcultures Reader, Oxford, New York, Berg. Murphy, Nancey (1996) Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda, Valley Forge, PA, Trinity Press International. Myers, Frederick W. H. (November 1881) ‘George Eliot’, Century Magazine, 23: 57–64. Neuhaus Richard, John (1986) The Naked Public Square, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Neuhaus, Richard John and Paul Johnson (Eds) (1986) Unsecular America: Essays, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Niebuhr, H. Richard (1929) The Social Sources of Denominationalism, New York, Henry Holt. Niebuhr, H. Richard (1952) Christ and Culture, London, Faber & Faber. Nietzsche, Friedrich (ET 1974) The Gay Science, New York, Vintage. Noll, Mark A. (1994) The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, Eerdmans; IVP. Noll, Mark A. (2004) The Rise of Evangelicalism, Leicester, IVP. Noll, Mark A., D. W. Bebbington and George A. Rawlyk (Eds) (1994) Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700–1990, New York ; Oxford, Oxford University Press. Osborn, Lawrence and Andrew Walker (1997) Harmful Religion: An Exploration of Religious Abuse, London, SPCK. Otto, Rudolf (ET 1923) The Idea of the Holy, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Packer, James I. (1958) “Fundamentalism” And the Word of God, London, IVF. Pals, Daniel L. (1996) Seven Theories of Religion, New York, Oxford University Press. Park, Alison, John Curtice, Katarine Thomson, Miranda Phillips, Elizabeth Clery and Sarah Butt (Eds) (2010) British Social Attitudes: the 26th Report, London: Sage.Partridge, Christopher H. (Ed.) (2001) Fundamentalisms, Carlisle, Paternoster.

Thematic and General References Partridge, Christopher H. (2004a) The Re-Enchantment of the West: Volume 1, London, T & T Clark. Partridge, Christopher H. (2004b) The Re-Enchantment of the West: Volume 2, London, T & T Clark. Partridge, Chris (2009). Religion and Popular Culture. In Woodhead, L., H. Kawanami and C. Partridge (Eds) Religions in the Modern World: Traditions and Transformations. London: Routledge, 489–521. Pattison, Mark, Benjamin Jowett et al. (1860), Essays and Reviews, London: J. W. Parker & Son. Penning, James M. and Corwin E. Smidt (2002) Evangelicalism: The Next Generation, Grand Rapids, MI, Baker. Percy, Martyn (1996) Words, Wonders and Power: Understanding Contemporary Christian Fundamentalism and Revivalism, London, SPCK. Percy, Martyn (1997) Sweet Rapture: Subliminal Eroticism in Contemporary Charismatic Worship. Theology and Sexuality, 6, 71–106. Percy, Martyn (1998) Join the Dots Christianity: Assessing Alpha. Religion and Theology, May 1998. Percy, Martyn (2005) Engaging with Contemporary Culture: Christianity, Theology and the Concrete Church, Aldershot, Ashgate. Percy, Martyn and Ian Jones (Eds) (2002) Fundamentalism, Church and Society, London, SPCK. Percy, Martyn, Andrew Walker and David Martin (2001) Restoring the Image: Essays on Religion and Society in Honour of David Martin, Sheffield, Sheffield Academic. Pinnock, Clark H. (1990) Defining American Fundamentalism: A Response, in Norman J Cohen (Ed.) The Fundamentalist Phenomenon : A View from within; a Response from Without, Grand Rapids, MI., Eerdmans. 38–55. Plant, Raymond (2006). Liberalism, Religion and the Public Sphere. In J. Garnett, M. Grimley, A. Harris, W. Whyte and S. Williams (Eds) Redefining Christian Britain: Post 1945 Perspectives. London: SCM Press. 254–66. Poloma, Margaret M. (2001) The Millenarianism of the Pentecostal Movement. In Hunt, S. (Ed.) Christian Millenarianism: From the Early Church to Waco. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 166–186. Popper, Karl R. (1989) Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London, Routledge. Porterfield, Amanda (2001) The Transformation of American Religion, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press. Postman, Neil (1985) Amusing Ourselves to Death, London, Methuen. Putnam, Robert D. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York, Simon & Schuster. Puttick, E. (1997) Women in New Religions: In Search of Community, Sexuality and Spiritual Power, London, Macmillan. Rennie, Ian S. (1994) Fundamentalism and the Varieties of North Atlantic Evangelicalism. In Noll, Mark A., D. W. Bebbington and George A. Rawlyk (Eds) Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700–1990, New York; Oxford, OUP. 333–50.

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Thematic and General References Ritzer, George (1993) The Mcdonaldization of Society: An Investigation into the Changing Character of Contemporary Social Life, Thousand Oaks ; London, Pine Forge. Ritzer, George (1998) The Mcdonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions, London, Sage. Robbins, Keith (2008) England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales: The Christian Church 1900–2000, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Robbins, Thomas (1988) Cults, Converts and Charisma, London, Sage. Robinson, John A. T. (1963) Honest to God, London, SCM. Robson, Colin (2002) Real World Research, Oxford, Blackwell. Roof, Wade Clark (1999) Spiritual Marketplace, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Roof, Wade Clark and Mary Johnson (1993) Baby Boomers and the Return to the Churches. In Roozen, D. A. and C. K. Hadaway (Eds) Church and Denominational Growth: What Does (and Does Not) Cause Growth or Decline. Nashville, Abingdon Press, 293–310. Roof, Wade Clark and William McKinney (1987) American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press. Roozen, David A. and C. Kirk Hadaway (Eds) (1993) Church and Denominational Growth: What Does (and Does Not) Cause Growth or Decline, Nashville, Abingdon Press. Rorty, Richard (1989) Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge, New York, Cambridge University Press. Rorty, Richard (1999) Philosophy and Social Hope, London, Penguin. Russell, Bertrand (1927, 2004) Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, London, Routledge, 2004. Sacks, Jonathan (2003) The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilisations, London, Continuum. Sacks, Jonathan (2005) To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility, London, Continuum. Sapsford, Roger (1999) Survey Research, London, Sage. Saroglou, Vassilis (2006) Religious Bricolage as a Psychological Reality: Limits, Structures and Dynamics. Social Compass, 53, 109–15. Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1799 – ET 1988) On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Schultz, Kevin M. (2006) Secularization: A Bibliographic Essay. The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, 8, 170–77. Sharot, Stephen (2002) Beyond Christianity: A Critique of the Rational Choice Theory of Religion from a Weberian and Comparative Religions Perspective. Sociology of Religion, 63, 427–54. Silverman, David (2004) Doing Qualitative Research: A Practical Handbook, London, Sage. Smith, Adam (1776, new edition 1998) Wealth of Nations, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Smith, Christian (1998) American Evangelicals: Embattled and Thriving, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Smith, Christian (2000) Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want, Berkeley; London, University of California Press. Smith, Christian and Linda Lundquist Denton (2005) Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, New York, Oxford University Press.

Thematic and General References Snell, K. D. M. and Paul S. Ell (2000) Rival Jerusalems: The Geography of Victorian Religion, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Sommerville, C. John (2002) Stark’s Age of Faith Argument and the Secularization of Things: A Commentary. Sociology of Religion, 63, 361–72. Spinoza, B. (ET 1951 (1670)) A Theologico-Political Treatise and a Political Treatise, New York, Dover. Spradley, James P. (1980) Participant Observation, New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Stark, Rodney (1997) The Rise of Christianity, San Francisco, CA, Harper Collins. Stark, Rodney (1999) Secularization, R.I.P. Sociology of Religion, 60 249–73. Stark, Rodney (2000) Secularization, R.I.P. Sociology of Religion, 60: 249–73.. Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge (1985) The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation, Berkeley, University of California Press. Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge (1987) A Theory of Religion, New York, Peter Lang. Stark, Rodney and Roger Finke (2000) Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion, Berkeley ; London, University of California Press. Stenger, Victor J. (2007) God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, New York, Prometheus Books. Stenger, Victor J. (2009) New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason, New York, Prometheus Books. Stewart, Robert B. (Ed.) (2008) The Future of Atheism: Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett in Dialogue, London, SPCK. Storr, Anthony (Ed.) (1998) The Essential Jung, London, Fontana. Stott, John R. W. (1992) The Contemporary Christian : Applying God’s Word to Today’s World, Downers Grove, IVP. Stout, Harry S. (1991) The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Strauss, A. and J. Corbin (1990) Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques, Newbury Park, Sage. Swatos, William H. (undated) Implicit Religion. Catholic Studies http://home.adelphi.edu/~catissue/ ARTICLES/SWATOS97.HTM. Swatos, William H. (Ed.) (1998) The Encyclopedia of Religion and Society, Lanham M.D., Altamira Press. Swatos, William H. and Kevin J. Christiano (1999) Secularization Theory: The Course of a Concept. Sociology of Religion, 60: 209–228. Swatos, William and Daniel Olson (2000) The Secularization Debate, Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield. Synan, Vinson (1971, 1997) The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Tamney, Joseph B. (2002) The Resilience of Conservative Religion: The Case of Popular, Conservative Protestant Congregations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Taylor, Charles (1992) The Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Taylor, Charles (2002) Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

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Thematic and General References Taylor, Charles (2007) A Secular Age, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Thiselton, Anthony C. (1977) Understanding God’s Word Today. In John R. W. Stott (Ed.) (1977) Obeying Christ in a Changing World, London, Collins. Thiselton, Anthony C. (1980) The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description with Special Reference to Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein, Exeter, Paternoster. Thiselton, Anthony C. (1992) New Horizons in Hermeneutics, London, HarperCollins. Thiselton, Anthony C. (1995) Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self: On Meaning, Manipulation and Promise, Edinburgh, T&T Clark. Thomas, Keith (1971) Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Thornton, Sarah (1995) Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, Cambridge, Polity. Thrower, James A. (1999) Religion: The Classical Theories, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. Thurow, Lester C. (1996) The Future of Capitalism: How Today’s Economic Forces Will Shape Tomorrow’s World, New York, W. Morrow & Co. Tidball, Derek (1994) Who Are the Evangelicals? Tracing the Roots of the Modern Movements, London, Marshall Pickering. Tomlinson, Dave (1995) The Post-Evangelical, London, Triangle. Troeltsch, Ernst (1911, 1992) The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, Louisville, KY, Westminster/ John Knox Press. Voas, David (2005) The Gender Gap in Religiosity: Evidence from European Surveys. Religion and Gender Conference (11–13 April 2005) of the Sociology of Religion Study Group of the British Association of Sociology. University of Lancaster. Voas, David and Alasdair Crockett (2005) Religion in Britain: Neither believing nor belonging, Sociology, 39(1): 11–28. Voas, David, Daniel V. A. Olson and Alasdair Crockett (2002) Religious pluralism and participation: Why previous research is wrong, American Sociological Review, 67(2): 212–30. Walker, Andrew (1985, 1989) Restoring the Kingdom: The Radical Christianity of the House Church Movement, London, Hodder & Stoughton. Walker, Andrew (2002) Crossing the Restorationist Rubicon: From House Church to New Church. In Percy, M. and I. Jones (Eds) Fundamentalism, Church and Society. London, SPCK, 53–65. Walker, Andrew and Kristin Aune (Eds) (2003) On Revival, Carlisle, Paternoster Press. Wallis, Roy (1984) Elementary Forms of the New Religious Life, London, Routledge, Kegan Paul. Ward, Keith (2008) Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins, Oxford, Lion Hudson. Ward, Pete (1998) Alpha – the Mcdonaldization of Religion. Anvil, 15, 279–86. Ward, Pete (2002) Liquid Church, Carlisle, Paternoster. Ward, Pete (2005) Selling Worship, Carlisle, Paternoster. Warner, R. Stephen (1993) Work in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 98, 1044–93. Warner, R. Stephen (2005) A Church of Our Own, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press.

Thematic and General References Warner, Rob (2003) Ecstatic Spirituality and Entrepreneurial Revivalism. In Walker, A. and K. Aune (Eds) On Revival: A Critical Examination. Carlisle, 2003, 221–38. Warner, Rob (2006) Pluralism and Voluntarism in the English Religious Economy. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 21, 21: 389–404. Warner, Rob (2007a) Reinventing English Evangelicalism 1966–2001: A Theological and Sociological Study, Carlisle, Paternoster. Warner, Rob (2007b) York’s Evangelicals and Charismatics – an Emergent Free Market in Voluntarist Religious Identities. In Kim, S. and P. Kollontai (Eds) Community and Identity: Perspectives from Theology and Religious Studies. Aldershot, Ashgate, 183–202. Warner, Rob (2008a) Autonomous Conformism: The Paradox of Entrepreneurial Protestantism. In A. Day (Ed.) Religion and the Individual. Aldershot, Ashgate. Warner, Rob (2008b) The Evangelical Matrix: Mapping Diversity and Postulating Trajectories in Theology and Social Policy. Evangelical Quarterly, 80, 33–52. Warner, Rob (2010a) Autonomous Religious Consumption. In Bailey, Michael, Anthony McNicholas and Guy Redden Mediating Faiths: Religion, Media and Popular Culture. London: Ashgate. Ch. 9. Warner, Rob (2010b) Secularization and Its Discontents, London: Continuum. Watt, David Harrington (1991) A Transforming Faith: Explorations of Twentieth-Century American Evangelicalism, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press. Webber, Robert (2002) The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World, Grand Rapids, MI, Baker. Weber, Max (1904–5, ET 1958) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York, Scribner’s. Weber, Max (ET 1948, new edition 1991a) Bureaucracy. In Gerth, H. H. and C. Wright Mill (Eds) From Max Weber. London, New York, Routledge, 196–244. Weber, Max (ET 1948, new edition 1991b) The Meaning of Discipline. In Gerth, H. H. and C. Wright Mill (Eds) From Max Weber. London, New York, Routledge, 253–64. Weber, Max (ET 1948, new edition 1991c) The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism. In Gerth, H. H. and C. Wright Mill (Eds) From Max Weber. London, New York, Routledge, 302–22. Weber, Max (ET 1948, new edition 1991d) Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions. In Gerth, H. H. and C. Wright Mill (Eds) From Max Weber. London, New York, Routledge, 323–62. Weber, Max (ET 1948, new edition 1991e) The Sociology of Charismatic Authority. In Gerth, H. H. and C. Wright Mill (Eds) From Max Weber. London, New York, Routledge, 245–252. Weber, Max (ET 1948, 1991f) Science as a Vocation. In Gert. H. H. and C.Wright Mill (Eds) From Max Weber. London, New York, Routhledge. pp. 129–158. Wells, David F. (1993) No Place for Truth, or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Whitefield, George (1960) George Whitefield’s Journals, London, Banner of Truth. Wilcox, Melissa M. (2009) Queer Women and Religious Individualism, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press. Wilson, Bryan R. (1966) Religion in Secular Society: A Sociological Comment, London, C.A Watts. Wilson, Bryan R. (1970) Religious Sects: A Sociological Study, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

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Thematic and General References Wilson, Bryan R. (Ed.) (1981) The Social Impact of New Religious Movements, New York, Edwin Mellen. Wilson, Bryan R. (1982) Religion in Sociological Perspective, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Wilson, Bryan (1998) The Secularization Thesis: Criticisms and Rebuttals. In Laermans, R., B. Wilson and J. Billiet (Eds) Secularization and Social Integration. 45–65. Wilson, Bryan R. (2003) Salvation, Secularization and De-Moralization. In Fenn, R. K. (Ed.) The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion. Oxford, Blackwell. 39–51. Wimber, John and Kevin Springer (1985) Power Evangelism: Signs and Wonders Today, London, Hodder & Stoughton. Wimber, John and Kevin Springer (1987) Power Healing, London, Hodder & Stoughton. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2001) Philosophical Investigations, Oxford, Blackwell. Woodhead, Linda (Ed.) (2001) Peter Berger and the Study of Religion, London, Routledge. Woodhead, Linda (2003) Feminism and the Sociology of Religion: From Gender-Blindness to Gendered Difference. In Fenn, R. K. (Ed.) The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion. Oxford, Blackwell, 67–84. Woodhead, Linda and Paul Heelas (Eds) (2000) Religion in Modern Times, Oxford, Blackwell. Woodhead, Linda, Hiroko Kawanami and Chris Partridge (Eds) (2009) Religions in the Modern World: Traditions and Transformations. (2nd edition) London, Routledge. Wuthnow, Robert (1988) The Restructuring of American Religion, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Wuthnow, Robert (1992a) Rediscovering the Sacred: Perspectives on Religion in Contemporary Society, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans. Wuthnow, Robert (1992b) The World of Fundamentalism. Christian Century, 426–9. Wuthnow, Robert (1996) Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community, New York, London, The Free Press. Wuthnow, Robert (1998) After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press. Yin, Robert K. (2003) Case Study Research: Designs and Methods, London, Sage. Yinger, J Milton (1960) Contraculture and Subculture. American Sociological Review, 25, 625–35. YouGov (2007) Religion in Britain Survey. for John Humphrys. Accessed 1/12/07. http://www.yougov. com/archives/pdf/Humphrys%20Religion%20Questions.pdf Young, Lawrence A. (Ed.) (1997) Rational Choice Theory and Religion, New York, London, Routledge. Zuckerman, P. (2003) An Invitation to the Sociology of Religion, London, Routledge.

Index abortion 36, 108–9, 124, 144 Abraham, William 138 Africa 46, 167, 169, 171, 181 African Christianity see Christianity culture see culture indigenous religions Latin see Latin America Pentecostalism see Pentecostalism theologians 171 Ahmed, Aaqil 110–1 Al Qaeda 136 see also terrorism Alpha programme 50, 77, 154, 156–7 America see also United States of America Academy of Religion 149 Christian Right 109 Christianity see Christianity church attendance see church attendance Conservative Baptist Association of 126 Constitution 107 fundamentalism see fundamentalism Latin 28, 46, 163–4, 181 middle 69, 122 American Council of Christian Churches 130 politics 69 religious market 73, 76 Ammerman Nancy, T. 60, 133 Anabaptist 46, 128 Anderson, Allan 122, 173 Anglican 8, 10, 12, 77, 129, 161, 175, 177–8 baptism 53 British Anglicanism 49 church see church Clergy 8 evangelicals 127–8, 157

liberals 18 market share 174 Anglicanism 49, 77, 90, 109, 146, 163 Anglicans 8–10, 31, 128–9, 173–4, 176–7 anthropology 15, 59 Archbishop of Canterbury 108 see also Carey, George; Runcie, Robert; Williams, Rowan Armstrong, Karen 124 Asad, Talal 57 Ashimolowo, Matthew 167–71 Assemblies of God 74, 164, 166, 172 World Assemblies of God Fellowship 166 atheism 20, 24, 30, 32, 102, 104–7 new 102, 104, 106–7 atonement 15, 18, 21, 125, 143–5 Augustine of Hippo 15, 27–8, 94, 171 Ayer, A.J. 105 Bainbridge, William Sims 78–80, 101 baptism 47, 161, 167 adult 53–4 see also confirmations Anglican 53 Christian 34 infant 12–3, 53 Baptist(s) 43, 73–4, 126, 128, 163–4, 173, 178–80 American Southern 163 Brazilian 163 British 178 churches see Church European 128 General Association of Regular Baptist 126

212

Index Baptist(s) (Cont’d) Southern 74, 126, 133, 163 Watchman-Examiner 125 Barker, Dan 106 Barr, James 129–30, 137 Bauman, Zygmunt 122–3 BBC see British Broadcasting Corporation Beattie, Tina 30, 106 Bellah, Robert 43, 76, 149, 153–4 Berger, Peter 24–5, 29–30, 42, 55, 69, 71, 79, 83–86, 101–2, 119, 122, 174, 181 sacred canopy see sacred canopy Berlinski, David 106 Berryman, P. 164 Bible 18, 51, 60, 105, 126, 129, 131, 134, 136–8, 143–4, 165–7 see also God, Word of Bishop(s) 27, 110 see also Archbishop Anglican 134 Catholic 69, 110, 115 of Durham 110 see also Wright, Tom English 18 Scottish Roman Catholic 110 women 145 Blair, Tony 33, 108, 158 see also Prime Minister blasphemy 108, 116 Bosso, Christopher J. 158 Bourdieu, Pierre 175 Bramadat, Paul 147 Brazil 46, 109, 164 Brazilian Baptists 163 Catholics 164 favelas 46, 172 Pentecostalism 164 underclass 164 Brethren 127, 134 Brierley, Peter W. 9, 11, 89, 173, 176, 179 Britain 4, 14, 31, 37, 44, 47, 54, 62, 65, 98–9, 102–4, 109–11, 113–5, 140, 148, 156, 158, 163, 172–5, 177, 177, 180 Christian see Christian Victorian 11, 46 British Anglicanism 49 Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 108, 110–1

evangelicals 126–7, 129, 148 multiculturalism see multiculturalism people 49, 62, 108, 116, 159 religion 54 Brown, Callum 13, 62–4, 74 Bruce, Steve 11, 13, 32–3, 37, 41–2, 49, 80–2, 84, 95, 98–100, 158, 180 Buddhism 38, 92, 155, 172 Buffy the Vampire Slayer 96 bureaucracy see social processes Bush, George 102 Butler, Jon 69 Butler, Samuel 18, 173 Calvin, John 15 Calvinism 122 see also Calvinist Calvinist 46, 128, 138, 157 Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union 127–9 Campbell, Alistair 32, 108 Canterbury Cathedral 32 capitalism 17, 20, 25–6, 102, 158, 166, 169–70, 179, Cardinals 18, 27 Carey, George 32 Carnell, Edward 136 Casanova, Jose 55, 57–8, 109, 111–3, 115, Catholic Bishops 69, 110 see also National Conference of Catholic Bishops Christianization 45 clergy 28, 73, 109 immigration 10, 73, 176 Hispanic 74, 176 market share 73 religion see religion Catholicism Irish 133 medieval 71, 83 Polish 133, 181 Catholics see Roman Catholics Census Compton 10 English church 63, 161 National 7–8 of Religious Worship 7 century eighteenth 70, 74

Index nineteenth 8, 14–6, 18, 22, 31, 71, 74, 99, 109, 122, 127–8, 132, 141, 176 twentieth 12, 21, 30–2, 46, 51, 55, 62, 74, 76, 84, 93, 96–7, 107, 125, 127–8, 130, 132–3, 139–40, 141, 145–50, 156, 162, 166, 172, 174–5, 178 twenty-first 5, 26, 48, 55, 77, 83, 86, 95, 107, 172, 176, 181 Cerrullo, Morris 168 Chadwick, Owen 10 charisma 24–5, 77, 82, 96, 176 charismatic churches see churches enthusiasm 25 evangelicals see evangelicals experiences 91 leadership 25, 154 renewal 156–7 worship see worship Chief Rabbi 116 Christ see Jesus Christ Christendom 37, 41–2, 53, 63, 78, 80–3, 98, 101, 104, 107, 111, 171, 173, 180 post- 17, 77, 149 Christian(s) beliefs 4, 50 Britain 13, 62, 64, 74 Church see Church faith 32, 96, 167 fundamentalists 124–5 religion see religion revival 97, 112, 180 theology see theology Traditional 156 Union 128, 142–6 Christianity African 171 American 92, 126 European 26, 111, 149, 170, 175 liberal 90–1 in modernity 4 Western 15, 171 Christmas 54, 114 Christocentricity 173 church(es) American Council of Christian Churches see American

attendance 4, 9 -12, 30–2, 34, 36, 42–5, 48–51, 58–9, 69, 75–6, 84, 89, 97, 108, 161, 162, 177 American 75–6 English 173–4, 176, 178 see also Survey, English Church Attendance mid-nineteenth century 8 census see census Christian 7, 14, 35, 90, 98, 101, 104, 114, 149, 160–1, 182 decline 7–21, 50, 63 of England 12–3, 61, 73, 96, 98, 108, 110–1, 127, 169, 174–5 Established 8–10, 13, 55, 73, 77, 81, 108, 112, 145, 175, 177 evangelical 120–1 Free 8–10, 12, 31, 55, 70–1, 74, 93, 128, 172, 174–7 see also fundamentalists quasiIndependent Fundamental Churches of America 126 local 54, 75, 97, 143, 156 Presbyterian 125–6 state 54–5, 77, 79–80, 98, 173–6, 179 tax 50 tradition 15 Voluntarist 176–7 World Council of 131 CICCU see Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union civilization 1–2, 14, 41, 58, 100, 136 Christian 10 emergent 20 human 20 rational 1 Western 2 class 25, 113, middle 121, 163–5 ruling 17 working 17 classical secularization theory 2–3, 7–40, 41, 45, 52, 55, 60, 69, 79–80, 101, 162, 176, 181 clergy 8, 27–8, 36, 52, 54, 70, 72–3, 109–10, 146, 159, 177–8 Coleridge, Samuel 155

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Index communism 35, 49, 131, 133 Compton Census see Census Comte, Auguste 2, 20, 22, 102 confirmation 53, 62 Congregationalists 73–4, 173, 176 Conservative Baptist Association of America see America Cox, Harvey 180 Crockett, Alasdair 50 cult(s) 22, 79, 81, 92, 96, 101, 148 culture, cultural African 171 contemporary 4, 89, 92 context 49, 62, 125, 146 high 19, 26, 155 occulture 95–6, 98 popular 95–6, 107, 147 Western 42, 46, 50, 59, 91–2, 116, 154 European 77, 124, 170 Currie, Robert 9 cyclical theory 22, 71 Cyprian 27 Daily News survey see Surveys Darwin, Charles 18, 26, 143 Darwinism 105, 134, 144 see also Dawkins Davie, Grace 48–50, 52–5, 58, 61–2, 84–5, 98, 154, 158, 160, 175 Dawkins, Richard 42, 105–6 Dayton, Donald 173 Dennett, Daniel 105–6 denominations 8, 10, 25, 29, 34, 54, 75–7, 79, 126, 128–9, 143, 161, 176 Nonconformist 55, 174 Protestant 47, 76 Derrida, Jacques 139 desecularization 114, 116 differentiation 42 functional 26–7, 55–6 social 26 structural 32, 96, 144, 181 disenchantment 23–4, 30, 33, 53, 61, 64, 95, 102, 156 Dissenters 10, 28, 73, 125 Dobbelaere, Karel 55–6 Dorrien, Gary, J. 138

Durkheim, Emile 22–4, 26, 33, 92, 102, 149, 162 cyclical theory see cyclical theory Durkheimian 42, 44, 48–9, 102, 105 Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 32 economic displacement theory see theory Ecumenical Movement 131 Edwards, David 131 eighteenth century see century Eliot, George 16 Ell, S. 9–10 emergent spiritualities 85, 89 England 7, 10, 12, 73, 77, 98, 110, 126–7, 134, 140, 161, 175–7 Church of see Church of England English church attendance surveys see surveys enlightenment 22, 41, 44–5, 62, 110, 130, 140, 147, 155–7 Age of 14 post- 113, 116 spiritual 15 entrepreneurialism 75–6, 154 Episcopalians 74, 126, 176 epistemology 92, 137–8 Equality Law see Law Established Church see Church Euro-secularity see secularity Europe Christianity see Christianity modernity see modernity northern 23, 53, 77 Western 12, 14, 22, 28, 32, 34, 37, 42–5, 48, 51–3, 55–7, 60, 62–3, 76, 81–2, 84–5, 96, 98, 101, 104, 128, 163, 169, 173–6, 180, 182 European empires 14 paradigm see paradigm Romanticism see Romanticism secularization see secularization sociological orthodoxy see orthodoxy Values Survey see Surveys Europeans 15, 49, 70, 76, 82, 103, 112, 170 Western 14, 50, 107

Index euthanasia 36, 108–9, 111 evangelical 4, 30, 46, 102, 111, 123, 127–30, 132–3, 140–50, 153–6, 167, 173 churches see churches colleges 120 exceptionalism 140 faith 16 non- 126 Protestants see Protestants Right 19 voluntarists 74 evangelicalism 46, 99, 126–9, 132, 140–1, 147, 157 American 120 British 127 charismatic 146 conservative 141, 157 English 128, 140 enlightenment-conditioned 147 moderate 140, 146–8, 156 post- 147 evangelicals British 126–7, 129, 147–8 charismatic 120 conservative 19, 126, 138 English 127, 131–2, 148 moderate 141–2, 146–9 National Association of 130–1 Evans-Pritchard, Edward, E. 1 faith 3, 5, 16, 18–9, 32–5, 43, 45, 47–8, 50–3, 69, 72, 74–5, 92–3, 96, 99, 105–7, 110, 112, 123, 125–6, 137, 142–3, 162, 167, 173 Falklands War see War Falwell, Jerry 136 Moral Majority 136 feminism 13, 62–4, 94–5, 168 feminist 31, 61, 63–4, 94–5, 100–1, 180 Festinger, Leon 148 Feuerbach, Ludwig 15–7, 20, 59 Finke, Roger 71, 73–6, 78, 120–1, First World War see War Fish, Stanley 139 Flew, Anthony 106 France 44, 52–3, 102–4, 114–5 Free Churches see Church

Fresh Expressions 77, 147, 178 Freud, Sigmund 1–3, 15, 20, 94 origins of religion see religion fundamentalism 25, 59, 85, 105–7, 122–33, 136–7, 139–42, 146–7, 149–50, 156–7, 180 American 122, 126–7, 133 Christian 127, 173 Islamic 109, 133 militant 35, 105, 122, 124, 146 organized 140 pathological 181 religious 122 twentieth century 125, 132, 149 fundamentalists 4, 120, 123, 126–33, 137–41, 145, 148–50 Christian see Christina Fundamentalists funerals 34, 49, 52, 98, 161 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 139 Galileo, Galilei 18 gay 31–2, 111, 143–5 see also homosexual Anti- 32, 109 Pro- 81, 101, 180 gay rights 32 gender 25, 60, 140, 143, 157 difference 63, 109 roles 63 Genesis 18, 143 see also Bible Gerth H.H. 24 Gibbons, Gillian 112 Gilbert, Alan D. 9 Gill, Robin 9, 12, 31, 112, 175 globalization 35, 58, 107, 112, 125 God 1, 13–6, 18–25, 30, 33, 42, 45, 47, 58–60, 91, 94, 96, 102–6, 108–10, 134, 137–8, 144, 155–7, 164–9, 172 Christian see Christian God holiness of 15 Living 30 Word of 126, 144 gospel 164, 166 Gosse, Edmund 134 Graham, Billy 131, 153 Great Britain see Britian Greenpeace 158 Guthrie, Donald 130

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Index Hadaway, Kirk 75 Hammond, Philip 157–8 Harman, Harriet 110–1 Harris, Sam 105, 122–3, 130, 137, 139 Harrison, R.K. 130 Hebrew Prophets see Prophets Scriptures see Scriptures Heelas, Paul 58–60, 89–92, 94–5, 98, 100–1, 156–7, 180 Hegel, Georg Friedrich 15–7, 26 hegemony 79–80 Henry, Carl F. 134, 137 hermeneutics 131, 139 Hervieu-Léger, Danièle 52–3, 98 Hirsch, E.D. 139 history 21, 48, 55, 73, 79, 102, 177 church 70 cultural 112 Hitchens, Christopher 105–6 holistic 59, 61, 89, 90–92, 94, 97–100, 102, 104, 107, 113–14, 116, 149, 157, 159, 180 Holy Spirit 25, 104, 155–6, 167, 172 homophobia 32 homosexual 109, 140, 143 Horoscopes 103 Horsley, Lee 9 Hume, David 14, 28, 105 Hunter, J.D. 71, 120, 133, 140, 147 Huntington, Samuel P. 58 Hybels, Bill 153 Iannaccone, Laurence R. 121 elitist theory see theory Incarnation 15, 104 individualism 22–3, 25–6, 31–2, 44, 59, 92–3, 99, 113, 126, 149, 157–8, see also social processes industrial revolution 14, 62 society 22, 100 Inter Varsity Fellowship (IVF) 128 International Gathering of Champions (IGOC) 168–9 Ireland 49, 161

Irish 49, 74, 181 Catholicism see Catholicism Isaacson, Alan 167 Islam 4, 48, 59, 120, 123–4, 136, 172–3 Islamic 31, 112, 122 anti- 112 fundamentalism see fundamentalism leaders 124 Islamophobia 124 James, William 15, 51, 93 Gifford lectures 51, 93 Jamieson, Alan 51, 146, 147 Jenkins, Jerry 135 Jenkins, Philip 163 Jesus 19, 104, 131, 135, 138, 144, 155, 166, 168, 178 Jung, Carl 99, 102 Kalu, Ogbu 171 Kant, Immanuel 14, 26 Kelley, Dean 120 Kendal Project 61, 90, 94, 97–8, 157 Kennedy, Ludovic 104 KICC see Kingsway International Christian Centre Kingsway International Christian Centre 168–70 Knight, Henry H. 137 Korea 165–6 South 164, 166 Yeoido Island in Seoul 164 Yoido Full Gospel Church 164 Korean War see War Kuhn, Thomas 68, 138 LaHaye, Tim 135 Lambert, Yves 42 language 102, 107, 114, 129, 138, 166 English 16 Latin America 28, 46, 163–4, 181 law 32, 57, 72–3, 85, 110, 113, 116, 157, 169 Equality 110 natural 110 Lewis, C.S. 24 liberalism 19, 59, 119, 121, 124, 130, 156–7 economic 70

Index Protestant 142 theological see theological liberals 4, 32, 59, 109 Anglican 18 Lindsey, Hal 134–5 Locke, John 28 Loftus, John 106 Long, Jason 105 Luckmann, Thomas 55 Lynch, Gordon 96 Lyotard, Jean, Francois 58 McGrath, Alister 106, 128–9 McIntire, C.T. 131 Mann, Horace 7–11 Marler, Penny L. 75, 161 marriage 12, 31, 34, 61, 98 Marsden, George M. 122, 127, 133, 140 Martin, David 44–9, 55, 58, 77, 83, 163, 172–3, 175 Marty, Martin E. 133 Marx, Karl 16–7, 20, 22, 25–6, 94 Marxism 42 Marxist 124 Mass Observation 11 Methodists 9, 73–5, 93, 126, 128, 173–4, 176–7 methodology Durkheimian 44 hermeneutical 140 longitudinal studies 7, 145 social scientific 5, 24, 146 Miller, Alan 63 Miller, Donald E. 163 ministry 25, 131, 143 Anglican 77 Christian 46 gay 143, 145 women’s 141, 143 modernity 4–5, 13–4, 19–20, 24, 26–30, 33, 37, 45, 47–8, 58, 82, 84–5, 96, 101, 113, 119, 122–3, 125, 133–4, 141–2, 147 civilized 2 European 26, 48 Great Satan of 134 impact of 80, 82

liberal 136 post- 122, 146, 163 rationalistic 102 secular 57, 114 secularization in 48 twentieth century 125 Weberian 24, 95 Western 2, 64 modernization 20, 26–7, 30, 32–3, 35, 37, 43, 45–6, 57–8, 63, 69, 73, 78, 84–5, 96 monotheism 30–1 moral panic 105, 107 multiculturalism 113–4, 116 Muslim 4, 35, 110, 112, 124, 136, 169, 181 Myers, Frederick 16 National Association of Evangelicals see Evangelicals Census see Census Conference of Catholic Bishops 69 natural law see law Nazarenes 74 neo-paganism 94–5, 100, 180 New Age 34, 37, 59–60, 64, 90, 94–95, 98–100, 107, 109, 149, 154–5, 157 paradigm see paradigm Religious Right see Religious Right spiritualities 90, 97–100, 149, 157 Testament 25, 130, 134 see also Bible Niebuhr, Reinhold 47 Niebuhr, Richard I. 47 Nietzsche, Friedrick 20 Nigeria 167–70, 172 nineteenth century see century northern Europe 23, 49, 53, 77, 102 Presbyterian Church see Church occulture see culture Oedipal complex 1–2, 20 Old Princeton 19, 122, 137 ordination 61, 109, 144, 177 of women see women

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Index orthodoxy 42, 59, 123, 133, 136 European 30 pre-modern 125 sociological 55, 69 Pacific rim 46 Packer, James I. 126 paradigm European 69, 73 new 47, 68–70, 72, 77–8, 80–1, 83, 153 old 70–1, 78 Partridge, Christopher 95–8, 100–1 Pentecost 48 Pentecostal Christianity see Christianity experientialism 54, 180 Pentecostalism African 104, 169–71 Brazilian 164 British 179–80 Global 163, 171–3 Percy, Martyn 123, 137 Pew Forum 164 philosophy 14, 48, 139 Pietist 46 Pinnock, Clark H. 129 Platonism 27 pluralism globalized 101, 140 Protestant 29–30 religious 29–30, 32, 72 Poland 35, 102–4, 109, 114–5 Polish 35–6, 174 Catholicism see Catholicism Pope 28, 110, 123, 134, 145, 164 Popper, Karl R. 42 popular culture see culture pragmatism missiological 148, 156–7, 179 premillennialism 127, 129 Presbyterians 73–4, 126, 176 Prime Minister 108, 110, 158, 166, see also Tony Blair Protestant Age 173 Christianization 45–6 evangelical 124, 150 Lutheran 44

North 44 orthodox 35, 131 pluralism see pluralism reformation see reformation sects see sects State 34 Protestantism apocalyptic 134 Calvinistic 25 liberal 46, 59 Reformed 59 United Kingdom (UK) 62 Putnam, Robert 93, 158 Quakers 43 race 16–6, 25, 106 Rational Choice Theory 72, 77–83, 121 disenchantment 53 rationalism 19, 32, 129, 136–7 see also social processes rationality 4, 23–6, 57, 119, 155 rationalization 22, 24, 26, 42, 61, 96, 181 RCT see Rational Choice Theory Reason 2, 4, 14, 18–20, 22, 105–6, 126, 137 Reformation 25, 28, 45, 62, 74, 125, 156, 159 religion see also religious Catholic 49 Christian 13–5, 27–8, 54–6, 150, 162, 172 communal 23 conservative 35, 119, 121–2, 140 contemporary 1, 3, 49, 59, 155 decline of 23, 26, 33, 37, 60, 62, 70, 82, 107 entrepreneurial 153–4, 164, 180 Experiential-Therapeutic 154 feminist critique of 61 Judaeo-Christian 55 middle class 121 non-experiential forms of 59 organized 4, 17–8, 53, 92–3, 101, 149, 162 resilient 81, 153–181 social significance of 3 sociology of 26, 48, 48, 70, 83, 85, 182 traditional 20, 52, 60–1, 64, 70, 91, 109, 120, 123, 140, 142, 154

Index voluntarist 71, 74, 166 Western 4, 19, 64 religious see also religion belief 43–49, 53, 56–8, 72, 84, 92, 104, 107, 181 capital 77, 93, 175–77, 179 choice 29, 81–2, 121 consumer 93, 158–9 consumption 60, 157, 159–60, 180–1 cottage industries 10 decline 58, 63, 69, 84, 96, 120, 148 economy 75 faith 3, 32, 50 framework 33, 79, 83 fundamentalism see fundamentalism hegemony 80 innovation 70, 72, 76–7 institution (s) 4, 34, 42–3, 46, 49, 51, 63, 69, 93, 149 marginalization 2 market 54, 56, 72–80, 100, 107, 153, 159–60, 173, 179–80 mobility 80 monoculture 81 organization 4, 24–5, 55, 69, 79, 82, 96, 110, 113 orientations 62, 102, 149 participation 29, 31, 43, 49, 73, 76, 82, 86, 89, 178 pluralism see pluralism & social processes practice 42–3, 53, 56, 69, 84, 104–4, 107, 155, 158, 181 relativism 29 Right 69, 116, 135, 145 wars 28 zeal 3, 72 Rennie, Ian S. 127 resacralization 50, 104 revival 33, 41, 46, 71, 74, 96–7, 112, 122, 127, 135, 137, 180 Rio de Janeiro 164 rituals 1, 30 Robinson, John A.T. 119 Roman Catholics 9–10, 12, 19, 74, 108, 124–5, 145, 161, 174, 176–7 Romanticism 46, 155 Roof, Wade Clark 69, 158

Rorty, Richard 138–9 Runcie, Robert 108 Russell, Bertrand 105 Russian communism see communism sacralization 50, 70, 92, 101, 104 sacred canopy 29–31, 33, 69, 79, 83, 119, 181 see also Berger Salvation Army 173 Satanism 95 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 119, 155 science 18, 20, 24, 26–7, 57, 92, 106, 131, 147 pseudo- 42 scientific humanism 20 SCM see Student Christian Movement Scofield Reference Bible 129 Scriptures 127, 129, 134, 138 see also Bible, God Word of Second World War see War sect 10, 27, 29, 96, 121, 164, 173–4 new religious 79, 81 Protestant 71, 83 secularity 3–5, 11, 35, 37, 57, 60, 71, 85, 101–2, 104, 107, 111, 162, 172 Euro- 83–4, 101, 113, 180 secularization see also theory classical 2–3, 7, 27, 29–30, 32–3, 41, 45, 52, 55, 60, 69, 78–80, 82, 95, 101 desecularization see desecularization European 43, 82 gendering 60–5 in modernity 48 see also modernity paradigm 49, 69 post- 34 process of 3, 42, 57 theorists 26, 29, 174 theory of 3–4, 44, 48, 84 see also theory self-spirituality 94, 101 Seoul 64–6, 72 sex 15, 103, 174 sexual abuse 109 expressiveness 15 orientation 109 see also gay, homosexual politics 62 Smith, Adam 70–2, 77, 178 Smith, Christian 140, 142, 146–7

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Index Snell, K.D.M. 9–10 social bureaucracy 23–5, 32–3, 61, 77, 82, 176 cohesion 3, 22–4, 33, 102, 105, 110 differentiation 26 individualism 22–3, 25–6, 31–2, 44, 59, 92–3, 99, 113, 126, 149 networks 23 processes 32 rationalism 19, 32, 129, 136–7 religious pluralism 29–30, 32, 72 structural differentiation 32, 96, 144, 181 theorists 4 society American 63 industrial 22, 100 modern 56, 70, 170 multi-faith 116 religion and 24–5, 45, 48, 55, 58, 142 secular 3, 37, 85, 180 Western 30 sociological imagination 26 sociology 1, 20, 47–8, 106, 136 of religion see religion Southern Baptist Convention 126 Soviet Union 134, 136 Spain 109 Spirit 103, 125 Holy see Holy Spirit Human see Human world 171 spiritual quest culture 69, 92, 96, 158 revolution 85, 89–116 wisdom see wisdom spirituality contemporary 85 individual 92–3 religion and 60, 62 therapeutic 154–5 Spring Harvest 154, 159 Stark, Rodney 34, 37, 42–3, 63, 71, 73–6, 78–80, 96, 99, 101–2, 120–1, 178 Stenger, Victor 106 Stott, John R.W. 131–2, 139–40 strictness theory see theory

structural differentiation see social processes Student Christian Movement 128 Sudan 112 suicide 22–3, 110–1 Sunday 7–9, 21, 31–2, 51, 54, 90, 97, 98, 141, 162, 165–6, 168, 172, 177 school 8, 51, 62 Surveys British Social Attitudes 2004 161 church attendance 11, 89 Daily News 11 English church attendance 7, 173 European Social 2002 161 European Values survey 53, 63, 98, 102, 107, 114 The Tearfund churchgoing 160 Sweden 44 Tamney, Joseph B. 140 Tatchell, Peter 32 Taylor, Charles 48, 59 Tearfund 160–3 terrorism 35, 102, 105, 109, see also 9/11 Thatcher, Margaret 108 theological liberalism 18 theology 15, 18, 26, 47–8, 59, 69, 105, 127, 133, 139 Christian 15, 70, 138 liberation 109, 134 modern 129 public 110–1 systematic 93, 105, 110–1, 127, 129, 133, 138 theory church-sect 84, 141, 176 economic displacement 122 elitist 121 of secularization 3–4, 48, 84 classical see Classical Secularization Theory therapies counselling 154 prayer 155 sensual 154 tactile 154 Thiselton, Anthony C. 139 Thornton, Sarah 175

Index Thurow, Lester C. 121 Tidball, Derek 129, 132 Tolkien, J.R.R. 24 Torrey, R.A. 129 traditionalism 123, 141, 146, 156 transcendent 2, 16, 18, 47, 58–9, 91, 95, 103–4, 155 Trinity, the 15–6, 18, 124 Trinity College Cambridge 16 Troeltsch, Ernst 47 twentieth century see century twenty-first century see century Unitarians 18 United Kingdom 45, 54, 62, 76, 89, 105, 108, 113, 122, 126–7, 140, 160, 162, 174 Church attendance see Church attendance Protestantism see Protestantism United Reform Church (URC) 93, 174, 176–7 United States of America 47, 81 University of York 142, 144 Victorian Britain see Britain rhetoric 10 Voas, David 50, 63 voluntarism 77, 120–1, 157, 179–80 voluntarist 28, 42, 70–1, 74, 76–7, 82–5, 137, 164, 166, 176–9 Wales 7, 10, 110, 161 Walker, Andrew 179 Wallis, Roy 41 War 5, 45, 106, 126, 128 civil 46 cold 134–5 Falklands 108 First World War 12 Korean 165–66 Second World War 12 Ward, Keith 106 Warfield, Benjamin 137 Warner, R. Stephen 63–4, 68–70, 80–1, 85, 181

Warner, Rob 4, 42, 50, 60, 128, 140–2, 148, 154, 156, 15–9, 172, 175, 179–80 Warren, Rick 153 Weber, Max 1–2, 22–7, 30–31, 33, 45, 47, 61, 64, 79, 96, 102, 162, 166, 176 Weberian 25, 53, 95, 156, 178 weddings 49, 161 Wesley, John 74, 148 Western Academy 101 Christian see Christian Christianity see Christianity culture see culture Europe see Europe European culture see culture Europeans see Europeans religion see religion society see society Whitefield, George 28 Wilkinson, Jonny 92 Williams, Rowan 113 Wilson, Bryan 3, 31, 33–7, 41–2, 45, 48–9, 55, 57, 174 Wimber, John 137, 153 women 60–4, 90, 94, 100, 109, 112, 114, 143, 145, 161, 168 Bishops see Bishops ordination of 109, 145 Woodhead, Linda 58–61, 83, 89–92, 97–8, 100–1, 156–7 Wordsworth, William 155 worship 30, 62, 166, 180 alternative 77 cathedral 155 charismatic 155 place of 7 public 7 religious 7, 95 Wright, Tom 110 see also Bishop of Durham Wuthnow, Robert 61, 69, Yamamori, Tetsuano 163 Yonggi Cho, David 166 Zionism 132

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