When religion’s influence on other social institutions in a society diminishes, the process of secularization is said to be underway. During this process, religion will survive in the private sphere of individual and family life (as in the case of many Native American families); it may even thrive on a personal level. At the same time, other social institutions—such as the economy, politics, and education—maintain their own sets of norms, independent of religious guidance. Even so, religion is enormously resilient. Although specific faiths or organizations may change, their transformation does not signal the demise of religious faith. Rather, it contributes to the diversity of religious expression and organization.
Secularization might be explained more accurately as being a process of the functional differentiation of other social elements, such as politics, law, economics, and education, from religion, as the result of social changes in the society where religion was once the dominant norm”.
Today, we are more likely to experience the transitions of birth, illness, and death in the presence of physicians (people with scientific knowledge) than in the company of religious leaders (whose knowledge is based on faith). This shift alone suggests that religion’s relevance to our everyday lives has declined. Harvey Cox explains: The world looks less and less to religious rules and rituals for its morality or its meanings. For some people, religion provides a hobby, for others a mark of national or ethnic identification, for still others an aesthetic delight. For fewer and fewer does it provide an inclusive and commanding system of personal and cosmic values and explanations.
Everyone sees religious change, but people disagree about whether it is good or bad. Conservatives tend to see any weakening of religion as a mark of moral decline. Progressives view secularization in more positive terms, as liberation from the dictatorial beliefs of the past, giving people greater choice about what to believe. Secularization has also helped bring some practices of many religious organizations, such as ordaining only men, into line with widespread support for greater gender equality.
According to the secularization thesis, religion should weaken in high-income nations as people enjoy higher living standards and greater security. A global perspective shows that this thesis holds for the countries of Western Europe, where most measures of religiosity have declined and are now low.
Secularization exists on a spectrum, Zuckerman explains. “Secularization is not an either-or phenomenon. There is no society that is totally religious in all aspects, and no society that is totally secular in all aspects. Rather, you have different dimensions of belief, behavior, and belonging”—attributes the authors call the three Bs.
One expression of secularization in the world is the rise of what sociologist Robert Bellah (1975) calls civil religion, a quasi-religious loyalty linking individuals in a basically secular society. In other words, formal religion may lose power, but citizenship takes on religious qualities. Many people find religious qualities in political movements, whether liberal or conservative. Civil religion also involves a wide range of rituals, from singing the national anthem at major sporting events to waving the flag in public parades.
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