Effects Of Secularization Of Religion

The modernization of religion is a response to the changing social, political and economic structures within a society. As the modernization of societies take place, people’s rationalizations change on the topic of religion. Modernity causes the decline of religious participation, religious influence and the result is a loss of faith in religion. Two major changes to religion that are caused by modernity are: secularization and disenchantment. Modernity causes secularization through the change of rationalizations of religion giving people the opportunity to choose a religious life through the idea of the heretical imperative. Additionally, modernity necessarily causes disenchantment through the increase of scientific knowledge which devalues

Secularization is the process of religion losing the social and cultural authority, and the role that religion plays becomes less significant in society. The start of secularization occurred because the rationalization of the society changed. Rationalization is the change of how people think and evidently act on those thoughts. In Steve Bruce’s Modernity: The Great Satan, Bruce mentions how citizens began to think of religion as something that could be personalized. This means that as the different social classes formed, religion could be manipulated and formed to fit the different groups in society. This allowed religion to become more personal to each person or society. With the many separate definitions of religion forming, it also became apparent that religion was not a necessity, which lead to some people denying religion and faith. With the combination of the different rationalizations of religion, including the denial of religion, religion is unable to be as strong as it was in the past as a political, social and economical force. This resulted in the secularization of religion. Modernity creates the idea that religion is no longer a necessity which creates a shift in people’s thinking, which necessarily causes secularization by losing religion’s social and cultural

Disenchantment is a cultural way of thinking that devalues mysticism within religions. A world that is completely disenchanted would no longer rely on magical or mythical means to understand concepts. A major factor is the growth of disenchantment is the increase of knowledge about science. Science is known as an ‘unchanged truth’ and can interfere with the concepts that are found in religion. For example, scientists have found evidence that can disprove concepts in religious traditions, such as the age of the earth being 4.5 billion years old, according to scientific evidence, or the earth being six thousand years old, according to the biblical text. The evidence that science discovers can make religion become disenchanted. As science becomes more advanced, religion must respond to the changes, which alters the existence of religion. However, science has not created a better understanding of how the world works. Science has not given individuals a greater understanding of the world, just a different or altered understanding. This new understand of the world shows that this is the work of modernity because the result is a change, not an improvement, in society’s rationalizations. This shows that modernity causes the disenchantment that is found when science is used to de-mythicized religion. Therefore, modernity does necessarily cause disenchantment