Modern Britain as a Secular Society

Modern Britain as a Secular Society

Secularisation has become more of an issue among Sociologists recently

than it has been in the past, it is the argument of whether or not

Religion is losing it's importance in today's Society. Bryan Wilson

defined Secularisation as being "The process whereby religious

thinking, practices and institutions lose social significance." This

definition itself and not just the topic alone causes problems, it

might be argued that it is not possible to measure the significance of

such a personal thing as religion and if it is possible it may not

even be true that Religion held such a significance in the first

place. It may not be true that Modern Britain is a Secular Society or

perhaps it is and it always has been. These are just some of the

problems that arise with the discussion of Secularisation.

Continuing with Bryan Wilson, he believed that Secularisation was in

fact occurring and that Religion holds less importance now than it had

done in the past. Wilson used Positivist methods such as analysing

statistics to support his claim. Apparently Wilson thought the

significance of Relgion could be measured, and so he collected data

from such 'Social Indicators' as church attendance, baptisms,

weddings, closure of churches and growth in religious Sects. The

results showed that there was a decline in Religious activity. For

example, since 1979 the attendance of Institutional Churches has

dropped from more than 5 million to less than 4 million. And a similar

decrease has occurred in non- Institutional churches also.

David Martin however disagreed with Wilson and questioned both his

methods and results. M...

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...dly 'religious' age from which decline has

commenced". More simply Shiner was asking the question, whether or not

religion ever did hold such an influence over people's lives. On a

similar note, KV Thomas said in reference to 16th and 17th century

England that because we do not know enough about the religious beliefs

and practices of this time that we cannot be sure that a decline has

occurred. W Williams determined in study of Gosforth that church

attendance has always been low. Parish records indicated that there

was low church attendance for 400 years but new Anglican vicars had

assumed that this was a recent trend. These Sociologists bring an

important issue into the debate, if we are to believe their views then

it will not be true that "Modern Britain is now a Secular society" but

that it has always been this way.