Secularization in the United States: The Battle of Scientific Method vs. Religious Practice

The United States is commonly thought to be on an inevitable march towards secularization. Scientific thought and the failure of the enlightenment to reconcile the concept of god within a scientific framework are commonly thought to have created the antithesis of religious practice in the rise of the scientific method. However, the rise of doubt and the perception that secularization is increasing over time has in actuality caused an increase in religious practice in the United States through episodic revivals. Moreover, practice of unbelief has developed into a movement based in the positive assertion in the supplantation of God by the foundations of science, or even in the outright disbelief in God. The perception of increasing secularism in the United States spurs religious revivalism which underscores the ebb and flow of religious practice in the United States and the foundation of alternative movements which combines to form the reality that the United States is not marching towards secularism but instead religious diversity.

The rise of densely populated urban spaces in the United States from the beginning of the second great awakening has provoked a perception of secularism and depersonalization amongst the public. The Second Great Awakening was brought in part due to the need for moral revival based on the presumption that urban areas brought a downturn religious practice through temptation and access, and also as a means with which to alleviate the ills which urbanization brought with it through the rise of volunteer associations and missionary work.1 Moreover, Utopian societies gave citizens the opportunity to recreate a society devoid of these perceived ills and also gave rise to alternative modes of practice and expre...

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...ular social force or perception of secularism, but in reality secularism is not the decline of belief but the decline in the influence of belief.11 The Awakenings therefore were not addressing a downturn in practice per se, but the perception that the religious moral fabric of society was eroding. In this way the Awakenings reflected the societal ebb and flow of religion and gave rise to new modes of belief and practice. The rise of unbelief was a response to the unknowability of God in relation to the Civil War and the resulting mass death, and represented a means with which to concentrate their need for social order into a non-specific mode of worship. The Great Awakenings and the rise of unbelief in the United States do not represent a rise or fall in the practice of religion or belief in God but the shifting ways in which religion is practiced in American spaces.