Claims That The United Kingdom Is Now A Secular Society Are Wrong. Both Religious Activity And Religious Belief Are Flourishing Essay

There is much debate between sociologists when it comes to the idea of secularisation and whether the UK has become secularised. Sociologists tend to take a rather extreme views on this subject either believe that the UK is still as religious as ever or not religious at all, there are very few who believe that the UK has changed and developed it’s religious views.
Many comparisons can be made of modern Britain and Feudal Britain when looking at the secularisation debate. In feudal Britain Christianity had a monopoly of truth over what people believed and thought. The Church was actively involved in all aspects of day to day life including the government and the military. Nowadays the Church has very little political power and is relegated to being a “pressure group” within the government. The loss of political and military power leads sociologists to the conclusion that the UK may be becoming more secularised as religion has decreased in popularity.
        However Parsons sees the Church losing functions as a positive thing. He believes that if the Church has less political power then it can focus more on its spiritual side and devote more time to teaching people about God and the afterlife. Also the Head of state is still the Head of the Church of England, so religion is still an important function in the UK. This supports the view that the UK is not becoming more secularised as religion has stopped performing some functions in order to focus more on the spiritual side of life.
There are many people who disagree with this idealistic view of feudal Britain. Many believe that religion in the past has been overestimated and is viewed through “rose tinted glasses”. Medieval Britain is often thought as being a period of high religion; this is certainly true but only for the aristocracy. Catholicism provided an explanation for why the rich were rich and the poor were poor. There is very little evidence for peasants attending Church services. Another “Golden age”...