“Religion Has Not Declined It Has Merely Changed Its Form” Explain and Discuss This Statement. (33 Marks)

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“Religion has not declined it has merely changed its form” Explain and discuss this statement. (33 marks) The decline of religion is known as secularisation. Wilson defined the process of secularisation as when religious thinking, practices and institutions decline and lose their social significance. The decline in the power of the church from the early 1900’s to the present is one of the major indications for some sociologists that society is becoming more secular and that religion and its power is declining. Where once there was only religion to explain the immediate world, now there is the concept of rationalisation as Weber suggested where science, technology and global media help to build an idea of why and how things happen away from religion and its beliefs based on magic and the supernatural. Many argue that religion and the church is losing its power in society as we no longer depend on it to answer the unanswerable questions as Parsons suggests and now it is just something we go to in times of great need where there is no other rational, scientific answer. This process is known as disenchantment whereby the old Protestant ideas in society which believed God to be existing beyond the world as and all-knowing figure, have been erased by the development of the scientifically proven facts and technology for the answers to questions that were previously unknown. However, many do still turn to religion in the traditional sense to answer their questions when all else fails so it is still performing traditional functions to a degree. Davie takes this idea of the religion losing power and becoming less prevalent in society and attributes it to the idea that faith and religion has become privatised – we can now feel more able to make a personal choice whether we go to church and believe in God because we feel less obliged to do so and therefore he argues

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