Assess the view that religion is not in decline but simply changing as a result of changes in wider society (33 marks)
Secularisation theorists argue that religion is in decline. However, others have argued that religion is not in decline, but it is in fact changing. They believe it is changing in accordance to the changes within society such as greater individualism, consumerism and privatisation, all which present a shift towards postmodern societies.
Grace Davie argues that religion isn’t declining but is taking a much more privatised form. She argues that we now have people in society who ‘believe without belonging’, this means people hold religious beliefs but don’t necessarily go to church because they don’t feel they have to go to church in order to be seen as being a religious person. Therefore, the decline in traditional religion is matched by the growth of a new form of religion. Davie notes a trend towards vicarious religion, which is where a small number of professional clergy practice religion on behalf of a much larger group of people. This pattern is typical in Britain where church attendance is low, but people still use the church for rites of passage in order to ‘hatch, match and dispatch), this related to people using the Church for occasions such as Baptisms, weddings and funerals. She compares vicarious religion as the tip of an iceberg and sees it as evidence for believing without belonging. For example, people may not be able to attend church due to work commitments, they have children to look after or maybe they find it more comfortable to worship at home. According to Davie, the secularisation theory assumes that modernisation affects society in the same way, causing decline in religion and replacement by science. She argues against this view and instead suggests that there are multiple modern states, e.g. Britain and America, who has