RELIGION, FAITH and Secularization

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RELIGION, FAITH and Secularization

• Reactions to Modernity

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We will consider a variety of issues

• Modernity
• Faith
• Religion
• Secularization
• Fundamentalism
• Religion and secularization in Western Europe and
  the USA

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MODERNITYin the West

• A result of Renaissance and Enlightenment
• We use REASON to explain reality
• An historical-cultural event an ethos that
  replaced the religious-based world view and
  cognitive methods of the Middle Ages

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Modernity is characterized by

• The empirical-scientific method
• The complex of industrialized nation-states with
  their non-monarchical governments
• Freedom of religious expression and religious
  pluralism.

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Modernity and Religion

• The institutions and the basic ideas of modernity
  proceed without legitimation by a religion.
• Before modernity, monarchy, class hierarchies,
  jurisprudence, cosmology, and education were very
  much under religious control and justification.

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FAITH

• Any faith is a personal and group experience of
  the metaphysical reality described in various
  ways as the Sacred, the Divine, the
  Transcendent, God, Allah, etc. etc.
• Faith is NOT Religion

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Examples of the FAITH experience

• Dag Hammarskjold, in Markings
• "Somewhere along the line, I said 'yes' to
  Someone or Something -- and that has made the
  difference......we die on the day when our lives
  cease to be illumined by the steady radiance,
  renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which
  is beyond all reason."
• Specifically FAITH experience has been variously
  identified in the following ways
• (1) the awareness of the holy, which evokes awe
  and reverence
• (2) the sense of being at one with the divine,
  linked with ground of being
• (3) the encounter with a reality wholly other
• (4) the sense of a transforming power as a
  presence.

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• Faith involves a stance toward some claim that is
  not, at least presently, demonstrable by reason.
• Faith is a kind of attitude of trust or assent.
  As such, it is ordinarily understood to involve
  an act of will or a commitment on the part of the
  believer.
• Faith involves a belief that makes some kind of
  either implicit or explicit reference to a
  transcendent source.

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RELIGION

• A religion is an INTERPRETATION of the Faith
  Experience
• INTERPRETATION expressed in an authoritative
  tradition (oral or written texts) sacred places,
  symbols, rituals and an authoritative leadership
  (apostles, priests, bishops, shamans, imams,
  rabbis, lamas, and scholar-monks).
• RELIGION IS NOT FAITH

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SECULARIZATION

• Sociologist Peter Bergers definition By
  secularization we mean the process by which
  sectors of society and cultures are removed from
  the domination of religious institutions and
  symbols.
• Secularization is a natural development from
  modernity.

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Not the end of religion

• Secularization does not mean the END of religion
• It does challenge religions and their place in
  society.
• Secularization is simply a fact of life.....
• How we react to it is the important
  issue.............

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I think Obama, for example, understands this very
well.....

• Call to Renewal address in May 2006
• Democracy demands that the religiously
  motivated translate their concerns into
  universal, rather than religion-specific, values.
  
• Democracy requires that their proposals be
  subject to argument, and amenable to reason.
• I may be opposed to abortion for religious
  reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the
  practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings
  of my church or evoke God's will. I have to
  explain why abortion violates some principle that
  is accessible to people of all faiths, including
  those with no faith at all...

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Possible Responses to Modernity

• TOTAL rejection of all religion SECULARISM
• A religion grows in self understanding and adapts
  to the perspective of modernity (RCC Vatican II)
• The religion rejects some of modernity and lives
  in two worlds (e.g. Amish)
• The religion rejects all of modernity as evil
  (Benedict XVI ??)
• The religion closes in on self and becomes
  self-worshiping Fundamentalism

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FUNDAMENTALISM

• Fundamentalism arises when a religious group
  fears cultural change and resorts to a form of
  socio-cultural isolation that leads to a
  distortion of their own religious understanding.
• Fundamentalists, fearful about change in the
  larger culture, revert to a static view of their
  religious tradition and confuse the
  interpretation (RELIGION) with that which is
  interpreted (FAITH).

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All fundamentalists follow certain patterns

• Religious ideology is the basis for their
  personal and communal identity.
• 2.They insist upon one statement of truth that is
  inerrant, revealed and unchangeable
• 3.They see themselves as part of a cosmic
  struggle between good and evil.
• 4.They seize on historical moments and
  reinterpret them in the light of this cosmic
  struggle.

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• 5. They demonize their opposition.
• 6. They are selective in what parts of the
  religious tradition and heritage they will
  stress.
• 7. They despise modern culture.
• 8. They are MILITANT.............

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• Fundamentalist groups are often driven to violent
  social action when their orthodox goals are
  frustrated by the events of changing social and
  political environments in the broader society.
• They see the world in terms of black and white.
  People are clearly enemies or friends. Actions
  are good or bad.
• All fundamentalist movements invariably create a
  dual myth the myth links a supposed Golden Age
  in the past with a Utopian future.
• Fundamentalist groups have a dysfunctional
  relationship with the rest of the world. Working
  constructively healing the dysfunction -- can
  be a long and arduous process.

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Religion and Secularization in Europe and the USA

• The United States is a country with the soul of
  a church.
• Religion in the USA is the social glue that holds
  the country together.
• Traditional religions sustain and support
  AMERICAN CIVIL RELIGION..........

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• America is built on a strong sense of American
  CIVIL RELIGION
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• Sacred Documents Constitution and Declaration
  of Independence
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• Sacred People Saints George Washington and
  Abraham Lincoln
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• Sacred Places Lincoln Memorial, Arlington
  National Cemetery where the martyrs are buried,
  Washington Monument, etc
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• Holy Days the Fourth of July, Memorial Day,
  Thanksgiving,
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• Holy objects the American flag, the dollar bill
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• Americans have turned their country (the land,
  its history and its heroes) into the objects of
  religious devotion.

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• A number of sociologists (and religious people!)
  continually point to lower levels of religious
  participation in Western Europe and assert that
  Western Europe is more secularized than the
  United States.
• I am not in agreement and would agree with other
  sociologists (like Grace Davie, Michael Winter
  and Christopher Short) that
• (1) The United States in fact is just as
  secularized
• (2) Many Western Europeans are unchurched
  because institutionalized religion has not come
  to terms with modernity
• (3) Many Americans have not sufficiently
  reflected on religion and modernity. Nor come to
  understand the ENLIGHTENMENT!
• Something for our discussion

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Saint George Washington