Secularization Revisited

I came to my often neglected blogger blog because yesterday I watched a short, 15 minute TEDx talk on secularism and why religion will not recover. I began thinking about the place of religion in society back when there seemed no threat to religion as a functioning, normal aspect of society (1964). The fellow who gave the talk is an English Sociologist who taught for a time at the University of Essex, although he lives in the United States now. He presented as cool, soft spoken reason personified. His talk was carefully organized, with points on a screen, built logically and using evidence, (well, if statistics can be considered evidence when presented alone).  A brief bit of research into his background reveals a scholar who has focussed his career on the sociological study of religion through the lens of statistical analysis.

I posted a few comments to the effect that what has replaced religion as a societal basis was chaos not order. I mentioned particularly the culture of entitlement which I hypothesize as being the new foundation of modern society - if that can be considered a foundation upon which to place our common house. I mentioned also the collapse of reasoned discourse as a norm and its replacement with a 'the loudest win the debate' ethos. Most of the other comments were of the celebratory, 'religion is dying at last' sort, with a few Christians citing scripture. There seemed to be no reasoned critique of his talk.

For those who accept the arguments of the New Atheists, the debate is over, or to borrow from Climate Science, 'the science is settled'. My thoughts posted on that TEDx talk and here in my own blog are at no such complete and dogmatic state. I am at the stage of  early hypothesis. What surprised me about the talk was the underlying implication that the victory of secularism in the western world is a case of 'the science is settled' amongst sociologists. Yet I know from my preliminary reading that there is no such consensus. At present I am reading slowly and carefully through a book entitled, Rethinking Secularism, a collection of essays on this topic edited by Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer and Jonathan Antwerpen. The introductory essay, written by the three editors, shows no such unity of analysis on the state of the 'science'. The essays that follow are by historians, philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists and one expert in International Relations. They come from a variety of backgrounds. Most teach in U.S. universities although not always American born and trained. One writes from India, one from the Netherlands and there is one Canadian (whatever we are these days!). I read the book quickly a while back and recall the chapter on India as the most interesting for its very different view of the role of religion in society and its critique of the very term 'religion'. This was one lacuna I noticed immediately in the TEDx talk:  there was a very loose use of the term 'religion' as though those listening would know immediately what that is. He implied that 'religion' is the institutional church with its buildings, and rituals and preaching. I found that very curious indeed. I insist from my students that they define the terms they are using and not expect that every reader will know what is meant by a term as though there were no debate on its use.

The speaker, David Voas, has excellent credentials and a highly successful career in the statistical analysis of religion. I was surprised that he seemed unaware of equally erudite critiques of the secularization thesis.

Here is the talk:  Why there is no way back....by David Voas

Dreams

I am nearly finished grading a student assignment in one of the history of religion courses I teach. I came across the idea of dreams as inspirations, in this case a bishop named Aubert had a dream in the year 708 that Michael the Archangel told him he should build a church. The small church that resulted was the foundation of Mont St-Michel Abbey.

I wonder at dreams as inspiration.

The literature on dreaming is vast, encompassing scientific research, philosophical thought and religious beliefs.

Dreams as in the tale I opened this post with are the typical asleep dreaming ... usually I forget mine, but many people have vivid well-remembered dreams on a regular basis. I don't. This could be because my dreams happen while I am awake. This was an elementary school sin..."Stop day dreaming!"  I day dream as much as I live in whatever this place called the 'real' world is; my mind is always going off in directions alternate to the physical space. I might be standing in line at a supermarket or walking my dog Toby and my mind is floating off to the side or up and back or living in an alternate universe while my body continues on its linear trajectory.

Perhaps mystics are those who live more in this dreamscape than in the physical landscape.

Definitions

Something occurred to me just now: our Western propensity to define things, religion in this case. To define means at root, to draw a boundary around something so one knows not only what it is, but what it is not. I wonder why we need this? Perhaps to impose order on chaos (one element of a definition of religion). Somehow i doubt this reflects reality.

Can religion be considered something apart? Or is it an element of entanglement? There seems to me to be a degree of artificiality in Western Civilizations need to assign definitions of categories, rather than view reality holistically.