Patterns of Secularization
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Patterns of Secularization

Church, State and Nation in Greece and the Republic of Ireland

Daphne Halikiopoulou

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eBook - ePub

Patterns of Secularization

Church, State and Nation in Greece and the Republic of Ireland

Daphne Halikiopoulou

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About This Book

The politicization of religion is a central feature of the modern world, pointing to the continued relevance of the secularization debate: does modernization result in the decline of the social and political significance of religion or rather in a reaffirmation of religious values? This book examines the emergence of different patterns of secularization. It identifies the circumstances under which religion may remain or cease to be politically active and legitimate in societies where secularization has been initially inhibited given a strong identification with the nation. Arguing that in such societies the Church draws its power not only from its relationship with the state but also its relationship with the nation, this book identifies two patterns of secularization: (a) co-optation, and (b) confrontation. The redefinition of the Church, state and nation nexus is likely to result in secularization if (a) the church obstructs the modernisation process (church and state), and (b) if external threat perceptions decline (church and nation). The simultaneous presence of these constraints serves to redefine the role of religion in the formation of national identity. Comparing Greece and the Republic of Ireland as two cultural defence cases with a strong variation in the political and social salience of religion, this book explains Ireland's current secularization drive in terms of the fluidity of Irish national identity and the rigidity of the Irish Catholic Church (confrontation). It contrasts this with the Greek case where the Church's resilience is linked to institutional flexibility on the one hand and a reliance on an ethnic/religious national identity on the other (co-optation). In conceptualizing the contemporary role of religion in the Republic of Ireland and Greece, this book draws a number of generalizable conclusions about the political role of religion in cultural defence cases.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2017
ISBN
9781317083016
Subtopic
Religion
Edition
1

PART I
Theoretical and Historical Considerations

Chapter 1
National Identity and the Secularization Debate

Belief in the supernatural is a universal human interest according to Max Weber. Religions may take various forms and characteristics given cultural and historical differences, but regardless of doctrinal and organizational distinctions, at the core of every religious belief system lays an ideological framework with a vision of the world and a set of rules to which the faithful must adhere. Whether one chooses to endorse Durkheim’s (2001) functional understanding, Berger’s (1981) substantive definition, or Marx’s false consciousness, one cannot ignore the profoundly social dimension of religion. It is precisely this dimension that holds the key to the secularization paradigm which expects modernization to result in ‘the diminution of the social significance of religion’ (Bruce, 2003), i.e. the decline of its social power (Wilson, 1966). In its classical form secularization is a theory that strives for universal generalizations. But this strive has generated the most fierce criticisms against the paradigms as evidence points to a variation in the social relevance of religion depending on case and circumstance.
In order to illustrate the limitations of the secularization thesis in explaining the contemporary role of religion, this chapter places the Greek and Irish cases within the confines of the secularization debate. It commences with a short overview of the debate itself and argues that existing literature on fails to provide an adequate understanding of the Greek and Irish cases. By focusing on a theoretical perspective at the core of which lie nationalism and national identity, the chapter proposes an additional dimension to the existing explanatory framework. The proposed model suggests that national identities are not static, but dynamic processes which become re-interpreted. It identifies two different patterns for the evolution of a religious-based national identity, each based on the interaction of two variables, namely the degree to which a church obstructs modernization and the degree to which a given nation perceives itself to be under threat.

The Traditional Secularization Thesis

Secularization is a multi-faceted concept. As a branch of modernization theory, the paradigm holds that industrialization is likely to result in the decline of the social significance of religion (Bruce, 2002; Martin, 1978, 2005; Wilson, 1966; Norris and Inglehart, 2004). Bruce defines secularization as ‘a social condition manifest in: (a) the declining importance of religion for the operation of non-religious roles and institutions such as those of the state and the economy; (b) a decline in the social standing of religious roles and institutions; and (c) a decline in the extent to which people engage in religious practices, display beliefs of a religious kind, and conduct other aspects of their lives in a manner informed by such beliefs’ (Bruce, 2002: 3). Modernization is accompanied by secularization because it involves significant societal transformations that serve to marginalize religion, disentangle it from its social and political functions and push it further into the private sphere. More specifically, modernization involves significant changes at two levels, the structural, i.e. differentiation of institutions, and the ideological/intellectual, i.e. the introduction of novel ideas which result in significant mind-set shifts. Secularization emerged as a scientific theory in the early twentieth century in the thought of leading sociologists such as Auguste Comte, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx who albeit for different reasons all concluded that religion will inevitably decline in the modern world.

Secularization as Structural Differentiation

In Durkheim’s thought religion is a collective phenomenon that fulfils an essentially cohesive social function. Pre-modern societies were characterized by a fusion of the religious, political and social spheres. The functional differentiation that characterises industrialized societies promotes the gradual of separation of the social, political and scientific spheres from religion. Structural differentiation contributes to the rise of secularism because specialization means that institutions and are no longer dominated by the Church; tasks are instead carried out by specialist professionals. Structural differentiation is accompanied by social differentiation, which implies the distancing and separation of people, what they think and how they act. ‘Structural differentiation’, or ‘the fragmentation of social life as specialized roles and institutions are created to handle specific features or functions previously embodied in, or carried out by, one role or institution’ (Bruce, 2002: 8).
Dobbelaere conceptualizes secularization primarily as differentiation, or laicization, ‘a process of growing independence of institutional spheres (such as politics, education, economy and science) each developing its own rationale, which implies the rejection of the overarching claim of religion’ (Dobbelaere, 1981: 14). Dobbelaere identifies two dimensions of secularization, demand and supply. He distinguishes between religious involvement, the degree to which people participate in church practices, and religious change – ‘occurring in the posture of religious organizations – churches, denominations and sects – in matters of beliefs, morals and rituals and implies a study of the decline and emergence of religious groups’ (Dobbelaere, 1981: 12). His concept of secularization as multidimensional promotes the understanding of the triangular relationship between laicization, religious change and religious involvement. This explains why, for example, certain societies may have high levels of differentiation but retain also high levels of church involvement.

Secularization as Rationalization of Thought

The rationalist argument focuses on the prevalence of scientific viewpoints brought about by the Reformation and the Enlightenment. The decline of superstition and magic and the rise of rationalist thought challenge church doctrine while the pluralism of liberal Enlightenment ideas erodes monopolistic religious thought.
Rationalization of thought is largely a product of the Reformation which served to ‘demythologize the world, eliminate the ritual and sacramental manipulation of God, and restore the process of ethical rationalization’ (Bruce, 2002: 6). Central to this is Weber’s concept of the ‘Protestant Ethic’ (Weber, 1992) and in particular, the Calvinist ethic, which Weber argued contributed to the rise of capitalism by effectively influencing large numbers of people to work in the secular world, develop their own enterprises and engage in trade. Certain ideas, which were introduced by the Reformation and in particular the notion of the ‘calling’ and the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, favoured capitalist rationalization by supplying the moral energy and drive for the capitalist entrepreneur. Therefore Christianity, and in particular Protestantism, is more prone to rationalization than other religions because it ‘allows empirical inquiry and a pragmatic treatment of explaining this world’ (Bruce, 2002: 6).
Berger holds that social change weakens the hold of religious values and defines secularization as ‘the process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the dominance of religious institutions and symbols’ (Hardiman and Whelan, 1998: 70). Religion is a social construction providing the individual with meaning. Every religion claims to hold a single truth – the ‘sacred canopy’. Pluralism is the key to understanding secularization. In other words, the promotion of a plurality of religious truths threatens church monopoly and ‘erodes the plausibility structures generated by monopolistic religious institutions in so far as it offers alternatives’ (Davie, 2007: 53).
According to Wilson, in traditional societies religion functioned as an agency of social control. Modernization brings about secularization as it shifts social control away from the moral and religious to the technical and bureaucratic. Wilson focuses on the concept of ‘societalization’, i.e. ‘the process by which life is increasingly enmeshed and organized, not locally but societally’ (Wilson, 1982: 154) meaning the demise of the small-scale community and its replacement by large bureaucracies. As religion is a collective force embedded in the community the ‘replacement of community by society’, undermines this social function and thus marginalizes religion to the private sphere. ‘The plausibility of any single overarching moral and religious system declines, to be displaced by competing conceptions which have less connection to role performance in an anonymous and impersonal public domain and more to privatised, individual experience … thus, religion becomes privatised and is pushed to the margins of the social order’ (Bruce, 2002: 13).

Measuring Secularization

Any attempt to assess the validity of the secularization paradigm is faced with the question of evidence: how is secularization to be measured? How do we know that the social power of religion has indeed declined? Measuring secularization as the dependent variable is a difficult task. On the one hand, evidence is partial and selective. On the other, one’s findings depend heavily on case selection and thus face the danger of selection bias. In addition, case comparisons may be limited by domain specific constraints, for example doctrinal, cultural and historical differences which make generalizations difficult. In order to overcome this problem Norris and Inglehart (2004) opt for a large-N approach examining multiple indicators across many cultures including cross national surveys, longitudinal trends, and world and European values surveys.
According to Martin, broad tendencies towards secularization in modern societies include:
(a) Religious institutions are adversely affected to the extent that an area is dominated by heavy industry; (b) they are the more adversely affected if the area concerned is homogeneously proletarian; (c) Religious practice declines proportionately with the size of an urban concentration; (d) Geographical and social mobility erodes stable religious communities organized on a territorial basis; it also contributes to a relativisation of perspectives through extended culture contact; (e) The Church becomes institutionally differentiated in response to the differentiation of society, notably into pluriform denominations and sects; and (f) The Church becomes partially differentiated from other institutional spheres such as: justice, ideological legitimation, the state apparatus, social control, education and welfare. And this is paralleled compartmentalisation of an individual’s religious role, which may encourage a role of variation in personal religion which contributes to institutional disintegration. (Martin, 1978: 2–3)
It is useful to divide the indicators of secularization into two broad categories: (a) religious participation (popular level); and (b) institutional differentiation (institutional level).

Religious Participation

Religious participation or involvement implies an analysis of the demand for religion. Dobbelaere defines religious involvement as ‘the degree of normative integration in religious bodies. It is an index of the accord between the norms religious groups – in domains of beliefs, rituals, morals etc – and the attitudes and conduct of their members’ (Dobbelaere, 1981: 12). People are thought to be secularized when their involvement in churches declines (Dobbelaere, 1981:10). This points to the importance of examining religious values and beliefs as indicators of secularization. There are two ways to measure these: church attendance and the numbers of people entering priesthood. A drop in the numbers of people that attend church and/or join religious orders entails an indication towards the secularization of society. These indicators may be extremely useful and instructive but also misleading. Failure to attend church need not necessarily refer to a rejection of traditional religious values. Attendance may vary for historical or doctrinal reasons. For example, attending Mass attendance is important in Catholicism but less in orthodox Christianity or Protestantism. There may also be different motivations prompting church attendance, including assertions of group solidarity or claims to social standing (Bruce, 2002: 196). A decline in the number of people entering priesthood is much more important for churches with a highly hierarchical organization whose involvement in political and social institutions depends largely on religious professionals, for example the Irish Catholic Church.

Institutional Differentiation

Institutional differentiation is one of the strongest arguments put forward by the traditional secularization thesis. According to Wilson, the loss of the traditional roles which religion once performed, including ‘providing legitimacy for secular authority and endorsing or even sanctioning public policy, is the core of the secularization thesis’ (Wilson in Bruce, 2002: 200). Dobbelaere terms the differentiation process laicization, i.e. institutions perform different functions and are structurally different. Religion becomes one institution alongside other institutions and loses its overarching claim’ (Dobbelaere, 1981: 11). The most accurate indicators of secularization are those which illustrate the decline of the role of religion in terms of its significance for the operation and organization of the social and political systems. However, according to some analysts (Stavrakakis, 2002) even the most formal institutional separation of the religious and the secular spheres – i.e. the constitutional separation between Church and state does not always indicate the establishment of a secularized society. For example, although the constitutional separation of church and state is one of the founding pillars of the US, the politicization of religion is even there to a degree prominent. According to Stavrakakis, ‘although social differentiation is both a reality and a necessity for the reproduction of modern societies it does not entail the strict separation between specialised areas of the social … in that sense religion is interconnected with the other elements of society and culture in complex way’ (Stavrakakis, 2002: 20).
An all-rounded approach involves an attempt to establish trends in all the above indicators. As each is problematic, examining them in isolation does not suffice and could lead to misleading conclusions. A comparison both within cases thought time, and between cases can assist towards the identification of patterns.

Counter-Secularization

The obvious problem with treating the secularization paradigm as a universal theory is that evidence points towards the decline of the social power of religion as the exception rather than the norm (Berger, 1999). In his study of public religions, Casanova argues that we are ‘witnessing the deprivatization of religion in the modern world’ (1994: 5). Secularization as a grand narrative is flawed as its potential to make universal generalizations is strictly limited (possibly only to Europe). The modern world is far from secularized and this poses a fundamental challenge to the identification of a necessary causal link between modernization and secularization. Counter-examples are numerous. The 1979 Iranian revolution occurred during a period of dramatic economic and social modernization and replaced a modernizing secular monarchy for a theocratic regime in which supreme authority lies in the hands of a religious leader. More generally, the post-1960s world has witnessed the proliferation of fundamentalist movements regardless of religion, geographical location and technological advancement. ‘Holy war’: terrorist attacks in the US, Jerusalem, Sri Lanka and Belfast, Bali, Egypt, Madrid and London have been carried out in the name of religion. They are all instances of terror where religion constitutes a common motivation and justification (Juergensmeyer, 2000: 5). Perhaps one of the most interesting facts about the renaissance of religion is that it is not at all confined to the developing world. Rather, it is also a feature of the modernized West as the recent Evangelical revival illustrates (Stavrakakis, 2002: 18; Berger, 1999).
Scholarly explanations focus on the crisis or failure of modernity therefore challenging the core premise of the secularization paradigm. Modernity does not lead to the marginalization of religion but rather to an upsurge of its social and political power. Huntington (1996) argues that the phenomenon of secularization has gone into reverse since the 1970s and identifies social, economic and cultural modernization as the underlying cause of this phenomenon because it has disrupted ‘long-standing sources of identity and systems of authority’ (Huntington, 1997: 97). Stavrakakis contends that the incapacity of ‘secular reason to resolve both practical and metaphysical questions (the so-called crisis of modernity), the collapse of the ideological imaginary of the cold war, and the various dislocations produced in the course of globalization have led to … the return of religion, a return that takes a variety of forms, from Islamic fundamentalism to New Age mysticism’ (Stavrakakis, 2002: 18).
Juergensmeyer explains the rise of religious nationalism in terms of the failure of secular western models of nationhood. Secularity brings nothing but disenchantment, despair and corruption in the absence of a moral comm...

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