When getting at the meaning of secularism, [Charles] Taylor rejects what he calls the “subtraction story” which sees science gradually chipping away at the credibility of faith. Instead he argues that secularism and faith come from the same well and that secularism emerges not through scientific discovery, but through history. In this way secularism is not pitted against religion but is part of a proper distinction between the temporal and religious realms.
Secularisation theory on the other hand attempts to describe a process of change ushered in around the time of the Industrial Revolution, whereby states modernise as they secularise. The idea is very simple: the more modernity, the less religion. It is broadly based on empirical data from north-western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. For much of the twentieth century it went unchallenged. It was commonly assumed that the world was following a trajectory set off in north-western Europe at the time of the Industrial Revolution. But about 20 years ago it became clear that the statistics told a different story. Peter Berger, an eminent American sociologist and expert on religions, was long an advocate of the secularisation theory, but changed his view on the basis of the empirical data. He said recently: “We don’t live in an age of secularity; we live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity.”
So those who predicted the “Death of God”, extrapolating the European experience to the rest of the world, were wrong. Rather than a correlation between economic, social and political modernity and decreasing religious practice, the evidence from the United States, Africa, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe points to religious practice walking hand in hand with progress, and in some cases actually being the spur. Indeed, figures from the World Christian Database show that the greater part of the world, both developed and developing, is as furiously religious as ever. For example:
It is quite likely that by 2050 or so there will be three billion Christians in the world; the proportion of those who will be non-Latino whites, will be somewhere between 15 and 20 per cent.
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Francis Campbell: No future for Europe in the ghetto of Secularism
When getting at the meaning of secularism, [Charles] Taylor rejects what he calls the “subtraction story” which sees science gradually chipping away at the credibility of faith. Instead he argues that secularism and faith come from the same well and that secularism emerges not through scientific discovery, but through history. In this way secularism is not pitted against religion but is part of a proper distinction between the temporal and religious realms.
Secularisation theory on the other hand attempts to describe a process of change ushered in around the time of the Industrial Revolution, whereby states modernise as they secularise. The idea is very simple: the more modernity, the less religion. It is broadly based on empirical data from north-western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. For much of the twentieth century it went unchallenged. It was commonly assumed that the world was following a trajectory set off in north-western Europe at the time of the Industrial Revolution. But about 20 years ago it became clear that the statistics told a different story. Peter Berger, an eminent American sociologist and expert on religions, was long an advocate of the secularisation theory, but changed his view on the basis of the empirical data. He said recently: “We don’t live in an age of secularity; we live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity.”
So those who predicted the “Death of God”, extrapolating the European experience to the rest of the world, were wrong. Rather than a correlation between economic, social and political modernity and decreasing religious practice, the evidence from the United States, Africa, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe points to religious practice walking hand in hand with progress, and in some cases actually being the spur. Indeed, figures from the World Christian Database show that the greater part of the world, both developed and developing, is as furiously religious as ever. For example:
It is quite likely that by 2050 or so there will be three billion Christians in the world; the proportion of those who will be non-Latino whites, will be somewhere between 15 and 20 per cent.
Read it all.