(Un)Believing in Modern Society

Religion, Spirituality, and Religious-Secular Competition

Jörg Stolz, Judith Könemann, Mallory Schneuwly Purdie, Thomas Englberger, Michael Krüggeler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134800193
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This landmark study in the sociology of religion sheds new light on the question of what has happened to religion and spirituality since the 1960s in modern societies. Exposing several analytical weaknesses of today's sociology of religion, (Un)Believing in Modern Society presents a new theory of religious-secular competition and a new typology of ways of being religious/secular. The authors draw on a specific European society (Switzerland) as their test case, using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to show how the theory can be applied. Identifying four ways of being religious/secular in a modern society: 'institutional', 'alternative', 'distanced' and 'secular' they show how and why these forms have emerged as a result of religious-secular competition and describe in what ways all four forms are adapted to the current, individualized society.

Chapter 1
Introduction: Religion and Spirituality in the Me-Society

Jörg Stolz, Judith Könemann

The way to God is by our selves. (Phineas Fletcher)

Introduction

However we characterize today's society, no sociological description can avoid assigning a prominent place to the individual person, to the individual. Never before has the individual been able to make such a wide variety of decisions on his or her own, whether educational, political, economic, lifestyle-related, sexual –or religious. Never before has the individual been solely responsible for so much, or has had so much to cope and deal with alone when things in life do not go to plan. And never before have individuals had to draw the meaning of experiences and actions so much from within themselves and from the consequences of their own decisions. It is in this sense that we truly are living in a me-society.

Central Questions

Formulated as briefly as possible, our study analyses the influence that this me-society has had on religiosity, spirituality and secularity. More precisely, we are concerned with exploring:

• which central religious and social types we can identify in society. By types, we mean large groups of people who characterize themselves through common perceptions, values and social-structural features, as well as through the social boundaries that they create;¹
• which religious and spiritual beliefs, practices, values, relationships to religious suppliers, and perceptions these religious and social types have;
• how the religiosity, spirituality and secularity of these types have changed in the last few decades, and how this change can be explained.

Each chapter of our book provides part of the answer to these questions.

Answers So Far

There is of course already a large literature which attempts to describe and explain the religious and social changes of the last few decades in Western European countries. The best-known theories today are secularization theory, individualization theory, and market theory.² According to secularization theory, elements of modernization have led to the declining significance of religion in both public and private life.³ According to individualization theory, what we are witnessing is not so much a decline in religiosity, but a situation in which religiosity is becoming ever more individual and multiform.⁴ Finally, market theory draws on economic insights to explain changes in the domain of religion. According to this theory, we are increasingly living in a religious market with religious suppliers (churches) and religious customers (believers). Since the religious market in European countries is heavily regulated (i.e., there is no free market), people are increasingly distancing themselves from religiosity. For proponents of this theory, it is only when the market is liberalized and new suppliers can enter the market that a religious revival might be possible again.⁵ However, all three theories are, as we will show in this book, only convincing in part. Above all, they each fail to explain satisfactorily the phenomena in their entirety – the fact, that is, that we can see not only religious decline but also religious revival, more religious individualization but also more fundamentalism, and more religious freedom but also more religious indifference. It is precisely here that the importance of our own contribution lies, for we attempt to give a more satisfactory answer to the central set of questions posed above, and we do so by providing a typology, a theory, and a thesis.

A New Typology

A first part of our answer to the question of how people in the me-society experience religiosity, spirituality and secularity lies in a new typology. We distinguish on an abstract level among four types: the institutional, the alternative, the distanced, and the secular. Each of these types can then be further distinguished into subtypes. The purpose of the typology is first of all to simplify the complex world in which we live. If we listen carefully to how people in Switzerland and other Western European countries talk about their religiosity, spirituality or irreligiosity, we are immediately confronted by a huge diversity of opinion. Here we give just a few examples. The 50-year-old widow Mima has distanced herself from the Catholic Church as a result of various deaths in her family. For reasons not entirely clear to Mima herself, she was angry at fate, God and the Church. Quite different is Barnabé, a 58-year-old farmer who converted to Christianity as a young man, joined a free church with his wife, and now holds the office of elder in this community. No such stability can be found in the comparatively short life story of the 24-year-old student Julie, who was brought up as a Catholic, went through an atheist phase, was then attracted by esotericism and Buddhism, and has become interested in Christianity again (this time Orthodox, though) since the sudden death of her father. The 39-year-old engineer Siegfried tells a different story again. When he and his wife asked themselves whether they wanted to have their two children baptized, the answer was, no. And so the couple came to the logical conclusion – and left the church.

If we consider the forms of religiosity mentioned here in their biographical contexts, what we notice first of all is the uniqueness of each person. But, if we then multiply the examples, it soon becomes clear that, behind the individual life stories, we can identify perpetually recurring social forms which can be described as types and milieus. In this book, we try to show that Mima, Barnabé, Julie and Siegfried belong to different and easily distinguishable religious and social types and milieus, and that these types and milieus can help us to come to a better understanding of the religious changes that Switzerland has undergone in recent decades. What is important to stress here is that we can find the central properties created by the me-society identified at the beginning of this chapter in all groups. In all types, for example, people tell us how they rely completely on themselves with regard to their beliefs and practices. Nonetheless, the contents, forms of practice, and beliefs of each of the separate types differ drastically from those of the other types.

A New Theory

We are concerned here, though, not only with describing the types, but also with explaining them. To that end, we present in Chapter 2 a new theory of religious-secular competition. According to this theory, we find in all societies religious and secular (collective) actors who compete for three things: power in society, power within groups/organizations/milieus, and individual demand. To be able to survive in this competition, the collective actors employ different strategies. They try, for example, to mobilize their members, to begin political campaigns, to provoke scandals, to enter coalitions, to offer attractive goods, etc. They are influenced by four external factors: by scientific and technical innovations (e.g., the invention of television), by social innovations (e.g., the invention of democracy), by major events (e.g., wars), and by socio-demographic-forces (e.g., differing birth rates). The struggles lead in effect to diverse results, and it is the goal of the theory to explain these results. In addition to the victories and defeats of the various competitors, there are also stalemates and agreements, as well as situations of differentiation and de-differentiation, of individualization and collectivization, of secularization and re-sacralization. The theory can only provide satisfactory explanations, though, if it is adapted to the particular historical development of the society concerned, which is why we outline in Chapter 2 the events in the story of secular-religious competition in Switzerland since about 1800. From the theory thereby made concrete by historical constraints, we can derive a series of hypotheses that we then test in the course of our work.

The Thesis of Regime Change of Religious-Secular Competition

The third part of our response to the question outlined above is the forwarding of our central thesis; namely, that in the 1960s there occurred a regime change of the religious-secular competition. According to our thesis, there was a cultural revolution in this period which we will denote as a change from a 'regime of industrial society' to a 'regime of the me-society'.⁶ Against the backdrop of an unprecedented economic boom from 1945 to 1973 (the 'economic miracle'), a cultural revolution occurred in the 1960s in which authorities of all kinds were attacked, and the individual as an autonomous entity was given centre stage. The ideas of subjectivity, freedom and self-determination which had increasingly caught on since the Enlightenment became the shaping forces in people's lives. The individual thereby became the ultimate authority on decisions of all kinds, whether political, familial, economic, consumerist, sexual – or even also religious. It is true that we find religious-secular competition on all three levels – for power in society, for power within groups/organizations/milieus, and for individual demand – in both the old as well as the new regime. But what has changed is that the central point around which competition revolves is now completely different. In the old regime of industrial society, religion and denomination were a central and collective characteristic of identity for society, while Christianity was regarded as a fundamental feature that unified society. In the new regime of the me-society, however, this is no longer the case. Instead, religion and denomination are now seen as a private and optional characteristic of identity, while Christianity is being increasingly viewed as just one religion among others. In the collectivist regime of industrial society, the sovereignty of Christianity was taken as given, and the most important religious-secular struggles revolved around the question of how much space could be taken by Protestants or Catholics, or how strongly Christianity was besieged by alternative value systems. In the individualistic regime of the me-society, though, the most important religious-secular struggle is that which relates to individual demand. Religious practice is now no longer a social expectation; it is no longer something that belongs to the public person. Rather, it has been relegated to the domain of leisure time, where it faces stiff competition from other forms of 'leisure activity' and 'self-development'.⁷

The new regime of the me-society has led in the last few decades to different effects on both an individual as well as a collective level. On the individual level, there are tendencies of 'secular drift' and of advancing religious-secular individualization and consumerization. In many areas of the competition between the secular and the religious, individuals are choosing the secular rather than the religious options. Other ways to spend time (such as sleeping in or playing football) are displacing going to church on Sunday morning; secular professions (such as psychologists and personal coaches) are taking the place of the church minister; secular explanations (such as the Big Bang and the theory of evolution) are increasingly seen as being more plausible than religious explanations (e.g., creation). In terms of upbringing in particular, the religious-secular competition and the new freedoms granted to children have led to a situation in which religious options are now no longer chosen at all. In effect, each new generation is now more secular than the previous. In addition, religious individualization and consumerization have now prevailed to such an extent that people usually see themselves as the 'final authority' in religious matters, and believe that they do not have the right to impose religious ideas on anyone, and not even on their own children. Individuals should choose for themselves, and should 'consume' whatever they consider to be the most important thing for them.

On the collective level...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: Religion and Spirituality in the Me-Society
• 2 A Theory of Religious-Secular Competition
• 3 Four Forms of (Un)Belief
• 4 Identity and Social Structure
• 5 Belief, Knowledge, Experience, Action
• 6 Values and Change of Values
• 7 Major Churches, Evangelical Churches and Alternative-Spiritual Suppliers
• 8 The Perception and Evaluation of Religion(s)
• 9 The Change in Religiosity, Spirituality and Secularity
• 10 Conclusion: (Un)Believing in Modern Society
• Appendix
• References
• Index