Secularization Analyzed in the Context of Cultural Differentiation

• In Event: 2329 - Section on the Sociology of Religion Referred Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 11. Secularism and Religious Theory

Abstract

Secularization has long been interpreted in terms of declines in religious belief, membership in religious congregations, and participation in religious rituals. It has then been understood that secularization brings in its wake declines in personal morality and in normative standards regulating interpersonal and collective conduct. In this understanding, secularization represents moral decline and threat to the normative order of society, and thus has been a major topic for sociologists over decades.
A different understanding emerges if we view secularization as an expectable outcome of a centuries-long process of differentiation among the major spheres of culture. In this context secularization is a result of the growth, since the Enlightenment, of a sphere of secular moral culture independent of religious belief, specialized around legitimation of detailed normative orders specific to elements of complex institutional orders. In this perspective, cultural legitimation is established separately, yet interdependently, for the various institutions of modern economies, polities, civil societies, and cultural maintenance, such as, families, schools, and universities.
Theories of the normative order of society independent of religious belief date back to works of the Renaissance such as Machiavelli’s writings, but their major growth occurred after the Reformation with the dignity it gave, especially in Calvinism,, to everyday social life. Doctrines of Natural Law independent of earlier theological conceptions became prominent and at times stimulated major social movements. In the Enlightenment of the 18th century, doctrines of Natural Law and Human Rights came to dominate thinking about secular society and established frames of reference for moral thought independent of religious beliefs. In the U.S., Enlightenment theories, through the learned figures of Madison, Jefferson, and Adams, provided the foundation for the Constitution and understandings of the law that derive from Constitutional theory. Through the 19th and 20th centuries, law framed through the Constitution gained elaboration. Citizens now think of their daily duties and rights, in terms of secular law and secular informal norms within the Enlightenment moral framework.

Author

• Victor Meyer Lidz, Drexel University College of Medicine