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Assess the View That Secularisation Has Been a Feature Only of Modern European Societies.

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Assess the view that secularisation has been a feature only of modern European societies.

Secularisation, as stated by Wilson, is the process whereby religious beliefs, institutions and practices have lost their social influence. Max Weber concluded that society is undergoing a process of modernisation – a transition from religious tradition to rational and scientific ways of thinking – and rationalisation – the process by which rational ways of thinking have gradually replaced the religious teachings and understandings of the world. This secularisation is said to have started by Marten Luther when he challenged the principles and ideas of the Roman Catholic Church. This religion was the main religion especially within the UK that most of the population believed to be true. Luther undermined the popular religious view by writing 93 reasons challenging the churches beliefs and this initiated the processes of modernisation and rationalisation. Luther had started the end of the rule of the church within the UK by causing a Protestant revolution and disenchantment. Weber talks about disenchantment as a way of escaping the beliefs of the church, this caused the thought that the world operates according to its own laws of nature based on science and reason instead of religion and superstition and that God is transcendent.
There is strong evidence to suggest that secularisation is very high within European societies, especially the UK as we can see from church attendance statistics. Crockett identifies the 19th century to be the golden age of religiosity as in 1851 census of Religious worship 40% or more of the adult population attended church. In the past 200 years this has now dropped to 10-15% as recorded during the 1960’s. There have also been a number of other observations made over this period, for instance; there has been an increase in the average age of church

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