Achterberg and colleagues conclude there is in train a significant change toward deprivatization in Europe. In the late 1990s Christians were more pro public religion in countries where they were ...least numerous and in the Netherlands in particular there had been an increasing difference in attitudes between believers and nonbelievers over 25 years. Examining more recent survey data on British attitudes (1998 and 2008), we find a firm consensus among the nonreligious against religion having a high public profile, while Christians are more likely to object to antireligion sentiment and people belonging to non-Christian religions are more likely to support public religion. Nonreligious people appear to be no more hostile now than in the late 1990s, and where there has been a decrease in sympathy for public religion it is among religious groups.
As disadvantage can have causes other than discrimination, its presence cannot prove discrimination. However, the absence of patterns of disadvantage in large data sets would be very strong evidence ...against the presence of sectarian discrimination. In this paper we analyse data on religion, social class, education, gender and region from the 2011 Scottish census. Against those who argue that sectarianism is endemic in the west of Scotland, we find no sectarian association between religion and social class among people at the peak age of their labour market involvement. The class profiles of people in the Other Religion categories are unusual but the profile for Catholics is pretty much the same as for Other Christians. That this analysis involves 487,694 people gives us confidence that the results are robust. Hence we conclude there is no evidence that the Scottish labour market is characterised by sectarian discrimination. We would like to acknowledge the assistance of the staff of the office of the Registrar General for Scotland who kindly provided us with the census data.
The secularisation of Scotland Bruce, Steve
International journal for the study of the Christian church,
01/2014, Letnik:
14, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The history of religion in Scotland is interesting for the light it casts on the links between secularisation and secularism. The creation of secular social institutions was not the work of ...secularists but was an unanticipated result of Protestant schisms originally intended to purify the dominant religion so as to justify its imposition. The diversity thus created forced the growth of a secular public sphere. It also prevented a coherent nativist response to Irish Catholic immigration and thus encouraged Catholic integration. Over the twentieth century, Scotland changed from being a country in which most people had some association with organised religion into one in which the population divided radically into small groups of religious people and a majority who had no association at all with organised religion. Neither the new religions of the 1960s, nor New Age spirituality, nor the charismatic movement have made any significant inroads. Prospects for the conversion of the non-religious seem remote, when religion is now carried primarily by demographically or ethnically distinct populations.
The Christian churches have considerably declined in popularity, power, and prestige over the twentieth century in Britain and Europe. This decline has stimulated many attempts to characterise the ...attitudes towards religion of people who are neither involved with organised religion nor consciously opposed to it. Grace Davie has founded one such effort on the concept of 'vicarious religion'. The idea of vicarious religion rests on two principles: that a minority of people are religious on behalf of a silent majority and that those in the majority appreciate their efforts. We agree that examples of the phenomenon can be found, but we question whether popular sympathy for religion provides evidence for this conjecture. We review the various illustrations provided by Davie and offer alternative readings that seem more plausible. We also argue that the trajectory of change in marginal religious involvement seriously weakens its ability to diminish the evidence of secularisation.
The absence from Britain of anything like the United States New Christian Right of the 1980s could be explained by differences in the popularity of religion or in features of the respective party and ...political structures. Devolution and electoral reform have encouraged British Christians to form political parties and contest elections. Examination of their performance, agendas, and candidate profiles, coupled with survey data on British attitudes to mixing religion and politics, suggests that the major difference between the United States and Britain lies in the degree of secularization rather than in political opportunity structures.
My original paper criticized a collection of essays on church growth in the United Kingdom for presenting case studies of growing congregations as refutation of the sociological secularization ...thesis. It argued that pockets of growth within overall decline could only refute the thesis if it required that the decline of interest in the churches be universal, even, and rapid, which it does not. David Goodhew has responded to that critique by re-stating his case and elaborating some examples. This paper clarifies the key point at issue by stressing the need for comprehensive rather than illustrative and selective evidence of religious behavior.
In this article, the presence of alternative spirituality and practices within the general culture and their relationship to institutional religion are examined using national survey data collected ...as part of the 2001 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey. Alternative practices are found to divide into two groups of interests: concerns with personal well-being and interest in divination. Better-educated women are much more likely to engage with holistic practices associated with well-being; a minority of younger, less well-educated women are more likely to have found horoscopes, astrology, fortune-telling and tarot 'important in their lives'. Churchgoers find divination antithetical to religion while the use and salience of a range of holistic practices is as acceptable among churchgoers as it is among non-attenders and the secular (once allowance has been made for the connections between putatively alternative practices, gender, age and education). This underscores a focus on personal well-being rather than alternative spirituality in the consumption of holistic products and practices within the general culture. The study findings are used to assess claims for a spiritual revolution in modern Britain.
This book tests the rhetoric with historical and social scientific data, describing and explaining the changing pattern of relations between Catholics and Protestants over the 20th century.
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