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British society is undergoing a process of disengagement from religion
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‘British society is undergoing a process of disengagement from religion and becoming increasingly secular in nature’ Critically discuss the arguments for and against this view. This is a difficult question to tackle because of the difficulty in finding a satisfying definition of religion. Exclusionists would define religion in very narrow boundaries or example P. Worsley defines religion as ‘a set of beliefs which in some way look validation in a dimension beyond the empirical technical realm’ which is very helpful. An inclusivist definition comes from Berger and Luckman ‘Religion is the way individuals attempt to formulate an all-embracing system of meaning’ which is equally helpful. The main difference is that Worsley would not define something as a religion if it had no supernatural element to it however Berger and Luckman would include things that help people to find a meaning for their lives. When the title refers to secularisation it means the level of religious belief in society and disengagement is the decrease in the involvement of religion in people’s lives. What would seem to be the strongest evidence for the existence of secularisation and disengagement in Britain would be statistics for church attendance since 1851. According to the 1851 census 40% of the population of Britain attended church. By 1997 this figure had reached 8.2% (except northern Ireland). Also the number of religious ceremonies has decreased due to the increase of cohabitation and the number of children being born outside marriage. This would seem to be concrete evidence of the fact that religion has become less important to modern society however the accuracy of these statistics has been questioned because not all churches take accurate attendance figures.
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