1、Chapter 5Secularization and the Sources of Morality: Religion and Morality in Contemporary EuropeLoek Halman and Erik van Ingen5.1 IntroductionFor a long time in history, a religious “Weltanschauung dominated peoples lives. God was the central point of reference to understand and interpret the natur

2、al and social order, human consciousness, and peoples moral concerns. Public or civic behavior was to a large extent determined and restricted by religion and often took place within the churches or in activities organized by the churches Churches were important resources for groups to mobilize; the

3、y created a sense of belonging and contributed to social integration, civic engagement, and associational life (see also Herbert 2003). In public affairs, moral decisions, and value judgments, churches and church leaders provided guidelines or directions grounded in a theology in which God was the u

4、ltimate authority, and fear of the Gods was for a long time an important motive to enforce the laws of society (Smith quoted by Yinger 1970: 52-53). Religion was a major source of inspiration of morality and the churches were the moral guardians of society.A process of secularization is assumed to h

5、ave made an end to this religious dominance in the modern world. Religion ceased to be “the all-encompassing reality in which the secular realm found its proper place” (Casanova 1994: 15), or as Peter Berger (1967) noted, the idea of religion as a sacred canopy has become questionable to a growing n

6、umber of people. Due to social differentiation and specialization, religion gradually lost its overarching claims and its dominant position in society. The various institutional spheres, such as health care,judicature, economy, welfare, education, and family are no longer under the presidency of rel

7、igion, (Wilson 1996: 17). They developed independent from religion their own secular norms, which increasingly restricted the validity of the church norms to the specifically religious sphere? Religion was gradually pushed back to a sphere of its ownL. Halman (E!) E. van IngenDepartment of Sociology

8、, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands e-mail: loek.halmanuvt.nl; e.j.vaningenuvt.nlJ. de Hart et al. (eds.), Religion and Civil Society in Europe,87DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-6815-4_5, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 5 Secularization and the Sources of Morality: Religion and Mora

9、lity.99and has become privatized and marginalized within its own differentiated sphere (Casanova 1994: 19).As Bruce (2002) argued, secularization means that religion has become less important in contemporary society and that the number of people who live by the rules and norms provided by the church

10、es has declined According to some, this development has serious consequences for the moral order and civil society. For example, Francis Fukuyama (2000) argued that these social trends weakened the social bonds and shared values considerably, disrupted the social norms, and fuelled the view that soc

11、ietys moral order has been on the decline (Fukuyama 2000: 7). Because social bonds and moral commitments are vital for a vibrant civil society, civil society is in jeopardy (Wuthnow 1996).In this chapter, we are interested in the connection between religion on the one hand and peoples moral views on

12、 the othe匸 As said, for a long time in history, reli gion has been an important source of inspiration for peoples moral views and propagator of decent or civic behaviors Religious authority is increasingly put into question, and humans are increasingly abandoned to their own wits and will (Bauman 19

13、95: 18). In modern society, the role of the churches has become more limited and the churches do not seem to be the moral compasses of society anymore. To what extent the beliefs of the religious and nonreligious about a number of moral issues are different in contemporary Europe is explored in this

14、 chapter. In particular, we ask ourselves what the differences are between churchgoers and non-churchgoers when countries have advanced economically and have become more modern. In other words, we examine the differences between the religious and nonreligious across countries and investigate whether

15、 or not these differences are determined by a country5s degree of modernization.People in contemporary society are not only assumed to be no longer forced to be religious; also religiosity has become a personal matte匚 This appears, e.g., from the many people in the Netherlands who do not feel attrac

16、ted anymore by the churches and do not consider themselves belonging to one of the churches It also appears from the declining numbers of people who attend religious services regu larly. All over Western Europe, church attendance is on the decline (Halman et al. 2011: 65). Of course there remain peo

17、ple who prefer to be religious and who still go to church as there are people who define themselves religious but do not go to church. Although churchgoers generally are more religious than people who do not or hardly go to church, religious people not necessarily have to attend religious services,

18、and many of the religious people will not attend religious services for a variety of reasons It raises the question whether these religious people are more civic than nonreligious people Are they more strict in their moral judgments than nonreligious or less devout people? Are churchgoers more civic

19、 than non churchgoers? To what extent do churchgoers still adhere to the prescriptions and lessons from their religious leaders, and hence, do they differ in moral views and convictions from people who do not go to church? Such questions are dealt with in this chapter.Previous studies made clear tha

20、t a distinction has to be made between religious beliefs and religious practices. Stark (2001) concluded that Durkheim was wrong in claiming that religious integration is essential. Stark demonstrated that religious beliefs were more important predictors of moral values than church participation and

21、 thus falsifying Durkheim claim. Others found opposite results (e.g., Parboteeah et al. 2008). Their analyses provided evidence that religious beliefs were not so important for peopled moral views. Religious practices, such as church attendance and prayer, were negatively associated to justification

22、 of ethically suspect behaviours (Parboteeah et al. 2008: 394). Such contradictory results seem to make it necessary to distinguish religious beliefs from religious practices and investigate which explains peopled moral values better: beliefs or practicesSecularization may be a modern phenomenon; it

23、 seems mainly to be confined to Western Europe. The recent developments in Central and Eastern European countries seem to reveal a different story .In many of the countries in that part of Europe, religion and religious organizations grew since the fall of Communism (Tomka 2005). And also outside Eu

24、rope, religion appears to remain of major importance in the lives of many people For Peter Berger, once one of the fierce proponents of secularization ideas, reason to admit that he was wrong in predicting that by the year 2000, there would be no churches and religious communities anymore and that a

25、 worldwide secular culture would have developed (Joas 2006: 57). In his 2000 Paul Hanly Furfey lecture, he abandoned the old secularization theory because the empirical evidence refutes the theory; the world “is as religious as it has ever been, and in some places is more religious than evef9 (Berge

26、r 2001: 445).In many Central and Eastern European countries, it seems that religion and religious practices are increasingly attractive to ordinary people since the collapse of the Communist period The secularization trends are thus not similar across Europe, and therefore, it is unlikely that civil

27、 society and peopled moral views have developed similarly across Europe In Central and Eastern Europe, the churches seem to have gained prominence During communism, the state was accepted as the power to regulate society over a wide area of life” (Crawford 1996: 26)，though the majority remained very

28、 hostile towards the state (idem). After the fall of Communist regimes, the churches entered a transition phase, and in many parts of Central and Eastern Europe, religious communities increased .In contrast to the state during Communism, churches are considered as reliable problem-solving and uncomp

29、romised bodies and resources of spiritual guidance A last research question addresses this issue: to what extent are the links between religion and morality stronger in Central and Eastern Europe than in Western Europe?5.2 Religion and MoralityReligious beliefs are considered important sources of pe

30、opled moral principles. For religious people, it seems usually quite clear what is ethically right and wrong and they do not need laws to guide their conduct across a host of behaviors According to the divine command theory, there exists a strong connection between religion and morality, simply beca

31、use moral rules are considered the rules given by God (see Gert 2005: 118) The basic idea is that “what is good or right is good or right only because God wills it or commands it (Wainwright 2005: 73). The waning of the dominant position of religion in modernizing society fostered the establishment

32、of a new morality” or permissive morality (Wilson 1982: 86). Since the moral guidance of the churches and religion is less self-evident and under heavy pressure, it can be assumed that peoples religious orientations are no longer, or less strongly, linked to their moral views. Individualized people

33、are free, autonomous, and independent from the traditional institutions in general and churches and their leaders in particular. As Taylor (1989: 312-313) argued, “masses of people can sense moral sources of a quite different kind, ones that dorf t necessarily suppose a God JThis is also how Casanov

34、a sees secularization, or at least one of the propositions of secularization: it is the differentiation of secular spheres from religious institutions and norms (Casanova 1994: 211). He goes on to argue that this remains a general modern structural trencl. One of the consequences is that religious a

35、uthority over moral convictions has diminished or has lost its determining power over morality. In contemporary modern society, people are assumed to have become their own decision takers, no longer bound to be influenced by religion and independent from their religious beliefs. If that is true, we

36、would expect to find declining differences in moral views between religious people and nonreligious people and between churchgoers and non-churchgoers because moral convictions in both groups will be less and less determined by their religious views and behaviors Both believers and nonbelievers have

37、 become free and autonomous people and decide for themselves what to believe and who/what to follow Neither of them needs a church as a moral source. Not only churchgoing is a matter of personal choice: also moral convictions are personal considerations. Hence, (Hla) the more modern a country is, th

38、e smaller the differences in moral views between churchgoers and non-churchgoers and between believers and nonbelieversHowever, it can also be argued that the differences between churchgoers and non-churchgoers remain, because churchgoers and strong believers still rely on their church or their beli

39、efs in moral decisions and hence remain more morally strict than unchurched people Differences could even become larger: a countermovement may occur among the group of churchgoers, in which a reorientation on religious beliefs takes place in response to the secularizing forces in society. In that ca

40、se, it can be expected that the differences in moral outlooks of both believers and unbelievers become more salient and more marked. This would not be inconsistent with an overall decline in the extent to which people subscribe to clerical norms: if the group of non-churchgoers grows at the expense

41、of the group of churchgoers, this may also affect the average beliefs in the population. Hence, (Hlb) the more modern a society is, the more the believers and nonbelievers will differ in their moral views.According to the secularization theory, religion has become privatized and people are increasin

42、gly defining their religiosity in a personal, nontraditional, and institutionally loose way. Grace Davie (2000, 2002) coined the situation as believing without belonging.” People turn away from the churches but do not necessarily become less religious. Also others like Wilson (1982: 149) and Chaves

43、(1994: 750) pointed out earlier that secularization should not be understood as the decline of religion as such, but as the declining scope of religious authority?9 Thus, secularization refers to the declining authority of religion or the displacement of religion from the centre of human life” (Bruc

44、e 2011: 1), which not necessarily should be equated with declining levels of individual beliefs and religious ideas. Only those who remain to adhere to the teachings and lessons from the churches will be strider. In their moral choices, the voice of the churches and church leaders are echoed. For th

45、ose who are not churchgoing, the moral voice of the church will be irrelevant. But what to expect when it comes to religious beliefs? Why would people who are more devout, but not churched, be more strict than churched or less devout people? It would assume that atheists are immoral people or have l

46、ower standards of morality, which seems unlikely to be true Hence, we predict that (H2) the differences in moral views are smaller when it comes to religious and non- (less) religious people than between churchgoers and non-churchgoers.As indicated in the introduction of this chapter, earlier studie

47、s (e.g., Stark 2001; Parboteeah et al. 2008) provided evidence that religious beliefs and religious practices were differently related to peopled moral views. Their studies also revealed that other factors may explain the effects of religion on morality. One suggestion of Parobeeah et al. was to loo

48、k at religious pluralism. Following studies of Voas, Olsen, and Crockett (2002), they suggested that the degree to which single religions are not dominant and there are any alternatives available could also be potentially linked to ethics59 (Parboteeah et al. 2008: 396). In the article they referred

49、 to, Voas et al. did not focus on the relationship between religion and morality but on religious involvement. They did not find evidence that religious pluralism affected levels of participation. Also Halman and Draulans (2006) were not able to substantiate the claim of rational choice theorists th

50、at religious pluralism in Europe had any impact on religious practices and religious beliefs Voas et al., however, concluded that “the question of whether religious diversity promotes or undermines commitment 一 and by implication how modernization affects traditional belief and practice 一 remains on

51、e of the most interesting problems in the field，(Voas et al. 2002: 227). As far as we know, the issue of religious pluralism has never been studied in relation with moral views and the impact religious diversity might have on peopled moral convictions and valuesIn mono religious settings, there is n

52、o competition between religions and hence no competition between moral views. Following the arguments of the proponents of the rational choice theory, in such circumstances, the churches do not have to do their best to be attractive to the believers In case churches have to compete with each other,

53、they have to do their best to attract believers, who on their turn will not only be stronger believers but also more strict followers of the religious and moral messages and teachings of the church leaders Hence, we may expect to find stronger associations between religion and morality in such compe

54、titive environments than in mono religious societies. The following hypotheses can be formulated: (H3a) The more religiously diverse societies are, the stronger religiosity impacts moral valuesThe adherents of the secularization ideas argue the opposite According to them, religious pluralism undermi

55、nes the plausibility structure of religion (Berger 1967), and therefore, people will be less inclined to follow the religious and moral messages of the church and their leaders From this opposite point of view, we can formulate the following competing hypothesis: (H3b) The more religiously diverse a

56、 society is, the weaker the impact of religiosity on moral values.5.3 Central and Eastern EuropeAs noted before, the recent developments in Central and Eastern European countries seem to reveal a different story which does not fit the secularization ideas In many countries in that part of Europe, re

57、ligion and religious organizations grew since the fall of Communism. Religion and religious practices are becoming increasingly attractive to ordinary people now that state communism has vanished and with it the dominant provider of morality. In many parts of Central and Eastern Europe, religious co

58、mmunities and churches are considered reliable problem-solving and uncompromised bodies and sources of spiritual guidanceThe secular ideology and the Communist efforts to destroy religion make it likely to expect lower levels of religiosity in Central and Eastern European societies (Pollack 2003). H

59、owever, it has been pointed out that the atheist ideology did not destroy religiosity. For example, Hormel (2010: 50-52) argues that not expressing your religious identity was merely a means to avoid scrutiny or to gain status. It does not reveal that state-imposed atheism was fully internalized or accepted. This is also what Tomka (2005: 16) noted: Communism undeniably weakened the churches and the institutional and official forms of religiosity,