Zum Inhalt springen
L

Das Video kommt von YouTube: erst beim Abspielen verbindet sich die Seite mit YouTube (Google).

Sociology of Religion – Peter Kivisto

Serious Science14:56 56.575 Aufrufe veröffentlicht Auf YouTube

Das Wichtigste aus dem Video

Tipp auf eine Zeit – das Video springt genau dorthin.

Transkriptautomatisch erstellt · 89 Zeilen
Herunterladen
  1. [Music] the sociology of religion is a really broad subfield in in sociology and it's
  2. one of the subfields that has been sort of part and parcel of the discipline right from the start and one can talk about it from a variety of angles such
  3. as the um the the um institutional or organizational structure of religious communities and so on but what I want to focus on is
  4. one um powerful debate that has been going on in the sociology of religion that maybe kind of structures everything else uh and that
  5. has to do with the issue of uh secularization at the moment there is a current discussion going on among sociologists of religion that is called
  6. post secularism the PO kind of post secular debate or discussion uh and you know post secularism is one of those posts that you find all over
  7. the place ever since we started talking about post industrial society and postmodernism and and so on and so forth post secularism was almost inevitable
  8. but what exactly are we talking about and and what are people who are post secularists reacting or responding to um when they when they make the claims
  9. that they that they make and I will say this there is no one unified position in ter in terms of postsecularism but I think if we step back and look at um the
  10. history of the sociology of religion what we'll see see is that there is a general notion that religion in the modern world is going to wne in
  11. significance it's either going to disappear or probably more likely it's going to become less and less consequential in a variety of ways and
  12. while you you can think about KL Marx who talked about the Opium of the masses religion being the Opium of the masses he had this dream that it would
  13. disappear now he um and if you talk about uh someone like durkheim who thought that religion was an important kind of glue
  14. that held Society together at some level but he himself didn't seem to be somebody who could Embrace religion um but probably the most consequential
  15. person in terms of shaping the way we thought about uh secularization uh was Max vber the great German sociologist born in
  16. 1864 V's major if there's one kind of theme that runs through his his uh work I mean if you look at Marx and you say Marx Marx was primarily interested in
  17. two things alienation and uh exploitation uh and if you look at durkheim you'd say probably the theme that runs through his work is solidarity
  18. how does a society kind of hang together for laor it seems to be rationalization now there's no there's no one you can't go to any one work of his and say see he
  19. he says as much it's people who have been commenting uh uh and doing exegetical studies of his work for decades and decades and decades now have
  20. come to the sort of General consensus that rationalization is the kind of thread the key theme that that kind of permeates his his thinking and you know
  21. it means a lot of things but but among other things rationalization suggests that we begin to explain and interpret the world in ways other than religious
  22. ways in particular because of of of science you know so the so the tension between the presumed tension between science and um and religion but this um
  23. this kind of thinking percolated into sociology as it became a full-fledged discipline you know when vber was writing sociology was really trying to
  24. get grounded it really didn't have much of a presence in universities in Europe or North America I mean it was there but it had not been there for a very long
  25. time and it was kind of insecure in terms of its status but Jump Ahead to the postor War II period which was kind of a high point for
  26. sociology and where in particular um uh American sociology loomed large in part because of the devastation of World War II you know we
  27. ended up being fairly unscathed and this meant that while Europe was trying to rebuild its everything including its universities um the United States was in
  28. a kind of privileged position there are any number of people who became um important um spokespersons or advocates for for
  29. the secularization thesis uh but the person I'll point to because he was probably the most influential was it was a um person by by the name of Peter
  30. Burger um who um argues that in fact you can if you want to trace the origins of secularization you can actually go back
  31. to uh the Protestant Reformation because protestantism starts to strip away the kind of corporate and Collective
  32. character of religion it it promotes a kind of individualism and that means you know people are you
  33. know Martin Luther said in talking about the so-called priesthood of all believers that individuals have a direct relationship with God as opposed to
  34. having a church body shaping it which you which you found both in eastern Christianity and in and in Roman Catholicism um so the seeds of
  35. secularization he said were planted within religion itself in the west okay and not surprisingly where those places in
  36. Western Europe and then spilling over into North America because they were predominantly Protestant um you you see you see in the second half of the 20th
  37. century secularization taking root religion becomes a far more Private Matter it it's not that it sometimes it becomes sort of invisible it's there
  38. sort of under the surface but it's not there in terms of shaping people lives you don't you don't uh decide your career based on what you think God wants
  39. you to do you know you're not looking for a vocation the way actually Luther talked about you're not choosing your friends you're if you're ill you're not
  40. going to a faith healer or praying to get better you're going to a doctor and using modern science and technology in in um place after Place sphere after
  41. sphere of Everyday Life religion kind of gets squeezed out okay the place that it seems to still have a role is that people end up and and vber actually
  42. understood this he said people need to understand they need an account of why suffering takes place in the world um how do you how do you explain suffering
  43. which includes the inevitability of death which is probably by the way what I think where Marx got it wrong about religion disappearing in his terms
  44. because he talked about you end exploitation and alienation but you don't end aging sickness and death you know and and so those are the what in in
  45. effect what the secularization thesis that was that dealing with those ultimate private matters and then and then perhaps people
  46. um may find that there they can deal with those in ways other than religion so the assumption is that some people will become irreligious A- religious um
  47. but many for many people for most people in fact probably religion will still be part of their lives but it will it will be compartmentalized okay that's that's
  48. what secularization argued okay now compounding all that I just said is something else in the modern world and that is that we live increasingly in
  49. societies especially the large developed societies that are religiously pluralistic and one of the ways in which if you're going to be religiously
  50. pluralistic and you learn to get together with people and respect other people's religions then at some level becomes a harder cell to say but my
  51. religion is the one true religion some people hang on to that people who we call religious fundamentalists they want to say my religion is the one true
  52. religion all other religions are false but others are prepared to say that that um my this is my way to trying to deal with and wrestle with these issues of
  53. ultimate meaning in in life but in fact uh um my neighbor who's you know you know if I'm a Protestant my neighbor's who's a Catholic or who's a Jew is doing
  54. the same thing and I respect that that so at some level then you don't come away with the same kind of absolute certainty that your religious beliefs
  55. are correct they are more tentative they are more something that you Embrace or endorse you feel comfortable with them or you're going to stick with them
  56. you're just going to have faith in them but you're but you also understand that that there are other options there are other possibilities and as pluralistic
  57. societies evolve this means you actually have choices so you can actually move from one religion to another you can be you can be born a
  58. Catholic and become a Protestant you can convert to Judaism or Jews can convert to Christianity or or what have you and one plausibility structure in all of
  59. this is that you're not religious anymore now now here's what one of the one of the anomalies in all of this debate was that
  60. the United States is is still a very religious country okay so how do how do you explain this thesis if the United States you
  61. know is still highly religious and the argument that burger suggested was that it's an anomaly okay Jump Ahead 20 years and
  62. what we see is a whole lot of evidence that religion in the world r large is alive and well you know uh in Latin America not only is Catholicism thriving
  63. now they have it now a lot of Latin American Catholics are excited because they have a pope from their own region but Evangelical Pro conservative
  64. Evangelical protestantism has taken hold and is is doing all sorts of things you have you have both an Islamic Revival and an Evangelical Christian Revival in
  65. places like West Africa like Nigeria it is true that the secular the secularization thesis argued that this was happening in the developed world and
  66. and it kind of ignored the world that had not kind of caught up with with um with the developed world but the reality is you
  67. still you find also find evidence of religion in that world so what Peter burer ended up saying is I used to think that the United States was the anomaly
  68. but now I think Western Europe is the anomaly the the lack of religion in Western Europe stands in stark contrast to everywhere else
  69. okay so this is the this is the basis for starting to talk about post secularism we we don't live in a secular age we live in this world in which
  70. somehow religion has managed to survive despite it all despite science technology pluralism etc etc etc that that's the argument of of uh of um the
  71. post secularist they don't necessarily have a have a particularly I mean there're it's more in many respects it's more descriptive
  72. religions everywhere we can point to it here here here uh but in fact um one of the things that they raise is the is the idea that that um both
  73. religion various kinds of religion and non-religion are options one of the one of the realities is people live in a world where you have the sense that they
  74. have an option and I'll I would point to a very very important article not by a sociologist or not an article a book a huge book 700 800 page book by the
  75. Canadian um political philosopher Charles Taylor and the title is significant because it's called the secular age a number of people who have
  76. been talking about postsecularism find this book very very compelling and what he argues is in many respects not quite the way Burger thought it but we do live
  77. in a secular age people have this you know religion is still far more powerful but but a secular age is one in which religion is
  78. far more of an optional thing and far less something that people are just born into and then stay there we we we I don't know if people still talk about
  79. this but people used to talk in the US about being a so-called cradle Catholic you know somebody who hadn't been to mass for decades and so on will say I'm
  80. a cradle Catholic well that meant you born a Catholic and somehow you think I'm still a Catholic even though I'm not a good Catholic or a practicing Catholic
  81. or um and uh increasingly that kind of that kind of situation doesn't exist and people if they're going to be religious they end up
  82. choosing and shifting and moving and um and the Very fact that you have to make decisions and make choices and that one of the choices is not just among
  83. different religious options but one is to be irreligious there's now an assertive a growing assertive movement the so-called new atheists who are um
  84. prepared to you know make their case that that they need to be seen and and sometimes they call themselves humanists um sometimes they have a kind of in-
  85. yourface attitude towards established religion other times they're simply saying we need to be we need to have a place at the table here too but this is
  86. the world that we live in I would I you know I think sometimes the term post secular although interesting is probably something that leads to more
  87. confusion than is necessary and probably the more important thing to think about and look at is that we live in this widely religiously diverse world and the
  88. sheer diversity the sheer pluralism of it is what shapes people's options and choices and so [Music]
  89. [Music]

Zum Nachlesen

SäkularisierungstheseDie Säkularisierungsthese oder auch Säkularisierungstheorie stellt einen zentralen theoretischen Ansatz der Religionssoziologie dar. SäkularisierungIm engeren Sinne bezeichnet der Begriff die Annahme, dass durch Humanismus und Aufklärung ausgelöste Prozesse Bindungen an Religion gelockert oder gelöst und … ReligionssoziologieSie befasst sich mit den sozialen Voraussetzungen von Religion, mit den sozialen Formen, die Religion annimmt, und dem Einfluss von Religion auf Gesellschaften … SäkularismusSie erwächst aus zwei Prozessen: zum einen aus der Säkularisierung, also dem mentalen Prozess der Entflechtung oder Trennung zwischen Religion und Staat, zum …