Faith and theology in a secular age

Abstract

Our age, it has been said, is a secular age, that is to say, an age in which religious affiliation, religious thought and practice, and religious influence upon personal and social life have been marked by a more or less steady decline. According to the British sociologist Steve Bruce, these developments are manifested in the decline in religious affiliation and practice; the relegation of orthodox groups who hold to traditional beliefs to “relatively autonomous subcultures”; and what may be described as a laissez-faire attitude among those “Christians and New Age innovators [who] hold their beliefs in a liberal and relativistic manner”. Bruce sums up “classical secularization theory” as follows:

"The secularization thesis argues that the decline of religion in the modern West is not an accident but is an unintended consequence of a variety of complex social changes that for brevity we call modernisation. It is not inevitable. But unless we can imagine a reversal of the increasing cultural autonomy of the individual, secularization must be seen as irreversible." [extract]