1.
0 In 1962, Wilson found that 45% of Americans
attended church on Sundays. However, he argues that
this figure was due to people following the ‘American
way of life’, not because they had deep religious
beliefs. Wilson claimed America was a secular society
because religion had become superficial.

2.
Bruce shares Wilson’s view. He uses three sources of
evidence to support his claim that America is becoming
increasingly secular…
0 Declining Church Attendance
0 ‘Secularisation from Within’
0 Religious Diversity and Relativism

3.
Declining Church Attendance
0 Opinion poll research suggests that church attendance
has been stable at 40% since 1940. However,
Hadaway found that this figure didn’t match the
church’s own statistics; if 40% of Americans were
going to church, then the churches would be full but
they weren’t.
0 Hadaway et al conducted an investigation into their
suspicion that the opinion polls had exaggerated.

4.
Declining Church Attendance
0 They conducted their study in Ashtabula County, Ohio and carried
out head counts at services and used interviews to ask people if
they attended church. They found that the level of attendance
claimed by the interviewees was 83% higher than their estimates
of church attendance in the country.
0 There is evidence that this tendency to exaggerate churchgoing is a
recent development. Until the 1970s, the findings of opinion polls
matched the churches’ own estimates, but since then, the
‘attendance gap’ has widened.
0 For example, in 1972 opinion polls exaggerated attendance by 47%
in San Francisco, but this had more than doubled in 1996 to 101%.

5.
Declining Church Attendance
0 Thus, Bruce concludes that a stable rate (40%) of
self-reported attendance has masked an actual
decline. The widening gap may be due to the fact it is
still seen as socially desirable or normative to go to
church, so people who have stopped going will say
they still go if asked in a survey. (possible Hawthorne Effect)

6.
Secularisation from Within
0 Bruce argues that the way American religion has
adjusted to the modern world amounts to
secularisation from within. Religion in American has
become ‘psychologised’ (a form of therapy) and
emphasis on traditional Christian beliefs have
declines. This change has enabled it to fit in with a
secular society, so American religion has remained
popular by coming less religious.

7.
Secularisation from Within
0 The purpose of religion has changed from seeking salvation in
heaven to seeking personal improvement in this world.
0 This decline in commitment to traditional beliefs can be seen in
peoples attitudes
1951 1982
and lifestyles:
Playing Cards 77 0
(% agreeing these
Social Dancing 91 0
are always morally
Going to the
46 0
wrong – adapted
Cinema
from Hunter)
Smoking 93 51
Drinking 98 17
Heavy Petting 81 45
Premarital Sex 94 89

8.
Religious Diversity
0 Bruce identifies a trend towards practical relativism
among American Christians, involving the acceptance
of the view that others are entitled to hold beliefs that
different to their own.
0 Lynd and Lynd’s study shows in 1924 94% of
churchgoing young people agreed with this statement:
‘Christianity is the one true religion and all people
should be converted to it.’
In 1977, only 41% of people agreed.

9.
Religious Diversity
0 The counterpart to practical relativism is the erosion
of absolutism – we live in a society where many
people hold views that are totally different to our
own, which undermines our assumption that our own
views are absolutely true.

10.
Criticisms of Secularisation
theory
0 Religion is simply changing it’s form, not declining
0 It is one-sided. It ignores religious revivals and the growth of new
religions
0 The falling church attendance ignores people who still believe but
don’t go to church
0 Secularisation is not universal
0 The past was not a ‘golden age’ of faith, and the future will not be
an age of atheism.
0 Religious diversity increases participation because it offers choice.
People can make use of religion in all sorts of different ways.