Secularisation A* grade notes

AQA RS ↗︎
Christianity ↗︎

AO1: Secularism & Humanism

Secularisation is the sociological process by which religion’s influence within the public sphere and wider society changes, e.g., through decline or relegation to the private sphere.
Secularism is a political and normative principle about the proper place of religion in the public sphere, including the state and shared culture.
Secularism takes different forms, with distinct methods and goals:
Procedural / open secularism:
Method: inclusive cultural participation
Goal: pluralistic coexistence of religious and secular worldviews, allowing religion a visible role in the public sphere
Programmatic / closed secularism:
Method: legal restriction of religion in public institutions and life
Goal: confining religion to the private sphere, removing it from the public sphere
The Enlightenment challenged religion as the primary source of truth and morality.
Figures such as Galileo Galilei demonstrated the authority of empirical science over religious doctrine.
Early liberal thinkers such as John Locke emphasised freedom of belief, while Immanuel Kant sought to confine religion “within the limits of reason,” partly in response to religious conflict.
Secular humanism develops this trajectory into a comprehensive worldview.
It is not purely a negative critique of religion, but offers a positive account of how truth and morality can be grounded without God.
It claims truth is only obtained by reason, evidence and scientific inquiry, not revelation or religious authority.
Truth is therefore understood as provisional and open to revision, rather than fixed by sacred texts.
From this epistemology follows its moral framework.
Ethics are based on human wellbeing, autonomy and flourishing, rather than divine command.
It affirms the intrinsic dignity of persons, influenced by Kant’s principle of treating individuals as ends in themselves, which underpins modern conceptions of human rights.
It therefore combines a concern for autonomy with a focus on human flourishing, in a broadly Aristotelian sense, as the goal of ethical decision-making.
Secular humanism provides a framework of values which can justify different political positions depending on what is prioritised.
If autonomy and pluralism are emphasised, it supports procedural secularism, allowing religion a place within the public sphere.
If rationality and harm reduction are prioritised, it can justify more programmatic secularism, restricting religion’s public role.
Thus, secular humanism aims to replace religion as a source of truth and values, while allowing divergent conclusions about religion’s place in society in the mean time.

AO1: Dawkins: Militant atheism / anti-theism & the rise of New atheism

Militant atheism / anti-theism became culturally prominent in the 21st century in the form of ‘New Atheism’.
Although they accept religious freedom, they want to persuade religious people to abandon their faith, by winning a cultural battle in the ‘market place of ideas’.
Its method aligns with open secularism: cultural persuasion, not state control.
But its goal is more radical than programmatic secularism: not content for religion to be a private matter, they seek its complete disappearance.
Their argument is that society would be better off without religion because it is irredemably harmful, even in its liberal forms, and even as a private belief.
Its key figures are the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, journalist Christopher Hitchens, writer Sam Harris and philosopher Daniel Dennet.
Religion as a virus:
Dawkins coined ‘meme’ as the cultural analogue of a gene, ideas and practices transmitted culturally through imitation.
Religious memes can spread “epidemiologically”, especially to children through parents, communities and institutions.
Evolution has made children dependent on adults.
This makes them vulnerable to religious ‘infection’ before their critical thinking abilities develop.
Religious indoctrination exploits this vulnerability with the fear of hell, which children don’t receive metaphorically but real and terrifying.
Dawkins points out mental harm can be as damaging as physical harm.
He points to cases where religious apostates have needed therapy due to their unshakable fear of hell.
Dawkins thinks these reasons justify the accusation of ‘child abuse’.
New Atheists also follow Freud in explaining religion through psychological pressures producing an infantile worldview.
Fear of death, desire for authority and meaning, and hope of reunion with loved ones encourage comforting religious explanations.
Dawkins argues religion provides childish and irrational answers to these existential questions.
He compares theism to belief in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, and calls reliance on others to provide meaning ‘infantile’: the ‘truly adult view’ is that life is as meaningful as we choose to make it.
Dennett similarly argues that people cling to religion for its comfort, guidance and purpose rather than rational justification.
He provocatively suggests that many do not straightforwardly believe in God, but instead “believe in belief in God”.
These epistemological criticisms reflect New Atheism’s connection to secular humanism.
Its emphasis on evidence and reason encourages distrust of unquestionable authority and confidence in individual judgement.
This feeds into liberal ethics and politics, emphasising autonomy, human flourishing, rights and publicly justifiable laws.
New Atheists therefore object not merely that religious beliefs are irrational, but that irrational methods of forming beliefs can produce irrational moral and political authority.
Harris and Hitchens develop this consequence:
Hitchens argues that religion idealises submission to unquestionable divine authority, becoming dangerous when believers claim God’s authority to coerce others.
Harris argues that treating faith as a legitimate source of certainty enables religious extremism.
Even moderate religion is problematic because respecting faith in principle protects extremism from rational criticism.
So, the fight over religion is ultimately partly a fight over what kinds of reasons are legitimate in a modern society.
Scientific inquiry, autonomous ethics and liberal politics all depend upon claims being open to criticism and justification.
New atheism finds Religion objectionable because faith can exempt beliefs from those demands.

AO1: McGrath’s defence of Christianity in ‘The Dawkins delusion’

McGrath argues that there is a “lunatic fringe” on both sides of the religion–secularism debate.
He accepts that religious fundamentalism exists, but claims Dawkins’ militant atheism represents an opposing extreme.
McGrath accuses Dawkins of misrepresenting Christianity rather than engaging with it accurately.
Dawkins attributes to Tertullian the idea that Christians should believe “because it is absurd”, although Tertullian did not actually write this phrase.
McGrath argues that repeating such claims without properly checking their sources is inconsistent with the scientific commitment to evidence Dawkins claims to represent.
Dawkins also quotes Martin Luther’s criticisms of reason as evidence that Christianity is irrational.
McGrath argues that Luther was specifically discussing salvation through faith rather than human achievement, not rejecting human reason generally.
He therefore describes Dawkins’ treatment of Luther as “inept”, based on selective quotation rather than “evidence-based scholarship.”
Dawkins, he claims, produces propaganda aimed at destroying religion rather than fairly understanding it, displaying a dogmatism resembling the fundamentalism he attacks.
McGrath similarly criticises Dawkins’ approach to religious education.
He worries that militant secularism may simply replace religious dogma with its own, comparing this to Soviet anti-religious education which presented religion as superstition defeated by science.
Children should instead be taught “fairly and accurately, what Christianity actually teaches.”
McGrath defends the rationality of religion by referencing natural theology. He concedes that God of the gaps style arguments were sometimes used, but not by Christian philosophers today like Swinburne and Polkinghorne who have more sophisticated arguments like fine tuning.
He defends the ethics of Christianity by pointing to the example of Jesus, who is the role model for Christian life.
Ultimately, McGrath defends open/procecural secularism, that religion deserves its place as an active contributor to contemporary society.

AO1: Emphasis on the the social relevance of Christianity: liberationist approaches (poverty, etc)

One Christian response to secularism has been to emphasise Christianity’s social relevance.
Western secular culture is often criticised as materialistic and consumerist, encouraging people to seek fulfilment through wealth, possessions and individual success.
Christianity can present an alternative source of meaning through service, community and concern for the vulnerable.
Catholic social teaching has long stressed duties towards the poor while rejecting both unrestrained capitalism and revolutionary communism.
The Church increasingly emphasised social justice, with Vatican II calling Christians to share the “joys and hopes” and also the suffering of humanity, while the principle of a preferential option for the poor gives particular priority to those most in need.
Liberation theology developed this approach much further, especially in Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s, where extreme poverty existed alongside enormous wealth and authoritarian governments.
Gustavo Gutiérrez and Leonardo Boff argued that traditional Christian charity could relieve suffering without challenging the structures that produced it.
Liberation theologians therefore drew selectively on Marxist analysis.
Marx argued that capitalism divides society between those who own the means of production and workers whose labour is exploited.
Although Gutiérrez and Boff rejected Marx’s atheism, they used his analysis as what Boff called “methodological pointers” for understanding poverty.
This contributed to the idea of structural sin: injustice can be embedded within economic, political and social institutions rather than existing only in individual behaviour.
Liberation theology consequently stresses orthopraxis — right action.
Gutiérrez described theology as “a critical reflection on Christian praxis in the light of the Word.”
Christians should first participate in the liberation of the oppressed and then reflect theologically upon that action.
This is presented as fundamentally biblical.
The Exodus portrays God liberating slaves, while Jesus cared for the poor and warned against wealth.
Liberation theologians therefore understand the Kingdom of God not merely as future salvation, but as something Christians help realise through transforming unjust society.

AO1: New religious expression & movements in response to secularis-m/isation

Secularisation does not necessarily mean the disappearance of all spirituality.
Some people instead identify as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR), rejecting churches, clergy and fixed doctrines while continuing to seek transcendence, meaning or spiritual wellbeing.
Their practices may be eclectic and self-directed, drawing on meditation, mindfulness, yoga, holistic healing or New Age ideas.
Authority is located primarily in personal experience and authenticity rather than scripture or religious institutions.
Heelas and Woodhead describe a related cultural shift from “life-as religion” towards “subjective-life spirituality.”
Traditional religion asks individuals to conform to externally given roles, duties and truths, whereas subjective spirituality encourages them to discover meaning through their own inner experience.
SBNR therefore suggests that secularisation may involve the individualisation and transformation of religion, rather than simply its disappearance.
The Fresh Expressions movement can be understood partly as a Christian response to this post-institutional culture.
Developing particularly from the Church of England’s Mission-Shaped Church report (2004), it seeks to create new forms of Christian community for people unlikely to attend traditional churches.
Rather than expecting people to enter an existing parish church, Fresh Expressions emphasises mission going to where people already are.
Communities may therefore develop in cafés, pubs, homes, workplaces or around shared interests.
Fresh Expressions often begins through listening to local people, forming relationships and serving a community before developing explicitly Christian worship.
This can appeal to people with SBNR sensibilities who remain interested in spirituality but distrust formal institutions, hierarchy or conventional worship.
However, unlike SBNR, its ultimate aim remains the development of an explicitly Christian community and discipleship.
The British house church movement, developing especially through charismatic renewal during the 1960s and 1970s, represents a different response to secularisation.
Many house churches were influenced by restorationism: the belief that established denominations had become overly institutional and that Christianity should recover the simpler pattern of the New Testament Church.
They therefore emphasised small relational communities, lay participation, charismatic gifts such as prophecy and speaking in tongues, and direct engagement with Scripture.
This reduced dependence upon large denominational institutions and could make Christianity feel more immediate and participatory.
Unlike SBNR, however, house churches were generally strongly evangelical, charismatic and doctrinal.
They therefore represent not individualised spirituality but an attempt to renew committed Christianity by stripping away inherited institutional structures.
Together, SBNR, Fresh Expressions and house churches show that secularisation can stimulate new forms of spirituality and religious organisation rather than producing straightforward religious decline.

AO2: Science vs religion on Methodology

The scientific method provides what the current evidence gives us most reason to believe.
Whereas, Dawkins argues faith is an excuse to believe what one wants.
E.g., in the doubting Thomas, Jesus implies the less evidence a believer needs, the more blessed they are.
Christian epistemology makes a virtue of blindness to evidence which can harm society (e.g. resisting embryo research & blood transfusions).
More broadly, faith imposes a child-like reliance on authority, opposed to the critical thinking needed for a healthy democracy.
A population with unscientific epistemic habits is more vulnerable to emotional manipulation by political demagogy.

Counter

However, McGrath responds that this overlooks the role of natural theology.
E.g., Aquinas’ 5 ways aim at a posteriori inductive proof of a higher power, supporting faith in the Christian God as reasonable.
Rational people are persuaded towards belief later in life by this, including McGrath himself and Antony Flew.
So, faith is not unscientifically blind but reason-supported and evidence-sensitive.
We could say the 5 ways are incorrect, but cannot say they are dangerously irrational.

Evaluation

However, Dawkins’ misunderstandings aside, natural theology is still irrational.
God’s arguments at best prove some higher power.
So, using them to support faith in a particular God unscientifically stretches them beyond what they can show.
Natural theologians argue this leap is where faith has its proper application.
Yet this concedes that belief goes beyond what evidence justifies.
McGrath assumes rationality is secured by granting a role to reason.
But using reason to support faith is rationalisation, not rationality.
Hume’s dictum of empiricism states the wise person proportions their beliefs to the evidence.
Only that secures rational belief sensitive to the ever-changing balance of evidence.
Religious belief may be consistent with the evidence, but it is not proportioned to it.
So, even sophisticated theology still promotes a harmful unscientific mindset.

AO2: The harmfulness of religion

Dawkins characterises the old testament God as an “ethnic cleanser … misogynistic, homophobic, infanticidal, genocidal” and “the most unpleasant character in all fiction”
The implication is that worshiping such a God reflects and perpetuates violence and prejudice.
He points to our evolved tribal tendency to favor members of our group and distrust the ‘other’.
Religion exacerbates this by splitting us into believers and non-believers, illustrated by the history of religious conflict.

Counter

McGrath counters that Dawkins unfairly focuses on fundamentalists.
Religion is distorted by extremists to legitimise their prior prejudices.
No worldview can be justly blamed for its misuse by the motivated reasoning of fanatics.
McGrath adds: Jesus is biblically presented as our role model.
He embodied agape: selfless love of all regardless of background (e.g. good samaritan).
Christian ethics thus orients us away from our propensity to dehumanisation.

Evaluation:

Ultimately, McGrath’s argument is true but misleadingly incomplete.
He risks committing a No True Scotsman fallacy, redefining “true Christianity” in a way that excludes violent interpretations.
This overlooks the flaws in the heart of the tradition, namely biblical passages which can motivate extremism.
E.g., subordination of women, condemnation of homosexuality and tacit endorsement of slavery.
So, extremists don’t simply misuse Christianity; aspects of the faith can also attract and enable them.
So, religion is both a symptom and a cause of prejudice.
McGrath claims theological reinterpretation of such passages address this.
But religion’s self-understanding as revealed eternal truth from a God makes such sophisticated reframing difficult.
Fundamentalists can always point to the prima facie meaning of problematic verses.
As Sam Harris put it, the problem with religious fundamentalism is the fundamentals of religion.
Religion will forever be burdened with the brute reality of its texts, which Mill described as “in many respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people”.

AO2: Whether secularism tends towards nihilism

Dostoyevsky warned that if there is no God, everything is permitted.
Ratzinger argues that secularism collapses morality into human opinion and relativism.
This risks granting power over morality to the state, leading to 20th century totalitarianism.
Implicit here is a “dependence” anthropology, that ethics requires a transcendent ground.

Counter

Liberal political theory counters that state power is limited by democracy, rights and constitutional controls, without religion.
Kant developed an ‘autonomy’ anthropology, where moral law derives from rationality.
Liberalism can fail, E.g., Germany’s sinking into Nazism.
But empirically, secular democracies avoid totalitarianism more reliably than theocracies and typically have better social health markers in education, health and crime.
Correlation does not establish causation, but Sam Harris argues that secularists need only show that secular societies are compatible with flourishing.
That sufficiently challenges the claim that secularism necessarily produces nihilism.

Evaluation

Nietzsche shows how even if the ‘death of God’ caused some nihilism, that doesn’t justify Ratzinger’s conclusion.
Our dependence on religion might be conditioned rather than necessary:
Christianity encouraged us to associate value with transcendence and distrust moral autonomy.
Breaking free could cause moral disorientation, which Ratzinger points to as confirmation that transcendence was necessary all along.
But nihilism could just be a transitional crisis we could overcome.
If Nietzsche is right, Ratzinger’s argument has the logic of an abusive relationship:
It activates an insecurity religion itself cultivated, that we don’t know how to live without religion.
This encourages us to interpret the difficulties of independence through fear and regard life outside the relationship as hopeless.
History supports Nietzsche, because Ancient Greek philosophy developed non-nihilistic this-worldly ethics, as do modern secular philosophers.
This undermines the supposed necessity of transcendent value and supports the liberal autonomy view that humans can find the confidence to stand on our own two feet morally.

AO2: The place (if any) for religion in modern society

Anti-theists aim for religion’s disappearance.
Hitchens argues religion cannot be safely contained to private life, because it claims a God-given right to direct people “not just in their public but in their private lives.”
Its ‘arrogant’ ‘certainty’ tends towards theocracy, making religion a “threat” to peaceful society.

Counter:

Williams’ procedural secularism rejects this crypto-authoritarian picture.
Religion should be separated from state power but free to contribute alongside other worldviews
Liberty of conscience, religion and speech must protect all views, including religion.
McGrath argues Dawkins sounds “uncomfortably like” Soviet anti-religious propaganda.

Evaluation:

However, McGrath confuses methods and goals.
Anti-theists want religion to disappear, but through persuasion in the marketplace of ideas, methodologically aligning with procedural secularism.
Wanting everyone freely to become atheist is no more authoritarian than evangelists wanting everyone freely to become Christian.
The appeal to procedural secularism overlooks a fundamental tension.
An epistemological premise of liberalism is human fallibility, from which Mill inferred the importance of freedom of opinion and public debate.
Politically, worldviews must therefore tolerate criticism.
Religion also accepts human fallibility, but regards some truths as guaranteed by divine revelation.
Religion therefore cannot straightforwardly take Mill’s route to valuing liberty and tolerance.
Especially since religion historically claimed that revealed truth legitimated political authority.
Procedural secularism requires religion to abandon that connection, but revealed universal moral principles make this especially difficult.
The religious politics surrounding Roe v. Wade illustrates this:
If abortion is objectively forbidden by God, accepting that it may be legitimately permitted by society becomes difficult.
So, aspects of religion’s self-understanding continually tear at the liberal social contract, making full domestication by modernity seem doubtful.
McGrath’s Soviet comparison may itself illustrate this tension.
Why is liberal criticism heard as a totalitarian threat?
Perhaps because, to a worldview historically accustomed to political privilege, criticism can feel like an assault on its ‘rightful (privileged) place’ in society.