In their analysis of the World Value Survey Inglehart and Welzel describes a global secularization process. Here religion is connected with "national pride, respect for authority, obedience and marriage." How does this definition reflect modern religiosity?
http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp
Read Rodney Stark's 2015 book, The Triumph of Faith: Why the World Is More Religious Than Ever. He uses data from the World Values Surveys to show that the world is NOT becoming more secular.
Thank you, Beth. i have ordered Stark's book. I edited the question towards the definition of religion used by the World Cultural Map. I find it interesting how such a large and influential statistical analysis can build on a definition of religion that seems very narrow and far from the values that religion represents in a modern society.
Just out of curiosity. I did not have so far access to Inglehart's book(s), but I have seen his central "map" of societies several times. It contains two coordinates: "traditionalism - secularism" and "survival - self expression". Wen looking at WVS, however, one can see answers given to elementary questions. I wonder, whether it is described somewhere what are the components and weight factors used by the authors to mix the two "main coordinates"?
Hi Gyorgy.
In Christian Welzel's 2013 book "Freedom rising" he defines the five items that are the established basis for the secular-rational values. These are "(1) low importance assigned to God in one's life, (2) no desire for greater respect for authority, (3) a weak national pride, (4) an emphasis on independence and imagination instead of faith and obedience as qualities for children, and (5) a toleration for divorce as justifiable." (Welzel, 2013:63-64) He sees a need to revise these and moves towards a definition where secularization is "the demystification of sacrosanct authority over people". He defines four norms of such authority including religious, patrimonial, state authority and the authority of conformity norms.
To me these definitions seem to exclude much of the religiosity I observe as growing and vibrant. The religiosity represented by leaders such as Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu are in many ways in opposition to the values defined by Welzel as "religious".
I have great respect for Welzel's analysis and the work of WVS. There are forces of human empowerment that needs to be described and reinforced. But I see religion not as necessarily opposed to these (though this obviously is the case sometimes) but as a central aspect of the empowerment for freedom. Examples of this would be the Civil Rights Movement in the USA and the opposition against the apartheid system of South Africa.
Dear Johan, thank you for providing this information. I agree with you that personal reliogisity is a very complex and individual matter. Nevertheless social scientists who want to draw conclusions and determine trends have to make simplifications. What they are studing could be called the cahneg of "traditional" religions or faith.
I agree with you, Gyorgy about the necessity for science to simplify. The research community functions as a guarantee for quality in that we criticise each other’s simplifications to prune them and make them more correct. I am not a statistician so I cannot question that part of the WVS analysis (I am also convinced that they do an excellent job with statistics). But when they present a basis for their definition of religious and secular values they move into my field of research and I can question the reasoning that they use for their simplification. A simplification that points in the wrong direction can (like a road sign) have great impact. In the case of the secular values in WVS I would say that this simplification upholds a prejudice against religion as a conservative social factor.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Philosophy
- Philosophy Of Science
- Reasoning