Stark's age of faith argument and the secularization of things: a commentary

Sociology of Religion, Fall, 2002 by C. John Sommerville

Rodney Start has repeatedly attempted to bury secularization. But his latest effort, "Secularization, R.I.P." (Stark 1999) involves some common and serious mistakes. In that article he refutes the idea that medieval Europe can be described as an Age of Faith. He presents much evidence that "lack of religious participation was, if anything, even more widespread in medieval times than now." And since "the only shred of credibility" for secularization theory is the supposed contrast between such an age of faith and our present situation, he thinks that dismissing that Age of Faith makes it impossible to speak confidently of a decline of religion. So, in line with his title, "secularization" would cease to be a live concept.

In the course of his argument, Stark makes some other points that need to be addressed. First, he questions the connection so often made between secularization and "modernization," and most especially with science. Second, he notes that secularization theory does not limit itself to a discussion of social or cultural differentiation, but makes explicit claims about belief. Third, he challenges the assumption that secularization is irreversible. And finally, he reminds us that we should not be talking just about Christianity, but about religion generally.

While sociologists have taken issue with Stark's challenges to secularization theory at various points, in reference to his recent article one must concentrate on his historical contentions. In doing so, I will emphasize the evidence from England as he has done. But we would both agree that a descriptive rather than theoretical approach to the study of secularization will likely show national variations.

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First, we should consider the notion of an Age of Faith. Stark may well be right that the medieval period was not an age of faith. But that does not prove his point. Faith is not what religion was mostly about back then. "Faith" suggests conscious belief and perhaps some awareness of alternatives. We need another term for a time in which religion consisted in assumptions, habits, customs. The medieval period was such a time. This is not to claim that no one was capable of reflection and even doubt. But the distance between us and our religion has grown greatly since then, making faith a more conscious and perhaps more difficult proposition. The reason for that change is that we are not reminded of religion everywhere we look.

Religion in the medieval period involved nearly everything, and was largely a matter of practices and assumptions. We might rather call it an Age of Religious Culture. We mean culture in the anthropologists' sense, of the ways of doing things that mark a society and are passed on to one's children. At such a time a lot of things were done "religiously" but not reflectively. It was the situation of people who literally could not think or express themselves outside of a religious idiom. There was plenty of heresy, but it took religious forms. For even resistance to religion could only assume religious forms, in inversion or blasphemy.(Moore 1977; Murray 1978; Sommerville and Edwards 1990) People may have been struggling to break free, but lacked the conceptual grammar that would make a stark secularity possible.

In 1938 Lucien Febvre published his classic The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais (Febvre 1982), arguing that atheism was effectively impossible in that period. People used the term to discredit their opponents, but only meant some form of unorthodoxy or disrespect to organized religion. Febvre explained how a real, speculative atheism would require a cultural and conceptual grammar that just did not exist at that time, but does exist now. Historians sometimes make the mistake of thinking that early modern religious dissent argues secularization. In fact it shows that one could counter religion only with alternative religion.

Modern faith might be measured by polls that asked people if they "believed in a God." The relevant question for medieval peasants would probably have been what they thought of God. To find out how (rather than whether) they were religious, one would ask whether they had made any vows recently, or said their prayers, or made confession or pilgrimage, or "charmed" their fields or done any of the many things that showed one's "religion." Apparently, church attendance was not high on that list, as Stark and others have shown. Annual Easter visits were so standard that one must wonder whether that was considered deficient, as he assumes. There were many other things that were considered important to what Stark calls "religious participation."

There has now been some progress in showing how the secular vocabulary that Febvre looked for eventually developed. We might even say that the creation of something we could call an Age of Faith was the result of this process! As Stark says, it is more a modern situation. But that does not mean that religion was lacking before; only that religion was different. In showing how a secular discourse could develop it has been necessary to show the secularization of virtually everything. A secularization of concepts of time made possible a secular history. The secularization of concepts of space was necessary to the new natural philosophy or science. Secularization of personal identity and social relations allowed secular social theories, while the secularization of political activities prompted secular political theories. The secularization of language and of literature encouraged a secular education, while a secularization of work allowed the secularization of the rest of life. All these in turn allowed the rise of theories of religion, which are the final stage of the secularization of culture, whether or not they happen to be true.