A history of the secularization issue

"Secularization" as a concept
As noted in the introduction, we will do two things in this history of the secularization issue. On the one hand, we will discuss the theories that analyze the role of religion in modern society. But on the other hand, we must also trace the different uses of the term "secularization", even when this use does not really occur within such a theory. As we have just seen, the first sociological theories about religion in modern society did not rely on the concept of secularization. Indeed, for a very long time, "secularization" was used exclusively in the political arena. It was a term used not to describe a historical process, but to further or, more broadly, to interfere in this very process.

The term secularization was coined in 1646 by the duke of Longueville, the French envoy to the negotiations that led to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia (Stallmann 1960, pp. 5-6). The term was invented to make possible a compromise in the difficult question of the ownership of a number of spiritual lands. In order to satisfy territorial claims from Sweden and from the elector of Brandenburg, the ownership of some episcopal lands had to be transferred to secular hands. "Secularization" was the ideal term to describe this operation in diplomatically neutral terms: "The word 'secular' belonged to the churchly vocabulary, and designated a worldliness which was not characterized by an excluding contrast to the spiritual. [...] 'The secular' can be useful to churchly purposes and can be ratified spiritually. The word secularization was particularly suited to the situation in that it allowed to characterize the transformation of spiritual principalities not as an alienation of property from its original purposes nor as a reversal carried out by force, but to imagine a use which was provisional, and which did not preempt the possibility of a different use of the property" (Stallman 1960, p. 7). Thus, from its very origins, the term secularization contained the ambiguity that has so much disturbed many subsequent scholars. It is this ambiguity that accounts, for a large part, for the muddy aspect of the secularization debate: Where some theologians hail secularization as an authentic product of Christian spirituality, other scholars use the term to refer to the final and total demise of religion in modern society.

In the following centuries, the term tended to lose its original neutrality, and to become a weapon in the fight for emancipation from the Church. For one thing, with the increase in the Church/state conflict and the ever more numerous "secularizations" of Church lands and prerogatives, the word could not but take a negative meaning. The French revolution, the 1803 secularizations in Germany, and the later Kulturkampf constitute the main historical benchmarks in this process. For another thing, "secularization" started to be used by the thinkers who led the fight against the Church. However, the first very systematic such use of "secularization" did not occur before the middle of the XIX^th century. In France, Victor Cousin announced the "secularization of education" and the "secularization of philosophy" (Lübbe 1965, p. 43), while in England, George Holyoake founded the Secular Society. This latter movement is particularly interesting for our purposes.

The secular movement was created as an offshoot of the Owenite movement (Campbell 1971, p. 47). The founder of the movement, George Jacob Hoyoake, converted himself to Owenism in his youth and, as a result, lost his job. He thus became a full-time "social missionary" for the movement. After an offending anti-religious remark he made in a meeting, he ended up in jail, one among several victims of anti-atheist "persecutions". When he was freed, the persecutions had notably abated and the Owenite movement had virtually disappeared. Holyoake decided to found his own movement, an association of freethinkers dedicated to the establishment of a secular morality.

In creating his movement, Holyoake drew on several traditions. In addition to Owenism, he drew on the anti-clerical tradition inherited from the French revolution (1971, p. 48). He was also close to contemporary positivism: Although he seems to have created his system of thought without relying on them, he was a great admirer of Comte (1971, p. 49) and of Spencer. The parallels are sufficiently obvious not to require too much elaboration: Like Comte and Spencer, Holyoake wanted to autoreferentially build a secular foundation for social life by drawing on the resources of "science" and "reason": "Science (which he used interchangeaby with reason) was revealing to men the operation of the natural world, and the contemporary systems of scientific morals of the utilitarians, Spencer and the positivists and the science of personality of phrenology would ultimately reveal the science of social life" (Budd 1977, p. 27).

The Londoner Secular Society was founded in 1853 (Campbell 1971, p. 49). In 1866, the movement had gained enough impetus for the foundation of a National Secular Society to take place. The movement continued gaining momentum until about 1885, when it started to decline (1971, p. 50). The Secular Society suffered from internal rivalries between its founder, who believed that secularism did not imply atheism, and his challenger Charles Bradlaugh, who believed it did and advocated more aggressive tactics. But it also suffered from the growth of tolerance toward freethinking in society in general, and from competition with the more successful socialist movement (1971, p. 54). The secular movement had different offshoots both in Britain and in the U.S.A. One of them which might be worth mentioning is the British Rationalist Press Association, founded in 1899 by Charles A. Watts, a great admirer of Spencer and of the other evolutionists, whose works he eagerly published and helped disseminate (Budd 1977, p. 133). Watts even attempted to "deify Spencer in the services held at the Agnostic Temple in South London" (1977, p. 127). The importance of this movement for our purposes is rather anecdotical: while continuing to publish secular manifestoes, Watts also published Wilson's Religion in Secular Society (1966). Thus, the age-old links between secularism as a political movement and secularization as a sociological theory were briefly revived on the occasion of this important publication⁷⁹.

Another, earlier and more significant such link is evident in Germany. A movement similar to the British Secular Society emerged in this country at the end of the XIX^th century: the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ethische Kultur (DGEK). This association of scholars, united to promote a technocratic positivism as an "apolitical" alternative to either nationalism or Marxism (Lübbe 1965, pp. 44-45), proposed the creation of an "ethical culture". By this, they referred to a morality independent from religious assumptions, and based on the "practical conditions of social existence" (Lübbe 1965, p. 47). But although the program of the DGEK was very similar to that of the British Secular Society, the word secularization itself was used only occasionally by its members. What makes this association of interest to us is the fact that among its members, we find Ferdinand Tönnies (Lübbe 1965, p. 43). Although Tönnies did not propose a "secularization theory" nor systematically use the term (1965, p. 62), he proposed a theory which forms one of the most important stepping stones in the development of the "social-structural" approach to the problem of secularization. As we will see, in Tönnies, the problem of the place of religion was posed in new terms.
Ferdinand Tönnies
Tönnies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887⁸⁰) is generally considered one of the great classics of sociology. The reputation of this work is based mainly on the impact of the two concepts it put forward⁸¹ on subsequent sociological thinking. Although literally dozens of other sociologists⁸² have proposed classifications of types of societies running along similar lines, it is Tönnies' terminology which has survived. Few present-day sociologist refer to Redfield's "folk-urban" dichotomy, or to Becker's "sacred-secular" dichotomy⁸³ (see chap. 9), but the opposition between "community" and "society", or between "communal" and "societal" types of organization, has become part of the sociologist's stock in trade.

The most important level of analysis underlying Tönnies' theory is psychological⁸⁴. According to Tönnies, there exist two distinct types of human wills⁸⁵: Natural will is "the will which includes the thinking", whereas rational will is "the thinking which encompasses the will" (1887, p. 103). In other words, in natural will, man's thought processes are dependent upon his organic life, whereas in rational will, these thought processes come to take preponderance over organic life. Natural will can be understood only in terms of the past: it is the produce of past experience, to which it always refers. By contrast, rational will must be understood in terms of the future, because it exists only in relation to a given, deliberately devised, project. Natural will is a produce of activity; its rational counterpart "is prior to the activity to which it refers [...], while activity is its realization" (1887, pp. 103-04).

Turning to the sociological level of analysis, the actions which express these wills can either take the form of aggression or of cooperation. Only in the second case can we speak of social relations. Thus, social relations are the product of the interaction of human wills (1887, p. 33). But this interaction does not only result in social relations, but also in the formation of a new type of will, a common, or social will (1887, p. 66).

Not surprisingly, depending on the type of will that is at work, different types of social wills, and different social systems, will obtain. Natural will results in a social organization Tönnies calls a Gemeinschaft⁸⁶. In this type of organization, people are related to each other through personal bonds, whose paradigm is the blood relation (1887, p. 37). Even if they are not directly related, people living in a Gemeinschaft know each other personally, and do not think of their relationships as being determined by self-interest. By contrast, rational will results in a social organization Tönnies calls a Gesellschaft. In this type of organization, people do not directly know each other. They do not act toward each other as total human beings, but only as abstract beings, who exist only insofar as they meet or oppose some rationally designed purpose of the acting agent (1887, p. 65). "Accordingly", Tönnies tells us, "Gemeinschaft should be understood as a living organism, Gesellschaft as a mechanical aggregate and artifact" (1887, p. 35).

Tönnies' theory contains several other levels of analysis. The only one which is needed for an understanding of the rest of this presentation is the distinction - analogous to Aristotle's distinction between three types of souls - between three forms of natural will: the first (which gives rise to pleasure) is vegetative, and is found in plants, in animals, and in humans. The second, (which gives rise to habit) is animal, and is found in animals and in humans. The third, (which gives rise to memory) is mental, and is present only in humans. Tönnies' other distinctions need not concern us here.

Tönnies' views on the evolution of religion are presented as one of the subordinate dichotomies arising from the basic dichotomies in a particular social sphere: morality. In Gemeinschaft, morality was based entirely on religion. Religion is most important in the most "supreme" of the three forms of Gemeinschaft⁸⁷. In the Gemeinschaft of ideas - best represented in town-life - the common will of the group expresses itself in religion⁸⁸. Furthermore, religion acts as a force that binds this looser form of Gemeinschaft together: "A worshiped deity [...] has an immediate significance for the preservation of such a bond [i.e., friendship], [and] is not bound to any place but lives in the conscience of its worshipers and accompanies them on their travels to foreign countries" (1887, p. 43).

In contrast, in Gesellschaft, religion can no longer commend men's attention: "The intellectual attitude of the individual becomes gradually less and less influenced by religion and more and more influenced by science" (scientization*; 1887, p. 226). Even tough religion retains some degree of influence in any kind of concrete social organization, its influence makes itself felt only in realms where communal forms continue to predominate, most conspicuously in family life (privatization*; 1887, p. 219). But in public life, religion has been replaced by public opinion⁸⁹. Thus, in Gesellschaft, public opinion has replaced religion as an agency for the conduct of collective life (autonomization*). This influence is exercised through the particular devices used in the different types of social organizations to enforce social control: "Religion approves folkways, mores, and customs as good and right or condemns them as false and bad. Likewise, public opinion condones policy and legislation as effective and clever or condemns it as ineffective and stupid" (1887, p. 219).

As we can see, in Tönnies' theory the autoreference question survives only in a very limited form. What must be noted is that the transformations of religion are no longer accounted for in cognitive terms (from "error" to "truth") nor in terms of social engineering (in term of the emergence of a "scientific" order), but as a social-structural evolution (from a form of association favorable to religion to a form of association unfavorable to religion).

Third divergence: The individual, the social order, intellectual knowledge, and religion
The previously mentioned problem of social engineering, which lay at the root of Comte's and Spencer's attempts, can perhaps best be formulated as follows: What, given the demise of religion, is to be the role of intellectual knowledge in the establishment of a new harmony in the relation between the individual and the social order? To understand the discrepancies between Comte and Spencer on this point, we must consider their views as to the relation between the individual and the social order. For Comte, the social order was to be predominant, whereas for Spencer, the individual was to retain predominance⁹⁰. Comte wanted every individual to be completely subordinated to the needs of society. In his view, the natural evolution of humanity leads to "sociocracy", that is, a society in which all individuals come to recognize the primacy of the collective order. This tendency finds its logical development in the Religion of Humanity, where individuals worship this society which stands so much above them. It should be stressed that this view was not a late development in Comte's thought. As early as 1825, in his Considérations sur le pouvoir spirituel, Comte argued that man's natural anti-social tendencies could be checked only by an organized moral force, which only could impose to humans the constant sacrifices demanded by social life ([1825] 1968, p. 154).

For Spencer, this view of society as requiring sacrifices from individuals was not wrong, but it applied only to the militant type: "In a society organized for militant action, the individuality of each member has to be so subordinated in life, liberty, and property, that he is largely, or completely, owned by the State; but in a society industrially organized, no such subordination of the individual is called for. [...] With the absence of need for that corporate action by which the efforts of the whole society may be utilized for war, there goes the absence of need for a despotic controlling agency" (1876-96, pp. 538-39). In an industrial society, order is not based on coercion, but on voluntary cooperation and individual self-restraint⁹¹.

Thus, "while Comte stressed that men should aim at discovering the laws of society in order to act collectively on the social world, Spencer argued with equal conviction that we should study them in order not to act collectively. In contrast to Comte, who wanted to direct society through the spiritual power of his sociologist-priests, Spencer argued passionately that sociologists should convince the public that the society must be free from the meddling of governments and reformers" (Coser 1971, pp. 99-100). Thus, neither Comte nor Spencer advocated a society primarily based on political power. For both men, civil society must be the base of the social order. Consequently, they both lay great stress on the role of morality. They diverged only in the sense that for Comte, this civil society was very holistic (to use a modern terminology), whereas for Spencer, it could only be individualistic.

The second point which must be considered to understand the divergence is the role attributed to scientific knowledge by the two thinkers. The shortest way to put the difference would be to argue that, whereas Comte's reorganization efforts were to bear solely on intellectual ideas, Spencer's also aimed at reforming sentiments. This is the view taken by Spencer in his rebuttal of Comte: "So far from alleging, as M. Comte does, that society is to be re-organized by philosophy; [my Social Statics] alleges that society is to be re-organized only by the accumulated effects of habit and character" (1864a, p. 136). In other words, according to this view, the divergence between Comte and Spencer would boil down to different views as to the forces that lay behind history. As noted above, Comte contended that ideas were the driving force in any society. To this, Spencer answered: "Ideas do not govern and overthrow the world: the world is governed or overthrown by feelings, to which ideas serve only as guides. [...] Not intellectual anarchy, but moral antagonism, is the cause of political crises" (1864a, p. 128). Spencer argued that a sound morality was a very important basis for social order. So much so that, with religion declining, it was urgent that a scientific system of morality be established. It is in this context that the word "secularization" appears in Spencer's writings: "The establishment of rules of right conduct on a scientific basis is a pressing need. Now that moral injunctions are losing the authority given by their supposedly sacred origin, the secularization of morals is becoming imperative. Few things can happen more disastrous than the decay and death of a regulative system no longer fit, before another and fitter regulative system has grown up to replace it" (1882, p. vi). The Principles of Morality, which constituted the last part of the huge Synthetic Philosophy, were very important in Spencer's work. Indeed, according to J. Peel, "The fundamental purpose of Spencer's whole lifework was to provide a scientific morality" (1971, p. 84).

There thus seems to be a fundamental divergence between Comte and Spencer as to the role of morality. However, this divergence is mostly superficial. Even tough Comte contended that society could be changed through a reform of intellectual knowledge, at the same time, like Spencer, he was aware that this could be achieved only by an appeal to moral authority. As early as 1822, in his Plan des travaux scientifiques, Comte argued that society must be reorganized and presided over by men holding spiritual power⁹² (1822, p. 83). This spiritual power was to be exercised by scientists, because they were the only ones who were professionally trained to think theoretically (1822, p. 86). It is not altogether clear, however, how this power of a spiritual nature is derived from the exercise of reason. In the Plan, these two aspects are simply juxtaposed. This fundamental ambiguity in Comte's proposal found expression in his own life by the succession of two phases which are considered by most scholars as being of very different nature. In the first part of his life, Comte founded positivism, and proposed to transform politics, or the direction of society, into a positive science, based on observation (1822, p. 94). In the second part of his life, after his encounter with Clotilde de Vaux, he founded the Religion of Humanity, and proposed to transform politics into a religious affair. Now, Comte always denied having shifted his views. Considering the ambiguity already contained in several of his early writings, this claim cannot be dismissed a priori (Manuel 1962, p. 266). But even if Comte did not change his mind, there remains the question of how these two aspects of his proposal can be reconciled.

I think that this question can be resolved through consideration of a rather machiavelian passage found in the Plan. Comte makes a distinction between the intellectual processes which lead to decisions concerning the future of humanity, and the practical means by which these decisions can be applied. As the decisions are taken by scholars, in accordance with their best knowledge of the constraining nature of the laws of evolution, we must conform to these laws regardless of whether they appear to be "good" or not. The question whether evolution is ethically good is simply irrelevant: it is neither good nor bad, but necessary. It is clear, however, that these decisions cannot be presented to the general public in this fashion: "In order that a new social system establishes itself, it is not sufficient that it be conceived correctly, it is also necessary that the mass of society impassions itself to constitute it" (1822, p. 129). This can obviously not be done by an appeal to the inevitability of that new system: "One will never be able to rouse the passions of the masses of men for any system, by proving to them that it is the system for which the walk of civilization, from its inception, has prepared the advent, and which is today called to direct society. Such a truth is within the reach of too small a number of minds, and even for these minds, it requires too long a series of intellectual operations, to be apt to ever rouse the passions" (Comte 1822, p. 129). Comte goes on to argue that, to achieve this implementation, we must revert to giving imagination free play, for instance in favoring art.

This is probably the solution of the riddle. Although Comte did not advocate an appeal to religious sentiments in this particular piece of writing, he clearly set forth the dilemma which later led him to create the Religion of Humanity. This is the dilemma inherent in the autoreference paradox: one must hide the intellectual operations that are necessary to establish the new social order. Although the new society was to be planned rationally, it was to be implemented through an appeal to the emotions. In the first part of his life, Comte designed the rational plan; in the second part, with the help of a biographical accident which allowed him to tap his emotional resources to foster his own enthusiasm⁹³, he sought to implement it. As Anthony Giddens explains, "at first sight the call to establish a Religion of Humanity seems quite inconsistent with the positive philosophy advocated in the Cours, and many commentators have supposed that there is a major hiatus between Comte's earlier and later works. But it is perhaps more plausible to argue that the Système de Politique Positive brings fully into the open the latent substratum of the positivist spirit: we see that science cannot, after all, provide its own commitment" (1972, p. 242).

By now, the reader must have the impression that we have strayed too far from our basic question: the religion/science problematic. But this long parenthesis has been necessary in order to establish what the effective divergence between Comte and Spencer was. This divergence can now easily be summarized. Comte contended that science could eliminate traditional religion, but must at the same time find a way to replace it. In order to do this, science must take on two functions traditionally attributed to religion: the exercise of central moral authority, and the capability to arouse the passions of the population. Hence, the necessity of the creation of the Religion of Humanity. As for Spencer, he contended that science could not eliminate religion, and needed not replace it. Furthermore, he argued that the social order in an industrial society needed no central moral authority, and that it was sufficient for science to provide a new foundation for ethics in order to guarantee social order. In other words, where Comte envisioned the possibility of a totally autoreferent reconstruction of the social order, Spencer was much more modest, proposing for autoreference a much more limited role: only morality could be reconstructed autoreferentially.

But how can we explain these divergent positions? To do this, we must again draw on some of the conclusions reached in the preceding analysis, and take into account two factors. The first of these is extrinsic to the religion/science problematic; the second is intrinsic. First, whereas Comte favored a view of social order in which the whole determined the parts, Spencer contended that the parts are determining the characteristics of the whole. Organized religion being by definition a collective phenomenon, it fitted easily into Comte's scheme, but certainly not into Spencer's. Where Comte saw, as the only solution to the problem of social integration, a strong central spiritual authority, Spencer preferred a diffuse, secular, and consensual form of morality.

Second, as noted above, in the first part of his life, Comte held the view that religion must be totally eradicated, and replaced by science. When he addressed the problem of social integration, however, he recognized that this posed a problem: Society needed spiritual power, and men could be motivated only by passion. Thus, for practical purposes, religion had to be brought back into the picture. The new religion, however, was to be totally subordinated to science. As Comte saw it, the Religion of Humanity was a totally rational creation, purged of all mystical elements. As we can read in the opening sentence of the Système de politique positive, "First spontaneous, then inspired, then revealed, religion finally becomes demonstrated" (1852b, p. 7). Thus, society was to be held together by science, which was translated into a religious appearance only in order to appeal to the sentiments and the passions of men. Having taken a radical position on the religion/science problematic, Comte was compelled to resort to a dramatic strategy when faced with the "practical" problems of social engineering.

Spencer's position with regard to the religion/science problematic was not as radical as Comte's; consequently, his strategy to cope with the problem of social integration needed not be as dramatic. In Spencer's view, we unmistakably see at work some of the exemplars central to the CISR paradigm. In the course of social evolution, religion and ethics have undergone a progressive differentiation⁹⁴ (differentiation). Furthermore, in the realm of knowledge, religious views have progressively given way to more empirical forms of knowledge (scientization*). Thus, only non-empirical questions continued to fall under the purview of religion. Where Comte, having eliminated religion in the first part of his life, was left with nothing but science, Spencer retained three distinct entities: science, ethics, and religion. As the world was not governed by ideas, but by morality, religion needed not play any role for social integration. All that was needed to insure social integration was the creation of a scientific ethic. This could be done without the help of religion, which could thus safely be left alone, concerned with matters of no practical importance (autonomization*).