Secularization

Secularization (from Latin saeculum 'time', 'age'; also: 'century') generally means any form of secularization, but in a narrower sense the processes triggered by humanism and the Enlightenment, which loosened or dissolved the ties to religion and assigned the questions of how to lead one's life to the realm of human reason. Sociologically, this process is interpreted as a "social loss of meaning of religion". While secularization in recent history has been observed primarily in Western societies (de-Christianization), secularizing tendencies can also be observed in many other societies.

Conceptual

The Latin word saeculum originally meant 'age', 'century', in church Latin then 'the temporal world' and thus the earthly in contrast to the eternal. The adjective 'secular' (Latin saecularis) therefore has the meaning 'worldly', 'profane'; the verb derived from it 'secularize' has the meaning 'to make something worldly / profane'. The term secularization or secularisation was therefore used to denote the transfer of a thing from the ownership of the Church (bishoprics and monasteries) to that of (non-prince-bishop ruled) states (for this meaning of the term, see secularisation). The first documented use of the term (though in this sense of a transfer of church property into secular hands) was by Henri d'Orléans during the negotiations for the Peace of Westphalia in Münster in 1646. Since the turn of the 19th century, the meanings have fanned out further.

Today the term "secularization" is used as follows:

• Secularization is understood - in a broader sense - as the institutional and mental process of separation between religion and state. Ernst-WolfgangBöckenförde characterizes this process as the "detachment of the political order as such from its spiritual-religious determination and shaping".
• Secularization - in terms of thought - also refers to the transition of concepts and ideas from a primarily religious to a more general context of philosophy and zeitgeist (e.g. paradise, sin, redemption, salvation history, apocalypse, and many others).
• In sociology, secularization is understood conceptually more narrowly, but thematically more generally, within the framework of the theory of social change as a social process that occurs in opposition to magization or sacralization. A distinction is made between the secularization (term for the process, i.e. procedure) and the secularity (term for the state) of a society. In general, the process of a loss of social significance of religion in modern societies is spoken of, although there is the danger that the concept of modernity is used here in the sense of a circular argument.

Secularization in history

Secularization takes place in many historical societies as a form and concomitant of social change. Thus, the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. of ancient Greece can be seen as a classical period of secularization, in which, for example, theater separated from its original cultic-religious content and became an autonomous art genre.

Secularization in the first meaning is the abolition of state religion and has resulted in a considerable loss of power of religious institutions, especially the churches, in favor of the state.