Response Paper 9

Chelsea Billek

November 17, 2011

SOC 1000-15

Response Paper 9

            Secularization is when a society begins to stray away from connection with religious values or places of worship and migrates towards values that lack religious meaning.  This is commonly seen when a society begins to progress to a more modernized lifestyle. In doing so, the focus lies on more rational ideas or the abandonment of religion all together. This can be seen among many different social groups through out the United States due to higher prioritized thoughts that do not include religion. Speaking on behalf of my own social group, I believe this trend is very common.

            Being that I am from a small town, I have known most of the people in my graduating class since preschool or kindergarten. Roselle Park, the town I reside in, is predominantly Christian in religion. I attended CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) classes with a majority of these kids throughout our childhood and saw most of them at church. As years progressed and we grew older, we had all celebrated the first four of the seven Catholic sacraments. These include Baptism, Eucharist or Communion, Reconciliation, and finally Confirmation. Confirmation is basically the celebration of becoming a mature adult who regularly practices and worships the religion. After this fourth sacrament, I noticed many people begin to stray away from the Christian faith. Most of my friends had stopped attending church and did not seem invested in the religion at all, including myself.

            I believe many factors contribute to this decline in worship and religious practices. Personally, I attribute my loss of faith to three main things.  My family’s lack of worship definitely had a large impact on mine. The fact that they seemed to lose interest in it after my confirmation led me to wonder why I should do differently. Other then fulfilling the requirements for my brother to celebrate the same four sacraments I did, our worship really went no further. The second component that led me away from my faith was the loss of free time I normally had. As I grew older, similar to most other adolescents, I gained many new responsibilities. Being a student, three-sport athlete, and holding a job did not leave much time for me to do anything otherwise. Therefore, any time I had to myself was spent with friends or family doing other activities. Finally, the awareness of other religions definitely put a hinder on my religious affiliation. Once I learned about the numerous different religions in this world, it was hard to determine why Christianity was the proper one for me. It is a free choice as to what religion you would like to practice and until now Christianity had ultimately been forced upon me after birth. Also, the number of religions that exist causes one to think which is actually viable. Religions put reasoning behind many questions asked regularly such as where did the human race come from? Most religions answer this differently, so it is unclear which one is right in their assumptions.

            On the other hand, religion can be considered growing as well. Given there are many people losing faith due to one reason or another, there are also people finding it. In this modernized society, there are just as many downfalls as there are uprisings. Problems such as the economy, crime-rate, and illnesses can all contribute to some people’s discovery of faith. When hard times hit, many will look for inspiration or guidance wherever they can find it. This is easily found in many religions. Being that religion answers many questions pertaining to the past and provides hopefulness for the future, it is common for people in search of optimism to begin finding it through faith. This way, they can prey about their problems and for the strength and patience to overcome them. Not everyone can find an easy remedy to their problems, but religion provides comfort for these few.