Specific features of secularization in the modern western culture

Abstract

The article focuses on the features of the secularization processes in the modern Western culture. It analyses the inconsistency of the assessment of the religious situation in the Western Europe and he USA. While the European sociologists insist on the increasing secularization, their American colleagues state the increasing religiosity. The authors of the article suggest explaining of these different approaches to understanding the essence of secularization. Hence, both the American and European sociologists agree the spread of religious individualism, but, unlike American, European researchers consider this process as the evidence of secularization. Thus, the researchers attempted to formulate a holistic view about this complex phenomenon. The authors show that the with regard to specific features of the secularization in the modern Western culture is not only the autonomy of the culture regarding to religion and the church, but modernization of Christianity. According to this analysis of secularization they establish a correlation between the secularization level of the Western culture and Western Christianity, because free interpretations of the Christian values by the representatives of the churches are fully consistent with the new value orientations in the XX–XXI centuries. As the results of the research of the secularization processes in the modern Western society, the authors of the article come to conclusion that both the Catholic and Protestant churches legitimized increasingly the hedonistic values of the consumer society.