The Relevance of Religion: Iceland and Secularization Theory

Abstract

in Iceland provides the focus for a historical-comparative and participant observation study of the supposed of religion in secular society. judgment of irrelevance appears to depend largely on a peculiar definitional construct, formed with little immediate connection to the experience of the participants in the system. A situational definition grounded in the participants' understandings of their own actions produces a rather different assessment of the religio-social systems under investigation. When people act in ways they define as religious, religion must be accepted as real for social-scientific analysis. On this basis judgments of the irrelevance of Scandinavian religion are premature and one-sided, with predefined functions of religion in society skewing both research and theory. A bout a decade-and-a-half ago, Richard Tomasson published an article entitled Religion is Irrelevant in Sweden, based on his considerable field research there (1968; see 1970). More recently he has published a monograph on Iceland (1980), in which he offers a similar analysis. Subtitled The First New Society, this book draws general theoretical inspiration from S. M. Lipset's synthetic work First New Nation and carries an introduction by him. In his own earlier book Political Man Lipset had cited Icelandic politics particularly its communist party - as an example of political sectarianism acting as a functional alternative to traditional religion. In a similar vein, Sigurdur Magniisson (1977) writes: Even though the Icelanders care little about Christianity and organized religion, they are still an essentially religious people in a more general sense (165). appearance of Petursson's monograph on religion and society in Iceland from 1830-1930 (1983) also brings this setting to particular prominence.