Japan closes 638 Congregations!!!!! Why???

by Witness 007 81 Replies latest watchtower scandals

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  careful

  SBF:

  If Japan is experiences secularisation in any way similar to that in western countries
  

  Doesn't secularization require a prior state of non-secularization? How would Japan of the pre-1990s qualify? Haven't they been "secular" for a long time already? By attempting to compare it with westernized, i.e., European and N. American countries, aren't you comparing apples and moon rocks? Japan was never religious like those westernized countries which have gone secular from the effects of nominal Christianity. Sure the Japanese have had Shinto and Buddhism for a long time, but did those religions have any effect equal to the eastern Orthodox, RC, and early Protestant ones where many European governments were run by devoted religionists, had state churches, and so on? No way.

  It's still apples and moon rocks.
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  slimboyfat

  My cagey wording was an acknowledgement that the Japanese path to secularisation is likely different than western or historically Christian countries. Christian heritage, in particular monotheism, is one component of many secularisation models, but there are other elements which apply to Japan such as industrialisation, urbanisation, differentiation, individualism, and relativism. (Steve Bruce’s model) Other models emphasise existential security and its inverse relationship with religiosity. (Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart) Traditional Japan would be considered a religious society from a sociological perspective, though different in form from Christian cultures. Religion is often measured by sociologists using three criteria: membership, practice, and belief. All these criteria likely take different forms in Japan, but what they will share in common with western countries is that all three measures likely show a downward trend in recent decades. This is how secularisation is generally defined and established to have taken place and or in the process of taking place.

  https://scispace.com/pdf/secularisation-r-i-p-nonsense-the-rush-hour-away-from-the-4dg611cwzp.pdf