The Karel Dobbelaere lecture: From the study of religions to the study of meaning systems

Abstract

Tracing the changes in the objectives and the projects of the members of our association, the purpose of this lecture is not to retain a nostalgia for the past but to propose new types of research in line with our history. Even if we may rejoice in the work done – the extension of the religious field studied, the development of paradigms, the use of a more sophisticated methodology and the internationalization of our work – an important research theme is missing. We need to study other meaning systems than those elaborated by religions, since in different parts of the world the impact of religion is declining on the societal and individual levels. Are people searching for meaning in their life? What are their sources of meaning? How should we study methodologically the present search for meaning?

It was Monsignor Jacques Leclercq, professor at the Institute for Philosophy of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, who took the initiative to create the ISSR in 1948. The purpose was to promote a methodologically sound ‘religious sociology’ to stimulate the empirical study of social facts, in particular the religious situation, its being useful for pastoral action. These studies had to be done by Catholics, whose faith had to enlighten the observations and the analysis and therefore would be ‘theologically justified’. In the initial conferences this principle was reaffirmed and at the fourth conference in La Tourette, France, (1953) different scholars tried to define the place of ‘religious sociology’ vis-à-vis the traditional religious sciences: theology, pastoral science, canon law, religious psychology and human economy.

The themes of the next few conferences were centred on ecclesiastical problems: the organization of the parishes and the sociology of vocations (Leuven, Belgium), the social integration of the parishes and the sociology of vocations (Bologna, Italy), religion in a period of change from a pre-technical to an industrial and urban society (Barcelona, Spain) and the clergy in the Church and in society (Montreal, Canada). Königstein (Germany), in 1962, was the first CISR/ISSR conference I attended. The topic was: how to theoretically integrate the multitude of existing sociographical studies. The proposed option was ‘religious affiliation’, an approach in the scope of studies on political participation, affiliation in unions, etc. At that time, a lot of sociological studies analysed the ‘normative integration’ of people in organizations and institutions.

In this way, in the 1950s and the 1960s, the ISSR practised a particular sociology of religion: a self-sufficient ‘religious sociology’. References to theoretical work or to studies in similar domains – e.g. the sociology of professions, of bureaucracy or of organizations – were if not non-existent, at most minimal. The ISSR was able to defend itself against the Holy See, which was afraid of a positivistic and neo-durkheimian sociology, only by practising an essentially sociographic sociology at the service of the Church and by underlining the need for rather methodological objectives.

In the second half of the 1960s, the strained relationship between Rome and the ISSR made the President and the Secretary General propose new statutes in the Bulletin of the Association, and they suggested asking the Holy See for its approval. Many members objected vehemently: they could not accept the ‘self-imposed’ limitations of the objectives of the ISSR and the submission of the statutes to the Holy See. A new generation of academics had emerged who wanted to link up with the mainstream of sociology and the sociological tradition of Durkheim and Weber. That was very clear in the papers presented at the ISSR conference in Rome in 1969. The authors referred not only to the publications of Weber and Durkheim, but also to those of Simmel, Merton, Nisbet, Bellah, Berger and Luckmann. The preceding generation – Carrier, De Volder, Duocastella, Goddijn, Houtart, Leclercq, Pin and others – were priests and first of all theologians and philosophers, who had no or very little training in sociology. Their reference was the Church. Conversely, the reference of the new generation was their colleagues in sociology, whom they met not only at the conferences of the ISSR/CISR but also at those organized by the International Sociological Association, the Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Française, the American Sociological Association, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Association for the Sociology of Religion.

At the 10th conference in Rome, the general assembly decided to abrogate all denominational references in the new statutes. And to mark symbolically the openness of the association, it was decided that the next conference should take place in a communist country, i.e. in Opatija (Yugoslavia), the central theme of this conference being ‘religion and religiosity, atheism and non-belief in industrial and urban society’. It was also at this conference that the objective of the SISR was specified, as it still appears today in article 3 of our statutes: that it shall be a ‘scientific organization’ with as its object ‘to advance sociology and related sciences in the analysis and interpretation of religious and related phenomena’.

From ‘normative integration’ to theoretical approaches analysing the effects of changing societal structures

The original objective of the ISSR (the study of normative integration in the Church) having been abandoned, more theoretical elaborations have bit by bit been put forward which have stimulated the emergence of several paradigms in our midst: among others secularization, laicization and rational choice.

By referring in the central theme of the 11th conference to atheism and non-belief, the door was opened for the study of beliefs developing outside the churches, but still in reference to religion – a-theism – and even including the study of individual beliefs and practices. In my doctoral study in the 1950s and 1960s, structural characteristics emerged: workers living in a workers’ district were less integrated in the church than workers living in mixed districts; women working professionally had a level of religiosity similar to men: it was housewives that were most involved in the church; and comparing the level of church practices of the interviewees with the level of their parents, I found that those who moved up the social ladder were more involved in the church than their parents, and the reverse was true for those going down the social ladder (Dobbelaere, 1966). It was clear to me that a sociologist worthy of this name has to study the effects of changing social structures on the ‘religiosity’ of the people, i.e. their practices, beliefs and ethical views. As a result, in the first paper that I presented at a plenary session of ISSR conference (Rome, 1969), I concluded: ‘a sociologist must analyse the effects of the structural changes of society to understand the changes we observe in the religious behaviour of individuals’. We need a sociological theory about the relations, tensions and conflicts between forms of religious behaviour and other social structures, and I suggested that the sociology of religion had to move from a sociology of normative integration to a sociology of secularization (Dobbelaere and Lauwers, 1969: 123). The doctoral dissertation of Liliane Voyé (1973) confirmed my views. She established that in the Belgian agricultural zones where the production was done by the proprietors of the land (direct production), church practice was higher than in the zones where the land was owned by the nobility and the clergy but worked by tenants (so-called indirect production). The regional maps of church practice corresponded largely with the regional maps of the type of agricultural production.

My reference to the theory of secularization in 1969 should not surprise you: it was two years after the well known books by Berger and Luckmann on the subject, publications that had a major impact on sociologists of Anglophone countries. And the two future presidents of the ISSR – Wilson and Martin – had also written on the subject. I will not elaborate on the debate on secularization in the acts of the ISSR; this was very well done by Tschannen (1980: 205–225, 241–246; 1990). The interest of the ISSR in this paradigm was also manifested in 1975 at the conference in Lloret de Mar (Spain). The Council asked me to write a ‘trend report’ on the theories of secularization for Current Sociology/La sociologie contemporaine, which was published in 1981. I will not expose my views on secularization here; they were largely developed in my writings (Dobbbelaere, 2002; 2004; 2008; 2009).

Three theoretical approaches present in the writings of members of the ISSR/CISR

However, the secularization paradigm was not the only one used in our midst. Bastian, Baubérot, Blancarte and Milot organized thematic sessions on Laïcité and Laïcisation, a paradigm coming especially from the Latin countries. And from the USA came the Rational Choice Theory (RCT), developed by Stark, Finke and Iannaccone. This last paradigm was presented by Iannaccone and debated in a plenary session at our 21st conference in Maynooth (Ireland) in 1995. I want to take a few minutes of your precious time to discuss the character of the debates between partisans of these paradigms that one finds in sociological journals.

Wanting to demonstrate that one is right and that the others are wrong, a tendency exists to cite bits of sentences and amputated arguments (e.g. Stark, 1999: 252–253). On the other hand, misinterpretations also happen. The fact that in my writings I had cited laicization as an example of manifest societal secularization was interpreted as the fact that in so doing ‘laicization became a subcategory of secularization, which was the encompassing category’ (Baubérot and Milot, 2011; 179–180). This has never been my intention. I think that these three theoretical systems analyse the religious reality with different questions. Therefore, in my writings, I have always underlined that these three theoretical approaches are complementary; they explain different aspects of the structural reality of our societies and, consequently, we should not combat each other. Permit me to insist on this.

RCT makes three important points (Young, 1997). It postulates a latent religiosity on the demand side (Stark, 1997: 8), which should become manifest by active competition between religious firms on the supply side (Stark, 1997: 17). However, this is only possible in a pluralistic religious situation where religious firms compete for customers, and to the extent that the supply side is not limited by state regulations, suppressing or subsidizing religions (Iannaccone, 1997: 40–41; Finke, 1997: 50–51). Stated this way, RCT works only in states where state and religion are de-regulated to allow competition between religious firms, in other words in states that are secularized on the societal level. In the opposite case, religious firms are ‘lazy’ (Stark and Iannaccone, 1994) since there is no need for competition. Consequently, referring to these postulates, I do not see an opposition between secularization theory and RCT; indeed, RCT presupposes secularization on the level of the state and studies the effect of competition between religious firms. The two theories are complementary. Consequently, sociologists of religion should combine both theoretical approaches and integrate them in their work (Dobbelaere, 2002 [1981]).

However, in Europe, there are several circumstances making the application of RCT nearly impossible. As Willaime (2004: 32) has underscored, the competition between ‘Christian churches’ is limited on the basis of an agreement between representatives of the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches urging these Churches to renounce competitive evangelization, which could be an expression of a competitive spirit between them. This limits the possibility of a competition between sects and New Religious Movements (NRMs) and between these and the Christian churches. However, due to state regulations, e.g. in Belgium, France and Germany, and to the witch-hunting in the media by the anti-sect organizations towards sects and NRMs in many European states, like Belgium and France, there is no fair religious competition. Does that mean that we have to conclude that RTC is not applicable in Europe? I do not think so. We should keep this idea of possible competition and study its effects on the population; however, to do so we should extend the application of this theory to all ‘meaning systems’, since there is competition in Europe between them. I will return to this in the second part of my talk.

In a recent publication on ‘laïcités’, discussed at the last ISSR conference, Baubérot and Milot (2011: 7–8) analyse this ‘mode of political organization aiming at the protection of the freedom of conscience and the equality of the citizens’ and they study ‘the (political) means that guarantee its display’, i.e. ‘separation and neutrality’ (Baubérot and Milot, 2011: 80). These are the four principles of ‘laïcité’. Their approach is different from the one on secularization, however: both are analytical frames in their own right. I have found their analysis of laicization very interesting. It reveals other aspects of the structure of society not underscored in the writings on secularization. These authors had other analytical glasses than mine. They used the ‘ideal typical’ tool that allowed them to describe six ideal types of ‘laïcité’ on the basis of the four principles (Baubérot and Milot, 2011: 87–116) and they were able to establish a periodization of ‘thresholds of laicization’ (Baubérot and Milot, 2011: 199–250). The theories of laicization and of secularization adopt a different approach to the analysis of the relations, tensions and conflicts between forms of religious behaviour and other social structures like medicine and education. ¹

Finally, the secularization paradigm. With his book Rethinking life and death. The collapse of our traditional ethics (1996), Peter Singer provoked a debate around the questions of life and death and the criteria to be used in order to decide about life and death. One has to admit that the conclusions he makes on the basis of cases in the USA, Great Britain, Australia and the Netherlands reflect correctly the actual situation. Medical practice, legislation and jurisprudence have shifted the frontiers of life and death and have replaced the principle of the ‘sanctity of life’– and consequently its untouchable character – by the principle of the ‘quality of life’, its consequences being, among others, the rejection of suffering. Research done in five countries with a Catholic tradition in Western Europe (Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain) by the research group GERICR (European Group of Interdisciplinary Research on Religious Change) analyses recent conflicts between the Catholic Church and the legislator on the subjects of abortion, euthanasia, medically assisted procreation and same-sex marriages. These conflicts have caused tensions in the population, which were exposed in the media, in elections, in referenda and by demonstrations. This research reveals a secularization on three levels, i.e. the societal, the organizational and the individual levels, and points out that the actors involved demonstrate levels of compartmentalization, i.e. secularization in the mind. ²

The expansion of the area of our research

So, since the end of the 1960s, the practice of the sociology of religion in the ISSR has become more theoretically oriented and its methodology more sophisticated. Moreover, the field of our research has also been enlarged. In the ISSR, we do not limit ourselves to Catholicism any more but we also study other Christian Churches; Judaism and Islam appear also on our conference programmes, as well as research on sects and New Religious Movements and studies on Amerindian religions. Recurrent themes are atheism, mysticism, spirituality, pilgrimages and esotericism. We discuss religious changes and the changing relations of religions and the State in Eastern and Central Europe. Religion facing social problems is also an important theme, as well as religious pluralization and civil society. This list is not exhaustive: for example, I did not mention religion and immigration, the situation of religion in prisons or other topics.

The geographical area has also spread out to include Japan, Southeast Asia and, most of all, Latin America. And not only do our members assist other sociological conferences; our conferences feature joint sessions with Working Groups or Research Committees from, among others, the Association for Social Sciences of Religion in el Mercosur; the International Association for the Study of Religion in Central and Eastern Europe; the Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Française, the Religious Research Association and the International Sociological Association.

All these may delight us; however, what is missing, it seems to me, is an important research theme: a reflection and studies on contemporary ways of giving meaning to life. We need to study other meaning systems than those elaborated by religions, since religion is only one of the existing meaning systems; it is a particular meaning system having a supra-empirical referent.

The need for a study of meaning

We now have surveys like the European Values Study (EVS) and the European Social Survey that allow us to see trends in religiosity. Take the successive waves of the EVS: we may see trends in most Western European countries over the last thirty years and for Europe as a whole since the last decade of the 20th century. The trends are clear: belief in God is declining, the image of God – for those believing in God – is becoming more and more ‘some sort of spirit or life force’, church membership is going down and is around 50 per cent in many countries, church attendance is declining, the influence of the church on society is diminishing (Halman et al., 2012: 54–72). But what is very important: these trends are most pronounced in the youngest generations and very clear in the most secularized countries. Take, for example, Belgium, where 69 per cent of those under 25 are unchurched (Voyé et al., 2012: 159); in France, 67 per cent of those under 30 are also unchurched (Bréchon, 2009: 231). The ideas about ‘moral issues which are regarded as private such as divorce, homosexuality, casual sex, and euthanasia’ are permissive to very permissive in nearly all Western European countries (Halman et al., 2012: 114). And again, in one of these permissive countries, Belgium, we see that the ‘self-disposition of the body’ – measured on the basis of the level of acceptance of suicide, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia and divorce – has risen over the years from 3.6 in 1981 to reach 6.9 in 2009 on a scale from 1 to 10, which means from ‘nearly never justified’ to ‘nearly always justified’ (Dobbelaere and Voyé, 2012: 107–108), and is highest in the generations under 55 years old. Furthermore, it has risen on all levels of integration in the Catholic Church, but most in those categories that are most remote from the Church (Draulans and Billiet, 2012: 126–127). These data demonstrate Luc Ferry’s argument (1996: 30): ‘For the majority among us … the moral law has lost, after the legal law, its sacred character, or, at least, its link with revealed religious sources’. Concerning the law, think about the above references to Singer and the changes in the laws in many countries on abortion, marriage between same-sex people, divorce and medically assisted procreation, which have produced bitter conflicts between the law makers and Catholic National Episcopal Conferences (e.g. in Austria, France, Italy, Ireland and Spain).

These data call for the study of the changing meanings of life and death as it is defined by women and men who today have rejected or doubt the definite answers that come from the divine by way of his so-called representatives on earth. In the literature we find different reactions to this situation. Alain Touraine in Barbarie et progrès (2002: 25, 30), for example, underlines that humans need a ‘principle’ that ‘overarches what they do, that overarches the techniques, the pure facts … and this is the meaning that we give to our own existence’ not in a vacuum; ‘we are also tradition, memory, but have at the same time the intention to make our own life’. If he is correct that our fellow citizens create overarching meanings to their lives this poses the question: What are the personal constructions they produce and on the basis of which resources?

However, some other authors, like Zygmunt Bauman in his book on Culture in a liquid modern world (2011) – i.e. the modern condition, described by other authors as post-modernity or late modernity – suggests that

[i]n contrast to utopias of old, the utopia of liquid modernity … the utopia of life revolving around the pursuit of constantly elusive fashion, does not give sense to life, whether authentic or fake. It merely helps to banish the question of life’s meaning from our minds. (2011: 30)

And the population he describes as being concerned with culture is

engaged in laying down temptations and setting up attractions, with luring and seducing, not with normative regulations; … with the production, sowing and planting of new needs and desires, rather than with duty. … One may say that it serves not so much stratifications and divisions of society (2011: 13),

as described by Bourdieu (1979) in his La distinction: culture as ‘a “socially conservative force”’ (2011: 4–5). And if we take culture in the sociological sense, may we then not say that our culture is geared towards change? Are Nokia and Peugeot Citroën (PSA), for example, not economically threatened for lack of innovation, for lack of new products? Is the constant search for improvement, for new products, not the motor of our economy, of medicine and pharmacy, of pop culture? We only have to look at the advertisements in the mass media to see that there is competition for new and so-called ‘better’ products. If we follow Bauman, we can state that our postmodern culture helps to banish the question of life’s meaning from our minds.

Besides these two positions – that of Touraine, who considers that the question of meaning is inescapable, and that of Bauman, for whom this question no longer exists – there seems to be another possibility.

A third type in functionally differentiated societies

Modern societies are primarily differentiated along functional lines that overlay the prior forms of segmented differentiation (Durkheim) and social class differentiation (Marx), and such societies have developed different sub-systems (e.g. economy, polity and science). ³ These sub-systems perform their own particular function (production and distribution of goods and services; taking binding decisions; production of valid knowledge), and communication internally and with their environment is based on the medium of the sub-system (money, power, truth). According to Luhmann (1977: 242–246) such modern functionally differentiated societies are no longer integrated by common values and norms that apply in all sub-systems. Each sub-system functions according to the values of the particular sub-system (competition and success; separation of powers; reliability and validity) and its specific norms and they reject outside interventions. I am not sure that there are no common values that apply in the sub-systems of modern societies. I could point out the value of equality of men and women that we have to promote in the family, the economy and politics; the call for non-discrimination on the basis of race; the support for freedom of expression; the protection of childhood and the rights of patients in hospitals and of students in the school system; and the protection of nature.

However, it is clear that in Europe, there is a growing negative attitude towards the interference of Churches in politics, in the family, in education, etc., which partly confirms Luhmann’s idea that a modern functionally differentiated society rejects certain overarching values and norms, certainly the religious ones. In France, 78 per cent are in agreement with the statement ‘Religious leaders should not influence government decisions’ (Dompnier, 2009: 259), In other so-called Catholic Western European countries, the EVS data registered agreement with this statement by 75 per cent of people in Belgium, 71 per cent in Spain, 66 per cent in Italy and 52 per cent in Portugal. We registered this negative attitude also in a study done in 13 Eastern, Nordic and Western European countries, called RAMP (Dobbelaere and Riis, 2003: 159–164) in 1997–1999. Compartmentalization or ‘secularization in mind’ varied with church commitment. ‘People with a low commitment to their church [were] prone to prevent[ing] secular institutions being affected by religious influences’ (Billiet et al., 2003: 153; see also Garelli, 2011: 176–178 for Italy, and Bréchon and Gonthier, 2013: 104–105). And we found no differences between members of Protestant Churches and of the Catholic Church. According to the EVS study of 2008–2009, even those practising weekly reject church intervention in political matters, 50 per cent were in agreement with compartmentalization in Belgium, France and Italy, and 45 per cent in Spain and Portugal. And, in the 1960s, the attitude towards the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae was also negative: the general attitude was that it is not the Church but the couple that should decide on the use of contraception, thus rejecting the overarching religious values and norms.

Is it then not possible that in such functionally differentiated societies humans make sense of their lives by engaging themselves intensely in the sub-systems – the family, profession or free time (weekends and vacations) – without reference to overarching meaning systems? According to a study by Périer (2003), sense and value are given to the family in popular milieus by the memory of past experiences of vacations and the anticipation of coming ones, since they are powerful moments for the family. Here we have an example of sense given to life in the family, where exchanging affect is a form of giving meaning. Meaning is consequently found in the here and now, but such meaning systems may produce problems. Indeed, an acute sense of an empty life may occur when losing one’s job or retiring. How many of us, once retired from the university, go on doing research and publishing? In a hospital in a Belgian provincial town I noticed that medical doctors continue to practise medicine for one more year after reaching the age of retirement, and for three more years they still have consultations in the hospital. I was told by one: ‘if your medical practice has been the kernel of your life, retirement seems empty’. In a cultural association we are involved in, all medical doctors still practise medicine after the age of retirement, not taking on new patients but continuing to care for some of their former patients. However, others are able to turn to a new type of activity. For example, restoring old furniture, doing research in physical anthropology after receiving a new university degree, or preparing and organizing a yearly guided cultural tour abroad for former colleagues and friends. All these examples suggest that one looks for meaning found here and now. For Lalive d’Épinay (1996: 137) the ‘received Sense’ from religion is replaced for retired people by the ‘petits sens vécus’, meaning some sense received by being useful, which provides contacts and pleases others, which is also expressed by our hairdresser, who continues to work two days a week after her retirement: ‘I would be lost’, she said to me, ‘without social contacts with some of my former clients’. This last point is important since it points out that meaning needs social support from former patients or customers, from former and new colleagues. People fear that without this, life would lose most of its meaning. Such a loss may also occur when people are confronted with the death of a family member – a parent, a spouse or a child – or when the family breaks up. Consequently, meaning in life is not only a matter of values that give sense to our life; meaning needs social support, a human network, something we should not overlook in our studies on the search for meaning by our contemporaries.

However, if we see the number of people trying to escape the emptiness of their everyday life through drugs and the number of suicides by young people, we should also be aware that some seem not to find a sense in life here and now or in the future, and that they do not have a social anchoring. A study by Le Breton (2000: 110–111) suggests that some young people use ordeal, not like judges in the Middle Ages as a juridical proof submitted to the judgment of God, but to assure themselves of the value of their existence, the challenge of death being the most radical one, which should reveal to them that life has a sense and a value. To escape death is the ultimate proof, which guarantees his or her existence: one can continue to live in the light of this new legitimacy, at least if there is a social basis, a social support by meaningful people.

It seems then that we have registered four possible scenarios concerning meaning systems of contemporary human beings, apart from those who still adhere to a religious meaning system: (1) post-modern society banishes the question of life’s meaning from people’s minds (Bauman); (2) humans have a need to create overarching meanings (Touraine); (3) applying Luhmann’s analysis of functionally differentiated societies, people may look for meaning in their commitments in the sub-systems they are engaged in, implying a social recognition, a social integration; (4) some people do not find meaning in life at all and try to escape the quest for meaning or look for a proof that life is worthwhile, even by challenging death. All these scenarios suggest a broad spectrum of studies for sociologists. And we should not forget to study social integration, which is the social basis of meaning, the social support of a meaningful life. Meaning does not float in the air; it is not purely something in the mind. It needs a social basis. Having discussed the need to study meaning in a post-modern society, I will now turn to the question: How should we study a possible quest for meaning?

How to study meaning systems

The way we study religion as a meaning system was traditionally by starting from the viewpoint of the churches, sects or NRMs. Indeed, we ‘measured’ people’s acceptance of the rules of the religious institutions on matters of beliefs, morals and ritual practices. We may also add questions such as ‘How important is God in your life?’ or ‘Do you find that you get comfort and strength from religion or not?’. However, to study personal meaning systems we have to proceed differently by doing qualitative research based on intensive interviewing: not with a battery of standardized questions, but with guiding questions to keep the interviewees going and leading them to the question that occupies us. We may have to start with a very open question like: ‘What is important for you in your life?’ or ‘Since you only have one life, what do you want to do with it?’ to make people talk and talk on what gives sense, gives meaning to their life. In reading a women’s magazine, I was struck by how a banal question may lead to what is important for the person. The question was ‘What is the object that you will always carry with you and why?’ A person answered: ‘My mobile phone; I carry it always with me; it is my security. If I do not have it with me, I panic’. The ‘why’ in the question revealed the need for ‘security’. Even a banal question may start the interview but we must be prepared to direct the person with our questions to what gives meaning to their life. And the second most difficult task will be to analyse the protocols of the interviews, not in order to produce tables, but to try to understand what gives sense to people’s lives. And I think that a study of existing non-religious meaning systems may help us to devise pertinent questions.

Established non-religious meaning systems?

Apart from religious meaning systems, there are indeed established non-religious meaning systems. They manifest themselves clearly in their reactions towards the criticisms addressed by the Vatican, the National Episcopal Conferences and National Catholic Academies concerning the bioethical issues that societies are facing. I want to point to humanistic meaning systems. In France they have a seat alongside four religions in the National Consultative Committee on Ethics and Life Sciences – which is made up of 39 representatives, besides a President and a General Secretary, of whom scientists are the vast majority – since the polity wants to be informed about the ethical views of the religious and the humanist families on current matters, but the consultation may also be permanent. Legislators are indeed confronted with the fact that science and technology have no limits; they create problems which neither science nor technology is able to control; they are not able to ‘maitriser leur maitrise’ (Comte-Sponville, 1999: 33–34). And since ‘meaning and values’, the answer to ‘What should be done?’, cannot come from science (Reeves, 2000: 20), this makes the legislators look for guidance in the old and new meaning systems. A study of the standpoints on questions about ‘limits’ defended by the representative of the humanistic families may be revealing of their meaning system. One could also study the parliamentary reports since hearings on ethical issues may reveal not only the arguments of ethicists but also those of parliamentarians who are members of humanitarian societies as well as members of Masonic Lodges. It is also clear that, as well as religions, humanistic societies use the media to express their positions on social, cultural and ethical problems. All these sources may help us to find crucial points to use in our qualitative interviews. And since in these discussions the reference to values will come to the fore, the interpretations of the values referred to may be of crucial importance in studying people’s meaning systems. These references to existing meaning systems, religious and humanistic ones, is given here only to suggest that these may be sources to prepare us for the studies to come. Terms that quite often are used to talk about the religiosity of our contemporaries – ‘religion à la carte’, ‘bricolage’, ‘pick and choose religion’ and others – may well reappear in our studies about meaning systems. I suggest set meaning systems to help us explore the field, certainly not to promote surveys to check to what extent people live according to these set meaning systems.

Rational Choice Theory

If we enlarge the study of religion to the more general category of meaning systems of which it is a part, then it seems to me that we can use RTC in Europe. Central to this theory is that competition between religious firms has an effect on the growth of memberships. Alongside religions there are humanistic meaning systems. The competition in Europe, at least in Western Europe, is mainly between religious and humanistic meaning systems. The manifest process of societal secularization attests to that. Take the recent changes in the so-called ethical laws on abortion, divorce, euthanasia, civil marriage between same-sex people and medically assisted procreation and the discussions in parliament and the media and the standpoints published by religions and humanistic associations, for example in Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal. Or the discussion in Belgium and Spain on the status of a course on religion in the curricula of primary and/or secondary education versus a more general philosophical course where religion is part of the syllabus. All these changes in the laws are motivated in reference to moral pluralism, which should allow, under certain conditions, individuals to follow their own conscience and are promoted by humanist associations and by political parties that are influenced by members of atheistic lodges and humanistic societies. Consequently, we must be able to pinpoint the humanistic associations that manifest themselves publicly and in opposition to the Churches. What is the impact of their active competition with religious firms on changes in the laws designed to reduce the influence of religion in ethical matters and in school curricula? Could we, using RCT, register whether their active involvement in promoting pluralistic laws augments their membership their ‘customers’ in RCT language? And is the Catholic Church, which is publicly more involved and aggressive in its opposition to the changes of these laws in some countries, e.g. France, Italy and Spain, better able to retain its membership? Might empirically working with RCT give us answers to these questions?

Meaning systems and their consequences for society

However, it is not sufficient to study the different meaning systems and the effect of their competition on memberships. Most important are the consequences for society of the impact of different meaning systems on social behaviour. Colleagues of my university have done studies that analyse the impact of church commitment on social integration, i.e. ‘the maintenance of orientations and attitudes that are favourable to the justification and functioning of a pluralistic, democratic, political system’ (Billiet, Dobbelaere and Cambré, 2010: 236). In an analysis of international data they found a negative relationship between church commitment and perceived ethnic threat (248). And this was confirmed in 20 of the 25 countries participating in Round 2 of the Social Science Survey of 2004–2005. In the same study they found in the vast majority of the countries a firm positive effect of church commitment on social and political trust (Meuleman and Billiet, 2011: 198–199). In a study on Belgian data, Billiet (1998: 245) found the same positive effect. However, involvement in humanist societies also had a favourable effect (243), which indicates that it is important to analyse the effect of different meaning systems. In a more recent study, Billiet (2012: 218) found that the moderating effect of religion on a negative attitude towards foreigners completely disappeared. He relates this to an earlier finding that the moderating effect of religion on a negative attitude towards foreigners is dependent on the level of religious commitment in the country as a whole (Meuleman and Billiet, 2011: 196; Billiet, 2012: 238–239). These studies suggest to us that we need to study the impact of different meaning systems, their impact on the population at large, and the effect of individual commitment to such meaning systems.

Conclusion

I have tried to use the opportunity that was so generously offered to me by the ISSR Council to do two things:

First, to promote a greater openness to different theories that we have in the sociology of religion, which are to my mind complementary, and to stop wasting time and paper in combating the other theories in order to promote our own theoretical views. Rather, we ought to use these theories according to the research questions we have.

And second, to ask whether we should not broaden our research domain by studying the broader field of meaning systems and not limit our research to only one meaning system, i.e. religion – and, in so doing, study their impact on our societies. In this way, we will take seriously the challenge that Luckmann (1967: 100–101) formulated nearly fifty years ago, to ‘study the institutionally non-specialized social forms of religion’. Even better would be to study the institutionally non-specialized social forms of meaning systems that he suggested were emerging and that now already have some institutionalization – a standpoint that may lead to a change in our name to the International Society for the Study of Meaning Systems.

Finally, some of you may think that this is a very Western vision of what types of study are needed in our field, and, indeed, of who is deserving of study. In fact, it is up to each of us to evaluate the types of study we need in our respective cultural settings. And if such a reflection is the result of this lecture, I would already be happy that I had the opportunity to prompt it.

Thank you for your attention.