Religious Beliefs and Practices In A New Era Essay

Assess the view that sacred depressions and practices be changing to reflect a impudently duration of diversity and choice. latest ghostly feels and practices be in proper(ip)eousness unalike in Britain from 100 age ago. No agelong do the masses escort the established church, attendance is d declare to 6% of the population and the 2001 Census identified iodin hundred s even upty distinct religions in Britain. 72% song to be Christian but little than half of the population believe in God and only 18% title to be a practicing member of an organize religion.Clearly todays patterns atomic number 18 very different from those of the past. How hence to beg off them? Thither ar two field of thought here. Secularists take the simple whim lack of attendance and reduction of belief means a lack of entertain and a decline in absorb and influence of religion. However, opp nonpareilnts of secularisation claim it is not as simple as that. auberge itself has changed dram atic all(prenominal) in ally in recent years but that does not mean a decline in society, just a change. Religion, therefore, sess not be anticipate to stagnate in a changing society but moldiness overly change with the times. Religion then must met the needs of a late y issuehful or postmodern society which strain levels of diversity and choice which have not existed before and give the axe not do this by behaving as it did in a modern or pre-industrial society.Grace Davie is a proponent of this point of view. For her, religion has plain father more than privatised, that is it is at one time a private matter of personal preference. This is more appropriate for a society which emphasises individualism and simply echoes what is happening in other(a) institutions in society the family, for example, is no long-lasting a simple usageal thermonuclear family, other companyings are now widely accepted. masses are then redundant to decide whether they wish to attend chu rch, godliness on their own or even use modern technologies to help them worship, whereas in the past the norm was to attend church and people felt obliged to do so. Davie describes this new pattern as believe without belonging and believes it is a new clear of religion. As evidence of this, she points to wider attendance or reliance on religion in times of crisis. People are mental object to practice vicarious religion where a small number of professional clergy employment religion on behalf of a lots larger number of people until times of national or personal tragedy.However, if Davies is remedy then this would mean high levels of belief and low attendance which Voas and Crockett point out is not the case. Bruce argues that if people are not willing to get involved then their belief must not be sincere or strong so Davies defence is unrealistic.Hervieu-Leger points to an increase in individualism and a decline of tradition in society, caprices associated with late modernity, as reasons for a decline in institutional religion. Parents are reluctant to tell their children what to believe so traditional ideas can not be passed experience, what Hervieu-Leger calls cultural amnesia. Churches can not be authoritarian and impose beliefs. This leaves people without a fixed sacred identity or knowledge of traditional beliefs and thus they are forced to choose or work new religious beliefs and practices for themselves, whereas their ancestors simply reiterate patterns of their forebearers.Fortunately having to ask ones own religion is not in any case demanding for people living in a postmodern society as one of its defining characteristics is consumerism, where we construct our identities through what we consume. H-L describes us now as spiritual shoppers without a traditional fixed identity, we must select our own and we do this to best correspond ourselves, choosing the beliefs which give most meaning to our lives and outfit our interests and aspiratio ns an individualised religion.Thus instead of except going to the church our parents went to, today we can take our own personal expedition and this let offs the wide range of organisations we can espouse from church to sect to cult. Some H-L describes as pilgrims focusing on self-discovery who join NAMs that thin out on personal development and others are converts who want a religious group which offers a strong sense of belonging, to come to a sense of community.Lyon, a postmodernist, supports the idea that traditional religion is giving charge to a variety of new religious beliefs and practices because we are living in a postmodern society. In this society globalisation, the change magnitude importance of the media and communications and the growth of consumerism all create a new era of diversity and choice in all aspects of life. Lyon demonstrates how these have affected religion. We are now exposed to a wider range of religious ideas than ever before and these have bec ome disembedded from their original local contexts so we can now adapt ideas and beliefs to causa our own purposes.Much new religious belief is simply a watered down version of Eastern religions, adapted to suit Western tastes. Practice of worship is overly different because it is no longer demand to attend a local church. form of the electronic church on the net and televangelism allow us to stay at home. However, if it is problematic to get convincing statistics of how many another(prenominal) people attend church and what center this has on them, it is even more difficult to research the numbers involved in and the influence of this new form of worship.The very diversity of religions on offer forces a change in religious belief. People become sceptical that any one religion can offer the truth and are, therefore, willing to sample any of the new NRMs on offer. Again this is a admonition of postmodern society where we no longer trust in any kind of expert, and have reject ed meta-narratives which seek to explain the world. This can even be seen in politics where the old certainties of left and right politics have been reduced to the digest ground one could argue here that their beliefs have also become slight strict. This means that new ideas will slide by to flourish as we become progressively disenchanted with the world.