Religious Beliefs and Practices In A New Era Essay

Assess the view that spectral feels and practices be changing to reflect a radical era of diversity and choice.Current spiritual beliefs and practices are really(prenominal) unlike in Britain from 100 long time ago. No protracted do the masses front the established church, attendance is d own to 6% of the cosmos and the 2001 Census identified 170 distinct trusts in Britain. 72% maintain to be Christian but slight than half of the population moot in God and only 18% claim to be a practicing member of an organised faith.Clearly like a shots patterns are really different from those of the past. How then to explain them? There are two palm of thought here. Secularists take the simple opinion lack of attendance and decrement of belief means a lack of interest and a crepuscle in interest and influence of religion. How of all time, opponents of secularisation claim it is not as simple as that. Society itself has flip-flopd dramatically in recent years but that does no t mean a stock in lodge, rightful(prenominal) a change. Religion, therefore, rout out not be expected to stagnate in a changing alliance but must also change with the quantify. Religion then must met the needs of a late advance(a) or postmodern society which offer levels of diversity and choice which train not existed before and tidy sum not do this by behaving as it did in a modern or pre-industrial society.Grace Davie is a advocator of this point of view. For her, religion has simply mystify more privatised, that is it is now 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 longer a simple traditional nuclear family, other groupings are now widely accepted. People are then spare to decide whether they wish to attend church, worship on their own or even use modern technologies to help them worship, whereas in the past the average was to attend church and population felt obliged to do so. Davie describes this sassy pattern as believing without belonging and believes it is a new cause of religion. As evidence of this, she points to wider attendance or reliance on religion in times of crisis. People are content to practice vicarious religion where a small number of professional clergy practise religion on behalf of a much larger number of people until times of national or personal tragedy.However, if Davies is correct then this would mean soaring 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, ideas 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 down, what Hervieu-Leger calls cultural amnesia. Churches can not be authoritarian and impose beliefs. This leaves people without a fixed religious personal identity or knowledge of traditional beliefs and thus they are forced to rent or create new religious beliefs and practices for themselves, whereas their ancestors simply repeated patterns of their forebearers. as luck would have it having to select 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 wooing ourselves, choosing the beliefs which give most meaning to our lives and suit our interests and aspirations an individualised religion.Thus instead of merely going to the church our p arents went to, today we can take our own personal journey and this explains the wide figure of organisations we can join from church to sect to cult. Some H-L describes as pilgrims direction on self-discovery who join NAMs that concentrate on personal development and others are converts who want a religious group which offers a strong backbone of belonging, to re-create a sense of community.Lyon, a postmodernist, supports the idea that traditional religion is giving way to a variety of new religious beliefs and practices because we are living in a postmodern society. In this society globalisation, the increase 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 unnatural religion. We are now exposed to a wider range of religious ideas than ever before and these have become disembedded from their original local contexts so we can now adapt ideas and beliefs t o suit our own purposes.Much new religious belief is simply a watered down version of east religions, adapted to suit Western tastes. Practice of worship is also different because it is no longer necessary to attend a local church. rather the electronic church on the internet and televangelism allow us to hitch at home. However, if it is difficult to get convincing statistics of how many people attend church and what effect this has on them, it is even more difficult to look 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 reflection of postmodern society where we no longer trust in any kind of expert, and have rejected meta-narratives which render to explain the world. This can even be seen in politics where the gaga certainties of left and right politics have been reduced to the centre cause one could argue here that their beliefs have also become less strict. This means that new ideas will continue to flourish as we become increasingly disenchanted with the world.