Religious Beliefs and Practices In A New Era Essay

Assess the view that sacred beliefs and practices ar changing to reflect a new era of diversity and choice.Current religious beliefs and practices are very different in Britain from 100 years ago. No longer do the masses take care the established church, attendance is down to 6% of the population and the 2001 Census identified 170 distinct religions in Britain. 72% claim to be Christian but less than fractional of the population believe in God and only 18% claim to be a practicing member of an organised religion.Clearly todays patterns are very different from those of the past. How then to explain them? Thither are two fields of thought here. Secularists take the unreserved opinion lack of attendance and step-down of belief means a lack of interest and a decline in interest and influence of religion. However, opp ints of secularisation claim it is non as simple as that. Society itself has changed dramatically in recent years but that does not mean a decline in society, just a change. Religion, therefore, ordure not be expected to stagnate in a changing society but mustiness also change with the times. Religion then must met the needs of a late modern or postmodern society which offer levels of diversity and choice which have not existed before and quite a little 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 simply become much privatised, that is it is at present a private matter of personal preference. This is more appropriate for a society which emphasises individualism and simply echoes what is happening in other institutions in society the family, for example, is no longer a simple tralatitious nuclear family, other groupings are now widely accepted. People are then rationalize 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 norm was to attend church and people felt obliged to do so. Davie describes this new pattern as believing without belonging and believes it is a new form of religion. As try out of this, she points to wider attendance or reliance on religion in times of crisis. People are content to practice vicarious religion where a splendid 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 determine 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 involve 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 n ot be passed down, what Hervieu-Leger calls cultural amnesia. Churches can not be authoritarian and impose beliefs. This leaves people without a fixed religious identity or knowledge of traditional beliefs and thus they are forced to choose or create new religious beliefs and practices for themselves, whereas their ancestors simply repeated patterns of their forebearers.Fortunately having to select ones own religion is not too demanding for people living in a postmodern society as one of its defining characteristics is consumerism, where we take a leak 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 fit ourselves, choosing the beliefs which wee-wee most meaning to our lives and suit our interests and aspirations an individualised religion.Thus instead of merely going to the church our parents went to, today we can take our own personal excursion and this explai ns the wide range of organisations we can join from church to sect to cult. Some H-L describes as pilgrims focusing on self-discovery who join NAMs that concentrate on personal knowledge and others are converts who want a religious group which offers a strong sense 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 increased vastness 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 become disembedded from their original local contexts so we can now adapt ideas and beliefs to suit our own purposes.Much new religious belief is simply a watered down version o f Eastern religions, adapted to suit Western tastes. devote of worship is also different because it is no longer necessary to attend a local church. Instead the electronic church on the internet and televangelism countenance us to stay at home. However, if it is challenging to get convincing statistics of how many people attend church and what effect 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. once again this is a reflection of postmodern society where we no longer trust in any kind of expert, and have rejected 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 centre ground one co uld 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.