Religion and Modernity

Abstract

This book focuses on two issues. First, it describes how the social significance of religion in its various facets has changed in modern societies. Second, it explains what factors and conditions have contributed to these changes. After discussing the two central concepts of the investigation, religion and modernity, the book presents the most important theories that deal with the relationship between the two. The empirical part, which constitutes the bulk of the book, begins by analysing religious change in selected countries in Western and Eastern Europe. For the sake of comparison, it then presents individual analyses of selected non-European cases (the US, South Korea), as well investigations of the global spread of Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism in Europe, the US, and in Brazil. On the basis of these selected case studies, which place as much emphasis on analysing the social, political, and economic contexts of religious changes as on capturing historical path dependencies, the book offers some general theoretical conclusions and identifies overarching patterns and determinants of religious change in modern and modernizing societies. In recent years, scholars of religion have become increasingly sceptical about the validity of secularization theory; the analyses contained in this book demonstrate, however, that tendencies of modernity such as functional differentiation, individualization, and pluralization are likely to inhibit the attractiveness and acceptance of religious affiliations, practices, and beliefs. Even Poland, Russia, the US, and South Korea, which have often been cited as prime examples of the vitality of religion in modern societies, display clear signs of religious decline.