THE METAMORPHOSIS OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

Abstract

The article analyzes the metamorphoses of religious faith in contemporary society and especially the influence of the process of globalization and secularization on religion. The specific hypothesis of the study is related to the fact that at the global level, one aspect of the recent religious changes is the scale taken by the religious movements, aiming at both the revival of tradition and the global and local manifestation of new religious movements. The main purpose of the research is to study religious movements that are conceived as responses to globalization. It gives us the opportunity to analyze the New Age movement and the discourse of spirituality in the universalist way. Based on the purpose, the following objectives were developed: identifying the role of religion in contemporary society; description of the paradox of modernity with the emergence of new religious movements; projecting religious mutations on today’s multicultural society. The main study methods used are the method of direct observation, the method of content analysis and the method of social documentation. By means of these methods it was identified about the cultural manifestations of religious and spiritual metamorphoses as basic elements of the global society through which cultural identity and religious identity are affirmed. This research results in several findings: the crisis of traditional values leads to the permanent search for new cultural and religious models, the differentiation of contemporary society in multicultural and multi-religious terms has created individual variants of perception of conceptions about life, group identity leads to the change of personal identity.