Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

For a quarter of a century all descriptions of the religious situation in Western European and North American societies have presented the same established theme. On the one hand, it is observed that the cultural and political power of the mainline churches is diminished, as is their capacity to organize the symbolic life of society. In certain countries of northern Europe, it is a matter of the virtual collapse of mainline religion, a process that began two centuries ago. In other countries the phenomenon is quite recent and subtle. But the tendency is a general one and makes tenable – at least with respect to the development of religious institutions – the classic thesis of an ineluctable “secularization” of modern society. On the other hand, empirical investigations dealing with beliefs within these very societies attest with the same consistency that individual interest in the spiritual and the religious has not undergone any decline, despite a disenchantment introduced by the pervasive expansion of instrumental reason in all regions of life. Paradoxically, modern societies, confronted with the uncertainties to which the rapidity of technological, social, and cultural change gives rise, are societies where belief proliferates. This explosion of belief is the work of individuals who cobble together, in their own fashion, systems of signification which give a subjective meaning ... log in or subscribe to read full text