Religion and New Age Movements

Using solid from item A and elsewhere, assess the watch that most people today cast other(a)worldliness and unearthly tactile sensation as axenicly snobby and own(prenominal) matters. In confederacy today religion john be seen in two antithetic ways, as a hidden and personalised matter or something to shargon with your community.Some sociologists would suggest that religion and religiousity is a private matter beca recitation of televangelism, which is where people watch their religions function on television or go on online church buildinges in the comfort and screen of their own home when we put one over lighten epoch but other sociologists w all told that this does non mean that religion and spirituality is a private matter, but that we demand to use televangelism collect to the fact we spicy in a postmodern society which federal agency society is constantly changing and causes us to lead hectic carriagestyles.This similarly links in with vicarious religion, which is where a small group of people hold for the wider community. Another savvy why sociologists would surround that religion and spirituality is a private matter is that there has been a abundant increase in new days movements, such as horoscopes, tarot tease and Wicca. Which sharpen on individualistic beliefs and self-healing, change magnitude amounts of these springing up indicates that because we live in a postmodern society we argon showtime to focus on ourselves more than implication that our beliefs are becoming privatised.Other sociologists would signal against this by saying that they are not a true picture of our religious beliefs, and are in fact, salutary fads, which we smoke deplume and choose whether, we opine in them and befoolt of necessity believe in them throughout our whole lives. This is linked to spiritual shopping, which is where we pick off and choose which parts of contrasting religions we believe in. Our beliefs are not a s et structure and we nominate personal pickax in what we believe. Also, another yard why religion whitethorn have become privatised is because of industrialization, which caused us to no all-night live in small tightknit communities.Before industrialisation churches and other religious organisations were often the decoct of small tightknit communities and also, there was social grunge attached to not going to church before industrialisation. Industrialisation caused people to go from alive in extended families to living in small nuclear families so that they could move round and find croak where it was available, This lead to more hectic lifestyles and little time for people to go to churches implication that they had to practise privately.Because of this, industrialisation also indeed decreased the amount of social soil around not attending church allowing people to choose whether they actually treasured to go or not. You could argue that this means that religion is no w more pure because we chose what we believe and fagt just believe so that we fit into the abatement of society. On the other hand, other sociologists argue that there are relieve other religious people about that still live in tightknit communities such as Muslims.Muslims tend to use their religion as a comprise of cultural demur to protect their identity from scrutiny from outsiders of their religion. besides other sociologists would argue that this is a Eurocentric argument because Muslims do not use their religion as a form of cultural defence outside of Europe, and the reason they do it here is because of how they are correspond in the media and because people connect them with fundamentalist attacks that happen causing islamaphobia, Which is the irrational devotion of Islam.Structural antitheticaliation has meant that religion has become more privitised because we now live in a multi-cultural society we now have more choice in what we believe in allowing us to spiritu al shop Lyon did a study called Jesus in Disneyland believes that we have become religious consumers, meaning that me pick and choose what we believe from all the different religions in the world. This has been made possible because of globalisation creating stronger links between different countries and allowing us to have access to multiple types of religions with all different norms and values.This gives us greater choice between what we believe in and what we dont. There are many methodological tasks with measuring whether religion has become privatized, on of these lines is that how do you measure how many religious organisations there are? this is a problem because it is near impossible to count all(prenominal) single religious organisation in the world because of the amount of cults and sects that exist that not everybody may now about. Sociologists argue that there has been a decrease on the outcome of religious organisations, and therefore religious belief is decreas ing, but they do not analyse into account that it may not be religious belief that is declining, but that need of funding has meant that the religious beliefs could not stick around forcing people into practise privately, Also, how do you set what a religious organisation is.Another problem with measuring whether religion has become privatised is that you cant know what people are thinking, just because they dont cry a religious organisation, it doesnt necessarily mean that they are not religious, they may just not have the time to visit the organisation so kind of use things like televangelism to practise at home.Also, just because people dont attend religious organisations often, Stark and Bainbridge believe that the decline in traditional religions has created a demand for newer religions, this includes new age movements that focus on private practice. They believe this is due to people being naturally religious and needing religion as a compensator during generation of cr isis. They think that people still sophisticate to religion for rites of passage and in quantify of life crisis, so, when people spirit their life is unstable and they need something to make them feel better.