Looking Ahead at Religion

Looking Ahead at Religion

Religion is a major social institution based on setting the sacred, or extraordinary, apart from the profane, or everyday life (Macionis, 2015). Looking ahead, one might say that in this day and age the world is constantly becoming more complex. Along with advances in technology, social change is on the rise within the religious community. With science develops by leaps and bounds daily, debate among the general public yields conflicting claims between the future of religion and science. It is said that members of society that embrace both, religion and science, agree that both social institutions represent different, but important truths. Voluminous numbers also believe that in the rush of scientific finding, our world has never been more in need of the spiritual awareness and moral guidance provided by religion. Consequently, this begs the question as to where religion going and will it still be a valuable piece of society when it gets there.

The idea at hand is secularization, which is frequently associated with modern, technologically advanced societies in which science is the respected way of understanding. Secularization is the historical decline in the importance of the supernatural and the sacred (Macionis, 2015). With the progression of modernization, secularization has not only become a vital part of contemporary society, it has also had significant impact on other religions. For some, the pattern can be seen that religious practices in public places are gradually fading out, making religious faith far more private. For others, secularization has not controlled the bereavement of religion. On the contrary, the boundless fluctuations of modern society have created an environment for new religions to thrive, and in some cases, there looks as if a revival of traditional religion is embarking upon us. Thus, creating the dilemma as to where relations involving religion, society, and science; traditional religion and “new age”...