Assess the View That Religious Beliefs and Practices Are Changing to Reflect a New Era of Diversity and Choice

In modern-day times, it has been debated by many sociologists such that religion is declining in linear form like in the UK, whereas some sociologists would put forward that religion is just fluctuating along with society as people lead complex lives, they have to adjust or abandon factors of religion into a much simpler form to carry out rituals. In this essay I will use various sociologists and theories to evaluate whether religion is actually changing in its form or whether it is merely declining. I will use Weber‘s idea of rationalisation where he takes the approach that thinking has changed which has led to secularisation. Then Gracie Davie’s notion of ‘believing without belonging’ where she perceives religion becoming privatised which has led to a fall in church attendance. Thirdly the religious market theory where it sees religion in a long term decline but using the assumptions of the theory there will be a rise in people using religion in their lives. Lastly an existential theory by through which Norris and Inglehart propound richer societies have more security and therefore do not need religion. In contrast poorer societies need religion as it provides an unconscious reward for humans. Using these theories I will analyse and evaluate whether religious beliefs and practices are in decline or whether they are simply changing.

Firstly using the secularisation approach, Weber argues that a process of rationalisation has occurred where the western approach rejects and has transformed the magical explanations that religion provides into a more scientific way. An example of this is where millions of pounds of research have gone into the Richter scale which explains how much damage has done by the movement in plates and not thinking that it is an ‘act of god’. Another key concept he discusses is the notion of disenchantment in which the world is becoming more scientifically informed and less mystical, moving from polytheistic religions to monotheistic ones...