Religion and New Age Movements

Using material from item A and elsewhere, measure the view that most citizenry today see spirituality and unearthly belief as purely private and personalized matters. In hostelry today organized religion can be seen in two divers(prenominal) ways, as a private and personal matter or something to sell with your community.Some sociologists would argue that religion and spirituality is a private matter because of televangelism, which is where multitude watch their religions services on television or go on online performes in the comfort and privacy of their own home when we have guiltless clip but other sociologists argue that this does not loaded that religion and spirituality is a private matter, but that we have to use televangelism callable to the fact we live in a postmodern society which kernel society is constantly changing and causes us to lead hectic lifestyles.This too links in with vicarious religion, which is where a fiddling group of people practice for t he wider community. Another reason why sociologists would argue that religion and spirituality is a private matter is that in that respect has been a large ontogenesis in new age movements, such as horoscopes, tarot tease and Wicca. Which focus on individualistic beliefs and self-healing, increasing amounts of these springing up indicates that because we live in a postmodern society we argon starting to focus on ourselves more meaning that our beliefs are becoming privatised.Other sociologists would argue against this by verbal expression that they are not a true picture of our apparitional beliefs, and are in fact, just fads, which we can houseclean and choose whether, we confide in them and put one acrosst necessarily cogitate in them throughout our unanimous lives. This is linked to spiritual shopping, which is where we pick and choose which parts of different religions we believe in. Our beliefs are not a set structure and we have personal choice in what we believe. Al so, another reason why religion whitethorn have belong privatised is because of industrialisation, which caused us to no longer live in small tightknit communities.Before industrialisation churches and other ghostly organisations were often the centre of small tightknit communities and also, there was social stigma attached to not going to church before industrialisation. Industrialisation caused people to go from living in prolonged families to living in small nuclear families so that they could move smoothen and find work where it was available, This lead to more hectic lifestyles and less time for people to go to churches meaning that they had to commit privately.Because of this, industrialisation also therefore decreased the amount of social stigma around not tending church allowing people to choose whether they actually wanted to go or not. You could argue that this means that religion is now more pure because we chose what we believe and dont just believe so that we fit into the consist of society. On the other hand, other sociologists argue that there are all the same other religious people about that still live in tightknit communities such as Muslims.Muslims tend to use their religion as a form of cultural defense force to protect their identity from scrutiny from outsiders of their religion. and 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 represented in the media and because people connect them with fundamentalist attacks that happen causing islamaphobia, Which is the irrational terror of Islam.Structural differentiation 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 spiritual shop Lyon did a theatre of operations 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 being. This has been made manageable because of globalisation creating stronger links amongst different countries and allowing us to have nettle 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 more methodological problems with measuring whether religion has become privatized, on of these problems is that how do you measure how many religious organisations there are? this is a problem because it is near unachievable to count every single religious organisation in the world because of the amount of cults and sects that exist that not everybody whitethorn now about. Sociologists argue that there has been a decrease on the number of religious organisations, and therefore religious belief is decreasing, but they do not take into account that it may not be reli gious belief that is declining, but that lack of reenforcement has meant that the religious beliefs could not remain forcing people into practise privately, Also, how do you restrict 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 visit a religious organisation, it doesnt necessarily mean that they are not religious, they may just not have the time to visit the organisation so instead 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 invite 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 times of crisis. They think that people still turn to religion for rites of q ualifying and in times of life crisis, so, when people feel their life is tottering and they need something to make them feel better.