Abstract:

The assumptions of traditional secularization theory continue to be applied to contemporary religious experience. In an increasingly individualized society, and especially since the advent of the internet, it may be quite pointless to use such theory to explain religious life by comparing current religious experience with a more traditional religious past. This paper argues that the old secularization paradigm fails to consider ways that religious groups reflexively react to changing
social circumstances, and that it does not explain ways that religion itself has changed in a globalized world. The idea of a new paradigm is re-examined with regard to its potential to understand contemporary religious life.

Author: Steve McMullin