Introduction

Sociological theory has concerned itself with the phenomenon generally referred to as alternative religions and which comprises ‘new religious movements’ as the expression of a return to religion that grows increasingly evident in contemporary society. Perhaps the most provocative version of the crisis-of-values perspective has been formulated by Robert N. Bellah, who views the alternative religions and therapeutic mysticisms as succession movements springing from the counter-culture of the 1960s, which demonstrated the incapacity of individualism to provide a meaningful basis for personal and social existence. The concept of normative breakdown aids interpretation of the privatized transcendent in a European reality where disparate events have fragmented the life-space into specific social roles, weakening personal identities and heightening the attractiveness of groups able to provide holistic conceptions of the self. Like culture, also the religion of contemporary youth is constantly reinvented, and in some manner young people themselves create their religion.