ABSTRACT

This chapter proposes a general model of the relationships between modernity and religion, emphasising distinctive religious features and new paradigms. It highlights the case of new religious movements (NRMs) and parallel beliefs in European youth. All specialist commentators point to globalization as one of the main factors behind the spread of NRMs, as well as of bricolage and syncretism. Numerous parallel beliefs and NRMs, and especially the most successful of them, have mundane purposes, examples being Scientology, New Age and Human Potential. Kitagawa describes ‘the single cosmos of the modern man’ which compels religions ‘to find the meaning of human destiny in this world - in culture, society and human personality in order to fulfill the human vocation’, and of a soteriology centred on this world within each religion. The analysis singles out four typical religious effects for each feature: decline, adaptation or re-interpretation, conservative reaction, and the flourishing of new religious insights.