ABSTRACT
UK census data (ONS, 2022) has shown an increasing number of people reported to have ‘no religion’ (22.2 million people in 2021 compared to 14.1 million people in 2011). Whilst on the surface, this may suggest a reduction in engagement with religion per se, Gautier (2017, para. 1) explored how consumerism and neoliberalism has shaped religion, suggesting that what he terms ‘entrepreneurial types of religion’ are in fact growing. He argues that consumerism was a ‘cultural and social revolution … [where] the consumption of objects and services became a vehicle for the expression of personal identity and became tied to quests for an authentic life …’. A rise in such entrepreneurial religion may also be related to what Clavier (2019, p. 86) highlights as the sustained reduction in influence the Church (in its traditional sense) has to ‘… enforce codes of conduct or beliefs’, thus leaving us to find our own ways of discovering, developing and moderating our identities through what is on offer in the marketplace.
