ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches the contours of a contemporary new form of individualized, privatized religion that increasingly replaces church religion in modern societies. This process is fueled by social change which makes it harder for the official form of the sacred cosmos to map onto the religious strata in the individuals’ consciousness. Sociology of religion needs to ask whether contemporary societies that are subject to processes of secularization still have a socially objectified form of religion in Luckmann’s sense, and if so, how this corresponds to the individuals’ subjective relevance systems that have an overarching, sense-integrating function in contemporary life. That way, it is possible to identify the existence of religion even in the face of a broad incongruence between an existing official institutional sacred cosmos and the individuals’ religious outlooks in present times. The new, privatized form of religion is not mediated by primary public institutions; religious themes originate in experiences in the private sphere and are relatively unstable; they cater to the needs of autonomous consumers. This results in the emergence of institutions that supply the market for ultimate significance, such as popular psychology.
