Criticisms

• Aldridge:

  1. religion can be a source of identity on a worldwide scale
  2. some religious communities are imagined communities interacting through the use of the media
  3. Pentecostal religious groups often flourish in 'impersonal' areas
• Bruce: two counter trends going against secularisation theory

  1. cultural defense
  2. cultural transition
• cultural defense: religion provides a focal point for the defense of national, ethnic, local or group identity in the struggle against an external force
• cultural transition: religion provides support and community to migrants
• But... Bruce argues that religion only survives in these situations because it becomes the focus of group identity

  
  

  eg: church going declined in Poland after the fall of communism
• religion is not declining by simply changing
• Secularisation theory is one sided and focuses on the decline of religion and ignores religious revivals
• Evidence of falling church attendance ignores how people can believe without attendance
• religion may be declining in Europe but not globally
• Religious diversity allows for religious choice. There is no overall downward trend