Spiritual Shopping

    Cards (9)

    • Danièle Hervieu-Léger (2000; 2006) continues the theme of personal choice and the decline of obligation. She agrees that there has been a dramatic decline in institutional religion in Europe, with fewer and fewer people attending church in most countries.
    • This is partly because of what she calls cultural amnesia, or a loss of collective memory. For centuries, children used to be taught religion in the extended family and parish church. Nowadays, however, we have largely lost the religion that used to be handed down from generation to generation, because few parents now teach their children about religion. Instead, parents today let children decide for themselves what to believe.
    • At the same time, the trend towards greater social equality has undermined the traditional power of the Church to impose religion on people from above. As a result, young people no longer have a fixed religious identity imposed on them through socialisation and they are ignorant of traditional religion.
    • However, while traditional institutional religion has declined, religion itself has not disappeared. Instead, individual consumerism has replaced collective tradition. People today now feel they have a choice as consumers of religion - they have become spiritual shoppers. Religion is now individualised - we now develop our own 'do-it-yourself' beliefs that give meaning to our lives and fit in with our interests and aspirations.
    • Religion has thus become a personal spiritual journey in which we choose the elements we want to explore and the groups we wish to join. As a result, Hervieu-Léger argues, two new religious types are emerging - pilgrims and converts:
      • Pilgrims are like those in the holistic milieu in the Kendal Project (see below). They follow an individual path in a search for self-discovery, for example exploring New Age spirituality by joining groups, or through individual'therapy'. The demand is created by today's emphasis on personal development.
      • Converts join religious groups that offer a strong sense of belonging, usually based on a shared ethnic background or religious doctrine. Such groups re-create a sense of community in a society that has lost many of its religious traditions. As in the Kendal Project, these include evangelical movements and also the churches of minority ethnic groups.
    • As a result of these trends, religion no longer acts as the source of collective identity that it once did. However, Hervieu-Léger notes that religion does continue to have some influence on society's values. For example, the values of equality and human rights have their roots in religion, she argues. Such values can be a source of shared cultural identity and social solidarity, even for those who are not actively involved in religion.
    • Hervieu-Léger's views can be related to the idea of late modernity. This is the notion that in recent decades some of the trends within modern society have begun to accelerate, such as the decline of tradition and increasing individualism.
      This explains the weakening of traditional institutions such as the church, as well as the growing importance of individual choice in matters of religion.