Characteristics of Contemporary Religious Change : Globalization, Neoliberalism, and Interpretative Tendencies

This chapter focuses on changes in contemporary religion and in particular in relation to the globalization process. Globally, one aspect of religious change is that fundamentalist religious movements are thriving, aiming at reviving tradition, and making religion influential again in contemporary society. The chapter explores the more vague religious expressions of Western culture, related to New Age and the spirituality discourse, as responses to globalization in the universalistic mode. It discusses the concepts of New Age and spirituality, and argues that essentializing a New Age category no longer makes sense in a globalized society. The chapter then focuses on the dichotomy of institutionalized religion on one hand, and uninstitutionalized, or popular religion, on the other hand. Finally, it raises some critical questions to point some significant similarities between, on the one hand, the characteristics of contemporary religious change and, on the other, neoliberal politics and culture