"Religion inside and outside Traditional Institutions" combines conceptual reflection, methodological proposals, and research results that help to understand contemporary religious praxis. These contributions to empirical theology thereby adopt a perspective which includes religious praxis outside traditional institutions.

'Religion's Sudden Decline' provides evidence of a major decline in religion in most of the world, based on surveys of over 100 countries containing 90 percent of the world's population, carried out from 1981 to 2020 - the largest base of empirical evidence ever assembled to analyse mass acceptance or rejection of religion.--

Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland is the first major book to explore the dynamic religious landscape of contemporary Ireland, north and south, and to analyse the island's religious transition. It confirms that the Catholic Church's long-standing 'monopoly' has well and truly disintegrated, replaced by a mixed, post-Catholic religious 'market' featuring new and growing expressions of Protestantism, as well as other religions. It describes how people of faith are developing 'extra-institutional' expressions of religion, keeping their faith alive outside or in addition to the institutional Catholic Church. Drawing on island-wide surveys of clergy and laypeople, as well as more than 100 interviews, Gladys Ganiel describes how people of faith are engaging with key issues such as increased diversity, reconciliation to overcome the island's sectarian past, and ecumenism. Ganiel argues that extra-institutional religion is especially well-suited to address these and other issues due to its freedom and flexibility when compared to traditional religious institutions. She explains how those who practice extra-institutional religion have experienced personal transformation, and analyses the extent that they have contributed to wider religious, social, and political change. On an island where religion has caused much pain, from clerical sexual abuse scandals, to sectarian violence, to a frosty reception for some immigrants, those who practice their faith outside traditional religious institutions may hold the key to transforming post-Catholic Ireland into a more reconciled society.

Where will postmodern culture lead us in the twenty-first century? Will it destroy traditional cultures together with the old, established religions that were its foundation? These questions and the new concerns they evoke are explored in this important collection of original essays. Contributors challenge entrenched assumptions about what many social scientists consider irreversible cultural trends. These include cultural differentiation, emphasis on individual identity, movement toward religion as a private act rather than a community commitment, and above all, emphasis on the relativity of all knowledge and values.The volume asserts three lines of argument in opposition to these trends. The first is the teleological significance of traditional religions and archaic knowledge. History can be said to have no goal, but the same must not follow for human culture. One can conceive individually of a hundred goals to live for. However, the quality of life cannot be that diverse. Taken to the extreme, cultural particularity and philosophical nihilism are insults to the life that emerged on our planet eons ago. Second, this volume emphasizes moral concern and the importance of universal values. Ideas of human well being have been formulated from ancient times. Religious beliefs invariably contain statements of value in the form of commandments and exhortations that express fundamental goals for a quality of life. Third, the nature of religion and spirituality is discussed. Religion today has become controversial socially, and marginal sociologically. The role of religion in society is sometimes problematic or abused, but it is also underestimated and misunderstood. The authors suggest that contemporary religion might best be viewed as non-ideological spiritual culture. This, in turn, looks to a future in which religion and culture coalesce.This volume includes an international cast of scholars from Japan, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, Italy, New Zealand, and Belgium. All have engaged in research outside their own countries. Taken as a whole, this volume addresses issues of interest to those in the fields of futures studies, religion, and philosophy, and in particular those concerned with human agency, personal responsibility, and public choice.

This book presents the first full-length study of the relationship between religion and the controversial concept of civil society. Across the world in the last two decades of the twentieth century religions re-entered public space as influential discursive and symbolic systems apparently beyond the control of either traditional religious authorising institutions or states. This differentiation of religion from traditional institutions and entry into secular public spheres carries both dangers and possible benefits for democracy. Offering a fresh interdisciplinary approach to understanding religion in contemporary societies, this book provides an invaluable resource for students and researchers in religious studies, sociology, politics and political philosophy, theology, international relations and legal studies. Part one presents a critical introduction to the interaction between religion, modernization and postmodernization in Western and non-Western settings (America, Europe, the Middle East and India), focussing on discourses of human rights, civil society and the public sphere, and the controversial question of their cross-cultural application. Part two examines religion and civil society through case studies of Egypt, Bosnia and Muslim minorities in Britain, and compares Poland as an example of a Christian majority society that has experienced the public reassertion of religion.

The church is struggling with the gap between the church and adolescents. Over the last decades, the problem of ‘bridging the gap’ was often outsourced to youth ministry in different forms, such as special youth workers, faith-learning programs, local activities, national events, holidays, and education of youth leaders. However, the overall conclusion is that over the last ten years, traditional youth ministry forms cannot function as the bridge they should be; the gap is too deep and too wide, or perhaps the metaphor of the gap is no longer appropriate to describe the current situation regarding the church and adolescents. This book aims to provide a creative and innovative contribution to the search for new paradigms in youth ministry. This book shows that small groups are very important for adolescents. The natural social environment greatly influences adolescents in their process of transformation from childhood to adulthood, including faith socialization. The emphasis on the natural social environment can be defined as follows: “Being goes before organizing, and the individual cannot ‘be’ without others.” Briefly, “being together as a basic given.” The conclusion of this book is that youth ministry needs a twofold turn: a turn from the individual to the communal, and a turn from an organized environment to a natural environment.

Digital Religion: The Basics explores how digital media and internet platforms are transforming religious practice in a digital age and the impact this has had on religious culture in contemporary society. Through exploring six defining characteristics of how religion is acted out online, including multisite reality, convergence practice, networked community, storied identity, shifting authority, and experiential authenticity, the book considers how digital religion both shapes, and is influenced by, religion offline. Questions asked include: How is religion being performed and reimagined through digital media and cultures? In what ways do the practices of religion online merge or correspond with shifts in perspective taking place in offline religious practice? How do the key findings of religion online reflect broader social, cultural, and structural practices observed within mobile, networked society? With case studies and further readings, Digital Religion: The Basics is a must-read for students wanting to come to grips with how religion is changing and experienced through digital media.