Secularization and New Forms of Religiousness

Abstract

In the present article we point to the multi-paradigmatic character of sociology of religion against the background of criticism of the secularization thesis and to new forms of religiousness and spirituality that require new interpretation models with respect to modern transformations of religiousness and spirituality (the de-secularization thesis). Even if secularization is still an uncompleted process, this does not mean that religion is constantly dying; on the contrary, its vicissitudes are ever more complex and multifaceted. We witness formation of new forms of religiousness and spirituality. Paraphrasing Ulrich Beck’s statement about the family we could say that ever more contemporaries facing the alternative “church religiousness or lack of religiousness” decide on the third way, namely, extra-church religiousness that is “a pluralist and non-continuous trajectory of the biography”. Outside the Church a variety of forms of spirituality develop (“I am not religious, but I’m looking for spirituality”).