Berger (1997) one of the foremost advocates of secularisation during the 1960’s has formally retracted his claims, ‘the world today with some exceptions is as furiously religious as it ever was and in some places more so than ever’. Stephen Moore (2009) said that religious revival among Christians in the USA, Jewish people in Israel, and Muslims throughout the world has gone unexplained by proponents of the secularisation thesis.
Stark and Bainbridge also rejected secularisation and used a ‘Euro Centric theory’, which means that they feel secularisation statistics are only carried out in Europe, because of there is a risk in religion in other parts of the world such as South America and Africa.
Statistics in the US show perhaps and increase in religious beliefs amongst citizens, after an opinion poll in 2004, results showed that far more Americans believe in the theory of creationism and reject Darwin’s theory of Evolution.
In the news today, we now see an increase in religious fundamentalism, with extremist Muslims campaigning against British soldiers and the war between Israel and Palestine, the war of Judaism and Islamic beliefs.
Globalisation has led to the migration of cultures around the world, and some may argue that this could be a major reason for the maintenance or increase in religious activity around the world. With chains of department stores and themes travelling around the world an aspect of religion travels with them and passes onto other parts of the world. However it could be argued that globailisation in the commercial business is causing a decrease in religious activity with migration of cultures causing the opposite to a cultural defence in people moving away from their cultures and religions to fit in with society.
The statement ‘the world today is as furiously religious as ever it was and in some places more so’, could be perceived as being true in that some cultures and continents still have religion and religious beliefs high on their agenda, but it could be argued that in European cultures especially, there is a decline in religious values and beliefs, statistics back up both sides at the argument, so it could just fall down to personal beliefs and opinion about the subject matter in hand.