A quantitative research on the individualization of religion

Abstract

Secularization theories argue that there is an inverse relationship between modernization and religion by stating that the religiosity will uniformly weaken in the process of modernization. For this reason, the nature of the relationship between modernization and religion has been hotly debated in the literature, and new versions of the secularization paradigm such as existential security theory as well as different models such as religious market theory have been developed to explain religious change in modern societies. In this context, the theory of religious individualization has also been put forward as an alternative framework in social science research. This theory aims to describe the forms of religiosity that have become independent from institutional religion and religious authorities and experienced as unmediated, especially in societies such as Western Europe. In other words, the theory points out that with the process of modernization, human beings will be freed from the influence of tradition and institutional structures and will turn towards unmediated religious life as a self-determining being. Thus, unlike the old paradigm, the theory of religious individualization assumes that in modern societies, the religious will be privatized rather than losing its effectiveness completely. The current study, which was designed in quantitative format and conducted with 403 participants over the age of 18 residing in Bursa, aims to measure the tendency towards religious individualization. According to the findings, factors such as political opinion/ideology/worldview, educational level, source of religious knowledge and religious group membership affect religious individualization. In other words, the research shows that political views characterized as communist, leftist and Kemalist and educational level increase the tendency towards a religious life independent from traditional religious authorities.