In Search of Certainties: The Paradoxes of Religiosity in Societies of High Modernity

Abstract

This article deals with the paradoxes of religiosity in societies of high modernity. It outlines the two basic features of ««religious modernity»: first, the unpredictable diversity of individual compositions of belief, which may include elements borrowed from a wide variety of symbolic resources; and second, the weakening of organized structure of the belief systems authenticated by religious institutions. This «religious modernity» leads to a number of new phenomena: the greater the individualization of belief, the greater its degree of homogenization; the greater the homogenization of belief, the greater the migration among believers; the more individual believers migrate, the more they need «community niches»