Religion

Bauman (2009) argues that the social production of our identity and individuality is a trivial truth. Regardless, when approaching the question of religious identities, contemporary social theory presents us with a problem. What does it really mean to claim a religious identity? Within pre-modernity, religion was presumed as a core to the society and the ascribed religious identity shared by a collective. Within contemporary society, we are faced with not only a multiplicity of belief systems but also the ability to pick and choose amongst them and to decide how central our chosen belief system will be to our life. Religious identity has moved from one of shared determinism to one of individual choice. These changes necessitate new understandings of religion, for the notion proposed by Durkheim ([1915] 2001) and other scholars that religion is 'social glue', is difficult to apply in a landscape that is characterised as plural and where the individual is seen as a consumer. This chapter contends that it is more useful to view contemporary religion in terms of consumer choice and consumer identity.