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SAGE Publications Ltd Andrew Singleton 2014
1 Oliver’s Yard
55 City Road First published 2014
London EC1Y 1SP
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SAGE Publications Inc. private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013946898
Editor: Chris Rojek
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
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table of contents
Andrew Singleton 2014
List of Tables vi
List of Figures vii
First published 2014
About the Author viii
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or Acknowledgements ix
private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Introduction: Religion, Culture and Society xi
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication
may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by
any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the PART I MAKING SENSE OF RELIGION AND
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, RELIGIOUS CHANGE: THEORETICAL AND
in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES 1
Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning
reproduction outside those terms should be sent to
1 What is Religion and Spirituality? 3
the publishers.
2 Modern Times: Classical Approaches in the Social Scientific Study of
Religion 18
3 Twentieth-Century Challenges, Twentieth-Century Thinkers 34
4 Towards Contemporary Theorizing: Secularization, the
‘Religious Economy’ and Globalization 48
5 Studying Contemporary Religion: Methods and Data 62
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013946898
PART II WINDS OF CHANGE: RELIGION AND
SPIRITUALITY IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD 79
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from 6 Post-Christian Nations? Christianity’s Decline in Great Britain,
the British Library Australia and Canada 81
7 One Nation Under God? American ‘Exceptionalism’ 102
8 Christian Vitality? Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin America 119
9 Buddhism and Hinduism in a Globalized World 140
10 The Rise of the Global Ummah? Recent Trends in Islam 158
11 ‘Lived’ Religion in Everyday Life 176
12 The End of Religion? The New Atheism and Secularism 193
13 The Future of Religion? Young People, Religion and Spirituality 208
ISBN 978-1-4462-0290-6 References 226
ISBN 978-1-4462-0291-3 (pbk) Index 249
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list of tables
5.1 Various national census programs that have data on religious
identification 73
5.2 Cross-national survey programs that have data on religion 74
5.3 National survey programs that have data on religion 75
5.4 Major US religion surveys with downloadable data sets 75
6.1 Religious affiliation of Australians 1901–2011 (percentage of the
population) 89
6.2 Religious affiliation of Canadians 1931–2011 (percentage of the
population) 92
7.1 Religious self-identification of the US adult population 1990,
2001, 2008 108
7.2 Adult population of selected countries: belief in God, belief in hell,
frequency of prayer, attendance at services of worship and religious
self-description (percentage of population) 110
12.1 Adult population of selected countries: belief in God (percentage of
population) 195
13.1 Teenagers in Australia, Britain, Canada, United States: religious beliefs,
identification and practices by country (percentage of age group
within country) 211
13. 2 Teenagers in Australia, Britain, Canada, United States: belief in
astrology (percentage of age group within country) 217
13.3 Teenagers in Australia, Britain, Canada, United States: belief in
‘contact with the dead’ (percentage of age group within country) 217
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list of figures
1.1 Example of a place of worship (I): a traditional Australian
‘bush’ church 7
1.2 Example of a place of worship (II): statue of Mazu the Heavenly
Queen, a Chinese folk religion deity 8
1.3 Religious affiliation of the world’s population 13
2.1 A modern-day Spiritualist church, the religion that speaks to
the dead 23
6.1 Change in religious affiliation, 2001–2011, England and Wales 84
8.1 Regional distribution of Christians 122
8.2 A typical house found in the Papua New Guinea (PNG)
Highlands 135
8.3 A Foursquare Gospel church service in the PNG Highlands. In this
photo the children are receiving a special children’s message 135
9.1 The Chua Phat Quang Buddhist Temple, West Footscray, Victoria,
Australia 150
9.2 Shrine at the Quang Minh Buddhist Temple, Braybrook, Victoria,
Australia 150
9.3 Statues of Lakshmi, Krishna and Ganesh, ‘India at Home’ store,
West Footscray, Victoria, Australia 151
10.1 Pilgrims walking around the Kaaba during the Hajj 165
10.2 Regional distribution of the world’s Muslim population 167
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about the author
Andrew Singleton, PhD, is a sociologist in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at
Monash University, Australia. His research interests in the sociology of religion include
secularization, youth religion, personal belief and alternative religions. Singleton has
published extensively in these areas both nationally and internationally. He is co-author
(with Michael Mason and Ruth Webber) of the book The Spirit of Generation Y: Young
People’s Spirituality in a Changing Australia (Garrett Publishing 2007).
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acknowledgements
I gratefully acknowledge the copyright owners for permission to use the following
material: Figure 6.1 adapted from the ONS licensed under the Open Government
Licence v. 1.0. Table 7.1 was originally published in Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar
(2009) American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS 2008), Summary Report. Hartford,
CT: Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, © 2009 The Institute
for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. Figure 8.2 is from the Pew Research
Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, Global Christianity: A Report on the Size
and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population, © 2011 Pew Research Center. http://
pewforum.org. Figure 10.1 © Ayazad/Fotolia. The epigraphs in Chapter 4 are from
Rodney Stark (1999) ‘Secularization, R.I.P.’, Sociology of Religion, 60 (3): 249–273 and
Steve Bruce (2001) ‘Christianity in Britain, R. I. P.’, Sociology of Religion 62, (2):
191–203 respectively, both used with permission from Oxford University Press.
Parts of Chapter 13, including the three tables, were previously published as:
Michael Mason, Andrew Singleton and Ruth Webber (2010) ‘Developments in spir-
ituality among youth in Australia and other western societies’, in Giuseppe Giordan
(ed.), Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, vol 1: Youth and Religion, Leiden: Brill.
Used with permission from Brill. Special thanks to Michael Mason who created
Table 13.1, and who wrote the paragraph which introduces that table. A version of
the case study in Chapter 11 was published previously as Andrew Singleton (2012)
‘Beyond heaven: young people and the afterlife’, Journal of Contemporary Religion,
27 (3): 453–68. Used with permission from Taylor and Francis. Some paragraphs in
Chapters 1, 6 and 13 were adapted from Andrew Singleton (2011) ‘Religion and
spirituality’, in John Germov and Marilyn Poole (eds.), Public Sociology, 2nd edn.
Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Used with permission from Allen & Unwin.
I’d like to thank the team at Sage Publications who helped bring this book to
fruition. Chris Rojek invited the proposal and offered very helpful suggestions and
guidance as I developed the contents of the book. Chris also suggested the title of
the book. Jai Seaman, Martine Jonsrud and Gemma Shields answered all my queries
with good grace and efficiency and assisted me greatly as I prepared the manuscript.
Thanks also to production editor Katherine Haw and copyeditor Rose James for
attending to the finer points of the manuscript.
I conducted some of my research on Spiritualism, Theosophy and afterlife belief at
the Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History, Turku, Finland.
They have a wonderful library, situated in a beautiful location on the River Aura
and it was a delight to work there. Special thanks to the Donner staff and academics,
including Björn Dahla, Ruth Illman and Joakim Alander.
I wrote several chapters while living in Goroka, Eastern Highlands Province,
Papua New Guinea. I’d like to thank several people there, including scholars from
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