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According to recent studies, neither of those are really happening. "Secularization theory" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularization#Current_issues_in_secu
by phd514 8y ago
According to recent studies, neither of those are really happening. "Secularization theory" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularization#Current_issues_in_secularization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularization#Current_issues_...) is the current sociological term for (a) and it is pretty well established that while there may be regional fluctuation in the numbers of religious people, at a global level, religiosity is not in decline.
As for (b), at least in the US, it is the large mainline denominations that are in steep decline and the smaller, more theologically conservative denominations that are growing most rapidly. Mega-churches are a phenomenon, but not one that falls easily into either of the above categories because they can range all the way from progressive to prosperity gospel to theologically conservative and nearly anything in between.
- mindcrime 8y agoIt's hardly conclusive, but I did an analysis using data from the General Social Survey[1] last year for a stats class, and found a downward trend in "religiosity"[2] in America between 1974 (or so) and 2014 (or so). Granted, that's only looking at America, not world-wide, but at least here in the US there seems to be some support for a general decline in the importance of religion. [1]: http://gss.norc.org/ http://gss.norc.org/ [2]: a synthetic metric based on multiple questions on the survey which related to religion - some like "how frequently do you attend a religious service", "how important do you consider religion to be in your life", etc., etc.