Culture and Religion

An Interdisciplinary Journal

ISSN: 1475-5610 (Print) 1475-5629 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcar20

(Un)believing in modern society: religion,

spirituality, and religious-secular competition

Claire Wanless

To cite this article: Claire Wanless (2019): (Un)believing in modern society: religion, spirituality,
and religious-secular competition, Culture and Religion, DOI: 10.1080/14755610.2019.1572099

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2019.1572099

Published online: 24 Jan 2019.

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CULTURE AND RELIGION

BOOK REVIEW

(Un)believing in modern society: religion, spirituality, and religious-

secular competition, by Jörg Stolz, Judith Könemann, Mallory
Schneuwly Purdie, Thomas Englberger and Michael Krüggeler, Abingdon,
Routledge, 2016, (hbk), 310 pp., £115 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4724-6128-5

For those interested in change in the religious landscape in Europe over the last
70 years, this book is a fascinating and informative read. It utilises data from
various sources to present a new description of the contemporary religious and
spiritual landscape in Switzerland, which the authors argue also parallels those of
other Western societies (196). Underpinning this is a theory of religious change
predicated on competition between a variety of religious and secular suppliers, as
well as an explanatory typology of religious and social types that the authors
developed during the course of the research. The main study on which this book
is based was conducted in 2008–2009, and combined a quantitative survey
representative of the Swiss population with qualitative data from 73 interviews
of individuals from a range of backgrounds. The interviews were designed to elicit
data regarding the participants’ own upbringing and that of their children as well
as their spiritual lives. The authors examined this data alongside census data and
the results of over 20 other studies of religion and religiosity in Switzerland from
throughout the period since the early 1960s.
The book begins with a statement of the importance of assigning
a prominent place to the individual in contemporary ‘me-society’ (1). The
typology thus maps individuals along two dimensions (‘institutional religiosity’
and ‘alternative spirituality’), according to scores assigned through quantitative
analysis and iteratively triangulated against the qualitative data. The authors use
‘institutional religiosity’ specifically to refer to connection to products and
teachings of Christian churches, and ‘alternative spirituality’ to refer to connec-
tion to products of alternative-spiritual suppliers (52). This is therefore to a large
extent a typology of consumption. Aggregating individuals on proximity, the
authors arrive at four top-level types and a total of nine sub-types. The types
and sub-types generally correspond to common sense classifications, for exam-
ple, ‘institutional’ (connecting strongly with product from Christian churches),
‘alternative’ (connecting strongly with product from alternative-spiritual suppli-
ers), and ‘secular’ (not very connected with either Christian or alternative-
spiritual product) (53). However, the conflation of ‘alternative customers’ (who
consume spiritual product with little spiritual intention) and ‘Sheilaists’ (who
actively develop their own personal religion) into one sub-type seems proble-
matic. Indeed, the authors do acknowledge the indistinctness of this sub-type
(59) and also the relative paucity of data relating to these individuals in the
study (194).
2 BOOK REVIEW

Having thus categorised their research participants, the authors use their
research data to characterise each type and sub-type, in terms of participants’
identity and affiliations, beliefs, and values. While there is much useful information
here, the wide-ranging nature of the study inevitably leads to this characterisation
occasionally feeling somewhat broad-brushed. The subsequent section, examining
the range of suppliers pertinent to each type and perceptions relating to those
suppliers, yields valuable insights into the diverse supplier–customers relation-
ships at play in the different milieus. However, the general focus on understand-
ing individuals through their relationship to external suppliers does risk the
possibility of overlooking the extent to which individuals themselves act as
producers on their own behalf. Exploration of this could, for example, be
approached through further study on the lived religion of members of the various
types.
The theory of religious change presented in the book is based on a study of
changes between and within the various datasets over time, especially with
respect to the types set up in the model above. The theory focuses on religious
institutions and specialists as suppliers competing with other religious suppliers
as well as with secular competitors such as leisure suppliers. The overall thesis is
that changes in the competition regime from that of an industrial society to that
of a ‘me-society’ led to a decline in the legitimacy of competition for power and
influence at a societal level, in favour of an increase in competition for individual
demand (191). To some extent then, this is a theory of secularisation as priva-
tisation, individualisation and increasing consumerism.
This is a meticulously researched and well-argued book, which presents
a plausible and even-handed account of the demographic changes inherent in
secularising societies. However, on reading, a number of questions arose. First,
despite the book’s explicitly stated focus on the point of view of the individual,
and the authors’ acknowledgement of the uniqueness of each subject, the meth-
odology looks for and therefore necessarily privileges ‘perpetually recurring social
norms’ (3). While this provides a useful way of understanding social trends, com-
plementary (perhaps ethnographic) work on the complexity and diversity of indi-
viduals’ religious lives and choices also seems necessary. Second, and relatedly,
while there are chapters on identity, beliefs and values, nevertheless the focus on
suppliers tends toward presenting individuals primarily as consumers of product
and services, rather than as active religious producers in their own right. As briefly
mentioned above, further work on the extent to which individuals engage in lived
religion or self-driven religious creativity could provide further insights into the
various forms of religion and spirituality observed, and into religious change. Third,
the authors’ findings support previous observations of a ‘gender gap’, whereby
women of all age groups tend towards both greater institutional religiosity and
higher levels of alternative spirituality. The authors acknowledge that this is
a problem for their theory, since they would have expected a narrowing of this
gap in younger generations. There is clearly a need for further research into the
reasons for this.
In summary, this is an interesting read, especially for anyone who wants to
understand the landscape of religious suppliers in contemporary Western
 CULTURE AND RELIGION 3

society, the relationships between those suppliers and those who make use of
their product, and the ways the role of these suppliers has been affected by
shifts in social attitudes. The methodological focus on the view of the individual
yields useful insights into trends relating to the religious lives of those who use
their product. The theory of change developed by the authors works best with
respect to Christianity and at a societal level, especially with respect to the social
and structural situations of the various religious suppliers. However, in terms of
the diversity and complexity of individual subjective religious experience, the
book perhaps throws up as many questions as it answers.

Claire Wanless
The Open University
Claire.Wanless@open.ac.uk
© 2019 Claire Wanless
https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2019.1572099