The article addresses the relationship between religion and politics, and combines theories on religious change with theories on political cleavages. Empirical evidence is presented from a Norwegian survey of new forms of religiosity and political attitudes. Woodhead and Heelas (2004) have posited the hypothesis that a silent revolution is taking place where (traditional) religion is giving way to what they call “spirituality of life.” This article questioned the assumption that the individualistic and consumer-oriented New Age movement of the 1980s and 1990s has developed into a new religious movement that is concerned with life quality and social questions. According to the literature on political cleavages, certain demands have to be fulfilled before a social divide or a conflict develops into a full political cleavage. With respect to alternative religion, the empirical analysis reveals that the main obstacle is related to the lack of a collective ideological platform.
The author compares religious and moral values of three generations in Scandinavia, starting from the question: is it true that young people lack moral principles and have low moral standards compared with older generations? The assumed moral decay in society is often blamed on the young generation. The empirical evidence of the RAMP survey (Religious and Moral Pluralism) does not support this hypothesis. Young people are, however, to a large extent guided by other moral principles than the older generations. While young people often stress the consequences of their moral actions, the older generations emphasize the existence of general rules about right and wrong. This indicates that the young and the older generations approach moral issues in quite different ways. Our material is taken from the RAMP survey conducted in the four Scandinavian countries from 1998 to 1999. RAMP has made it possible for researchers to study the relationships between religiosity and morality in new ways compared to the European Values Studies.L'auteur compare les valeurs religieuses et morales de trois ge´ne´rations diffe´rentes en Scandinavie. Son point de de´part est la question de savoir s'il est vrai que les jeunes manquent de principes moraux et me`nent une vie moins morale que les ge´ne´rations plus aˆge´es. Cette hypothe`se est de´mentie par la recherche empirique RAMP (Religious and Moral Pluralism) qui montre que les jeunes sont a`l'e´vidence largement guide´s par des principes moraux mais que ceux-ci sont autres que ceux des ge´ne´rations pre´ce´dentes. Tandis que les jeunes insistent souvent sur les conse´quences de leurs actions morales, les plus aˆge´s mettent davantage l'accent sur des re`gles ge´ne´rales concernant le bien et le mal. Il ressort aussi que les jeunes et les plus aˆge´s approchent les questions morales de fac¸on assez diffe´rente. Ce mate´riau est tire´de la recherche RAMP qui a e´te´re´alise´e dans les quatre pays scandinaves en 1998-1999. Elle a permis aux chercheurs de revisiter les rapports entre attitudes religieuses et attitudes morales au regard des Etudes des Valeurs Europe´ennes.
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