For a long time it was taken for granted that with the rise of science we should expect to see religion getting increasingly marginalised till belief and superstition gets replaced by a modern and secular way of life.
However this hasn’t happened. Not because the absolute number of believers has grown as that could have happened along with rising population but because of their percentage.
These statistics indicate that the number of believers isn’t showing any decline. Almost any independent survey reveals that whether it’s Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism or Islam, they’re as influential today as they were earlier.
Religion still continues to play a significant role in several spheres of life such as the intellectual, political, artistic and cultural.
Jennifer Hecht author of several award-winning books on philosophy, history and poetry, including Doubt: A History thinks she knows why. The reason she says is that although more and more people have become non-religious they still go to places of worship for important events in life like marriages, births and deaths.
Priests are aware of this and tolerate it because they’re no longer single-mindedly evangelical — and of course because it brings more people together in kindred functions.
Thus it’s easy now to see a possible future for religion. It will continue to grow worldwide and attract even the non-believers since it would no longer be perceived by them to be promoting the supernatural.
Instead the emphasis will shift to its calming, meditative and healing powers.
(This piece first appeared in The Economic Times)
