Individueller religiöser Pluralismus - Perspektiven für kulturpsychologische Forschung

A few years ago, sociologist Peter Berger argued in favour of a paradigm shift in understanding the relationship between modernity and religion. He proposed replacing secularisation theory with a theory of pluralism, thereby accentuating two forms of pluralism: the co-existence of different religions and the co-existence of religious and secular discourses in society as well as in individual consciousness. Linda Woodhead complemented these two forms of religious pluralism with a third form of dedifferentiation, characterised by the softening of clear boundaries between religions and between the religious and the secular. She sees explanatory potential in all three pluralisms to understand the rise of the so-called nones in many post-industrial societies. In this article, examples from empirical research projects are used to point out the analytical potential of the three pluralisms with regard to the phenomenon of individual religious pluralism, and are combined with suggestions for corresponding cultural-psychological analyses.