Conclusion

Abstract

If religion is the search for meaningful understandings of reality it has taken an enormous diversity of forms. This should not, perhaps, surprise us too much since the range of possibilities is limited, as Stark and Bainbridge (1987) point out, only by the human imagination. The very diversity itself testifies to the problematic nature of this search. A not unreasonable conclusion to draw from this might well be that even after millennia of human endeavour in this respect, no satisfactory answers have yet been or are likely to be found. An equally reasonable conclusion, on the other hand, might be that many societies or social groups have found answers that work very well for them and with which they are satisfied. Religious beliefs, once established, can be remarkably resilient and resistant to change and modification; once established, a meaningful account of reality is not easily questioned or relinquished. To subject it to question is to pose too serious a threat to the sense that things hang together in a meaningful order. Religious answers, however, do change, develop and are sometimes supplanted by others. Such fluidity as religion manifests is undeniably closely bound up with social change.