The topic of this article, religion and consumer culture, highlights the fact that religion has entered the market of ideas and experiences. Even though being essentially a late modern phenomenon, the historical roots of the development can be traced back to the spread of capitalism and to the ideology of consumerism. Consuming religion has become a distinct feature of late modern religiosity. The initial question was how different contemporary theorists of modern religion (Bruce, Luckmann, Stark and Bainbridge) have understood the consuming religionist and the religious market. Noticing an underdeveloped idea of both the consumer and the market, I sought help from other sociologists (Bocock, Featherstone, Lehtonen) to get a better idea of contemporary consumption. Combining ideas from various theorists (mainly Luckmann and Featherstone) I was able to show the sometimes playful nature of contemporary religion that goes unnoticed, if the researcher still sees religion solely as a serious search for the meaning of life.

The article has been published in Tidskrift for kirke, religion og samfunn that is today the Nordic Journal of Religion and Society.