Individualization and religious change in Germany

Sociologists of religion are more and more convinced that the term individu alization describes religious change in Western Germany and other Western E uropean countries better than the term secularization. This paper tries to substantiate this hypothesis. The result is that processes of individualiza tion, which can hardly be denied in themselves, lead to a greater distance to traditional Christian forms of religion than to non-Christian or syncret istic forms of religion. People who favor items of individualization show s ome distance from all forms of religion and church, whereas people who favo r syncretistic and non-ecclesiastical forms of religion show hardly any acc eptance of these items of individualization. That means there is a negative correlation between processes of individualization and religious or church connections. As a result, it is inappropriate to replace the term seculari zation with the term individualization. It seems better to use both terms t o explain different processes of religious change.