religious market theory

Stark and Bainbridge (1985) recommend the religious market theory. They criticse the secularisation theory for its 'disorted view' of the past and the future. Stark and Bainbridge base religious market theory on two assumptions:

• People are naturally religious and religion meets human needs
• People make rational choices based on costs and benefits of the available religious options. 
• Religion is attractive because it provides us with a supernatural compensation when real rewards are unobtainable eg. immortality is unobtainable but religion compensates with the promising of life after…