instruments of globalization and religious identity studying the relationship

this research probes the impact of instruments of globalization on the religious identity. this is why the theories that are used here include: the implant theory of george gerbne, the relevant theory as developed by teriandis, the theory of cultural coexistence, the theories relating to the american consumer culture, and the spread of western modernity. today globalization through intensification of worldwide social relations has rapidly expanded communications, cultural coexistence and cultural interactions. as a consequence, cultural relativism in values has become a prevalent phenomenon.  on the other hand with the increased interactions, a different phenomenon known as cultural imperialism is occurring through the process of which a culture overwhelms another culture. today, american capitalist consumer culture along with its distinctive values, such as consumerism and pleasure-oriented influences, is penetrating diverse communities. thus, globalization, with its apparent instruments (such as the internet and other satellite-based information technologies), contribute to the emergence and promotion of relativistic values, pleasure-oriented activities, which all leads to larger amounts of consumption, hitherto unprecedented. the appearance of such relativistic values, we argue, affects the religious identity of the relatively-speaking, pristine and simpler people, who come in contact with technologically-dominant cultures who own the means for production and dissemination of information. the recipients are overwhelmed by such complex production processes, and merely become consumers. here the case in point is the american culture. this is a survey-method research which uses the questionnaire for collecting data from its statistical society. the sampling technique is that of disproportionate stratified sampling, and the volume of the sample is 384 persons, a figure which was determined based on cochran formula. the most important finding of this research is that an increased use of the internet and other satellite-based devices, tend to diminish religious identity of the users at a significant rate.