“Affi rmative Genealogy” of Religion from a Sociological Perspective

Abstract

Religion is often believed to be based on the use of binary concepts (sacred/profane, transcendent/immanent, religious/secular and religious/postsecular), which are assumed to have the same meaning. This, however, is not the case. This work presents an ?affi rmative genealogy? of the distinct meanings and the social genesis of these concepts. The ?sacred/profane? pairing represents epistemological and cognitive categories which are common to all religious experiences in terms of time and space, separating different domains of the world. The ?transcendent/ immanent? pairing represents historical categories created around the 5th century BC, with the emergence of the Axial Age. The ?religious/secular? pairing also represents historical categories, but this time they come from Western European Christianity. The ?religious/postsecular? pairing represents sociological categories originating during the ?postsecular? world (but not a post-religious one).