Family Resemblances Twixt Implicit Religion and Post-modernity

Abstract

This article explores parallels and convergences between implicit religion and post-modernity. The elective affinity between them is considered as a constructive combined “take” on late modern religion, culture and society. The aim is primarily to identify some overlap, some family resemblances, between key post-modern concepts and a number of the central themata of implicit religion, construed as a perspective or point of view on the human social and cultural condition. Drawing upon a variety of contributors to post-modern theory and implicit religion studies, this meta-analysis illuminates ways in which the “third way” conception of sacrality (cf. Bailey), inherent in the implicit religion (IR) perspective, resonates with the “liquidity” (cf. Bauman) of post-modernity (POMO). This holistic IR-POMO point of view, it is suggested, offers a challenging heuristic alternative to the “static polarities” (cf. Elias) of “gnostic thought” (cf. Jonas), and a “post-secular” mode of creative resistance to modernist hyper-secularism.