Secular Religions

Abstract

The term ‘secular religions’ can be used to describe certain apparently secular enterprises that appear to share common features with enterprises usually thought of as ‘religious.’ Examples of ideologies and activities that have been called secular religions are Marxism, nationalism, environmentalism, certain business enterprises, sport, self-help groups, and voluntary associations. Pursuing the analogy between such enterprises and religion raises serious theoretical questions concerning the proper definition of religion, the process of secularization and the nature of religion in contemporary societies. Within contemporary sociology and anthropology, there exist several different research traditions that focus on the boundary between the religious and the secular. Students of ‘civil religion’ study the sacred aspects of political and civil life in state societies. The ‘implicit religion’ tradition examines noninstitutionalized and ‘invisible’ aspects of the sacred in ostensibly secular modern societies. A number of scholars use religious terminology, such as ‘ritual’ and ‘conversion,’ to describe social processes in everyday life. Other scholars, who employ the term ‘quasi-religion,’ explore the social construction of religious labels, treating ‘religion,’ not as an entity, but as a claim made by some and contested by others.