Secularisation is an ecclesiastical regime of truth not a sociological event: a practical definition of religion re-visited

Abstract

In a previous article, in this Journal (2011, 21.1) Steve Bruce put forward a practical definition of religion which he held out as offering considerable explanatory scope: religion consists of beliefs, actions and institutions which assume the existence of supernatural entities with powers of action, or impersonal powers or processes possessed of moral purpose. This article proposes that this definition holds dramatic explanatory scope that has yet to be realised by sociology. The element ‘moral purpose’ in that definition represents a not clearly acknowledged, but nevertheless substantial, agreement amongst sociologists that religion is a life-meaning-making enterprise defined by the imposition of moral order on a universe that is incomprehensible and indifferent to human existence. The full implication of that definition is the reversal of the conventional perspective on secularisation. If the placement of life within a meaningful sense of existence is the domain of religion, it follows that today's secular placing is just as much a religious enterprise of world building. The use of supernatural entities is only one method to anchor that placement: they are a dispensable adjunct to religion. The Gods are representatives of the truly sacred fact, which stands independent of them, that human existence has to make meaning for itself. To treat the supernatural entities as essential to the definition of religion is to adopt an ecclesiastical conceit from which a sociological perspective needs to free itself. The way forward for sociology is to deconstruct the present regime of truth through the recovery of the secular religion that comprises today's life-meaning-making enterprise. The article falls into two parts. The first identifies elements of consensus among sociological theorists that religion is defined by life-meaning-making and seeks to reinforce that consensus with a range of working examples that illustrate different ways in which religious life-meaning is constructed. The second part develops theory and a selection of research avenues in the new task to characterise today's secular religion.