Shrinking Transcendence, Expanding Religion?

Religion is not disappearing from the modern world: experiences of transcendence are a universal component of human life. Human experience is a continuous flow of “little,” “dintermediate,” and “great” transcendences. Societies differ significantly in how they “organize” and control subjective experiences including the experiences of the “little” spatial and temporal transcendences of everyday life, of the “intermediate” transcendences of fellow human beings, and the “great” transcendences of life and death. One of the most important consequences of the “modern” differentiation of the social structure, including the institutional specialization of religion, has been customarily interpreted as the “secularization” of the modern world. However, it is better understood as a process of profound change in the “location” of religion in society — as the “privatization” of religion. Modern social constructions of religious significance shifted away from the “great” other-worldly transcendences to the “intermediate” (political) and also to the minimal transcendences of modern solipsism whose main themes (“self-realization,” personal autonomy, and self-expression) tend to bestow a sacred status upon the individual.