Religion Today: ‘Public Decline’ in an ‘Anthropological Refuge’?
Religion Today: ‘Public Decline’ in an ‘Anthropological Refuge’?

Author(s): Nonka Bogomilova
Subject(s): Cultural history, Theology and Religion, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: contemporary religion; subjective religion; secularization vs; desecularization debate; philosophical paradigms; sociological approaches
Summary/Abstract: The paper examines diverse theoretical standpoints on issues related to the interpretation of contemporary religiosity. A distinction is made between, on the one hand, authors who acknowledge as indisputable the secular, non-religious nature of the contemporary times and, on the other hand, authors and ideas that consider the contemporary world as totally religious; between interpretations of the existential horizon of religion as providing a unique and irreplaceable transcendental meaning and support to the mortal individual, as opposed to those viewing religion as a transient cultural condition in the course of the maturing and autonomous self-assertion of the individual and society. These general theoretical and value-based interpretations, developed in particular by the philosophy and sociology of religion, are taken up here in order to understand the dynamic processes developing in the modern/postmodern religious situation, registered by sociological research and fieldwork or observed in various regional phenomena. The emptying of religion of its social ‘infrastructure’ role – the global framework of the social body – shifts the ‘point of application’ of religion from the social to the individual level, to human subjectivity. The methodological turn from the group and community to the individual is analyzed as both culturally justified and very limited. This investigation tries to clarify the issue: is ‘subjective’ religion an ‘anthropological residue’ doomed to depletion, or an essential element of ‘revived’ religion?

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