Metamorphosis of the Sacred: Power, Identity, and New Ontologies in Late Modernity

1. The Post-Secular Horizon and the Reinvention of the Sociology of Religion

The sociology of religion, as a discipline, has traveled a long path since the predictions of the founding fathers of sociology to the complex reality of the 21st century. For much of modern history, the discipline was dominated by a “grand narrative” or grand récit of secularization. This narrative, whose intellectual origins trace back to Saint-Simon, Comte, and Spencer, possessed an undeniably teleological stamp: it was believed that the more modern a society became, the more secular and less religious it would be. Under this paradigm, it was assumed that the advancement of scientific rationality, the functional differentiation of social spheres, and technical progress would inevitably lead to the “disenchantment of the world” and the confinement of the religious to the private sphere, if not its total disappearance.

However, contemporary empirical evidence and recent theoretical debates have fractured this consensus. As Aguiluz-Ibargüen and Beriain point out in this volume, that “sociological conjecture” which automatically associated modernization with religious decline has proven to be empirically false on a global level. Europe, far from being the universal norm prefiguring humanity’s future, is revealed today as an “islet of secular exceptionality” in an ocean of religious persistence. The classical theory failed in attempting to apply itself as a global rule, ignoring, for instance, the religious vitality of the United States—a country both modern and deeply religious—or the dynamics of intramundane religions like Confucianism or Taoism, which never fit the Western tension between “this world” and “the other world”.

In this context, current sociology has moved toward a paradigm of “multiple modernities” and a “post-secular” understanding of reality. We no longer live in a world where the distinction between transcendence and immanence can be wiped clean. Rather, we find ourselves in what Charles Taylor has termed a “secular age,” defined not by the absence of God, but by a shift in the conditions of belief: faith is no longer axiomatic; it is one option among others. In this immanent frame, where we operate etsi Deus non daretur (“as if God did not exist”), the religious does not disappear but transforms and relocates.

In contrast to the teleology implicit in European secularism, which postulates a final conversion of the religious “they” into a post-religious “we,” these two circles do not function as irreconcilably opposed or disjointed elements. Rather, they operate as two circles of sociality that must be carefully understood as possibilities that enter into relation, tension, and mutual interpenetration within each society. Although the general theory of secularization that emerged in Europe prematurely postulated the advent of a post-dualist world, anchored exclusively in the flourishing of the secular immanent world, it is necessary to recognize that the immanent framework itself generates new experiences of transcendence, in opposition to the secularist ideology—whether active or passive—of the state. Transcendence thus remains possible within a context of functional differentiation of social spheres, in which the religious phenomenon persists in plural forms.

The contemporary “postsecular” world is not characterized by the disappearance of “the religious,” despite the fact that in some societies, such as those of Europe, religious beliefs and practices have declined markedly. Rather, it is characterized by a continuous expansion of new religious, spiritual, and anti-religious options. This is because, when it comes to religion, there is no single global and uniform rule. If we assume the centrality of the religious phenomenon within a context of multiple differentiations, plural secularizations, multiple modernities, and, of course, transnational religions, this world can no longer be described as secular, but rather as “postsecular.” Recognizing this fact consequently undermines the secularist confidence in the imminent disappearance of the religious phenomenon.

Current debates, which this Special Issue collects and amplifies, suggest that the category of “the religious” is itself a construction of Western secular modernity. By questioning the linear narrative of secularization, the need arises to analyze how the sacred metamorphoses. Durkheim already warned that society possesses an incessant capacity to create sacred things out of the profane, sacralizing the nation, liberty, or reason. Thus, contemporary sociological research must attend not only to the decline of traditional ecclesial institutions but also to the “sacralization of the secular,” the proliferation of non-affiliated spiritualities, and the instrumentalization of religious identity in mass politics.

Furthermore, the Simmelian distinction between “religiosity” (as a vital quality) and “religion” (as an institutionalized form) gains new relevance. Traditional statistics, obsessed with church attendance or dogmatic affiliation, often fail to capture “secular religiosity” or the forms of diffuse belief that characterize advanced societies. This volume addresses these tensions, exploring how religion today is not just a matter of personal faith, but a question of cultural belonging, a tool of imperial governance, an ontological refuge in the face of scientific uncertainty, and a battlefield for the definition of human rights and dignity.

As Guest Editors of this Special Issue of the journal Religions, titled “The Sociological Study of Religion,” we present a collection of eleven articles that, far from taking the death of God or the triumph of secularism for granted, demonstrate the vitality, ambiguity, and political potency of the sacred in the contemporary and historical world. Through case studies ranging from Imperial Japan to democratic Spain, passing through communist China and the United States of the Black Panthers, this volume proposes that the study of religion is, today more than ever, the study of the fundamental tensions of modernity.

2. The Sacralization of the Secular and the Limits of Secularization

The first axis of the monograph challenges the unidirectionality of secularization and explores the new ontologies of the sacred.

Maya Aguiluz-Ibargüen and Josetxo Beriain, in their article “Sacralization of Secular Spheres in Modernity,” establish the fundamental theoretical framework. They argue that modernity is not merely a process of emptying the sacred, but a machine for the production of new sacralities. They analyze phenomena such as the French Revolution, where the Fatherland and Reason were objects of direct worship, and American “civil religion,” which sacralizes the nation and its institutions without adhering to a specific confession. The authors highlight how modernity has sacralized immanent spheres such as the “human person,” converting human rights into a new faith where the individual is, simultaneously, the believer and the God. This sacralization extends even to the figure of the child, whose accidental death in the 20th century transformed from a misfortune into an “intolerable sacrilege.” Their work forces us to rethink secularization not as the end of the religious, but as the migration of the sacred toward secular objects.

This theoretical framework is empirically grounded in the work of Javier Gil-Gimeno and Gorka Urrutia Asua, “The Structure of Beliefs and Religious Practices in Spain: A Three-Part Society?”. Analyzing the Spanish case, the authors describe the transition from a religiously monolithic society to a tripartite structure: a declining Catholic majority, a growing group of religious minorities, and a booming sector of “nones” (atheists, agnostics, indifferent). However, their most critical contribution lies in questioning current statistical tools. They argue that by identifying religiosity exclusively with “historical religions,” surveys underestimate the impact of secular religiosities and blindly reinforce the narrative of secularization. They warn that categories such as “atheist” or “indifferent” may hide dynamics of secular sacralization (such as nationalism or the cult of the individual) that standard metrics ignore.

At a level of ontological and symbolic analysis, Jacinto Choza explores “The Feminine Sacred: An Ontosociology of Woman as a Symbol.” Choza traces representations of the feminine divinity from the Neolithic Great Mother to the Virgin Mary, arguing that woman symbolizes indeterminate matter and primordial energy. His analysis connects ancient cosmology with modern physics, suggesting that “mother matter” or the quantum vacuum represent the feminine sacred as origin and return (regressus ad uterum). This text is crucial because it shows how religious symbolic structures persist and underlie sociological and political configurations, even in contemporary debates on feminism, where the tension between equality and difference has deep theological roots.

Finally, Todd Madigan, in “Perfect Fools: Sanctity, Madness, and the Theory of Ambiguous Performance,” offers an innovative perspective from cultural pragmatics. Analyzing the historical figure of the “holy fools”—individuals who, like St. Symeon of Emesa, acted obscenely or irrationally—Madigan challenges the idea that the meaning of a social performance depends on the actor’s intention. He proposes the theory of “ambiguous performance,” where incompatible roles (saint and madman) are presented simultaneously. The sociological importance lies in the fact that it is the audience, not the actor, who constructs meaning based on their own interpretive identity. This has profound implications for understanding how modern societies label the sacred and the profane, madness and sanctity, in an environment of interpretive uncertainty.

3. Religion, Politics, and the Struggle for Identity

The second thematic block addresses the instrumentalization of religion in the political arena, both as a tool of domination and resistance.

Carmen Innerarity and Antonello Canzano present a comparative analysis of the radical populist right in “National Populism and Religion: The Case of Fratelli d’Italia and Vox.” The authors demonstrate that these parties do not seek a revival of theological faith but use Christianity as a cultural identity to define the native “people” against the “Other,” represented primarily by Islam. This political use of religion is paradoxically combined with a defense of secularism (a “Christian secularism”) when it serves to exclude Muslim symbols from the public space. Christianity thus becomes a “culturalized religion,” a heritage without a creed that legitimizes nativist policies under the guise of defending Western civilization.

At the other end of the political and temporal spectrum, Sergio García-Magariño and Aaron Yates examine the Black Panther Party (BPP) in “Violence, Politics and Religion: A Case Study of the Black Panther Party.” Although the BPP was a secular organization in a Black movement largely comprising religious groups (led by figures like Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X), the authors show how its ideology of self-defense interacted with the religious imaginary of its environment. The study reveals that the violent “radicalization” of the BPP was not inherent but a relational response to brutal state repression (COINTELPRO). This article challenges the simple dichotomy between the religious and the secular in social movements, showing how a secular organization can adopt and adapt repertoires of action in an ecosystem saturated with religiosity.

Religion also appears as an imperial battlefield. Yiwei Xiao and Yuanlin Wang, in “The Separation of Church and State as an Imperial Project in the Philippines during the Early American Colonial Period,” demystify liberal secularism. They argue that the imposition of church-state separation by the U.S. in the Philippines was not merely an administrative measure but a project of cultural hegemony. Colonial administrators used the narrative of “religious freedom” to contrast American democratic “civilization” with the “corrupt” and “barbaric” theocracy of the Spanish friars. Thus, secularism reveals itself as an imperial tool to legitimize colonial rule, constructing an unbridgeable difference between the new “enlightened” regime and the old Catholic regime.

Against the co-optation of religion by power, Eun-Young Park and Do-Hyung Kim recover a prophetic voice in “Is Religion Personal or Social?—Reading Yanaihara Tadao’s ‘The Ideal of the State’”. They analyze the figure of Yanaihara Tadao, a Christian and academic in Imperial Japan who used his faith to resist state nationalism. Yanaihara rejected the “subordinate peace” that demanded blind obedience to the Emperor, arguing that religion has a social responsibility of criticism based on divine justice. His concept of the “Ideal of the State” as justice, and not as power, shows how religion can serve to relativize absolute political authority and defend human dignity, acting as an ethical counter-power in times of crisis.

4. Alternative Epistemologies and Social Order

The third axis of the volume explores how religious traditions offer systems of knowledge and cohesion that compete with or complement modern Western rationality.

Chao Jia and Jingting Zhang offer a fascinating re-reading of rituals in “Affective Governance Through Ritual Praxis: A Comparative Study of Confucian Sacrificial Systems and Western Social Cohesion Theories.” Challenging Western functionalist interpretations (such as those of Durkheim), the authors argue that the Confucian sacrificial system is based not on fear or mere social cohesion, but on “affective governance.” The ethical transformation during the Zhou dynasty internalized ritual as an expression of intrinsically moral human nature (benevolence and reverence). This model proposes a social order based on vertical integration (ancestors-descendants) and the management of emotions, offering a humanistic alternative to Western legalistic rationality.

In the realm of science and faith, Yingxu Liu and Saiping An investigate conversion narratives in contemporary China in “The Tension Between Buddhism and Science Within Contemporary Chinese Buddhists.” Through interviews with monastics at the Larung Gar Buddhist Academy, they discover a surprising phenomenon: many monks, educated in secular scientism, converted to Buddhism not out of superstition, but because they perceived Buddhism as a “super-science”. For these practitioners, Buddhism offers epistemological and methodological answers superior to those of materialist science (for example, in the explanation of consciousness or high-dimensional physics). This study challenges the thesis that scientific modernization inevitably leads to secularization, showing how science can, paradoxically, act as a catalyst for religious conversion.

Finally, José Andrés-Gallego excavates the cultural archeology of the West in “Roots of 20th-Century Western Counterculture: From Guillem Rovirosa’s Catalonia to Its Antipode.” Using the microhistory of Guillem Rovirosa and his circle, the author traces how, before the explosion of 1968, there already existed a countercultural “melting pot” mixing Esperanto, naturism, spiritualism, and theosophy. This eclectic itinerary was not an anecdote but a symptom of a broader spiritual search attempting to escape both materialism and rigid institutional Christianity. Andrés-Gallego demonstrates that the search for “new certainties” and the blending of the political (anarchism) with the spiritual (theosophy) have deep roots that prefigure the diffuse spirituality of today.

5. Conclusions

This Special Issue of Religions invites the reader to a profound reconsideration of the boundaries of the sociology of religion. The articles gathered here demonstrate that religion in late modernity cannot be understood simply as a residual variable destined to disappear. On the contrary, the sacred demonstrates extraordinary plasticity: it migrates from altars to parliaments, disguises itself as cultural heritage to exclude the different, becomes a tool of resistance against empires, merges with quantum physics to explain reality, and structures our most intimate emotions.

The transversal thesis emerging from this volume is that secularization is not the end of religion, but its metamorphosis. We live in an era where the “sacralization of the person” coexists with “religious nationalism,” scientific pursuit with Buddhist mysticism, and militant secularism with new forms of spirituality. Studying religion today necessarily implies studying how human beings—whether in populist Europe, post-Maoist China, or colonial Philippines—construct meaning, legitimize power, and manage transcendence in an immanent world.

“The Sociological Study of Religion,” is a compendium that not only observes religious fact but interrogates the very nature of our modernity.