Post-Secularism in a World-Historical Light: The Axial Age Thesis as an Alternative to Secularization
1
Centre for Religion, Conflict and the Public Domain, University of Groningen, Groningen 9712 GK, The Netherlands
2
Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA
Religions 2018, 9(5), 139; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9050139
Received: 5 March 2018 / Revised: 3 April 2018 / Accepted: 4 April 2018 / Published: 24 April 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Public Role of Religion)
The secularization thesis claims that religion will lose its public influence as the forces of modernity advance. This hypothesis has long functioned as a paradigm within the humanities and social sciences. However, due to the apparent “resurgence” of publicly influential religion throughout the world in recent years, scholars have recognized that a “straightforward narrative of progress from the religious to the secular” is no longer viable. I describe the current state of narrative perplexity regarding the changing place of religion in the modern world as the “post-secular problematic.” The aim of this article is to examine the contours of one specific post-secular narrative of religious change—the one that has crystallized around the concept of the axial age—and consider how it can be used to reconceptualize the public role of religion in the modern world.
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Keywords:
religion; axial age; secularism; post-secular; public religion; religious history
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Schewel, B. Post-Secularism in a World-Historical Light: The Axial Age Thesis as an Alternative to Secularization. Religions 2018, 9, 139.
AMA Style
Schewel B. Post-Secularism in a World-Historical Light: The Axial Age Thesis as an Alternative to Secularization. Religions. 2018; 9(5):139.
Chicago/Turabian StyleSchewel, Benjamin. 2018. "Post-Secularism in a World-Historical Light: The Axial Age Thesis as an Alternative to Secularization" Religions 9, no. 5: 139.
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