The proliferation of secular religions

The term ‘secular religion’ first appeared in the description of modern totalitarian ideologies but soon became a general category applied to other political, socio-economic and cultural phenomena. The first problem with this approach is the inherent contradiction of the term, since ‘secular’ by all modern definitions means ‘non-religious’, making a secular religion something like a ‘nonreligious religion’. The second is the wide range of examples from communism to liberalism, from capitalism to ecology, or from transhumanism to social media, which suggests that with some creativity almost anything can be described as secular and religious at the same time. The first part of the paper deals with the terminological difficulties, while the second outlines the history of drawing secular-religious analogies, concluding that the ultimate failure to give a coherent narrative of secular religions is rooted in the impossibility of giving an adequate definition of religion in the first place.

POSTSECULAR RELIGIOSITY AND ITS CONCEPTUAL VERSIONS: FROM "INVISIBLE RELIGION" TO "RELIGION WITHOUT ESSENCE"

The article is devoted to the theoretical reconstruction of the of the conceptual version of postsecular religiosity. All the theories clame that the traditional religion can survive today through cover-up it’s religious identity. This is accompanied by the marginalization of religious organizations and an increase in the influence of religion at the level of individual interest. Theological analysis is limited mainly by negative characteristics when describing post-secular religiosity: the devaluation of transcendence and the rejection of dualism (Daniel HervierLeger), the absence of doctrinal boundaries (Thomas Luckmann), the weakening of the ideological core of the doctrine (Roberto Cipriani). The author argues that post-secular religion is an implicit ideology in terms of the way it functions. In the late XX - early XXI century, a number of researchers (U. Eco, S. Zizek, G. Marcuse and others) noted that the imaginary post-ideology of modern society is associated with the formation of a specific type of ideology, which can be designated as "implicit". The post-Christian secular world is also "implicitly" religious. The author reveals the commonality of the processes taking place in the field of religion with the characteristics of the "post-ideological" world and concludes that the religiosity of the post-secular society is most productive to study precisely as part of an implicit ideology.

Dual Minds: Lessons from the French Context of Hume's Social Theory

Hume's theory of mind is often interpreted in associationist terms, portraying the mind as psychological and social. It is also argued that in his most famous philosophical works Hume has an irreligious agenda. These views are problematic because they overlook the issue of social obedience to political authority. By contrast, I examine the connections between Hume's works and those of Bayle and Montaigne. I argue that the French context of Hume's social theory sheds a new light on the dual mind. Indebted to a French Pyrrhonian heritage, Hume invokes custom as an explanatory concept in psychology and in the natural history of society. He also introduces religious analogies as he adopts a historical perspective in social and political theory. Along with custom, faith is crucial in his theory of government. The double nature of the mind thus corresponds to two distinct approaches: the customary mind engaging in profane, habitual activities; and the faithful mind participating in the sacred. Hume's analogy between society and secular religion is comparable to Durkheim's anthropology of rituals. Hume's affinity with Montaigne, Bayle, and Durkheim concerning to the duality of the mind, as customary and faithful, emphasises his role in the history of the French humanities.

Lenin’s Memorization as a Hierotopic Project

This article traces the implementation of the concept of ‘temple consciousness’ in hierotopic processes, including the construction of monuments and the organization of memorial sites. The memorials were designed to stand as an eternal reminder of an event that was experienced as a common heroic story in its symbolic representation. The study shows the transit and transformation of memorial discourse in the Soviet and post-Soviet symbolic spaces, which manifested itself in the redefinition of memorial sites in the direction of either actualization or levelling of the cultural and historical memory, given the dominant ideological paradigm. The sources of research, in addition to architectural and artistic monuments, include the mythopoetics of the mass culture, which also acts as a projection of ideology and contains archetypal patterns of the collective unconscious.Lenin’s memorialization as ‘the leader of the world proletariat’ became useful. The memorial policy of the Bolshevik Party was influenced by the ideas and events that took place back in history, including the discovery of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in Luxor (1922) and the teachings of Russian cosmologist Nikolai Fedorov in the work Philosophy of Common Cause published in full in 1913. The use of religion should point to key preconditions that have ensured the development of Soviet ideology which should be codified through the dominance of religion, in particular as ‘political religion’ or ‘secular religion’. The peculiarity of this phenomenon is the merging of two forms of thinking: political and religious.In addition, the Bolshevik atheists allowed the bodily resurrection of Lenin considering their unconditional belief in the “science of the future”; incidentally, they were not mistaken, because the leader’s body, engaged in the research work, survived until the invention of the cloning procedure. The secularized religious energy was mobilized to achieve political goals, which made possible the implementation of a totalitarian system, revealing the imitative essence of totalitarianism, which parasitized on religious thinking. Lenin’s Mausoleum is seen as a reliquary temple in the view of the communist cult of Eternity, which became the basis of Lenin’s cult.The levelling of the cult of Lenin began in the 1970s, which was facilitated by the pompous celebration of his 100th anniversary, which gave rise to political anecdotes as a symptom of the destruction of Lenin’s myth. The Revolution of Dignity (2013–2014) in Ukraine contributed to the dismantling of monuments to Lenin which were seen as personifications of Soviet-style ‘Leninism’ and symbols of imperial-Russian oppression.The purpose of this article is to substantiate the legitimacy of the author’s proposed concept of ‘political hierotopy’.

Beatles Fandom

A confluence of demographic, technological, political, and other cultural factors in the 1960s resulted in the Beatles becoming an epochal phenomenon. Never in human history had millions of people around the world received and reacted to the same communication at the same time over a period of years. The nonstop deluge of compelling sounds, words, images, and ideas the band put forth made it a unique source of emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual nurturance, distinct and apart from parents and other traditional sources of socialization. Using a synthesis of sociocultural and phenomenological analyses, this chapter shows how and why Beatles fandom endures as a kind of secular religion, serving the same functions in fans’ lives that religion serves in the lives of believers.

God[’s] hung from a tree

As Black people struggled for freedom from oppression in the United States, toward the end of the modern era of the African American freedom struggle, a reflexive moment was taken to assess Christianity and its meaning for those whom Howard Thurman referred to as the “disinherited.” This article attempts to take up the pattern of reflective thinking, which began with Howard Thurman, James Cone, and William R. Jones, extending the thought forward to its natural conclusions. In doing so, the author intimates that the concepts that lead to racism and racial aggression are bound within the signs, symbols, and frameworks of white American Christianity, which has become a secular religion or secular way to order society. These signs, symbols, and frameworks continue to do the work of setting the ground for each subsequent generation to demonstrate a similar racial attitude as the preceding one. They also set the groundwork for Black reflective thinkers to find necessary the development of a posture of rejection toward white American Secular Christianity and all its derivative forms.

New Secular Religion and the Clash with Neotraditional Great Religions

The United States in 2020 is in the midst of its greatest crisis since that of the Great Depression and the Second World War. This crisis is the result of large numbers of Americans, especially elite Americans, abandoning the traditional American religion, which was originally based upon Reformed Protestantism, and replacing it with a new secular religion, which is global progressivism. The determined efforts of these elites to promote this secular and postmodern religion on a global scale have produced a determined resistance, also on a global scale. This global resistance is mounted by several neotraditional religions and their civilizations, which are the contemporary heirs of such ancient and traditional religions as Islam, Confucianism, Hinduism, and Eastern Orthodoxy KEYWORDS: American Creed, Axial Age civilizations, globalization, global progressivism, neotraditional civilizations, public theology, Reformed Protestantism, secularization, secular religion, Western civilization