Beyond

Abstract

After years of fruitful debate on “implicit religion” it is worth asking, “Where did it bring us?” It led to a focus on “religious,” on sense-making aspects in fields where they might have been least expected. I was able, for example, to point out strong traces of “implicit religiosity” in the worlds of economics and medicine. I also suggested implicit religious tendencies in art, the media and in politics. I acknowledged a strong connection between sense-making and power. So I became a bit notorious in the Netherlands as someone who labeled practically anything as having some sort of religion, from spontaneous adoration and mourning (Lady Di), to football. Standing on the shoulders of giants and in co-operation with colleagues, I developed such theoretical concepts as “transcendence and ontological security,” to clarify how similar phenomena could appear in such diverse fields. It all boils down to this. People need sense-making systems in all fields of human activity. They are, however, both able and willing, to a larger or lesser extent, to transcend the limits of their particular sense-system or world-view. But this extraordinary capacity for transcendence also endangers their peace of mind, their “ontological security.” I elaborated on the ways in which individuals and collectives find the balance between these two inescapable poles of human existence, which, to a milder or fiercer degree, hangs in the nexus of the tremendum and fascinosum. It is here that the ideas of non-institutional and implicit religion are just starting to flower.