Family Resemblances Twixt Implicit Religion and Post-modernity
A Fecund Framework for Engaging New Times
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.v15i1.5Keywords:
implicit religion, liquidity, post-modernity, post-secular, sacrality, “third way”Abstract
This article explores parallels and convergences between implicit religion and post-modernity. The elective affinity between them is considered as a constructive combined “take” on late modern religion, culture and society. The aim is primarily to identify some overlap, some family resemblances, between key post-modern concepts and a number of the central themata of implicit religion, construed as a perspective or point of view on the human social and cultural condition. Drawing upon a variety of contributors to post-modern theory and implicit religion studies, this meta-analysis illuminates ways in which the “third way” conception of sacrality (cf. Bailey), inherent in the implicit religion (IR) perspective, resonates with the “liquidity” (cf. Bauman) of post-modernity (POMO). This holistic IR-POMO point of view, it is suggested, offers a challenging heuristic alternative to the “static polarities” (cf. Elias) of “gnostic thought” (cf. Jonas), and a “post-secular” mode of creative resistance to modernist hyper-secularism.References
Alexander, J. C., and J. Colomy. 1992. “Traditions and Competition: Preface to a Post-Positivist Approach to Knowledge Cumulation.” In Metatheorizing, edited by G. Ritzer, 7–26. Newberry Park, CA: Sage.
Arweck, E. and W. J. F. Keenan. eds. 2006. Materialising Religion: Expression, Performance and Ritual. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate.
Arya, R. 2009. “The Religious Dimension of Compulsive Buying.” Implicit Religion 12(2): 165–185.
Bailey, E. I. 1969. The Religion of a “Secular Age.” MA Thesis, Bristol University.
———. 1997. Implicit Religion in Contemporary Society. Kampen: Kok Pharos.
———. 1998a. “Implicit Religion: What Might That Be?” Implicit Religion 1: 9–22.
———. 1998b. “Sacred.” In Encylopedia of Religion and Society, edited by W. H. Swatos, Jr. www.hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/Sacred.htm.
———. 2001. The Secular Faith Controversy. London and New York: Continuum.
Bailey, J. 1988. Pessimism. London: Routledge.
Barker, E. 1984. The Making of a Moonie. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Baudrillard, J. 1981. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. St Louis, MO: Telos Press.
———. 1983. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities. New York: Semiotext(e).
Bauman, Z. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
Bell, D. 1979. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. London: Heinemann.
Bellah, R. N. 1970. Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World. New York: Harper and Row.
Berger, P. L. 1967. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
———. 1970. A Rumour of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural. London: Allen Lane.
———. 1980. The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation. New York: Doubleday.
Berman, M. 1982. All That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York: Simon and Schuster
Bertens, H. 1995. The Idea of the Post-modern: a History. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203359327
Bhabha, H. K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Blond, P. 1998. Post-Secular Philosophy: Between Philosophy and Theology. London: Routledge.
Boghossian, P. A. 2006. Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bradshaw, G. A. 2009. Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us About Humanity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Bruce, S. 2002. God is Dead: Secularization in the West. Oxford: Blackwell.
Davie, C. 2010. The Mirth of Nations. New York: Transaction Publishers.
Davie, G. 1994. Religion in Britain Since 1945: Believing Without Belonging. Oxford: Blackwell.
Davies, D. J. 1999. “Implicit Religion and the Inter-faith Dialogue in Human Perspective.” Implicit Religion 2(1): 17–24.
Dufour, D.-R. 2007. The Art of Shrinking Heads: The New Servitude of the Liberated in the Era of Total Capitalism, translated by D. Macey. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Dupré, J. 2001. Human Nature and the Limits of Science. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Dupré, W. 2007. “Why (and When) Should We Speak of Implicit Religion?” Implicit Religion 20(2): 132–150.
Durkheim, E. 1970 [1912]. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, translated by J. W. Swain. London: Allen and Unwin.
Eagleton, T. 1996. The Illusions of Post-modernism. Oxford: Blackwell
Elias, N. 1984. What is Sociology? New York: Columbia University Press.
Farrell, F. 1996. Subjectivity, Realism and Post-modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Featherstone, M. 1991. Consumer Culture and Post-modernism. London: Sage.
Feyerabend, P. 1993. Against Method. New York: Verso.
Flanagan, K. 2004. Seen and Unseen: Visual Culture, Sociology and Theology. Basingstoke, Hants: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fukuyama, F. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man .http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man Free Press, 1992.
Gehlen, A. 1988. Man: His Nature and Place in the World. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gellner, E. 1964. Thought and Change. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Stucturation. Cambridge: Polity.
———. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
Griffin, D. R. ed. Sacred Interconnections: Post-modern Spirituality, Political Economy, and Art. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Heelas, P. 1998. “Introduction: on differentiation and dedifferentiation.” In Religion, Modernity and Post-modernity, edited by P. Heelas, D. Martin, and P. Morris, 1–18. Oxford: Blackwell.
Heelas, P., L. Woodhead, B. Seel, B. Szerszynski, and K. Tusting. 2005. The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. Oxford: Blackwell.
Heidegger, M. 1971. “Building Dwelling Thinking.” In Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by A. Hofstadter. New York: Harper and Row.
Hervieu-Léger, D. 2000. Religion as a Chain of Memory, translated by S. Lee. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hoesterey, I. 1991. “Post-modernism and Its Discontents.” In zeitgeist in Babel: the post-modernist controversy, edited by I. Hoesterey, i–x. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Hye, A. E. 2004. The Great God Baseball: Religion In Modern Baseball Fiction. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.
Jameson, F. 1984. “Post-modernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” New Left Review 146: 53–92.
Jenks, C. 1986. What is Post-modernism? London: St. Martin’s Press.
Jonas, H. 1963. The Gnostic Religion. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Keenan, W. J. F. (ed.). 2001. Dressed to Impress: Looking the Part. Oxford and New York: Berg.
———. 2002a. “Twenty-first Century Monasticism and Religious Life: Just Another New Millennium.” Religion 32: 13–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/reli.2002.0395
———. 2002b. “Post-Secular Sociology: Effusions of Religion in Late Modern Settings.” European Journal of Social Theory 5(2): 279–290.
———. 2003. “Rediscovering the Theological in Sociology: Foundation and Possibilities.” Theory, Culture & Society 20(1): 19–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/13684310222225450
———. 2009. “Divinity and Power in Minute Particulars: Politics and Panentheism in the Implicit Religion of Marist Socks.” Implicit Religion 12(2): 201–220. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/imre.v12i2.201
Keenan, W. J. F. and T. Schnell. 2012. “The Resilient Academy: A Transdisciplinary Critique of the Real-Worldist University.” In Resilience and Unemployment, edited by Å. Aamaas, W. J. F. Keenan, and C. Sedmak, 19–42. Vienna and Berlin: Lit Verlag.
Keupp, H. 2002. Indentitätskonstruktionen. Das Patchwork der Identitäten in der Spätmoderne. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.
Laclau, E. and C. Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.
Levinas, E. 1986. “The Trace of the Other.” In Deconstruction in Context, edited by M. Taylor, translated by A. Lingis, 345–359. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lynch, G. 2007. The New Spirituality: An Introduction To Progressive Belief in the Twenty-first Century. London and New York: I. B. Tauris.
Lyon, D. 1993. “A Bit of a Circus: Notes on Post-modernity and New Age.” Religion 23(2): 117–126. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/reli.1993.1011
Lyon, D. 2000. Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Post-modern Times. Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Blackwell.
Lyotard, J.-F. 1979. The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Maffesoli, M. 1996. The Contemplation of the World: Figures of Community Style. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Martin, B. 1981. A Sociology of Contemporary Cultural Change. Oxford: Blackwell.
Martin, D. 1965. “Towards Eliminating the Concept of Secularization from the Vocabulary of Sociology.” In Penguin Survey of the Social Sciences, edited by J. Gould, 169–182. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
———. 1978. A General Theory of Secularization. Oxford: Blackwell.
———. 2005. On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory. Aldershot: Ashgate.
———. 2011. The Future of Christianity: Reflections on Violence and Democracy, Religion and Secularization. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.
Ménard, G. 2001. “Religion, Implicit or Post-Modern?” Implicit Religion 4: 87–95.
Mills, C. W. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Morawski, S. 1996. The Trouble with Post-modernism. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203422250
Nietzsche, F. 2006 [1885–1886]. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book For Everyone and No-one, translated by Adrian del Caro and edited by Robert Pippin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Reker, G. T. and L. C. Woo. 2011. Personal Meaning Orientations and Psychosocial Adaptation in Older Adults. SAGE Open.
Schnell, T. 1999. “Report: The Centrality of the Concept of Implicit Religion for Teaching Religious Studies.” Implicit Religion 2(2): 115–116.
———. 2003. “A Framework for the Study of Implicit Religion: The Psychological Theory of Implicit Religiosity.” Implicit Religion 6(2–3): 86–104.
———. 2004. “Wege zum Sinn.” Wege zum Menschen 56(3): 3–20.
———. 2004/2009. Implizite Religiosität: zur Psychologie des Lebenssinns. Lengerich: Pabst.
———. 2006. “Personality and Meaning in Life.” Personality and Individual Differences 41: 117–129. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2005.11.030
———. 2008. “Implicit Religiosity: Diversity of Life Meanings in Church Members and non-members.” International Journal of Psychology 43(3–4): 386.
———. 2009. “The Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life Questionnaire (SoMe): Relations to Demographics and Well-being.” Journal of Positive Psychology 4(6): 483–499. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439760903271074
———. 2010. “Existential Indifference: Another Quality of Meaning in Life.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 50(3): 351–373. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022167809360259
———. In press. “Implizite Religiosität – Transparenz für Transzendenz.” In Jugend, Religion, Religiosität, edited by U. Kropac, K. König and U. Meier. Regensburg: Pustet.
Schnell, T., and P. Becker. 2006. “Personality and Meaning in Life.” Personality and Individual Differences 41(1): 117–129. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2005.11.030
Schnell, T., and M. Hoof. In press. “Meaningful Commitment: Finding Meaning in Volunteer Work.” Journal of Beliefs & Values.
Schnell, T., and W. J. F. Keenan. 2010. A Trace of Spiritual Atheism. British Association for the Study of Spirituality, First International Conference, May 2010, Windsor, UK.
———. 2011. “Meaning-Making in an Atheist World.” Archive for the Psychology of Religion 33(1): 55–78.
Sheldrake, P. 1995. Living Between Worlds: Place and Journey in Celtic Spirituality. London: Darton, Longman and Todd.
Smart, B. 1993. Post-modernity. London: Routledge.
Smart, N. 1998. “Implicit Religion Across Cultures.” Implicit Religion 1 (Nov.): 23–26.
Smith, K. A. 2006. Who’s Afraid of Post-modernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Strinati, D. 1992. “Post-modernism and Popular Culture.” Sociology Review 1(4): 2–7.
Swatos, W. H. Jr. 1999. “Revisiting the Sacred.” Implicit Religion 2(1): 33–38.
Taylor, V. E. and C. E. Winquist, eds. The Encyclopedia of Post-modernism. London: Routledge.
Turner, B. S. and C. Rojek. 2001. Society and Culture: Principles of Scarcity and Solidarity. London: Sage
Turner, V. W. 1979. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage.” In Reader in Comparative Religion: an anthropological approach, edited by W. A. Lessa and E. Z. Vogt, 234–243. New York: HarperCollins..
Turner, V. W. 1992. Blazing the Trail: Way Marks in the Exploration of Symbols. Edited by E. Turner. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Vattimo, G. 1989. The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Post-modern Culture. Translated by J. R. Snyder. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Wallis, R. 1984. The Elementary Forms of the New Religious Life. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Weber, M. 1958 [1904–1905]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Charles Scribner.
Wilson, B. 1976. Contemporary Transformations of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Woodhead, L. and P. Heelas, eds. 2000. Religion in Modern Times: an interpretive anthology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Religion Feeds