Post-Secular Conceptualization of Religion: Formulating the Problem

The author develops a new conception of religion appropriate for modern post-secular conditions. In these conditions, neither secular model of religion, typical to Modernity, nor pre-secular understanding of religion / religiosity can be considered as fitting to socio-cultural reality. It is especially stressed that secular understanding of premodern religion distorts religion's nature by allotting it a fixed and therefore limited place in line with the idea and practice of functional differentiation typical to European societies of the Modern age. In this way the article unpacks the ''hidden'' worldview behind the secularism as ideology. The main assumption of the author is that ''religious'' should be regarded as one side of a two-sided socio-cultural whole (the second side is ''eternal'' secular) and that this scheme fits for different historical periods and particular sociocultural settings.