In 1965, in his book The Secular City, Harvey Cox summarized the prevailing prediction shared by sociologists of his time: “The age of the secular city, the epoch whose ethics is quickly spreading into every corner of the globe, is an age of ‘no religion at all’. It no longer looks to religious rules and rituals for its morality or its meanings. For some religion provides a hobby, for others a mark of national or ethnic identity, for still others an aesthetic delight. For fewer and fewer does it provide an inclusive and commanding system of personal and cosmic values and explanations” (p. 3). However, later in his book Fire from Heaven, Cox confesses his misjudgment: “Nearly three decades ago I wrote a book, The Secular City, in which I tried to work out a theology for the ‘post-religious’ age that many sociologists had confidently assured us was coming. Since then, however, religion—or at least religions—seemed to have gained a new lease on life. Today, it is secularity, not spirituality, that may be headed for extinction” (p. xv). Interestingly, the famous Peter Berger had the same “conversion of thought” concerning secularization. His edited book The Desecularization of the World (1999) is a mighty evidence of his change of mind.
In this essay, I affirm Cox’s and Berger’s analysis of the re-sacralization of the world, but my thoughts are not guided by a sociological approach, which I am not capable of doing in the first place (although I have read at least half a dozen of Berger’s books and a few others). Rather, my reflections are more theological and practical.
In this short essay, I equate “the sacred” with “the one worshipped.” Thus, sacralisation is simply the attribution of reverentiability or worshipability to something or someone. For instance, people in cultures with animistic worldviews worshipped that which they considered sacred. This could include literally anything. In the forgotten Filipino animistic worldview, for instance, ant hills were considered sacred, and thus were treated with reverential fear. The most important element that I want to point out, however, is that in animism, things and places are not sacred on their own. Sacredness is not an inherent quality, but is derived. Specifically, a thing or place is sacred only when a spirit indwells it.
Therefore, when I argue that there is a re-sacralization of the world, I am not referring to a return to the recognition of spiritual indwelling in things and places. The naturalistic mindset is still the predominant worldview today, not only in the West, but the majority of the world. I am saying that paradoxically, there is sacralisation in naturalistic cultures, but of a different sort from animism. The difference is this: Whereas animism perceives sacredness as derived from spirits that indwell the “that”, naturalism perceives sacredness as derived from other categories. These categories may include “pragmatism,” “pleasureability,” “sensuality,” etc. As such, the modern world has discovered new “spirits” with which to divinize new “relics.” It is ordained by its own bishops and presented to the world as new objects of worship. This new form of divinization or deification is a radical alternative from the animistic mindset, but is still sacralization. It is a mad ascription of venerability to things and powers, such as Money, Sex, Pleasure, Politics, etc. As far as I am concerned, this modern procedure is as illogical (contrary to reason) as the animism that it repudiates!
But this re-sacralization that ordains everything useful and pleasurable as gods is not even new. It is as old as sin itself, because it is the very essence of sin: IDOLATRY. It is the worship of man-made gods, a pseudo-divinization of this and that.
