Toward a Historiography of the Sacred

In this study, I explore the possibility of a historiography that recognizes and incorporates the sacred as an essential part of how reality is conceived. Here, the “sacred” refers to the belief that reality is inherently shaped and influenced by the presence and action of God. For the majority of the last twenty centuries, this has been the prevailing conception of reality in Europe. However, interpreting such a conception poses a significant hermeneutical challenge, that is understanding a sacred worldview that is fundamentally different from modern perspectives, without distorting its meaning through present-day assumptions or biases. The aim of this introductory article is to identify both the root of the hermeneutical problem and an opportunity to solve it. The root of the problem lies in the predominance of an immanent, secular approach to history. This approach dictates a secular interpretation of history that systematically excludes or marginalizes the transcendent, reducing complex historical realities shaped by sacred or metaphysical dimensions to purely material or social phenomena. The opportunity is the crisis of the secularization thesis and the loosening of secularism’s grip on historiography that open the space for alternative historiographical approaches. These alternative approaches would prioritize understanding the sacred on its own terms, rather than subordinating it to secular explanations.