Some Remarks on the Discussion Concerning “Post-Secular”

Introduction. The article’s primary goal is to critically evaluate some of the arguments made during the discussion concerning “post-secular”, the proceedings of which were published in the journal “Philosophy of Religion: Analytical Studies” (2024, Vol. 8, No. 1). When doing this, the main emphasis is on how proponents of the idea of a post-secular age’s advent explain and interpret empirical facts that more or less unequivocally indicate that secularization processes are still ongoing in at least some contemporary societies. Content. Proponents of the concept of the post-secular age recognize that at least in some modern societies secularization continues; they argue, however, that this situation is irrelevant because post-secularity does not entail the elimination of secularity in general but rather of a rigid “secularism” that dominated the Western world in the middle of the 20th century and excluded religion from all areas of public life. Nevertheless, there is little solid proof that such “secularism” existed in the time period and region in question; rather, we ought to speak about the close collaboration between states and religions, as the article illustrates with the case of Italy. Similarly, it is dubious that the sociological theory of secularization, supposedly inspired by this “secularism”, really made the assumption that religion would vanish in the near future (for instance, by the end of the 20th century), and that, since it did not, than the theory is untenable and needs to be replaced by a more adequate one, namely post-secular. However, there is every reason to believe that the idea of the “end of religion” was a feature of Protestant “secular” theology of the 1960s-1970s, whereas sociological theory of secularization took a different point of view on this issue. Conclusions. To explain the persistence of secularization under the circumstances of a hypothetical post-secular age, advocates of post-secular discourse need to postulate the existence of an imaginary “secularism of the mid-20th century”, as well as to read the sociological theory of secularization through the lens of the Protestant “secular” theology of the 1960s-1970s. This explanation cannot be deemed appropriate due to the inclusion of obviously incorrect assumptions.