Nature, Secularization Too The Transformation Of The Sacred

A summary of:
Szerszynski, B. (2005). Nature, Technology together with the Sacred: Religion together with Spirituality inward the Modern World. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford.
Chapter 2: Nature, Secularization together with the Transformation of the Sacred

For Szerszynksi, 1 of the outset steps to realizing the continuing role of the sacred inward modern Western guild is to broaden its definition. As he says, “I volition endure contention that the sacred has its correlate of what astrophysicists telephone band nighttime thing – that at that spot is much to a greater extent than of it virtually than nosotros mightiness think” (11).

One of the preeminent voices on the ‘sacred’ is of course of teaching Durkheim, whose Definition is defined yesteryear Szerszynski equally follows: “to regard something sacred is to prepare is apart from the routine together with the everyday; to attribute to it some sort of divine or transcendent characteristic, powerfulness or significance; to process it equally an terminate inward itself rather than something that tin legitimately endure used exclusively equally a agency to an end” (10). This agreement has come upwards nether assault equally existence majorly flawed because it ignores how things “come to endure seen equally sacred inward the outset place” (Milton, inward Szeryszynski: 10). An choice Definition posited yesteryear Kay Milton is that the sacred is “‘what matters most to people’” (10), taking into line of piece of job concern human relationship emotions.

But at that spot are potential useful demarcations of stages inward the evolution of the pregnant of the sacred inward our world. For the purposes of comparing (perhaps non to serve equally a comprehensive list), Szerszynski identifies primal religion, archaic religion, the Axial Age, the Protestant sacred, the modern sacred, together with the postmodern sacred:

Primal: “The aim of primal faith is to secure the sustainable reproduction of life inside this world, rather than to escape it or to alive according to laws originating from exterior (Bellah, 1970: 25-9)” (16).

Archaic: “Like primal religion, archaic faith is similarly monistic inward its experience of the globe equally a unified ‘natural-divine cosmos’, but hither the deities are to a greater extent than definite gods amongst whom humans must interact inward an ordered way” (17).

Axial Age: “In a radical shift inward the agreement of the sacred which occurs across the globe betwixt 800 together with 200 BCE, inward what Karl Jaspers calls the axial historic menstruation (Jaspers, 1953), the cosmological monism of before faith is progressively reordered only about a dualistic distinction betwixt ‘this’ globe together with a transcendent reality understood to be ‘above’ it” (17).

Protestant Sacred: “We popular off far at the Protestant sacred when the Reformation strips away the institutional together with supernatural hierarchies that both constituted together with spanned the gulf betwixt the transcendent divine together with the world, making that gulf at 1 time interplanetary space together with infinitesimal, absolute together with vanishingly small. With the divine’s fifty-fifty to a greater extent than absolute removal from this world, it became apprehended nether the figure of the sublime – equally infinite, unconditioned together with unknowable (Mellor together with Shilling, 1997: 106-7). But at the same fourth dimension equally the Reformation radicalizes the gulf betwixt the empirical together with transcendent worlds, the latter is also brought unopen to each individual, together with to nature” (19).

Modern Sacred: “With the modern sacred, embracing the Enlightenment together with Romanticism, the vertical transcendent axis is increasingly drawn into the empirical world. Instead of Being together with monastic say existence seen equally deriving from a supernatural source external to empirical reality, they are increasingly seen equally properties of that reality itself. The globe thereby comes to endure seen equally profane inward a newly radical sense” (20)

Postmodern Sacred: “Finally, nosotros popular off far at what I desire to telephone band the postmodern sacred, which exhibits a to a greater extent than thoroughgoing collapse of the organizing dualism of the monotheistic together with Protestant sacred. But this signals non a homecoming to the monistic, unmarried reality of the primal together with archaic sacred, but the emergence of a multiplex reality, 1 filled amongst together with constituted yesteryear unlike cosmologies together with world-views grounded inward subjective experience. Rather than faith together with cosmology – including ideas of nature – determining who people thought they were together with how they experienced the world, instead people experience obliged to fashion or direct religious together with cosmological ideas on the footing of their ain subjective experience – what ‘feels right’ to them (see Heelas, 1996; Roof, 1999)” (22-3).

What’s fascinating to me is that at some point, “Divine attributes are hence stripped of metaphor together with allegory together with allotted specific functions inward the novel scientific agreement of the globe – a displace which helps lay the grounds for the after erasure of God from Western science” (20), together with this classify of abandonment yesteryear God (which I talked virtually inward my before posts) inward a way helps us define our novel purpose, together with it is technology: “And inward America inward item the sublimity of the monotheistic God – his supra-human grandeur, his indifference to the interests together with projects of private humans – is transferred non only to nature but also to technology, equally the human capacity to transform the globe starts to endure seen non only equally the powerfulness to run into empirical needs but equally a quasi-salvational collective projection (Nye, 1994)” (22).

This of course of teaching becomes constituent of the mythology of disenchantment described earlier. The role of the myth, he argues, is to basically brand us experience special, of import (and secondarily, to perpetuate our electrical flow ways of knowing, which include our mythologizing of secularization): “Secularization was hence 1 of the cardinal ideas used to capture the thought of the uniqueness of modern Western society…. It was assumed widely – together with argued explicitly yesteryear secularization theorists – that this shift was a natural together with inevitable lawsuit of societal development…. As societies moved upwards this [evolutionary] ladder, it was thought, faith would lose its concord together with disappear” (12). Thus, made meaningful yesteryear the myth, the waning participation inward organized faith serves to reinforce notions of superiority. And the notion that applied scientific discipline has replaced God is a cardinal interpretation of this disenchantment myth. (I also truly similar this statement: “as the finish of applied scientific discipline comes to endure rendered inward technical terms, applied scientific discipline starts to monastic say the ends of life inward its ain terms” (172). It’s an fantabulous way of maxim that applied scientific discipline has non only learn a source of pregnant inward modernity but that it is self-reinforcing.)

So agreement how religious ways of knowing bring changed throughout history is crucial for agreement the modern epistemologies; equally Habermas argued, “the history of faith is truly the history of reason” (25).