The first meaning of post-secular refers to the disintegration at a cultural level of the ideology that was inherited from the Enlightenment, which assumed that religion would more or less disappear as society became more enlightened. From a global perspective, this assumption was false. In fact, opposite tendencies are visible across much of the world (Berger 1999), although what will happen in the West is difficult to judge.

Well-known nineteenth-century proponents of this ideology are Marx and Comte. Their visions of a “religion-less” society can, despite mutual differences, be interpreted as particular instances of this wider belief in the disappearance of religion. Also, the so-called secularization thesis that dominated sociology for more than half of the twentieth century was heavily influenced by this general outlook (Warner 2010).

According to José Casanova, the belief in an inevitable disappearance of religion has not been restricted to an intellectual elite, and he contends that Western society as a whole is still permeated by a “stadial consciousness” (Casanova 2015, 31–32). This influence on society can probably be explained in part by the success of some of the ideologies from the nineteenth century. However, despite the various explanations, what is important is that post-secularity in this broad cultural sense not only affects academic thinking, but also concerns the whole of society. It is about a changed consciousness, a loosening of the grip of stadial consciousness that in turn leads to that the secular lifestyle no longer appears as a natural consequence of modernization (Casanova 2015).

A common criticism of the traditional secularization thesis by sociologists is that it is based on a simplified picture of the relationship between religion and modernity: “In places where … stadial consciousness is absent or less dominant, as in the United States or in most non-Western postcolonial societies, processes of modernization are unlikely to be accompanied by processes of religious decline” (Casanova 2015, 32). In other words, there is no correlation between modernization and secularization (religious decline). Instead, we have “multiple modernities”. Another criticism of the traditional secularization thesis is that it is too sweeping and needs to be broken down into various components. The differentiation thesis is still relevant but none of the other components (Casanova 1994).

From a philosophical point of view, the general belief that religion is an outmoded way of living and thinking that will soon disappear is similar to a so-called grand narrative and is equipped with all the intellectual difficulties characterizing such metanarratives (a penchant for binary opposites, lack of discernment/nuances, absolutizing, an ahistorical mode of thinking, etc.). This philosophical critique reveals that the first meaning of post-secular is closely related to the concepts of postmodernity or late modernity. According to this philosophical outlook, what has lost power in our society is not only the belief that religion will disappear, but also a whole package of beliefs, such as the belief in science as a superior authority and a belief in development as a steady, ongoing process (the latter became impossible already after World War 1). Some thinkers would even argue that “secular reason” has been undermined in the historical process (Milbank 2006).

Taking this first notion of post-secularity seriously means that there is no longer any point in discussing the future of religion itself (whatever that would mean today). At least in the area of Religious Studies, the academic discussion has already gravitated towards a very different yet related question: the validity of the concept of religion influenced by Western thinking and, in particular, the ideas of the Enlightenment (Thurfjell 2016). To be more precise, what is questioned today is not religion itself, but a cultural construction of it that has profoundly affected popular culture, academic studies and the self-understanding of religious traditions. The eventual disappearance of this construction could lead to a “religion-less” society, although in a very different sense than that imagined by the early proponents of such a society in the nineteenth century.

One aspect of late modernity—and one of the biggest challenges for religious education—is a new form of cultural relativism. In the modern period, a secular view characterized by a strong belief in reason/science and technological progress, often mixed with an atheist conviction, functioned as an unquestioned framework for the interpretation of reality. As a result of a growing awareness of the limitations of the Enlightenment heritage, this secular view has become a target for critical analysis in the same way that religion was previously targeted. A well-known example of this new intellectual orientation is the work of Charles Taylor. In his book A Secular Age (2007), he describes secularity as a “new context of understanding”:

… the change I want to define and trace is one which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one of human possibility among others. (Taylor 2007, 3)

Taking this argument about one “possibility among others” one step further, it follows that all today’s life stances, including atheism and its correlations, are relative. Absolute claims no longer appear credible. This relativistic turn is visible at many levels of society. Apart from postmodern intellectual trends and a deepened historical awareness, it is related to and reinforced by social factors such as globalization and the increased presence of multicultural life forms in the West. At the same time, and taking the complexity of the situation into account, unbelief is still dominant in modern civilization and has achieved hegemony in, for example, academic spheres (Taylor 2007).

A prominent feature of this relativistic attitude is that individuals now have much more room to formulate their interpretations of life, even if it is not clear whether or how young people perceive such activity as meaningful or if it is comprehensible to everyone. What was an external authority in the modern period—science as an institution and a normative ideal for gaining knowledge—has now lost a lot of its power in society as a whole, which is visible in, for example, climate scepticism and medical self-treatment. Trying to decide for others what should be regarded as true or reasonable is perceived as patronizing. Such considerations are now regarded as private matters and expressions of individuals’ freedom of choice.

The second meaning of post-secularity denotes a particular, relativistic aspect of the slow cultural change already dealt with above. What is happening now is not only a disintegration of “stadial consciousness”. In the wake of this disintegration, and also taking the weakened cultural position of science into consideration, what is left of secular reason can no longer function as a protective wall against “the religious”—what was deemed by many as “irrationality”—at a societal level. The distinction between high and low has now more or less been eroded. The influx of magic and occultism in popular culture, what Christopher Partridge (2005) calls “occulture”, is a clear sign of this.

A recurring aspect in the discussion about post-secularity is whether this phenomenon is to be understood as a change in our way of reflecting on social and historical reality, or whether the change reflects a transformation of society, dawn of a new era. This section shows that both things are involved. The reorientation of critical thinking, exemplified by Taylor, where reason has begun to question its own secular foundation, marks a change in our thinking. The rampant relativism and the erosion of intellectual standards point to an actual change. However, how deep the latter change goes is still an open question. Some layers of society seem to be affected, whereas others are not. In the basic activities of everyday life, truth still matters.

A dominant feature of modernity has been the will to completely detach from the past, to break radically with tradition and to build a new society based on science and reason. The great role model here is Descartes and his attempt to rebuild all knowledge from scratch. At the same time, this feature has been a utopian endeavour. The power of tradition and the way it always reappears, not least through language, were underestimated. The ties to the past were never cut but were suppressed and made invisible. A dominant feature of post-secularity is the willingness to make these ties visible, trace the genealogy of modernity and recapture the continuity with the past.

Many researchers have highlighted how political ideologies, such as communism and liberalism, convey a religious heritage, albeit in a transformed and sometimes distorted form. In a similar way, secular life views and teachings are often viewed as translations of religious doctrines and messages. One remarkable example from 1959 is the German philosopher Eric Voegelin’s argument that Marxism had taken over central themes from antique Gnosticism, which could consequently be apprehended as a new, or modern, Gnostic movement (Voegelin 2005). Another example is the writings of the Jewish thinker Hans Jonas. In the epilogue of the paperback edition of his classic The Gnostic Religion (1963), Jonas exposed structural similarities between existentialism (modern nihilism) and antique Gnosticism. As early as 1922, Carl Schmitt, in his controversial book Political Theology (2005 [1985]), tried to demonstrate how concepts in political science were secularized theological concepts (cf. Sigurdson 2009).

However, the appreciation of the significance of the past is not merely an academic matter. The political arenas of our time show a range of cases in which politicians and debaters make reference to traditional religious teaching in order to emphasize a dependence, or at least an inspiration,...