Sensing a ‘second coming’: An overview of new concepts in sociology, philosophy, law and theology on the re-emerging religious in private and public life

Abstract

In a number of academic disciplines, expression has been given to the recently rising awareness that the category of the religious has not disappeared from public life. What the ‘masters of suspicion’ – Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Durkheim and Freud – had sensed was the intellectual spirit of their times and not the dawning of a broadly post-religious phase in Western/ised humanity. In different academic disciplines, this new awareness has been given expression to by means of a series of newly developed concepts. In this contribution, these developments are briefly tracked as they relate to one another. Although these formulations and discussions in some ways correspond to one another, it has not yet been undertaken to relate them to one another, which is the contribution of this article: these developments reflect, as largely parallel expressions, the recently rising awareness that the category of the religious is currently present in private and public life more so than in previous decades. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article traces recent developments in Sociology, Philosophy, Law and Theology on the unfolding place of religion in the world currently, as a first step to bringing these disciplines into discussion with one another on this matter.