4 - The sacred and religion

Summary

The preceding chapters have established fundamental claims about the social and historical significance of the sacred. All societies organized around morally charged symbolic boundaries are structured on the basis of sacred forms. Te structure of these sacred forms have shifted, from the localized sacred of late prehistory, through the hierarchical sacred of the ancient and medieval world, to the ideological forms of the sacred in modernity. Within these modern sacred forms, the nation and humanity have come to exert particular influence over Western, and increasingly global, cultural and moral imaginations. Indeed, as we have seen, these modern sacred forms have even found imperial expression, bound up with cross-national systems of governance and activism, just as much as the Roman Imperial cult or the sacred hierarchies of Christendom did in previous centuries.

These are broad claims, necessary for establishing an understanding of the sweep and significance of the sacred through human history, including its enduring relevance today. But it is also important to add more nuance into the picture that has so far been painted here. A fundamental task will be to clarify how the sacred, as discussed here, can be more adequately understood in relation to conceptions of “religion” that continue to whirl around this term. By the end of the chapter, it will be clear that we cannot treat modern forms of the sacred as secular “quasi-religions” that perpetuate long-standing forms of religious organization and behaviour but without any divine, transcendent reference point.