Shrinking Transcendence, Expanding Religion?
Thomas Luckmann
Religion is not disappearing from the modern world: experiences of transcendence are a universal component human life. Human experience continuous flow “little,” “dintermediate,” and “great” transcendences. Societies differ significantly in how they “organize” control subjective including “little” spatial temporal transcendences everyday life, “intermediate” fellow beings, life death. One most important consequences “modern” differentiation social structure, institutional specialization religion, has been customarily interpreted as “secularization” world. However, it better understood process profound change “location” religion society — “privatization” religion. Modern constructions religious significance shifted away other-worldly to (political) also minimal solipsism whose main themes (“self-realization,” personal autonomy, self-expression) tend bestow sacred status upon individual.
Sociological analysis