Sacralisation and Desacralisation

Societies across time and space regarded certain values, ideas, principles, scriptures, things, practices, or spaces as sacred – absolute, intangible, and of ultimate meaning. The sacred was assigned normative function and the capacity to structure and organize collective thinking and behaviour. Once we abandon understanding the sacred narrowly as the defining core of institutionalized religions (as religious phenomenologists long had it) and take it as a social construct and repeated discursive attribution, multiple sacralities become visible. These sacralities oblige and foster social coherence at the same time as they differentiate and even divide. Their claims are usually challenged, contested and at times completely disputed and desacralized.

Our research on a select number of case studies of (de)sacralizations in early modern and modern European history has shown that, amongst others, the sacred is characterized by the paradox constellation of the constant negotiation of what should be intangible and non-negotiable. Another recurring feature of the sacred is the strong link between difference and cohesion: Creating and obliging adherents is usually accompanied by the exclusion of non-believers. Finally, all processes of secularization and pluralization notwithstanding, European societies are still marked by the cultural grammar, the concepts, rituals, and articulations of the Christian sacred.
 

News from the research area:  

- Christliche Linksintellektuelle im Kontext: Politische, kulturelle, kirchlich-religiöse und transnationale Konstellationen in Ost- und Westdeutschland (1960–2000), conference organized by Benedikt Brunner in cooperation with Sarah Jäger and Gabriel Rolfes, Katholische Akademie des Bistums Dresden-Meißen, Dresden, October 5–7, 2023. Programme

- Dark Green Religion in Europe: History and Impacts, Dangers and Prospects, conference organized by Bernhard Gißibl, Kate Rigby und Bron Taylor, IEG Mainz, April 25–27 2024. CfP
 

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