Secularism, Resacralization of Secular Power, and Civil Religion

Abstract

Seeing the question of secular power as laying at the centre of politico-theoretical discussion on secularism and arguing that the articulation of the notion of secular power belongs to the history of Christian political thought while the institution of secular power belongs to ecclesiastical history, the author discusses the reaction against the institution of separation between secular and spiritual power from the late eleventh century onwards. Mistaking anticlericalism for secularization, historians have often regarded this reaction as the origins of modern secularism. The author argues that this alleged secularism, in fact, aimed at resacralizing secular power and, by reintroducing civil religion, led to the sacralization of political order.