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OnSecular Culture andReligious Crisis
Our context variouslyidentiedas modernity, late-modernity, hyper-modernity, or post-modernityis
somewhat likequicksand.Wearenot onlyfacingatimeof changes, but, as thenal document of theAssemblyof the
Latin-American Bishops held inAparecida says, we are confronting an epochal change, and this means signicant
changes for humanlife, its conguration, its meaningandself-understanding, alongwithafeelingof enormous un-
certainty, insecurityandanxiety.
One of the greatest impacts of the current changes is nodoubt its effect onreligion. If during the Age of Enlighten-
ment, humanrationality became increasingly visible andachievedthe status of a fundamental principle governing
humanlife, what we see today is quite different. Modernity is being replacedby a newstate of affairs, whichhuman
knowledge is still far fromhaving deeply assimilated, and it is concretely in the twentieth century that this process
appearedmoreclearly.
Religionsuffers the consequences of this newpost-modernworldview. Froma modernperspective, for something
tobe consideredlegitimate andtrue, it must have gone througha process of rational comprehension. This was seen
as the antidote for the fanaticism, superstition and intolerance that religion has been accused of fostering over the
years.
Today, human beings consider themselves as autonomous and emancipated. Science and technology resolve their
problems, replacing beliefs. The individual is the center of the universe, of phenomena and events, somehowre-
placing God himself. Human beings alone are the ones responsible for finding happiness and meaning in life
throughtheir thinkingandreasoningcapabilities.
Ina similar way that theocentrism, at the beginning of the modernera, fell intodeepcrisis andlost its power toex-
plain the world, the same such process is nowunderway regarding Cartesian rationality. This crisis appears as a
symptomof the birth of a newera: the one in which we nowlive. With all utopias nowcollapsed, certainties gone
and abundant means to achieve scarce and poorly dened ends, the contemporary human being is seeking peak
experiences, experiences that cangivetheir lives meaningandconveywhether lifeis still worthliving.
Faith, belief or religious organizations, with their perpetually insufcient messages about human beings, are no
longer the best means of communicating these peakexperiences. As Zygmunt Baumansays Having disconnected
the dreamof peak experiences fromthe religiously-inspired practices of self-negation and withdrawal fromworldly
attractions, we feel obliged to connect this dreamto the desire for mundane goods and deploy it as a fuel for anin-
tenseconsumerism.
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Livingahumanlifehas becomeasynonymfor enjoyingthedelights of consumerism. Livingfullynowmeans tosat-
isfy the endless hunger of human desire in a highly material manner. Conspicuous and excessive consumption of
material goods has been elevated by the consumer to the status of true religion. Our mantra is no longer I think,
therefore I am, but I consume, therefore I am. We are confronted by a consecration of commercial and con-
sumerist relations.
Nevertheless, religionas apathtotranscendencehas not beenbanishedfromthehumanhorizon, as themasters of
suspicion once prophesied. The same modernthinkers who strongly criticized the superstitious and magical ele-
ments of Christianityarenowcalledtorecognizethestrengthof transcendenceas aconstitutiveelement of human-
ity. Even committed atheists, such as Andr Comte Sponville, speak of a spirituality of atheism that grants to
humanbeings someexperiences that cannot beclassiedas rational or natural.
In this scenario, religion turns into something private, a property pertaining exclusively to the inner forum of
humanconsciousness, without mediationor institutions. It becomes increasingly something tobe livedwithinthe
sphere of private life, where each personholds truths and beliefs apprehended ina mix of concepts, rituals and ex-
periences. They are considered and discerned by whatever it is that inuences people within their own experience
andbythegratifyingsentiments that this livedexperiencegrants.
The twentieth century, a century without God, in which the divinities were still itting and volatile-objects to be
consumed-pointed to the height of the postmodern process. Retrieving transcendence, but fragmenting it, it pre-
sentedtranscendencewithout aface, without identity, without absolutes. Religiousexperiences proliferateagain,
whenthey seemedto have disappeared. Nevertheless, inspite of a newconguration, they are equally objects to be
consumed. They speaktothe senses andare exchangedby other experiences, equally supercial, andthe fruit is the
exhaustion of the potential for fulllment and delight, which increasingly creates, as the scientist of religion Jim
Heisighas pointedout, a frigidsociety. Incontrast tothis state of affairs, it is the mystics whocanshowonce again
the burning roads of pathos, of that passion without which human life loses its avor, and depression or suicide
becomedailyoccurrences.
M\v\Ci\v\Bixcvxvv
Department of Theology
Pontical Catholic Universityof Riode Janeiro
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NOTES
ON
SPIRITUALITY
FOR
OUR
TIMES