ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Towards a Postsecular Society [Conclusion] With these seven contexts I am suggesting that the postsecular is emerging from the secular in a patchy way, with elements contributing to it that run at different speeds and over different timeframes, and that they include science, art, and postmodernism. But what of the relationship between the presecular and the postsecular, that is between the religions of old and the emerging spiritualities?

We have to observe that parts of this even larger picture run with still greater variation of speed, there being entire sectors of contemporary society that are untouched by modernity and postmodernity, let alone the postsecular. There are estimated for example to be 70 million Christian fundamentalists in the US today. The presecular survives in great swathes into the secular world, but the fact is that it contributes very little to popular or highbrow culture .

We might say that religion flies below the cultural radar of the West, largely due to the intellectuals of the West having poured their energies into less problematic projects, such as science and politics. It is also rather shocking that Eastern ideas have been known in the West since the mid-18th century, but, with the exception of Schopenhauer, they have been ignored by almost all important thinkers, whether modern or postmodern.

The presecular religions of the West have therefore been largely insulated both from modern and postmodern thought, and from exposure to the East. Yet religion up to the 17th century - and Eastern religion prior to its contact with the West - has historically shown itself to be remarkably adaptable and even an engine for progress and change.

By contrast, in the secular world of the 20th century it has been ghettoised and insulated from the crucibles of change that have forged the contemporary worldview, making the adherence to it almost as embarrassing today as frankness in sexual matters was in the Victorian era.

The result is that presecular religion may not be able to make the transition to a postsecular world, rather that entirely new forms of spirituality may emerge, perhaps the most promising arising out of deep ecology / nature mysticism. But the postsecular lays a potential trap for new spiritualities as they emerge, and we can anticipate this from the seven contexts suggested above. Each one extracts a price for allowing its practitioners the new freedom to engage with the spiritual.