Pour Une Sociologie Des “Modernités Religieuses Multiples”: Une Autre Approche De La “Religion Invisible” Des Sociétés Européennes

Abstract

The notion of “invisible religion” is an integral part of the set of theoretical tools that had a decisive impact in the shaping of the classical theory of secularization. It specifically fits the religious trajectory of European societies that built their political modernity in the very long term, by exempting themselves from the supervision of religion. Beyond the extreme diversity of national histories, this historical trajectory formed the matrix of a typical (and relatively homogeneous) modernization process that implies the privatization of religion, the proliferation of individualized small transcendences, and a sharp decline in the social and cultural influence of religious institutions. Starting with the concept defined by Luckmann, the author suggests changing the approach of the process of the “invisibilization” of religion in Europe, by focusing the cultural-encoding function of religion which operates in a completely different manner, but just as powerfully, in all European countries. This approach could open the way to a sociological (both genealogical and “geological”) description of the multiple religious modernities that make up the composition of the so-called “Eurosecularity”.