oa Over de secularisering van het heilige

In this article it is suggested that secularization does not necessarily mean desacralization. One should distinguish several aspects of the development of religion, among which secularization and desacralization are only two. There are others as well, such as pluralization and privatization.

The importance of the sacred may diminish in modern society, it is certainly not completely faded out; instead, the sacred is secularized, which means that it has become more of this world. Here, the faith in progress is taken as an example: from a belief in the Kingdom of God, it developed, via the idea of an ideal future society, into a faith of progress as a fate.