RELIGION AND SECULARIZATION. TWO ANTITHETIC REALITIES?

Abstract

Secularization in Europe started a long time ago. This article shows its philosophical and theological roots, linked to the rigorous problem of God and the possibility to think His presence in the world. The crisis of Scholasticism, further accentuated by the rise of modern science, led to the exclusion of theological discourse in universities, in civil life (because) of religious wars and the Inquisition, both Catholic and Protestant), and from philosophical reflection (Kant). The religious problem was rediscovered in the cultural field in the early 1970s, in sociology (Berger, Casanova), philosophy (Wittgenstein, Plantinga), and psychology (Bruner, Gardner). What these perspectives have in common is the plurality of possible approaches to the world and life, none of which claims to be of exclusive dominion. The rethinking of the relationship between religion and secularization is also increasingly present in the socio-political context, with the explosion of questions linked to religious pluralism, migration and the crisis of meaning, which pose enormous problems with regard to the very survival of Western societies.­