‘Religion’ in th Age of ‘De-religionization’

On the Zeitdiagnose of Schleiermacher and Simmel

Abstract

Diagnoses of the role of religion in contemporary life are nothing new. Since the beginning of the modern era, as the plausibility of Christianity was increasingly questioned and the general concept of religion became popular, religious diagnosis of the time (Zeitdiagnose) played an important role as a narrative form and as a discursive means to re-define and re-imagine the realm of religion. Contemporary debates about the ‘de-religionizing’ or ‘post-secular’ age also follow this tradition. Naturally, the conclusions reached as a result of such diagnoses and any subsequent reformulation of religion will vary in accordance with the normative position of the subject and with the social and religious changes that occur under modernity. In this paper I discuss the Zeitdiagnose of two thinkers, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) and Georg Simmel (1858-1918). Although they are separated by a century and thus belong to different ages, their diagnoses reveal both commonalities and differences in terms of their evaluation of Christianity and in their respective vision of the future form of religion. A century later, a reassessment of their diagnoses sheds light on our own contemporary religious situation and on the plausibility of our views of that condition.