ABSTRACT
A major concern of the sociology of religion in the post-war period has been to understand social trends in the context of evidence of the decline of public engagement with traditional forms of religious affiliation, belief and practice. Whilst much attention has been paid to this in the context of debates around secularisation and de-secularisation, another important strand of work that is arguably far less developed has considered religious dimensions of life in ways that extend beyond traditional, substantive forms of religion. Thomas Luckmann influentially articulated this research agenda in the 1960s, taking inspiration from Emile Durkheim’s interest in religious dimensions of social life. This chapter traces significant lines of analysis developed within the recent literature on this issue and argues that sociologists of religion undertaking this work will benefit from engaging with scholarship in the closely related fields of the ‘strong programme’ of cultural sociology and the anthropology of ethics. These might enable us to develop richer accounts of the various uses and significance of moral meanings in social life, as well as how the deeply charged meanings of the sacred and profane might be understood in the wider context of the uses of ethics in social life.
