ABSTRACT
In a highly critical essay, sociologist James A. Beckford (2012) points out that the ‘sheer variety of meanings is a notable feature of discourse about postsecularity’, adding that there are ‘tensions between some meanings’:
For example, it is not easy to reconcile the idea that the secular has somehow come to an end with the idea that postsecularity represents a refinement—or a more productive phase—of secularity. Again, there is tension between the claim that postsecularity enables a return to presecular forms of religion and the contrary claim that any forms of religion that emerge in postsecularity must be new and nondogmatic or “spiritual”.
