Abstract:
In postmodern societies the symbolic vacuum, a result of the loss of a unified religious
tradition, calls for substitutes in the form of fragmentary and isolated memories. By drawing
from the reservoir of those memories in an arbitrary and subjective way, privatised (deinstitutionalised)
religion creates a kind of symbolic bricolage. Can such a bricolage become
more than a mere ‘counterfeit’ of collective meaning that religion once used to provide? Can
religious tradition, based on a broken continuity of memory, still bring about a matrix of the
ways of expressing one’s faith? If so, how? This twofold study seeks to explore those and
similar questions by means of showing, firstly, in what sense religion can be conceived of as
memory which produces collective meanings (Part One) and, secondly, what may happen
when individualised and absolutised memories alienate themselves from a continuity of
tradition, thus beginning to function as a sort of private religion (Part Two). Being the second
part of the study in question, this article aims at exploring the postmodern crisis of religious
memory, which includes the pluralisation of the channels of the sacred and the differentiation
of a total religious memory into a plurality of specialised circles of memory. Firstly, it examines
the three main aspects of the current crisis of continuity at large, namely the affirmation of
the autonomous individual, the advance of rationalisation, and the process of institutional
differentiation. Secondly, the plurality of the channels of the sacred is discussed in light of
religion’s apparently unique way of drawing legitimisation from its reference to tradition.
This is followed by two illustrations of the reconstruction of religious memory. In the final
section of the article, a theological reflection on possible directions that may be taken in the
face of the postmodern crisis of religious memory is offered.
Description:
Dr Urbaniak is a research
fellow at the Faculty of
Theology, University of
Pretoria. He also teaches
at St Augustine College,
a Catholic University in
Johannesburg. Currently, in
his research he focuses on
theological foundations for a
‘global ecumenism’.
