Abstract:
Paradigms determine relationships. During the Enlightenment period Emile Durkheim
proposed a relationship between the sacred and the profane. Religion, which is concerned
with the sacred, was defined in terms of being different from the profane. The profane came to
denote the secular. The organic character of religion caused some scholars to predict the end of
the church at the hand of modernisation and rationalisation. Some scholars instead envisaged
a new form and function of the church. Some scholars anticipated the growth of Christianity.
Reality shows that Christianity has not died out but seems to be growing. The new era we are
currently in (identified as the postmodern) has been described as the post-secular age where a
process of re-sacralisation takes place. How will the post-secular influence the church? What
will the relationship between the church and the secular be like under a new paradigm? This
article suggests that within a postmodern paradigm, the post-secular will emphasise the place
of the individual in the church. Fragmentation of society will also be the result of the postsecular.
Religiosity in future will have to contend with fundamentalism and civil religion.
