Volume 5, Issue 3, Spring 1991
Daryl J. Wennemann
Pages 237-249
Desacralization and the Disenchantment of the World
In this paper I explore Jacques Ellul’s sociology of religion in terms of Weber’s disenchantment thesis. In contrast to Mircea Eliade’s depiction of modern persons as nonreligious, owing to scientific and technological development, Ellul argues that traditional religions have merely been replaced by new ones. This has occurred, according to Ellul, because the desacralization of one realm of experience results in the resacralization of another realm of experience.