Post-secularism in multiple modernities

Habermas, communicative action and secularism

This section concentrates on Habermas’ key concept of the colonization of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt). He sees the lifeworld as a field wherein culture, personality, meaning and symbols meet, and where civil society is more, or less, active. This lifeworld forms the basis for communication: that is, communicative action (by which he is referring to individuals’ linguistic interactions, such as debates in newspapers and on television, conferences, café discussions, and so on). Communicative interactions allow individuals to reach a level of knowledge of the ‘other’: that is, an intersubjective recognition. This enables cooperation to be established between individuals which is not based on the maximization of profit, as is the case in our current consumer society, but is aimed at opening up dialogue with others and developing debate about questions dealing with the quality of life. Human beings humanize themselves through their interaction with other individuals, and through this, the plurality of values entailed in the plurality of world visions is linked to an ethic based on an understanding between movements and groups, which makes possible the constant renewal of social consensus.

In contrast to communicative action, instrumental reason operates through a system – the system being the field where we find the instrumental action of multinational corporations and political power. According to Habermas, when instrumental reason spreads through the lifeworld it has the effect of colonization – which is increasing rapidly in this period of late capitalism – thus eliminating all expression of communicative action. The systematic colonization of the lifeworld refers to the replacement of mechanisms of social coordination by those supporting accumulation of financial resources and political power. He argues that methods for making profit are used extensively for the sake of efficiency, even within civil society. This leads to the fetishization of growth per se, and the maximization process means that other values, such as traditions and the better attributes of human nature, are treated instrumentally. The effect of economically motivated corruption on the democratic political process, the obfuscation of the distinction between news information and entertainment, the transformation of students into consumers and teachers into producers, and the passive civil engagement of Westerners are just a few examples of the ramifications of the colonization of the lifeworld. The lifeworld tends to be degraded, while the system spreads its tentacles. This colonization by instrumental reason, aimed at the accumulation of profit, increasingly diminishes the strength of communicative action in the lifeworld. As Robert Bellah (2010: 47) puts it:

Habermas emphasized the creation through legal and moral frameworks of the possibility of ‘communicative action’, that is, undistorted communication in search of agreement in the formation of a public will that would ground politics in a democratic ‘lifeworld’. The lifeworld, a term taken from Husserl, is that sphere of life in which the ‘steering mechanism’ is speech, and it is contrasted to the systems, the economy and the administrative state, whose steering mechanisms are the nonlinguistic media of money and power. According to Habermas, only when the economy and the administrative state are ‘anchored’ in the lifeworld’ – that is, when they are finally regulated by the will-formation in the public sphere of the lifeworld – is a democratic society fully realized.

In his reading of Habermas, Bellah is of the opinion that the German philosopher accepts the necessity of market mechanisms in the sphere of the economy, but on the condition that governments are actively involved in reducing the negative outcome of market-driven decisions, and that the public sphere is active, through communicative action, in monitoring the actions and policies of both the economy and the state.

In his early writings, Habermas described religion as an agent of communicative action that was not necessarily taking part in the emancipation project undertaken by enlightened philosophers. In the 1980s, he thought that religions were conservative and agents of legitimation for state intervention in civil society. At the end of the last century, he changed his mind and started to admit that religions could also be agents of contestation and offer new ways of being that are not calculative (Habermas, 2002: 79). This led later to his reflection on the place of religion in the public sphere and to his concept of post-secularism.

Post-secularism

Casanova (1994) identified four main catalysts that effectively shifted religion from the private to the public sphere: the 1979 Iranian Revolution; the rise of Solidarity in Poland; the political engagement of Catholicism in Latin America; and the growth of the Christian right in US politics. These developments demonstrated not only that religion could make a comeback in ‘secularized’ countries but, perhaps more importantly, that it was capable of taking over the government. It was not until the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 (Torpey, 2010), with their devastating assault on the heart of western culture and capitalism, that people could no longer ignore the ‘new’ facts of the last quarter of the 20th century. Religion was not only back, it had been reincarnated, and far from rejecting modernization, it had adopted its creed of progress and emancipation in its many forms.

Authors such as Habermas, who had previously been defenders of the secularization thesis as seen above, could no longer ignore this new reality. In dealing with these new issues, Habermas (2002, 2006; Habermas and Ratzinger, 2006) refers to the concept of post-secularism in association with the process of the de-privatization of religion and the current dialogue about the management of the presence of religious groups in the public sphere.

Within this post-secular phase, religion is seen as a useful resource and an ally in combatting global capitalism (Mendieta and Vanantwerpen, 2011) and hence the colonization of the lifeworld (something I will disagree with below). Religion is also seen as having the potential to provide new moral insights for the political sphere (Calhoun, 2011a, 2011b).

Habermas wants to find a way to incorporate insights historically bound up with faith (and religious traditions) into the genealogy of public reason. He clearly sees faith as a source of hope, both in the sense of Kant’s practical postulate that God must exist and in the sense that it can help to overcome the narrowness of a scientific rationalism always at risk of bias in favour of instrumental over communicative reason. (Calhoun, 2011b: 84)

It could thus be inferred that a way forward for working on the process of civilization is to allow religious people, among a multitude of other social actors, to be part of a revised Enlightenment project. We can still strive towards the development of reason and progress, but seek reason that is not purely instrumental, and progress that is not purely material and quantitative. Religion and spirituality, among other factors, could help us deploy a more humane type of reason and allow for progress towards more equitable and qualitative outcomes: a value-oriented output that promotes human rights, human solidarity, justice and spirituality, and that opposes religious extremism and empty secularism. Of course, in suggesting such a fusion between faith and reason in a new civilization project that would fit with our multicultural and multi-faith world, we should be mindful that some religious groups make exclusivist truth claims, use violent means and are intolerant towards others. These, including militant atheism, are not conducive to this new project of post-secularism.

With globalization and migration movements, we are living in a culture of pluralism which redefines the role of religion (Giordan and Pace, 2012). This proves to be a challenge for religious institutions, which used to have the monopoly of faith in monocultural societies. In this plural setting, Habermas (2006: 4) underlines that the challenge today is to draw the ‘delimitations between a positive liberty to practise a religion of one’s own and the negative liberty to remain spared from the religious practice of the others’. In other words, how do we work with post-secular societies’ religious tolerance in ways that celebrate religious diversity but that do not foreclose upon the freedom to be atheist? Part of the solution for Habermas is to have neutral and secular governments that can ensure that communities of various beliefs are able to coexist on an equal basis. His post-secular project is based upon the notion that the state is neutral and objective, yet we know from studies in sociology that the state usually and instrumentally serves certain groups over others (see e.g. Barbalet et al., 2011).

Following the theological point made by Roger Trigg (2007), if the voices of these religious people are silenced in the public sphere, they will be tempted to use other means to impact on society, such as lobbying, a practice that is being used successfully by the religious right in the US. Trigg (2007) contests Habermas’s idea that reason should be the only language used in the public sphere. He does not agree that religious knowledge can be useful only if it is translated into the language of reason. He advocates for a metaphysical or religious grounding for the discussion, assuming that human knowledge is not self-sufficient. Whatever the merits of Trigg’s perspective, the public sphere only allows participation by religious groups that are able to speak a language of ‘secular’ reason. This, as Craig Calhoun (2011b) argues, is a process set by secularists, which limits the presence of religion in the public sphere and prevents them from understanding religious discourse; by creating a basis for equal inclusion based on reason, it provokes what he calls an ‘ironic exclusion’. This, as he claims, is a privilege usurped by the secular middle class in many western countries and, in the US, by white elites at the expense of the more religious African Americans, Latinos, and migrant groups. Along this line of inquiry, Taylor’s (2007) A Secular Age makes reference to what he calls the ‘immanent frame’ to describe the current context, or social imaginary, in which religion and secularism are included. It is a space today that is more open to religion but still secular. Rather than asking for religions to give up their own vocabulary and use instead the allegedly neutral language of reason in the public sphere, the Catholic philosopher proposes that religious groups should mobilize their religious language to provide a voice against the discontent of late modernity. Both the secular and the religious would find a higher level of reflexivity if they were able to use their own social imaginary in the public sphere and enter into a relationship of tolerance and recognition. In this sense, Taylor wishes to increase the equality between religion and secularism, rather than have secularism dominate the public sphere. This demonstrates, as I will argue below, that post-secularism is still a type of secularism.

One should also be aware of the difficulties of entering into such a post-secular dialogue. Michele Dillon, in her 2009 Association for the Sociology of Religion Presidential Address, stated quite sharply that ‘independent[ly] of whether an individual is religious or not, tolerance of otherness does not come easily’ (Dillon, 2010: 149). She asserted that openness to alternative beliefs is more complicated than authors such as Habermas might have us believe, and that the idea that all religious and atheist groups can live in a self-reflective manner ‘is attractive but hard to imagine’ (Dillon, 2010: 152). Following this line of thinking, Alphia Possamai-Inesedy and Bryan Turner (2016) analyse the debate around same-sex marriage and find this issue to be in conflict with post-secularism. The values of secular liberalism and religious fundamentalism that distinguish this topic create division and controversy in the public sphere. The presentation of religious arguments in public debate, and the difficulty in translating religious beliefs for a secular audience, undermine social cohesion rather than enhance it as was predicted by theory. These circumstances, plus the fact that people involved in post-institutional spiritualities generally do not feel a strong compulsion to enter the public sphere to debate their religious views, lead Turner (2012: 1066) to argue that some arguments about post-secularism are philosophically worthy but can ‘unfortunately be sociologically naïve’. Indeed, in a later publication, Turner (2015) reinforces his point by stating that communicative rationality is problematic when dealing with controversial issues such as abortion, evolutionary thought, homosexuality and gay marriage. On these issues, rationality has not surmounted existing division in the public sphere.

At this stage of this article, the point is to highlight that post-secularism as a philosophy does not fully work in practice. However, we do have concrete social and cultural changes happening in our society and, for sociologists, it would be better to speak about post-secularity as a period in which some religions have today a public voice instead of post-secularism (as a philosophy dealing with the communicative action of religious and non-religious groups).

Before moving to a section that will situate our discussion on this term within the multiple modernity debate, it is worth exploring a telling case study to further highlight the limit of post-secularism.

Shari’a in Australia: a sociological case study

The desire of some Muslims in western countries to structure interpersonal and community relationships according to Shari’a has become the focus of intense, often misleading, debate. In this case study, Shari’a is used as a test of post-secularism in a liberal society. If religious groups were to be asked to participate in the public sphere through non-secular communicative action, what would ensue in relation to a controversial issue such as legal pluralism? The following telling case is from Australia.

While Islamic law is not officially codified in Australia, it informs the ideas and conduct of Australian Muslims in various ways. Recent research (e.g. Hussein and Possamai, 2013; Possamai, 2014; Possamai et al., 2013; Roose and Possamai, 2015) has found that, in Australia overall, the subject of religious and legal pluralism is not allowed to be fully aired or debated in the public sphere, unless to show it in a negative light. This leads to the argument that although Australia is a multicultural and multi-faith society, it is not fully post-secular. The issue here is not solely about including Shari’a in the legal system or preventing its use in the private or public sphere, but about being officially allowed or disallowed to have a fruitful dialogue of the Habermasian type.

For example, in 2011, in response to an inquiry into multiculturalism held in that year by the federal government, the then president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC), made a submission titled ‘Embracing Australian Values, and Maintaining the Rights to be Different’. This document underlined the fact that Muslim countries differ in their use of Shari’a. In his submission, Islamic law is viewed as being able to be adapted according to the requirements of different places and times. It is thus impliedthat Australian Muslims can adopt and adhere to the same values that are shared by Australian people in general. Using the active involvement of the Australian government with regard to Islamic finance (see below) and halal food as examples of positive sites of cooperation (e.g. the export of AU$1.5 billion worth of halal frozen meat to Indonesia; Hussain, 2011), Patel recommended that multiculturalism in Australia should lead to ‘legal pluralism’.

The then Attorney-General rejected the submission and claimed that there was no place for Shari’a in the then Labor government’s debate about multicultural policy, or in Australian society. This claim led to a heated controversy in the media (Hussain and Possamai, 2013). Within a week, the author of the submission claimed that it had been a mistake to mention Shari’a law and legal pluralism. He pointed out that there had also been criticism from the Muslim community, which was concerned by the lack of consultation with regard to his submission. He emphasized that, in family matters, civil law should always take precedence.

This analysis indicates that there was no communication of the Habermasian type in the public sphere. The request for legal pluralism, right or wrong, was not discussed in a constructive way at all. But is this usually the case? I have here presented qualitative analysis of one specific, telling event, but what of a quantitative analysis of a series of cases? Possamai et al. (2013) analysed articles from the five years following the Archbishop of Canterbury’s famous lecture on 7 February 2008, which included backing for the introduction of Shari’a in Britain. In all, 696 articles and opinion pieces across the four main Sydney newspapers were analysed. Of these articles, 10% were somewhat to extremely positive towards Shari’a, 54% were neutral, and 36% were somewhat to extremely negative. With regard to the articles that could be expected to be the most objective, that is, news articles that report data (n = 297), and not including editorials, opinion pieces or letters, the proportion of neutral pieces increased to 72%, and the proportion of somewhat to extremely negative pieces decreased to 14%.

Further analysis reveals that, of the news articles with somewhat or extremely positive representations, the large majority focused on the application of Islamic finance and the opportunity to move into new markets. With reference to articles on finance specifically, the proportion of those that expressed neutrality was quite low (37%), because, conversely, the proportion that expressed a positive attitude was very high: 39% were extremely positive and 24% were somewhat positive news reports, and there were no negative reports. For other articles not concerned with finance, the neutrality rate was higher (79%), but the negativity rate was also high (11% for somewhat negative, and 6% for extremely negative).

This research confirmed Anne Black’s and Kerrie Sadiq’s (2011) point concerning the need for a more nuanced divide between ‘good Shari’a’, based on the profit-generating potential of Islamic finance and ‘bad Shari’a’, that appears to challenge Australian family and criminal laws. While there is public disquiet over family and criminal law applications of Shari’a, there has, nevertheless, been support for legislative change in Australia to facilitate Islamic banking and financial services. ‘It seems that Islamic banking and finance laws are “good” Shari’a worthy of adoption, whilst personal status laws (marriage, divorce, separation, custody of children and inheritance) are not’ (Black and Sadiq, 2011: 388).

Islamic finance first appeared in Egypt at the beginning of the 1960s (Obadia, 2013). It was created as a substitute or alternative to the capitalism that the western colonizer had imposed. It has now spread globally, including to the western world, and the impact has not been restricted to Islam. Thirty years after, in the 1990s, Christian finance appeared. Obadia (2013: 146) cites the FTSE KLD Catholic Values 400 Index and the STOXX Europe Christian Index as indexes aimed at domesticating capitalism from a Christian angle. Christian finance is similar in structure to Islamic finance except that it also deals with pork and alcohol.

Inspired by the work of Will Kymlicka (2013), Roose and Possamai (2015) have claimed that Shari’a, in this context, is viewed positively when fulfilling the neoliberal approach to multiculturalism in Australia. Kymlicka argues that, in the early stages of neoliberalism, its ideologues tended to oppose multiculturalism, as it was dependent on state intervention and support. However, they later realized the extent to which these minority groups are connected to global markets thanks to their personal networks. Their unique ‘social capital’ make of them very strong market assets.

In short, a neoliberal multiculturalism is possible because ethnicity is a source of social capital, social capital enables effective market participations. […] It enables transnational linkages that native-born citizens lack. Immigrant transnationalism, then, is an asset in an increasingly global marketplace. (Kymlicka, 2013: 110)

Even if we have seen a backlash and retreat from multiculturalism since the mid-1990s, Kymlicka (2010) argues that the reports of its death are exaggerated. What he claims is that there are uneven advances and retreats within and across counties. Further, as Kymlicka (2013: 19–20) explains in a later publication, ‘multiculturalism is most effective when it attends both to people’s citizenship status and to their market status’. This connection with neoliberalism is not new as Schiller (2011) points outs with regard to ‘neoliberal multiculturalism’ in the US. Even if neoliberalism is focused on the individual and multiculturalism on the community, there are some synergies that have been discovered. As Schiller (2011: 219) states:

By the 1990s, multiculturalism became one of the ways cities could rebrand themselves to attract international investment capital, global talent and hi-tech industries. New York City became a glittering city of consumption with its ethnic restaurants and neighbourhoods marketed as part of its cultural capital.

Schiller (2011: 223) also makes an important note on this process:

while many migrants distanced themselves from the efforts by city leaders to use multiculturalism as part of the implementation of a neoliberal agenda, migrants nonetheless participated in processes of neoliberal restructuring and re-scaling as they established pathways of local and transnational incorporation.

If neoliberalism has been able to absorb multiculturalism, the same goes for post-secularism. In this sense, for post-secularism to work in neoliberal societies, religions need to be ‘colonized’ by neoliberalism, or at least to not detract from the colonization process. They cannot be agents of contestation. This neoliberal logic, of tapping into the social capital of these minority groups, can also be applied to religious groups and their transnational networks. In neoliberalism, religion provides another layer of social capital which can be used for profit.

This situation can also arise in more authoritarian states. For example, Jack Barbalet (2011) studies China and its Buddhist and Daoist revivalist movements, which attract overseas Chinese contributors to the capitalist economy of the mainland. We discover in Barbalet’s work how the program of temple rebuilding has been encouraged through donations made by overseas Chinese individuals and families. While this type of family capitalism is not the only factor in the development of the post-1978 Chinese market, it is surely an important one.

The case study of Shari’a in Australia offers a perfect example for reflection on how religious groups involved in the post-secular project can be colonized (in the Habermasian sense of the term); here the communicative action of Muslim groups in the public sphere, with regard to legal pluralism, has been shut down; a leader of the Muslim community engages in the public sphere of this officially secular country and no discussion of the Habermasian type emerges with regard to these social and legal issues. On the other hand, we do have this Habermasian colonization with regard to the integration of Islamic financial institutions, which have the potential to lead to economic prosperity for certain groups and companies. This case study reflects a trend, and trends, of course, differ from one country to another – and, as the next section explores, from one modernity to another.

Secularization and desecularization in multiple modernities

While it should not be forgotten that there were strong anti-ecclesiastical attacks from philosophers (e.g. Machiavelli and Voltaire) already before the French Revolution, in the western world it is mainly with the advent of modernity that the ideology of secularism became prominent; that religion, and not just its leaders, had to disappear once and for all (or at the very least be relegated to the private sphere). With modernity came colonization, and with colonization, globalization, and with globalization, different modernities. Indeed, the modernity created in Europe and the US, which was exported and expanded around the world, was received in various ways. If some countries were eradicating religion from their public sphere to fit this mould (e.g. Kemal’s Turkey), others were trying to keep religion but within this modernist ethos (e.g. Malaysia).

A key tool to make sense of these changes is the work of Eisenstadt (2000: 2). He coined the term ‘multiple modernities’ and describes this paradigm in cultural terms:

The idea of multiple modernities presumes that the best way to understand the contemporary world – indeed to explain the history of modernity – is to see it as a story of continual constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural programs. These ongoing reconstructions of multiple institutional and ideological patterns are carried forward by specific social actors in close connection with social, political, and intellectual activists, and also by social movements pursuing different programs of modernity, holding very different views of what makes societies modern.

It is a concept that attempts to undermine the hegemony of western modernity and reflects cultural diversity and multiplicity. Unlike postmodernity, that is opposed to modernity as a meta-narrative, the multiple modernities thesis is in disagreement only with the western domination at the roots of the project of modernity. As such, it does not reject modernity (Lee, 2006). In this sense, the theory of multiple modernities acknowledges specific expressions of culture and traditions and is reflective of a pluralist view of the world.

Berger et al. (2008) find that the universal features of modernity pertain to science and technology, and the way they are institutionalized leads to different social and cultural outcomes. In a version that accepts modernity as not part of the same mould, there could be alternate forms of modernity in which religion can be included, but ‘the forms of religion may be as diverse as the forms of modernity’ (Davie, 2013: 109).

As an example, in ‘Rethinking Secularization’ (2006), Casanova traces how the development of modernity in Europe was informed by secularism. The trajectory was to move away from religion towards the emancipation of reason which would in turn lead to progress. In contrast, in the US ‘there was “collusion” between religion and the secular differentiated spheres’ (Casanova, 2006: 11). This is explained by the fact that when the US modernized, it did not have to go through a European process of secular differentiation which involved conflict with the established church. For example, the French Enlightenment was anti-clerical and openly anti-Christian, whereas the American Enlightenment was not.

That said, one should not ignore that a specific type of modernity has collapsed and is no longer part of this multitude: communism, this modern regime of a special type, as Eisenstadt (2003: 926) has written. Left without the second world, the first world has been able to develop its neoliberal ideology around the world, which allows various regions to be modern, but this is only as long as the market is free. With the theory of multiple modernities, there is a tendency to express cultural diversity in our global world, but, through this illusion of equality, it often fails to address asymmetries of power (Thomassen, 2010).

Eisenstadt (2003: 934) already argued his point to balance this view. He claimed that the market ideology is indeed winning over the world, but that different types of political economy (e.g. how to deal with the market, state regulation and intervention, and welfare structure) will be different across regions and reflect different types of modernity.

Even if religion never disappeared in the first place, this new theory presents a meaningful way for religion to be part of the public sphere without being atavistic. However, the importance of the place of religion in the public sphere can change from region to region, and time to time. This follows Martin’s (2005) observations about processes of secularization and desecularization. The fundamental argument of his work is that secularization is not a clear cut process that happens in all western societies homogenously or that will happen to all developing countries. Indeed, as the author argues in relation to Christianity:

instead of regarding secularization as a once-for-all unilateral process, one might rather think in terms of successive Christianizations followed or accompanied by recoils. Each Christianization is a salient of faith driven into the secular from a different angle, each pays a characteristic cost which affects the character of the recoil, and each undergoes a partial collapse … (Martin, 2005: 3)

If at one time period, in a specific place in the world, religion is strong, the same cannot be said in another part and time. This can also be stated with regard to secularism. It can be militant at one place and time (e.g. France’s Laïcité) or low key for recognized religions somewhere else (e.g. Indonesia’s Pancasila). The one modern trajectory that saw religion disappearing is a failed one. Rather than secularism and religion being antagonistic, we should see them as speaking to each other differently at various time periods and places in the world.

Returning to the debate on multiple modernities and pluralism, the link with post-secularism becomes clear in the work of Rosati and Stoeckl. As they state:

A truly postsecular society is a multi-religious society, where so to speak ‘indigenous traditions nowadays live side by side with diasporic religious communities’ … a postsecular society has to be understood as one in which a plurality of individual and collective religious belief and practices enrich and strengthen pluralism in general. A postsecular society is a society full of religious differences and particularities. (Rosati and Stoeckl, 2012: 5)

The multiple modernity thesis thus gives support to post-secularism as a philosophical debate that discusses the place of religion in the public sphere. However, post-secularism is still dominated by secularism (the language of reason is dominant and not all religions are part of the public sphere), and as such is a type of low-key secularism. As there are multiple types of modernity, there will be multiple types of secularism, and post-secularism (a misnomer) is one of them. This type of secularism reflects a specific type of modernity that takes on board the voice of certain religious groups in the public sphere.

Paradoxically, as seen with this Australian case study, a post-secular dialogue of the Habermasian type is taking place in western countries, but it can be one that is colonized, and one that can support and develop neoliberalism rather than minimizing its deficiencies and faults. For fear of opening a line of inquiry, and not being able to pursue it adequately due to lack of space, we should explore this colonization in parallel with Beck’s (2010) statement that the ‘invisible hand of the market can be a powerful ally in the pacification of global religious conflicts’. He quotes Immanuel Kant:

For the spirit of commerce sooner or later takes hold of every people, and it cannot exist side by side with war. And of all the powers (or means) at the disposal of the power of the state, financial power can probably be relied on most. Thus states [and religions] find themselves compelled to promote the noble cause of peace.… And wherever in the world there is a threat of war breaking out, they will try to prevent it through mediation. (Beck, 2010: 150)

Beck (2010) argues that we are now witnessing a kind of ‘religious imperialism of the spirit of commerce’. He suggests that the violent side of religions could be tamed by this commodification of God. Indeed, in the individualization of belief systems we can witness a deregulation of institutional systems of religious beliefs. As religions cease to exist in their classic forms, the individualization of God, for Beck, could be an antidote to a clash of civilizations and cultures.

There is more to say with regard to religion colonizing the public sphere and contributing to neoliberalism (see for examples, Burchardt, 2017; Gauthier et al., 2013; Possamai, 2017), but suffice it to state in this article that post-secularism reflects a specific type of low-key secularism that is in confluence with neoliberalism.

Concluding paradox

At the end of the last century, when postmodern philosophies were more central to public debates, Habermas was one of the strongest voices at that time arguing to keep the project of modernity (rather than reject it) and put it through a type of an Aggiornamento (bringing up to date) process. Although this article has discussed the theories of multiple modernities, another concept has become more prominent in the early phase of this 21st century, that of late modernity (we are still in modernity but in a late phase). Discussing the link between late modernity and multiple modernity may be the focus of another article, however what is worth mentioning here is that we are still in modernity and the postmodernist views have lost their momentum. The same could be said of post-secularism. In a world of multiple modernities and multiple types of secularities (Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt, 2012), we are still dealing today with secularism, even if it is called post-secularism (in the same way that postmodernists were dealing with modernity when debating their move away from it). It is a paradox that Habermas, one of the most vocal philosophers against postmodernism, has used the same prefix to call this concept ‘post-secularism’. A better term would have been ‘late secularism’ (akin to late modernism), to indicate that we are still in secularism but at a later stage, which is more inclusive in listening to the voices of some religious groups in the public sphere. Another one is to keep the ‘post’ to reflect current trends, but call it instead ‘neoliberal post-secularism’ to underline the impact of current forms of capitalism (Possamai, 2017).