In this article the author constructs a typology of the different senses secularization has been understood, and how these various senses correlate to different models of secularization in the modern world. He engages with the works of Jürgen Habermas and argues that Habermas’s conception of secularization is too closely linked to the European model in which secularization and modernization are correlated. Casanova argues that the world may be becoming “post‑secular,” characterized by the re‑emergence of religion as a public issue in some societies.

The author develops a new conception of religion appropriate for modern post-secular conditions. In these conditions, neither secular model of religion, typical to Modernity, nor pre-secular understanding of religion / religiosity can be considered as fitting to socio-cultural reality. It is especially stressed that secular understanding of premodern religion distorts religion’s nature by allotting it a fixed and therefore limited place in line with the idea and practice of functional differentiation typical to European societies of the Modern age.