Secular and religious categories are historically constructed, not essential.

Evidence

I take the view, as others have done, that the “religious” and the “secular” are not essentially fixed categories. However, I do not claim that if one stripped appearances one would see that some apparently secular institutions were really religious. I assume, on the contrary, that there is nothing essentially religious, nor any universal essence that defines “sacred language” or “sacred experience.” But I also assume that there were breaks between Christian and secular life in which words and practices were rearranged, and new discursive grammars replaced previous ones. … I dwell briefly on how religious myth contributed to the formation of modern historical knowledge and modern poetic sensibility (touching on the way they have been adopted by some contemporary Arab poets), but I argue that this did not make history or poetry essentially “religious.” — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 103

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is Asad’s core redefinition: the secular is not religion in disguise, nor an essence, nor a mask — it is produced by historical discursive breaks from Christian life.
• XREF: Plausibly connects to Cooper’s argument in the vault that ‘secular modernity’ quietly privileges Christian family norms — both treat secular categories as historically constituted rather than neutral departures from religion. — connects to: Secular ideology itself enables racial exclusion, not the religion it blames. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 690; Religion and nationalism are modern categories co-created by the secular order, not ancient givens. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 306