The secular cannot be conceived without the category of religion.

Evidence

In conclusion, I want to suggest that if the secularization thesis seems increasingly implausible to some of us this is not simply because religion is now playing a vibrant part in the modern world of nations. In a sense what many would anachronistically call “religion” was always involved in the world of power. If the secularization thesis no longer carries the conviction it once did, this is because the categories of “politics” and “religion” turn out to implicate each other more profoundly than we thought, a discovery that has accompanied our growing understanding of the powers of the modern nation-state. The concept of the secular cannot do without the idea of religion. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 972

Categorization

• XREF: Directly corroborates the vaulted Cooper argument: secular modernity quietly presupposes and needs the religious categories it claims to have superseded. — connects to: A secular majority depends on the religion it claims to resent. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 773; Israeli ‘secular’ identity is only definable negatively as not-religious. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 774; Modern environmental awe of nature is secularized religious worship. — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 41
• DEEPTHINKING: Dense, paradigm-shifting claim that reframes secularization not as religion’s decline but as definitional interdependence — a reformulation that resists one-sentence summary.
• SEED: Strong essay angle: ‘The secular cannot do without the idea of religion’ as the hinge between Asad and Cooper on how liberal neutrality smuggles in Christian-normative content.