The secular is conceptually dependent on the idea 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: Structures like this recur across the “On Sacrifice” thread on how ideologies need their opposites to constitute themselves — the secular needs religion as its defining other, much as sacrifice-as-love needs the sacrificial-ritual frame. — 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; Modern environmental awe of nature is secularized religious worship. — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 41