IN SEARCH FOR THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION: METHODOLOGICAL AND THEMATIC OUTLINE

Abstract

What are we talking about when we talk about universal religion? The purpose of this article is to present a preliminary methodological, typological and historical outline (focusing particularly on modern France modern France), which facilitates answering this question. If we accept the meaning given to religion by modernity (which defines it by a form of worship, doctrine, morality and community), we conclude that the idea of a universal religion, as having numerous historical variants, fulfills its criteria in various ways. At the same time, however, it transcends positive religions, and its critical-investigative attitude towards them are even the necessary conditions of possibility of its emergence. The idea of universal religion can remain at the level of purely intentional solution or project (as in the case of modern natural religion, which is the common denominator of all religions, based on the so-called Credo minimum), it can also although this is rare, adopt a specific social character (as in the case of cults created during the French Revolution). The idea of a universal religion can also be associated with one of the historical religions. In the Western world and its Judeo-Christian context, it would generally be Catholicism.