How to study the contemporary dynamics between the religious the nonreligious and the secular
in a globalizing world? Obviously their relationship is not an empirical datum liable to the
procedures of verification or of logical deduction. We are in need of alternative conceptual
and methodological tools. This volume argues that the concept of 'social imaginary' as it is
used by Charles Taylor is of utmost importance as a methodological tool to understand these
dynamics. The first section is dedicated to the conceptual clarification of Taylor's notion of
social imaginaries both through a historical study of their genealogy and through conceptual
analysis. In the second section we clarify the relation of 'social imaginaries' to the concept
of (religious) worldviewing understood as a process of truth seeking. Furthermore we discuss
the practical usefulness of the concept of social imaginaries for cultural scientists by
focusing on the concept of human rights as a secular social imaginary. In the third and final
section we relate Taylor's view on the role of social imaginaries and the new paths it opens
up for religious studies to other analyses of the secular-religious divide as they nowadays
mainly come to the fore in the debates on what is coined as the 'post-secular.'
