Externalizing religion

Many have pointed to the early modern privatization of religion, with its corresponding interiorization. Guy Stroumsa ( A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason , 24-6 ) notices something else in the post-Reformation era: “To sum up the key characteristic of the transformation of the concept of religion in the early modern age, one could perhaps speak of its externalization . . . . In antiquity . . . religion had primarily been perceived as collective or public behavior within the city. Among both Jews and pagans, religion was essentially a pattern of behavior, most clearly exemplified by public animal sacrifices.”

Christianity internalization religion, but the conflicts of the Reformation focused on ritual differences between Protestants and Catholics, leading to a renewed interest in ritual: “It was largely the rituals of the ‘new’ religions that were first described, while their theologies, or sets of beliefs, would long remain much less clearly perceived . . . . In the age of the great discoveries and the Reformation, religion came to refer mainly to a system of ritual practices. A turn can be detected to a new perception of religion as a public activity – a return, as it were, to the primary sense of the word in the ancient world” (29).