The Reconfiguration of the Sacred in a Secular Age: Body, Faith and Modernity

Abstract

This article explores the socio-anthropological meaning of pilgrimage in contemporary times, bringing into dialogue the categories of religiosity, spirituality, and corporeality within a context of progressive secularization. Starting from the etymology of the term peregrinare — “to go afar,” “to move through fields and territories” — the study examines the transformation of pilgrimage from a collective religious practice to an individual experience of self-discovery and reconnection with the material dimension of the body. In a “liquid” society (Bauman, 2012), marked by mobility and the fragmentation of social bonds, the journey toward the sacred acquires a new function: to reconstruct tangible and relational points of reference, restoring to the body a central role in the process of meaning-making and belonging. Through a multidisciplinary approach — integrating anthropology, the sociology of religion, and qualitative field observation — this study proposes a reading of de-secularization as an inversion of modernity: a return to embodied sacrality, where spirituality manifests itself through lived corporeal experience and shared practice rather than institutional belonging. The contemporary pilgrimage thus becomes both an inner and social journey — a rite of passage that, despite its fluidity, restores structure and meaning to collective life.