Religion?

"...attempting to demarcate sacrificial practices on the basis of a distinction between religious and secular actions or motivations is difficult, and I would argue that this approach is fundamentally, historically flawed.

"While my objection to embedding discussions of sacrifice in “the sacred” or “religion” may seem like a case of the perennial anthropological conundrum of finding an appropriate etic term to fit emic realities, the problem, in fact, runs much deeper. The issue lies in the pernicious intellectualist reification of “religion” as a unique and independent sphere of practice and (especially) belief (W. C. Smith 1962). Though scholars of ancient societies frequently note that, in the societies they study, religion was inseparable from politics, daily life, and so on, it is nonetheless difficult for post-Enlightenment Western academics to take home the point powerfully made in Asad (1993) that “religion” has come to denote little more than a perspective in the modern West. That Christianity went from “the faith” to “a faith” and then to “a religion” does not merely reflect the historical development of a concept but rather marks seismic shifts in relations of truth, power, being, and world. Though the contributions to this volume have largely steered clear of direct discussion of “religion,” it nonetheless accompanies the concept of “sacrifice” like a shadow and has problematically entangled writing on the archaeology of religion in general with its conceptual framework. Practices of ritual killing and offering were (as are all practices) embedded in intertwined ways of knowing and being in the world. In other words, “religion” (to the extent that this is even a locally meaningful category) is neither thought of nor practiced as a separate compartment of social life in most times and places. It is not just (or even mainly) about beliefs, and the same is true for putatively “religious” practices such as “sacrifice"."—Roderick Campbell in Sacred Killing , pages 306-307

<idle musing>
The heart of it is here: "In other words, “religion” (to the extent that this is even a locally meaningful category) is neither thought of nor practiced as a separate compartment of social life in most times and places. It is not just (or even mainly) about beliefs..."

The secular/sacred distinction doesn't exist in reality; your whole life is lived either for God or for self—all of it, all the time...
</idle musing>