Until recently, changes of religious culture have always proceeded in the following way: a certain form of religious life, originally fully adequate in its strengths and essential characteristics, gradually rigidifies in superficialties and narrow specialization. It is displaced by a newly rising form in which religious impulses can flow, dynamically and without impediment. In other words, a new religious form, a new series of beliefs took the place of an outmoded one. For a relatively large number of people today, the supernatural objects of religious belief have been radically excised; their religious impulse, however, has not thereby been eliminated.

XREF: Connects to the broader argument about secularism retaining religious structure — echoes thinkers like Tillich or Berger on the persistence of the religious impulse without traditional objects.

DEFINE: Contrasts the historical displacement of one religious form by another with the modern excision of supernatural objects entirely, defining a distinct situation.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 864