Category: Practices & Community

To someone else, a photograph of someone you love might be little more than a piece of paper, complete with faded colors, worn edges, and a coffee stain from that unfortunate incident three years ago. To you, however, that photograph might be irreplaceable.

Maybe you’ve framed it, or maybe you just handle it carefully and keep it somewhere safe. How much would it hurt if someone deliberately destroyed it?

There’s absolutely nothing supernatural about that photograph. Its physical properties can be explained through a basic understanding of physics and chemistry. Yet somehow, it means much more to you than the sum of its parts.

Could something like your photograph be considered sacred?

For many people, the idea of sacredness is inseparable from religion. The word immediately brings to mind things like scriptures, temples, divine commandments, or objects believed to hold spiritual significance.

But is it really a supernatural connection that makes something sacred? Or can sacredness also exist as a distinctly human experience?

To explore that question, we first have to understand what we mean when we describe something as sacred.

What Makes Something Sacred?

The word sacred doesn’t have a single definition. In fact, its meaning can be rather muddy. Dictionaries do their best to convey an understanding of it. Dictionary.com¹, for example, gives seven different definitions of this adjective.

Some of these definitions would suggest that I’m using the word sacred in the entirely wrong way. But I think there’s something interesting going on here. For the purposes of this discussion, I think these seven definitions can be organized into three broad categories:

What’s interesting to me is that, despite their differences, these definitions all describe something we recognize as sacred. Somehow, these seemingly distinct meanings share enough in common that we use the same word to describe them.

So, what exactly do they have in common?

I would propose that the common thread between all these definitions is this:

To be sacred is to be regarded as possessing such exceptional significance that it deserves a particular degree of reverence, respect, or protection.

“Sacred” vs. “Important”

Sacredness is something more than just believing something to be important.

Consider the photograph again, then consider these two ways of describing it.

1. “The photograph is important to me.”
2. “The photograph is sacred to me.”

The first communicates that the photograph has special value to you, but the second conveys something extra. It suggests a sense of reverence and respect. If someone damaged or destroyed that photograph, it could feel like a grievous violation.

Where Does Sacredness Come From?

But that raises another question: Where does that extraordinary significance come from?

Is sacredness something inherent in an object, something that exists independently of our perception? Or is it something that emerges from the ways we understand, value, and interact with the world around us?

In his influential 1912 work, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, sociologist Émile Durkheim proposed that one of religion’s defining characteristics is the distinction between the sacred and the profane.

Here, profane doesn’t necessarily mean offensive or disrespectful. It refers to the ordinary aspects of everyday life. Sacred things, by contrast, are set apart. They are treated differently, surrounded by special rules, practices, or expectations².

A religious text might be handled with extraordinary care. A memorial might be approached with silence and respect. A particular place might be preserved because of its importance to a community.

What makes these examples interesting is that their significance cannot be explained by their physical characteristics alone. A book remains a book. A monument remains a structure of stone or metal. But their meanings influence how people relate to them.

Durkheim was studying religion, so his definition doesn’t automatically establish the existence of sacredness outside religious traditions. Nevertheless, it provides an important insight: sacredness isn’t necessarily a claim about what something is made of. It also concerns how something is understood and treated.

But Durkheim took this idea even further.

He argued that sacredness was closely connected to the ways communities understand and organize their lives. Through shared beliefs, traditions, and rituals, societies can come to regard certain objects, places, and even ideas as sacred.

In fact, Durkheim pointed to the French Revolution as an example. During that period, concepts such as Liberty, Reason, and the Fatherland acquired a kind of sacred significance. These were not supernatural entities, yet people treated them with a reverence resembling religious devotion.

Now, it’s worth remembering that Durkheim was primarily interested in the collective nature of sacredness: how entire communities come to share these attitudes. Our cherished photograph, on the other hand, illustrates a more personal form of reverence.

Nevertheless, his work raises an intriguing possibility. Perhaps sacredness isn’t always something we discover within an object. Perhaps, at least sometimes, it’s something that emerges from our relationships with that object, with one another, and with the meanings we create together.

Must the Sacred Be Supernatural?

Imagine two people standing in a forest. The first believes that the forest is inhabited by spirits. To them, it is a sacred place because of its connection to something supernatural.

The second doesn’t believe in spirits or anything supernatural. But they see the forest as something extraordinary: a living ecosystem that has existed for centuries, supporting countless organisms and connecting generations of people to the natural world.

Both might feel a profound sense of reverence toward the forest. Both might believe it deserves protection from destruction. But their explanations of why the forest deserves that reverence are fundamentally different.

This demonstrates an important point: A claim about what something is isn’t necessarily the same as a judgment about what something means or how it deserves to be treated.

If someone claims that spirits inhabit a forest, they’re making a claim about reality, and that claim would need to stand on its own evidence. But if someone says that the forest is sacred to them because of its beauty, ecological significance, or personal meaning, they’re expressing something entirely different: their relationship of value and reverence.

This is an important distinction.

For example, a religious person might believe that human life is sacred because it was created by God. A nonreligious person might regard human life as sacred because of its capacity for conscious experience, relationships, suffering, and flourishing.

Similarly, a religious person might find the Earth sacred because it was the product of a creative deity, while a nonreligious person might find the Earth sacred because it is irreplaceable and vital for life. (That’s why I keep all my stuff here.)

Religious studies scholar Ann Taves explored a related distinction in her 2009 book, Religious Experience Reconsidered. Rather than treating religious experiences as a separate and inherently religious category, Taves proposed examining how people come to identify experiences as religious or otherwise special³.

Her approach encourages us to distinguish between an experience itself and the interpretations people give to that experience. By doing so, we can investigate experiences of extraordinary significance without assuming that they originate from supernatural forces. If sacredness doesn’t necessarily require supernatural belief, what can psychology tell us about the experiences of awe, reverence, and profound significance that people sometimes describe as sacred?

The Psychology of Sacred Experiences

Have you ever looked up at a star-filled night sky or stood before an enormous mountain and suddenly felt very small? Psychologists have a name for the emotion we sometimes experience in moments like these: awe.

In a 2003 paper, psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt identified two central features of awe: a perception of vastness and a need for accommodation⁴.

Vastness doesn’t necessarily refer to physical size. It can also involve an extraordinary idea, accomplishment, or experience. The need for accommodation occurs when we must reconsider how we understand something in order to make sense of it.

(For more on this subject, see my article The Science of Awe.)

Neither of these features inherently requires anything supernatural. But what does awe have to do with sacredness?

In 2017, psychologists Jesse Preston and Faith Shin explored this relationship through five studies involving a total of 1,064 participants.

They asked participants to recall experiences they considered spiritual and examined the emotions associated with those memories.

The researchers found that recalling spiritual experiences increased feelings of awe in both religious and nonreligious participants. They also identified a phenomenon known as the small self: a feeling of personal smallness in relation to something perceived as much greater than oneself⁵.

Interestingly, the kinds of experiences participants recalled often differed depending on their religious beliefs, or lack thereof. Religious participants were more likely to describe explicitly religious experiences, while nonreligious participants more frequently described encounters with nature, science, meditation, and other extraordinary experiences.

Different explanations, but some remarkably similar emotional responses.

More recently, researchers Misaki Fujii and colleagues⁶ investigated sacred experiences among three groups: religious individuals, people who described themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” and people who identified as neither religious nor spiritual.

Across two studies, they found that people in all three groups reported sacred experiences, although religious participants reported them most frequently, followed by spiritual-but-not-religious participants, and then those who identified as neither.

There’s an interesting detail about how the researchers approached this question. They used the phrase deeply meaningful moment to avoid discouraging nonreligious participants who might associate the word sacred exclusively with religion.

That distinction is important, particularly for our discussion.

Researchers can study experiences of profound meaning, awe, and reverence without requiring participants to interpret those experiences through a religious framework.

We should, however, be careful not to confuse these findings with proof that sacredness exists as some independent property of the universe. Nor should we assume that every experience of awe is sacred.

Watching an impressive fireworks display might inspire awe without creating any lasting sense of reverence. Conversely, our cherished photograph might remain sacred to us even when looking at it doesn’t provoke any particularly intense emotion.

Awe describes an emotional experience. Sacredness, as we’ve defined it, also involves the significance we assign to something and how we believe it deserves to be treated.

What the research suggests is that some of the psychological experiences associated with sacredness are not exclusive to religious believers. The feelings are real, even when people disagree about what causes them or what they mean. But if sacredness emerges from human experience, interpretation, and relationships, does that make it any less meaningful?

Does Human-Created Meaning Count?

And that might be our toughest philosophical question for the day. After all, if human beings assign sacredness to something, doesn’t that make it imaginary?

Not necessarily.

Consider a promise. A promise is not a physical substance. You cannot examine it beneath a microscope or identify the atoms that make it binding. And yet promises can profoundly influence human relationships. They create expectations, establish responsibilities, and affect how people treat one another.

Their consequences are real, even though their significance depends on human minds and social relationships.

The same could be said of friendship, traditions, cultural heritage, and many of the values that guide our lives. Something does not become meaningless simply because its meaning emerges through human experience.

But that doesn’t mean all interpretations are equally reasonable.

Our beliefs about what deserves special respect can be questioned. We can examine whether those beliefs are consistent with evidence, whether they cause harm, and whether they reflect values we are prepared to defend.

The photograph we considered earlier is not sacred because its paper contains some mysterious property.

It is precious because of the history, relationships, and memories it represents.

Its significance is not diminished by understanding where that significance comes from.

An explanation for why something matters is not necessarily an argument that it doesn’t matter.

The Danger of Making Things Sacred

There is, however, a potential problem with sacredness that deserves serious consideration. When people describe something as sacred, they may also begin treating it as beyond criticism.

Psychologist Philip Tetlock⁷ explored how people respond when deeply held values are placed in conflict with ordinary practical considerations. His work on sacred values and taboo trade-offs examined why people sometimes react with moral outrage to the suggestion that certain values should be negotiated or exchanged.

Such commitments can help people resist exploitation or defend what they consider essential, but they can also make difficult questions harder to discuss.

Throughout history, beliefs and institutions treated as sacred have sometimes been used to justify harmful practices and discourage dissent. It is absolutely paramount that a secular understanding of sacredness does not repeat that mistake.

If we decide that human dignity deserves extraordinary respect, that commitment should encourage us to examine how people are treated, not prevent us from questioning our understanding of dignity.

If we regard nature as sacred, that should inspire thoughtful stewardship, not require us to abandon scientific understanding.

And if we treasure a tradition, we should remain free to reconsider it when it no longer serves the people who practice it.

Sacredness, understood this way, should encourage responsibility rather than demand unquestioning obedience.

Finding the Sacred in an Ordinary Universe

So, can something be sacred without being supernatural?

I think it can.

If sacredness describes the extraordinary significance we recognize in something, and the reverence and responsibility that follow from it, then there’s no inherent reason that significance must come from beyond the natural world.

Remember that photograph we talked about earlier? Understanding the chemistry of its paper or the physics of light doesn’t diminish the love, memories, or relationships it represents. Knowing why something matters to us doesn’t necessarily make it matter any less. And perhaps the same can be said of sacredness.

But don’t just take my word for it.

Take a moment to look around you. Think about the people in your life, the places you’ve been, the memories you’ve made, or the principles you hold dear.

Is there something you regard with such extraordinary significance that you feel it deserves a special kind of reverence or protection? What makes it so meaningful? And how does that meaning influence the way you treat it?

You don’t have to call it sacred. That’s entirely up to you.

But perhaps sacredness doesn’t have to be something we discover beyond the natural world.Perhaps it’s one of the ways we choose to relate to the world we already inhabit.

References

1. Dictionary.com. (n.d.). Sacred. In Dictionary.com. Retrieved October 21, 2026, from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sacred ↩︎
2. Durkheim, É. (1915). The elementary forms of the religious life (J. W. Swain, Trans.). George Allen & Unwin. (Original work published 1912). https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41360/41360-h/41360-h.htm ↩︎
3. Taves, A. (2009). Religious experience reconsidered: A building-block approach to the study of religion and other special things. Princeton University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7rtvt ↩︎
4. Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17(2), 297–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930302297 ↩︎
5. Preston, J. L., & Shin, F. (2017). Spiritual experiences evoke awe through the small self in both religious and non-religious individuals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70, 212–221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.11.006 ↩︎
6. Fujii, M., Ng, C. S., Khong, Z. Y., Koh, R. J. H., & Ramsay, J. E. (2026). Uneven blessings: Sacred experiences, positive emotions, and mental health among the spiritual but not religious. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2026.2694941 ↩︎
7. Tetlock, P. E. (2003). Thinking the unthinkable: Sacred values and taboo cognitions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(7), 320–324. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00135-9 ↩︎