Secular religions literature and where not to find it

A few days ago, a friend of mine asked me about a comprehensive introduction into the topic of “secular religions”. There is, however, no such book srictly speaking. The only one by a similar title, Hans Kelsen’s Secular Religion was written in the 1950s and 1960s, and it is actually (as the subtitle goes) A Polemic Against the Misinterpretation of Modern Social Philosophy, Science and Politics As New Religions, so rather an extroduction than an introduction.

We have, of course, plenty of great books on political theology and political religions, as well as on many specific topics from the altars of Wall Street to psychology as religion. Just a few months ago, Tara Isabella Burton published a new one called Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, but once again on specific cultural (or spiritual, whatever that means) phenomena in contemporary America, and not on “new religions” in general.

Yes, of course, Wikipedia also has an entry on “Secular Religion”, but this is rather a medley of different arbitrary examples: citing for example only ONE modern case, that of the former Turkmen president’s cult of personality. Hm. Maybe I will also write a more detailed review on this entry later.