Academic theology in the West is increasingly devalued, as evidenced by the decline of theology faculties, student enrolments, educational programmes, and research funding. Secularisation is an obvious explanation, as less religiosity could account for declining student rates and perceived relevance of studying religion. Furthermore, secularisation influences the Western social imaginary, the background understanding from which sense is made of the world, resulting in a hesitation to, or even suspicion of anything related to religion. However, secularization cannot account for the broader trend of the devaluation of the humanities. Scholars point out various dynamics that negatively affect the prosperity of the humanities, e.g. developments of quantification, marketization and the equation of societal value to economic value. The humanities can only partly, if at all, accommodate these demands, given the predominantly qualitative nature of research output, absence of large scale industries to which they can 'sell' their services, and their influence on economic development which is more indirect, rather than direct. Despite ongoing calls to revalue the humanities, the present predicament seems not to have remotely changed. Western societies appear to remain entrenched in an immanent social imaginary which prioritizes measurables and economic value, and thus in which theology and the humanities keep struggling to prove their societal value. Social imaginaries dictate the human encounter with the world, and form expression of experience, social practices, and institutions. Social imaginaries also include value systems, and thus is a particularly relevant concept to explore the present (de)valuation of theology and humanities. Therefore, this paper will utilize this concept, which is theorized by among others Castoriadis, Ricoeur and Taylor, as to sketch a broader picture of what lies at the foundation of the devaluation of academic theology in Western societies.