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Religion and the Earthly City
This paper explores the religious origins of the secular. It troubles the often rigid and misleading opposition between the secular and sacred through an exploration of this relationship in the thought of Augustine, Calvin, Madison, up to Obama.
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 pp. 989 - 1000
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research
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Locke and the Political Origins of Secularism
The paper tries to show the importance of the writings of John Locke in preparing the way for secularism. He provides a theory for disentangling religion and the state for several main reasons, including the avoidance of religious persecution of minorties; the avoidance of civil strife; and the need to leave it to individuals to work out their own salvation by exercising their conscience free o…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 pp. 1001 - 1034
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- 0037783x
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The Secular-Religious Divide: Kant's Legacy
How has philosophy contributed to bringing about a secular age? What role has philosophy played in bringing about a secular age in which belief and unbelief are both viable options? This paper does not address philosophy in general but rather focuses on a single thinker, Immanuel Kant, to argue that the consequences—both intended and unintended—of Kant's critical philosophy has had the greatest…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 1035 - 1048
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- 0037783x
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The Secular and Secularisms
This paper explores the distinction between secularism as ideology and secularism as statecraft principle. By secularism as statecraft principle, I understand simply some principle of separation between religious and political authority, either for the sake of the neutrality of the state vis-ŕ-vis each and all religions, or for the sake of protecting the freedom of conscience of each individual…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 pp. 1049 - 1066
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- 0037783x
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Introduction: Religious Selves, Secular Selves
Recent scholarship has taken us beyond the simplistic framework of the self in or outside world religions. It has deepened, historicized, and pluralized our sense of selves between and within cultures, and shown us that selves—especially perhaps the "self-made"—are narrated and performed intersubjectively and politically. Scholars have questioned the ways in which selves are built, unbuilt, and…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 pp. 1069 - 1071
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- 0037783x
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- Sociel Research
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Ritual, the Self, and Sincerity
This paper critiques the modern cult of sincerity, suggesting that selves cannot be selves except in relationships which are constituted by ritualized behaviors fundamentally at odds with the demands of the self. Such ritual acts, are, I maintain, crucial to the existence of the relational self. Rituals create that subjunctive space, a shared "could be" where such selves can exist—in relation w…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 pp. 1073 - 1096
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Spirituality in Modern Society
This paper attempts to liberate the concept of "spirituality" from its apolitical consumerized present, and suggests that our thinking about selves as well as about secularity and religion must recognize its debts to Orientalist practices.
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 pp. 1097 - 1120
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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The Human Predicament
This paper explores the notion of the "human predicament" by a comparative examination of the works of Tillich, Sankara, Catherine Keller and Friedrich Nietzsche. The text highlights the radical differences between these thinkers in order to bring out existential issues that any conception of the human predicament must somehow address.
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 pp. 1121 - 1140
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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The Polysemy of the Secular
We think of "secularization" as a process that can occur anywhere (and for some people, is occurring everywhere). And we think of secularist regimes as options for any country, whether they are adopted or not. And certainly, these words crop up everywhere. But do they really mean the same thing? Are there not, rather, subtle differences, which can bedevil cross-cultural discussions of these mat…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 pp. 1143 - 1166
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Introduction: Odd Ways of Being Secular
Secularism in the United States finds its most heightened expression in its constitutional arrangements; in this respect Britain falls short but by its own secularist standards—as the following essays display—American politics are saturated by Christian, especially Protestant concepts and sensibilities, which shape the hopes and fears, the ideals and blind spots of American political culture. I…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1169 - 11
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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The Secular Citadel and the Untended Garden
Functionally, religion is what is held as sacred, that is, as untouchable. In the United States, taxes and military manpower are untouchable and, therefore, beyond objection by particular religions. The courts, too, are untouchable in determining what is and what is not religion. Despite these severe limitations on religious freedom, sometimes religion has broken the national consensus - most n…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1173 - 118
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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We Are All Religious Now. Again.
In this essay I set current reappraisals of the secular, of secularism, and of secularization, in the context of the ways in which law regulates religion in the U.S. today. Religion under the rule of law—as it is practiced in the United States. Virtually all Americans today, however orthodox their asserted religious identities, Protestant or Catholic or Jewish or Muslim, claim the right to asso…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1181 - 119
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Jefferson's Rickety Wall: Sacred and Secular in American Politics
From the start, Americans were wrestling with the proper connections between "private and public felicity." On its face, the first line of the First Amendment to the Constitution seems to settle the issue: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Thomas Jefferson declared that this provision "buil[t] a wall of separation bet…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1199 - 122
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Obama's Neo-New Deal: Religion, Secularism, and Sex in Political Debates Now
The "religious and secular divide" cannot be understood unless we think about the way sex gets mobilized on both sides of this supposed divide. In our joint writing, we have resisted thinking of the religious and the secular as a divide; we have rather been interested to think them relationally—as relations. Thus, the larger suggestion of this paper is that we cannot truly imagine and practice …
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1227 - 125
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Introduction: Moral Crusades Then and Now: Religious and Secular
This introduction frames the papers that follow in terms of an overlapping project of recognizing asymmetries and shifts as communities seek to draw lines between church and state, private values and public morality, insiders and outsiders, and reconcilable and irreconcilable differences. The ideas of the religious and secular sometimes fold into each other or split apart to make new alignments…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1257 - 126
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Prophetic Religion: A Transracial Challenge to Modern Democracy
Most contributors approach the secularization question out of concern with intolerance and repression. But a peculiar kind of religion may impinge upon secular life in a different way: a prophetic religion may generate the solidarity and will-to-sacrifice that oppressed peoples need to fight for freedom and equality. The tradition of the Hebrew Prophets (shared by Islam and Judaism) played a ke…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1261 - 127
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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American Protestant Moralism and the Secular Imagination: From Temperance to …
Modern secularity as a historically specific hegemonic social formation that prevailed in the U.S. in the mid-20th century depended on and was, in part, constituted by the exclusion of fundamentalists and their Bible-based moral rhetorics from public life. This essay argues that the movements for temperance, prohibition, and prohibition repeal were an important context in which the political an…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1277 - 130
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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The Culture War and the Sacred/Secular Divide: The Problem of Pluralism and W…
The culture war over the last several decades in North America appears to be a proxy between the conflict of the sacred and the secular. Yet, this perception ignores the complexity that actually exists. Advocates for competing sides have never denied a place for the other but affirmed the necessity of pluralism in American democracy. Rather, the conflict has been a contest over the language and…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1307 - 132
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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The Religious-Secular Divide: The U.S. Case
This essay summarizes the themes and issues of the conference and raises further questions concerning how religion and the secular might be theorized and related.
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1327 - 13
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- 0037783x
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Reclaiming the Secular and the Religious: The Primacy of Religious Autonomy
What is the "secular"? Is it a state of official neutrality, or is it one in which religious influences are on the wane? This "polysemy" about "the secular" permeates our public and legal discussions and has unfortunate consequences for debates over our constitutional arrangements. In these comments, I will suggest that a different vocabulary—a vocabulary of religious freedom rather than secula…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1333 - 13
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
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- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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