The Immaculate Conception Church in Astoria will host a three-part lecture series next month by Ryan Williams of the Immaculate Conception Seminary: “Christianity and Secularism.” Details are here.
Berg-Sørensen (ed.), “Contesting Secularism”
This April, Ashgate Publishing will publish Contesting Secularism: Comparative Perspectives edited by Anders Berg-Sørensen (University of Copenhagen, Denmark). The publisher’s description follows.
As we enter the twenty-first century, the role of religion within civic society has become an issue of central concern across the world. The complex trends of secularism, multiculturalism and the rise of religiously motivated violence raise fundamental questions about the relationship between political institutions, civic culture and religious groups. Contesting Secularism represents a major intervention into this debate. Drawing together contributions from leading scholars from across the world it analyses how secularism functions as a political doctrine in different national contexts put under pressure by globalisation. In doing so it presents different models for the relationship between political institutions and religious groups, challenging the reader to be more aware of assumptions within their own cultural context, and raises alternative possibilities for the structure of democratic, multi-faith societies.
Through its inter-disciplinary and comparative approach, Contesting Secularism sets a new agenda for thinking about the place of religion in the public sphere of twenty-first century societies. It is essential reading for policy-makers, as well as for scholars and students in political science, law, sociology and religious studies.
Rahim, “Muslim Secular Democracy”
This month, Palgrave Macmillan will publish Muslim Secular Democracy: Voices from Within edited by Lily Zubaidah Rahim (University of Sydney). The publisher’s description follows.
Muslim Secular Democracy: Voices From Within provides an expansive understanding of secularism in the Muslim World by exploring different trajectories and varieties of secularism, from the failed authoritarian secular state of Pahlavi Iran and the ambiguous secularism in Malaysia to democratizing passive secularism in Indonesia and shifts towards passive secularism under the AKP government in Turkey. Where the bulk of academic literature on democratization in the Muslim World focuses on the Arab World, this volume fills a gap by developing an integrated Muslim World perspective; together, the country case-studies provide multiple lenses through which to appreciate the socio-political shifts that have resulted in different democratic transitions, supported by varied discourses and propelled by diverse combinations of political, social, and religious actors. In the early twenty-first century, passive secularism increasingly aligns itself with mainstream Muslim aspirations for forms of wasatiyyah democracy and governance based on popular sovereignty and citizenship rights and for the incorporation of the sacred within the political framework of the inclusive secular state. The contributions to this volume examine the ways by which Muslim wasatiyyah democracy has been advanced by progressive Islamic Muslim discourses and movements grounded in the principles of equity and social justice.
Acevedo on Secularism in the Indian Context
Deepa Das Acevedo (Ph.D. Student, U. of Chicago) has posted Secularism in the Indian Context. The abstract follows.
Indian constitutional framers sought to tie their new state to ideas of modernity and liberalism by creating a government that would ensure citizens’ rights while also creating the conditions for democratic citizenship. Balancing these two goals has been particularly challenging with regard to religion, as exemplified by the emergence of a peculiarly Indian understanding of secularism which requires the non-establishment of religion but not the separation of religion and state. Supporters argue that this brand of secularism is best suited to the particular social and historical circumstances of independent India. This article suggests that the desire to separate religion and state is integral to any understanding of secularism and that, consequently, the Indian state neither is nor was meant to be secular. However, Indian secularists correctly identify the Indian state’s distinctive approach to religion-state relations as appropriate to the Indian context and in keeping with India’s constitutional goals.
Lecture on Laïcité and Changes in French Society (Feb. 25)
NYU’s Maison Française will host a lecture by French historian Jean Baubérot (École Pratique des Hautes Études), “La Laïcité face aux mutations de la société française,” on February 25. Baubérot is identified with laïcité en mouvement, a school that represents a middle ground between the laïcité positive of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with its less hostile view of religion, and the more militantly secular laïcité de combat. Details are here.
Datla, “The Language of Secular Islam”
Last month, the University of Hawaii Press published The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India by Kavita Datla (Mount Holyoke College). The publisher’s description follows.
During the turbulent period prior to colonial India’s partition and independence, Muslim intellectuals in Hyderabad sought to secularize and reformulate their linguistic, historical, religious, and literary traditions for the sake of a newly conceived national public. Responding to the model of secular education introduced to South Asia by the British, Indian academics launched a spirited debate about the reform of Islamic education, the importance of education in the spoken languages of the country, the shape of Urdu and its past, and the significance of the histories of Islam and India for their present.
The Language of Secular Islam pursues an alternative account of the political disagreements between Hindus and Muslims in South Asia, conflicts too often described as the product of primordial and unchanging attachments to religion. The author suggests that the political struggles of India in the 1930s, the very decade in which the demand for Pakistan began to be articulated, should not be understood as the product of an inadequate or incomplete secularism, but as the clashing of competing secular agendas. Her work explores negotiations over language, education, and religion at Osmania University, the first university in India to use a modern Indian language (Urdu) as its medium of instruction, and sheds light on questions of colonial displacement and national belonging.
Grounded in close attention to historical evidence, The Language of Secular Islam has broad ramifications for some of the most difficult issues currently debated in the humanities and social sciences: the significance and legacies of European colonialism, the inclusions and exclusions enacted by nationalist projects, the place of minorities in the forging of nationalism, and the relationship between religion and modern politics. It will be of interest to historians of colonial India, scholars of Islam, and anyone who follows the politics of Urdu.
Lecture: Toward a Theory of Religious Pluralism (Feb. 5)
On February 5 at Georgetown’s Berkley Center, the always-interesting sociologist Peter Berger will deliver a lecture, “Toward a Theory of Religious Pluralism”:
Renowned sociologist Peter Berger argues that secularization theory—the idea that modernity necessarily leads to a decline of religion—has been falsified. Rather than an age of secularity, ours is an age of pluralism. In other words, the problem of modernity is not that the gods have fled, but that there are too many of them around. Berger will discuss his ideas on religion and modernity, and sketch an outline of a possible theory of pluralism for the modern era.
Details are here.
The Book is Probably Better
In my law and religion seminar this week, we’ve been discussing justifications for religious freedom. Why should the state protect religion? One argument is that religion, on the whole, contributes greatly to social capital. Take aesthetics, for example. How much great art and music has Christianity alone inspired? What a diminished culture we would have without the St. Matthew Passion, the Sistine Chapel, and The Brothers Karamazov.
But, critics object, religion isn’t the only possible source of artistic inspiration. The Enlightenment inspired great works too, like Candide and The Magic Flute. And then there’s this: John Rawls’s “A Theory of Justice”: The Musical, a current student production at Oxford. (Better hurry, the February 1 performance is already sold out). “A Theory of Justice,” the producers tell us, will be “the world’s first feature-length musical about political philosophy.” Here’s the plot:
In order to draw inspiration for his magnum opus, John Rawls travels back through time to converse (in song) with a selection of political philosophers, including Plato, Locke, Rousseau and Mill. But the journey is not as smooth as he hoped: for as he pursues his love interest, the beautiful student Fairness, through history, he must escape the evil designs of his libertarian arch-nemesis, Robert Nozick, and his objectivist lover, Ayn Rand. Will he achieve his goal of defining Justice as Fairness?
Well, Handel it’s not, but it could be fun in a nerdy sort of way. And it’s nice to see that the musical theater is finally taking Rawls seriously. (H/T: First Thoughts).
Nongbri, “Before Religion”
At least since the Enlightenment, the West has assumed that “religion” and “civil 
government” are separate categories. “Religion” concerns spiritual things like the soul and salvation; civil government concerns the things of this world: health, property, leisure. In fact, the Enlightenment separated religion, not only from politics, but from disciplines like economics as well. Not all cultures share the assumption that religion should be strictly segregated from other aspects of social life, of course, and not everyone in the West does, either. But the Enlightenment assumption still informs much of what we do, whether we think about it consciously or not. Brent Nongbri of Sydney’s Macquarie University has written an interesting-looking book on the history of “religion” as a separate category in Western thought, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (Yale 2012). The publisher’s description follows:
For much of the past two centuries, religion has been understood as a universal phenomenon, a part of the “natural” human experience that is essentially the same across cultures and throughout history. Individual religions may vary through time and geographically, but there is an element, religion, that is to be found in all cultures during all time periods. Taking apart this assumption, Brent Nongbri shows that the idea of religion as a sphere of life distinct from politics, economics, or science is a recent development in European history—a development that has been projected outward in space and backward in time with the result that religion now appears to be a natural and necessary part of our world.
Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Nongbri demonstrates that in antiquity, there was no conceptual arena that could be designated as “religious” as opposed to “secular.” Surveying representative episodes from a two-thousand-year period, while constantly attending to the concrete social, political, and colonial contexts that shaped relevant works of philosophers, legal theorists, missionaries, and others, Nongbri offers a concise and readable account of the emergence of the concept of religion.
Scherer, “Beyond Church and State”
Secularism and “post-secularism” studies have been big over the last few 
years (just click on the “Secularism” tag below for a small sampling), and it looks like they will continue to attract scholarly attention in 2013. Here’s an interesting looking entry in the field, Beyond Church and State: Religion, Politics, and Democracy (Cambridge University Press 2013), by Matthew Scherer (Union College, New York). The publisher’s description follows.
Secularism is often imagined in Thomas Jefferson’s words as “a wall of separation between Church & State.” Religion, Politics, and Democracy moves past that standard picture to argue that secularism is a process that reshapes both religion and politics. Borrowing a term from religious traditions, the book goes further to argue that this process should be understood as a process of conversion. Matthew Scherer studies Saint Augustine, John Locke, John Rawls, Henri Bergson, and Stanley Cavell to present a more accurate picture of what secularism is, what it does, and how it can be reimagined to be more conducive to genuine democracy.