Eroding the hard category or “religion,” such as accomplished by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Jonathan Z. Smith, Talal Asad, and Timothy Fitzgerald, enables a coordinate eroding of its apposite: secularity. Not only, or even as of first concern, is this an issue of Christian “decline” in the lands of Corpus Christianum. Rather, as the binary of religion/secular itself underlay the colonial enterprise, so the loosening of this binary opens necessary space for redressing both the post-colonial context and the diverse local embodiments of the Christian faith.
In this regard, voices such as José Casanova’s have inserted an international perspective concerning different forms of local religious adherence. There are apparent ambiguities. For example, with the “establishment clause” (the separation of church and state), as the first clause in the US “Bill of Rights,” the USA is constitutionally a secular state. However, in practice, it is evident that religion continues to play an outsized role in political affairs. In India, the Preamble to the Constitution occasioned by the forty-second Amendment of the Constitution in 1976, asserts that India is a secular nation. Yet, this occurs against the backdrop the distinction of India from Pakistan and in the context of its own Muslim population. The constitutional secular position found in India is not a one-to-one equivalent with that of the USA. Different histories, religious pluralisms, even difference in religious self-understandings concerning the nature of religion and its proper relationship to the state, all of these condition the formulation of secularity at every social level.
None of this means the death of the old theories. Rather it points to a necessary complexification of the issue.
For a couple of recently summary articles, see first the article by Jörg Stolz, which retains a western focus, and the response by Tobias Müller, which highlights more international/post-colonial and gender concerns:
- Stolz, Jörg. 2020. “Secularization Theories in the Twenty-First Century: Ideas, Evidence, and Problems. Presidential Address.” Social Compass 67 (2): 282–308.
- Müller, Tobias. 2020. “Secularisation Theory and Its Discontents: Recapturing Decolonial and Gendered Narratives. Debate on Jörg Stolz’s Article on Secularization Theories in the 21st Century: Ideas, Evidence, and Problems.” Social Compass 67 (2): 315–22.
