HISTORIA RELIGIONUM, 2, 2010, 115-33.
Theoretical and methodological resources for breaking open the secular and exploring the boundary between religion and non-religion
Kim Knott
“Eurosecularity” constitutes the exceptional case in a world where religious belief and practice is generally thought to be and represented as the norm[1]. The secular condition, secularism and the associated non-religious ideological categories of humanism, agnosticism and atheism have particular significance in contemporary Europe. Given that these concepts and their associated fields of belief, practice and organization represent what might be called a ‘counter-field’ of interest for scholars of religion, as well as an increasingly important arena in the politics of religion, we ignore them at our peril. Interrogating their position vis-à-vis the state, the public realm, the category of ‘religion’, European Christianity, the presence of other religions and new forms of religiosity and spirituality will help scholars make sense of historical and contemporary discourses about religion, debates about church-state settlement and the location of religion in public life, and the nature and range of beliefs and values held by people in Europe. In this paper I present some resources from the study of religion for the investigation of this counter-field, with reference to examples of religious/secular conflict, in particular The Satanic Verses controversy in the late 1980s. I examine what happens around the boundary between the religious and the secular and make a case for a reconstitution of the object of our studies to include non-religion as well as religion.
A major contemporary issue facing politicians, public servants and intellectuals in European secular states is the relationship between secularity and religion. What place do religious organizations have in the secular state, and what rights are afforded to their members? To what extent should space be made for religion in state and other public affairs, in relation to law, education, health and matters of governance and citizenship, or should it remain a private matter? And which religions should be recognized or tolerated? Are some more conducive – whether historically or ideologically – to secular political and legal contexts and therefore more acceptable? Such questions have risen to prominence in contemporary Europe. Furthermore, as articles and editorials in the European mass media show, many intellectuals and public commentators express concern about what they perceive to be the “re-emergence of religion” and the “crisis of secularism” and their implications for politics, culture and the public sphere.
Behind these questions and anxieties lies the nature of the relationship between secularity and religion. From one perspective this is an historical matter that has been traced back to early Christian concepts of spiritual and worldly time and vocation, and later elaborated in seventeenth and eighteenth century European philosophical texts and political settlements[2]. From another, it is a sociological one, in which the relationship between the religious and secular has been theorized with reference to modernity and increasing social differentiation[3]. But it also concerns the development and deployment of concepts of the “religious” and the “secular”, what they connote and how they are related[4]. Are they separate and mutually exclusive categories, or interrelated? To what extent are they informed by one another, and how far do the interests, values and beliefs associated with each overlap?
The historical and philosophical contours and varieties of the relationship between religion and secularism/s, and the rise and fall of one or the other have been given serious and detailed consideration in recent years[5]. I shall not rehearse these discussions here, except to make the point that contemporary secularisms, whilst often presented as ideologically counter or antagonistic to religion (particularly by European commentators), in differing national contexts are seen as either struggling with or making space for – even serving – religion. It seems clear that, in the US and Indian contexts, religious secularists dominate, whereas those whose secularism is characterized by atheist or liberal humanistbeliefs are dominant in Europe. My aim here is not to examine the niceties of these complex, varied and important relationships, but to consider rather the conceptual and categorical relationship between the “religious” and the “secular”, the boundary which separates them, and key resources in the study of religion that are available for examining their relationship. In particular, I shall refer to four approaches: historical/conceptual (Fitzgerald), spatial/discursive (Knott), cognitive/cultural (Anttonen) and naturalistic (Taves). These are all tools for understanding more about how we see imagine, define, classify and represent religion and its other (whether we call that non-religion or the secular), tools that, once employed, might challenge the categories we use and the anxieties they induce. They do not treat religious and secular phenomena per se; and certainly they do not help us to evaluate whether religion is actually re-emerging or secularism in crisis. They deal instead with concepts, discourse and representations, but before I consider them directly it is imperative to mention – before settingit aside – perhaps the most well known and influential instrument of all for explaining the relationship between the religious and the secular, the secularization thesis.
In crude summary, this thesis – among whose classical exponents were Wilson and Bruce[6], with Martin, Berger and Casanova as engaged critics –states that, in modernity, we have witnessed the structural separation of religion from western society’s other significant institutions (politics, the economy, science, education etc). We have seen its privatisation and decline, in terms of social significance[7]. Martin refers to the dominance of this sociological account as «the undisputed paradigm of secularization», in which modernity was characterized «as a scenario in which mankind shifted from the religious mode to the secular»[8]. It is against the backdrop of this widely accepted paradigm that religion is now held by some to be re-emerging or becoming more visible, and the political doctrine that informed public institutions during this period of separation, privatisation and decline – secularism – is now thought to be in crisis. This rise and fall account of the fate of religion in western society has been repeatedly rehearsed, by sociologists, social commentators and even theologians, as incontrovertible fact. Such has been the dominance of the thesis that even dissenting views have had to be expressed in relation to it, and within its terms.
Sociologists, historians, political philosophers and anthropologists writing about religion and modernity have, of course, held varying views about the changing relationship between the religious and the secular, between religion and society, and religion and politics;irrespective of the nature of their views, they have nevertheless found expression against the backdrop of secularization’s undisputed paradigm. Whilst some would no doubt agree with the idea that religion is re-emerging or becoming more visible, others would query assumptions about the extent of pre-modern religiosity, progressive rationalization and/or the extent or reach of secularization. Generally, though, these scholars have accepted and worked with substantive notions of religion, its secular other, and secularization, applying these to empirical groups and institutions, events and historical processes, and thus reinforcing the boundary between them[9]. Whilst I do not want to disown this perspective as such, I want to distinguish here between this type of approach, which treats the religious and the secular substantively as above, and a second type, which treatsthem nominally, focusing instead on how the concepts “religious” and “secular” have been developed and deployed as a entry point for understanding more about social, political and cultural beliefs, values, practices and organization. This second type of approach does not treat discourse for its own sake but for what it suggests about deeper movements, patterns and anxieties.
Many scholars from beyond sociology (and indeed some social theorists within it[10]) would challenge this substantive starting point, stressing that “religion” is not a natural or primary concept, but rather a second-order concept, a socially and discursively constructed category which evolved from early Christian origins and acquired much of its contemporary character in the crucible of political philosophy in seventeenth century Europe[11]. It was at this time that the possibility arose of designating an institutional sphere of belief, practice, tradition and experience separate from the state and its political doctrine, of distinguishing “religion” from other domains, and, indeed of differentiating different conceptions of the world both within and beyond Christianity (hence “religions”). It is to this approach to the formation of categories at the heart of the study of religion that I now turn, moving away from the paradigm of social differentiation, privatization and decline towards an examination of conceptual, cognitive, spatial and naturalistic boundaries and distinctions.
1.The formation and relationship of the “religious” and the “secular”: A historical/conceptual approach
Among scholars writing on the religious and the secular we find a variety of models of the religious/secular relationship, some showing the progressive decline in social significance of one with the rise of the other (see above), and others their historical imbrication from early Christianity to today[12]. Some scholars have presented religions and secularisms as distinctive ideological equivalents within a liberal modernist context[13]. Bossy and Fitzgerald identify “religion” and “the secular” as mutually-conditioned, oppositional concepts which emerge, with others such as “economics” and “politics”, in the context of western Enlightenment and colonialist discourse[14], and it is to this approach in particular that I now turn.
Writing of the transformation of manners in medieval and early modern Europe, Jorge Arditi suggested that, «the lines separating religion from other spheres of practice whose boundaries today we take for granted did not exist, and therefore the fusion between the religious and those other spheres was complete»[15]. Even where there was an apparent difference, for example between religion and magic, there was in fact epistemological congruence[16]. More recently, Charles Taylor has suggested that confessional and ideological acts of separation only became possible with what he refers to as the «great disembedding» of the modern social imaginary[17]: «[I]n earlier societies this inability to imagine the self outside of a particular context extended to membership of our society in its essential order. That this is no longer so with us… is a measure of our disembedding»[18].This process has allowed us to imagine other social and religious possibilities, and to ask «What if…?» questions. Conceiving of a separate sphere of non-religion, for example, or an alternative religious confession, or an individual spiritual trajectory beyond the dominant religious order became possible in a way that it had not been previously.
With a concern for categories and their historical emergence rather than the changing nature of the religious landscape per se, Timothy Fitzgerald in his book and edited collection, both from 2007, also refers to this shift from an undifferentiated socio-religious worldview to separate and bounded conceptual domains of “religion” and the “secular”[19]. In his examination of the seventeenth century contributions of John Locke and William Penn, he stresses the importance of what he refers to as «a profound reconfiguration of the dominant world-view of what I call encompassing religion», the idea that «nothing exists or could exist» outside «Christian Truth»[20]. This reconfiguration constituted an alternative privatised piety that made space for the idea of a secular domain[21], necessary for the establishment of a polity suitable for the conduct of global trade, colonial development, and political and religious toleration. Following the earlier work of John Bossy[22], Fitzgerald writes,
The conceptualization of “religion” and “religions” in the modern sense of private faith, or the related sense of personal adherence to a soteriological doctrine of God, was needed for the representation of the world as a secular, neutral, factual, comprehensively quantifiable realm whose natural laws can be discovered by scientific rationality, and whose central human activity is a distinct “non-religious” sphere or domain called “politics” or “political economy”. By “non-religious” I do not necessarily mean ‘hostile to religion’, but, more often, neutral towards religion, tolerant of religion […] The crucial logic is separation into two essentially different domains[23].
The distinction between the two is unstable, in so far as it changes as the meanings of “religion” and the “secular” are repeatedly contested[24]. Of the early nineteenth century, for example, Fitzgerald writes that older Christian uses of “religious” and “secular” run alongside and compete with the more recently emerging ideological construction of the “non-religious” secular[25]. What is clear, however, is that the two spheres are co-produced. The ‘invention’ of one leads to the co-invention of the other[26].
The now taken-for-granted boundaries – between “religion” and “non-religion”, “religion” and the “secular”, and “religion” and “politics” – the discursive formation of which Fitzgerald interrogates, continue to be repeatedly reproduced today in controversies about religious and secular matters (as my later example will show),and, in the process, the concepts of “religion”, “non-religion” and the “secular”, and their ostensible form and content, are continually reinstated and reworked. This is evident, for example, in public – particularly legal – cases involving religious organisations and spiritual matters[27]. Studies of such cases have tended to focus to date on how ‘religion’ is defined, presented and limited by secular officials with little discussion so far of the consequent production of the non-religious “secular”. That such a space is produced is not in question, but its definition and contents in current discourse need more thorough investigation.
Through his readingof “religion” and the “secular”, but also “society”, “politics” and the “economy” in early modern political, philosophical and pietistic writings, Fitzgerald provides us with an analytical strategy to chart the more recent historical development of these concepts, their usage and relationship, the discursive development and isolation of “religion” as a particular cultural, social and political formation and of its other. Such an analysis reveals how, in different periods, in the context of changing political and religious formations, religion’s other – the category of non-religion – metamorphosed, appearing discursively in the guises of “superstition”, the “profane”, the “secular”, and “secularism”.
2.The formation and relationship of the “religious” and the “secular”: A spatial/discursive approach
Fitzgerald’s aim in the body of work discussed above was to show the way in which those who have focused on “religion” without reference to its discursive co-construction with other terms have produced an inaccurate and bounded conceptualization which has limited our understanding of western culture and had a wider impact through the process of colonialization. By «retelling the story of the modern category of generic religion»[28], he has sought to re-engage religious studies with other disciplines and the study of “religion” with that of other domains, such as “politics” and “economics”. Moving now to the second resource for breaking open the secular, I turn to the example of my own work. Seeking to develop a methodological framework for exploring the location of religion in ostensibly secular contexts, in my 2005 book,in addition todeveloping a spatial approach, I proposed a dialectical field of religious and secular knowledge-power relations[29]. In drawing up this field I argued for the discursive co-relationship and engagement between positions (“religious”, “secular” and “postsecular”) that are generally presented as antithetical or oppositional, and often as constitutionally different.
Figure 1: The religious/secular field and its force relationships
I suggested the field to be a site of struggle in which “religious”, “secular” and what I referred to as “post-secular” positions were contested. Within it were included not only confessional exponents, e.g. ardent theists or secularists, but also those in the middle ground (undecided or deliberately agnostic) as well as those who comment upon the field and its relations (such as secularization theorists). There is no disinterested, external position, no “bird’s eye view”.
The academy and its representatives, like those in the media and other professions, indeed like confessors of all kinds, are situated within the field, both historically and in terms of the contemporary cultural order. The field of the “religious” and “secular” is one in which knowledge-power is expressed and contested, and in which controversies between positions (either within a single camp or across different camps) reveal some of the deeply held views and values which constitute the field and mark out the territorial areas and lines of engagement within it. Investigating such controversies helps to uncover some of the unspoken norms of late-modernity regarding the “religious” and “secular”[30].
Modelling religious and secular positions and their relations in this way not only built on their historical and discursive inter-relationship[31], but reflected the representation of struggle and warfare repeatedly reiterated in religious and secularist tracts, and in academic and media commentary on such positions. Furthermore, the model expressed relations between the religious and secular in terms of knowledge-power[32]. Foucault, for example, referred to, «… a strategy of struggle, in which the two forces are not superimposed, do not lose their specific nature, or do not finally become confused. Each constitutes for the other a kind of permanent limit, a point of possible reversal»[33].
Representing this relationship as a strategy of struggle has the effect of setting the religious and the secular apart from one another, thus resisting the view voiced by some commentators that the latter is merely a part of or subsumed within the former, or that it is just an historical development of it, but rather that the concepts – or “forces” – are linked in a categorical and dialectical relationship. It has the virtue of presenting the boundaries between the various positions, which are discursively constructed, negotiated and policed by those on different sides (and transgressed, for example, by those of a post-secular religious persuasion), as spaces which then become available forinterrogation. Chimerical as such boundaries are – to people of some persuasions appearing substantial and impenetrable, to others, porous and insubstantial – these boundaries come into focus and present themselves for investigation on the occasion of public controversies such as recent debates and legal cases in the Netherlands, France and the UK on liberal and religious rights, the Danish cartoons crisis of 2006 or The Satanic Verses controversy of 1989/90[34].