Read side by side, these two stunning commentaries on Magic’s Reason—for which I am immensely grateful—both seem to revolve around…
Secularism’s enchantments and disenchantments: A reply to Goto-Jones and Zhan
Book blog
Scholars from varying disciplines engage in critical discussions of recent books. Additionally, scholars introduce their books with an original essay or, occasionally, an original essay reviews an important new book, connecting it to other threads of conversation in the academy and beyond.
You can read our very first book forum, on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and the continued discussion around Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age here.
Modernity’s residues
How is modernity sticky—prone to leaving a residue? How are secularization theses still affecting us “as gelatinous or glutinous matters…
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
Don’t you love the word “debunk”? Its cheerfully aggressive sound is inseparable from its sense. The second syllable, bunk!, seems…
Abduction as abduction
Lepselter’s text is a magisterial enactment of the thing that it is ultimately about: American weirdness.
Revelations in method
Uncanny or rational, spiritual or empirical, the genesis of thinking cannot be pinned down.
Thinking from the verge: The dynamic of secularism and its others
In this forum prompted by Emily Ogden’s Credulity, Susan Lepselter’s The Resonance of Unseen Things, Pamela Klassen’s The Story of…
Constituting Religion—An introduction
Most Muslim-majority countries have legal systems that are meant to embed religion in state law. In many cases, the broad…
Liberal rights and religious rites
While Constituting Religion provides a detailed case study of Malaysia, the argument Moustafa develops has important implications for much of…
Deepening the “zero-sum binary”
Via Islamic finance, “rites” have increased their power over “rights” in Malaysia.
Mansplaining religion
While the hot cases [in Malaysia] differ in their details from those in the United States, the structure of the…