...reform process and to put its weight behind freedoms welcomed by the pious majority, while neglecting the freedoms of non-pious groups. For instance, severe strictures were put on alcohol and...
insta---batmanapollo
Let’s get clear about materialism
by Edward Slingerland...cultural primes (for instance, Catholic nuns) would probably result in very different reported experiences: not merging with some indefinite “larger presence” or Mt. Tam, but being physically embraced by a...
On reductionism
by Brandon Vaidyanathan...dismissal that itself ends up being an instance of what it aims to prevent. Reductionism needn’t be dismissed tout court. I don’t hope to do a great deal of image-management...
Paul Kahn’s mis-prognosis of America’s social imaginary
by Jason Stevens...selective use of history. Consider, first, Kahn’s comparison of modern democratic revolutionaries and early Protestants. To paraphrase: the trans-temporal, collective subject of the revolutionary sovereign, instantiated in every citizen, is...
Constituting Religion—An introduction
...colonialism. In others, state regulation of religion is of more recent vintage. But in either instance, the co-constitution of law and religion is a trend that is not likely to...
Populism without borders
...are today understood as exceptional problems, tomorrow will be nationalistic, racist, or fascist. If migration and the presence of migrants are understood as normal instances of human mobility, the future...
Withdrawing consent
by Stathis Gourgouris...the revolutionary movement for democracy in both Egypt and Tunisia never gestured toward any religious authorization. Even the instances of collective prayer in Tahrir Square before projected mass actions remained...
spirit
by Josef Sorett...of a project such as this, “A Universe of Terms.” Yet even within the rubrics of an installation that revisits Mark C. Taylor’s 1998 edited volume, Critical Terms for Religious...
Figurations of menace
...decades writing about. Even if it may seem that Sri Lanka slots into place as the latest local instantiation of a global populist desire for authoritarianism, when I write about...
The suspicious revolution: An interview with Talal Asad
by Nathan Schneider...questions about the state of the economy. Since the economy suffers from the political instability in the country, they say, we shouldn’t have more demonstrations or strikes. But one of...