I begin with three fundamental features of the idea of ‘secularism.’ I will want to make something of them at…
pluralism
Beyond secularisms of all sorts
Is there a crisis of secularism in Western Europe? Is Tariq Modood’s “moderate secularism” the solution, or should we go…
A historian’s reaction to American Grace
David Campbell's and Robert Putnam's American Grace left me historically puzzled on my first reading, and my second didn't clear things up.…
Beyond moderate secularism
For Modood, moderate secularism can and should go on more or less as it is, but, in order to accommodate…
American religion in the era of Fosdick’s revenge
Is bland beautiful? Almost never, most of us would say. But when it comes to religion in a diverse society,…
A suspension of (dis)belief
Most academic discussions in political science and international relations presuppose a fixed definition of the secular and the religious and…
Forthcoming SSRC book: What Matters?
Edited by Courtney Bender and Ann Taves, and forthcoming from Columbia University Press, What Matters? Ethnographies of Value in a (not so)…
Book review: Bridging the maximalist-minimalist divide
Must human rights be grounded in a religious or metaphysical worldview in order for them to be understood and implemented…
Poppies and Prophets
Last November 11, two British Muslims, purportedly members of an organization calling itself “Muslims Against Crusades” (MAC), were arrested under…
Secularism despite itself
Kile Jones, a Ph.D. student at the Claremont School of Theology, has a review of William Connolly's Why I Am…