Jonathan VanAntwerpen is program director for theology at the Henry Luce Foundation. Originally trained as a philosopher, he received his doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is co-editor of a series of books on secularism, religion, and public life, including Habermas and Religion (Polity, 2013), Rethinking Secularism (Oxford University Press, 2011), The Post-Secular in Question (NYU Press, 2012), The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (Columbia University Press, 2011), and Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2010). VanAntwerpen was the founding director of the SSRC's program on religion and the public sphere, and in 2007 he worked with others to launch The Immanent Frame, serving for several years as editor-in-chief.
According to Karl Marx, by 1844 the criticism of religion—the ‘premise’ of all social criticism—was ‘essentially complete’. A hundred and sixty years later, Edward Said endorsed the sentiment in Humanism and Democratic Criticism—though more by way of hope than expectation, given the persistent dangers posed by ‘religious enthusiasm’. ‘Surely’, Said entreated, ‘it must be a major part of the humanistic vocation to keep a fully rounded secular perspective’. For today, it is routinely doubted that secular criticism can offer a ‘fully rounded’ perspective on our contemporary predicament: either some intrinsic religiosity must be included within a more spiritually expansive humanism, or else materialists will have to accept that their work will never be complete.
