Social Science Research Council

In collaboration with the CUNY Graduate Center, Rutgers University, and Yale University, and in conjunction with the efforts of its Working Group on Religion, Secularism, and International Affairs, the SSRC is organizing a series of exploratory meetings intended to build on and contribute to a rapidly unfolding discussion regarding multiple forms of secularism. In this international debate, it is no longer taken for granted that secularism is a neutral governance structure, or that it can be understood simply as the negation of “religion.” Yet disagreements are also emerging. How closely can secularism be identified with the Christian culture from which it arose? What distinctions are to be made among different varieties of secularism? Does the increasingly discussed resurgence of religion signal the onset of “post-secular” society, or must it rather be understood within the broader context of a distinctly “secular age”?

As part of these efforts, this past May the SSRC partnered with the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University to play host to an event on the “Varieties of Secularism.” Bringing together an impressive array of scholars, this one-day colloquium involved wide-ranging discussions of the relationships between secularism, politics, and religion. Discussion was stimulated by the remarks of six colloquium participants, each of whom was responding to recent and influential articles by Gil Anidjar (“Secularism,” Critical Inquiry 33:52, 2006), Jürgen Habermas (“Religion in the Public Sphere,” European Journal of Philosophy 14:1, 2006), Saba Mahmood (“Secularism, Hermeneutics, and Empire: The Politics of Islamic Reformation,” Public Culture 18:323, 2006) and Charles Taylor (“Introduction” to A Secular Age. Harvard University Press, Forthcoming 2007). Edited transcripts of each of the six presentations can be downloaded below.