Politics of Religious Freedom

Abstract

When tackling the topic of "religious freedom" what are policy-makers and academics trying to define? Is religious freedom a universally defined set of liberal human rights from a secular state, or is religious freedom also seen in religious states? The Politics of Religious Freedom goes into the depths of complexity that is "religious freedom." The book explores what religious freedom is in a variety of settings: South Asia, North Africa, Middle East, Europe, the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Brazil. This book is a collection of blog posts and essays submitted to the Immanent Frame website (hosted by the Social Science Research Council) dedicated to interdisciplinary discussion on religion, secularism, and the public sphere. Overall, this collection of blog posts and the larger Immanent Frame website, are part of the Politics of Religious Freedom research project, a three-year study funded by the Henry R. LuceFoundation. In beginning the research for this project it became clear the project extended beyond the dialogue of the four editors and even setting the discourse of "what is religion?" needed to be expanded, let alone trying to define religious freedom in an overarching, universal approach. The book is divided into four sections: religion, history, law/politics, and freedom. The variety of essays forces the reader to examine religion and

Four genealogies of postsecularity

“…This postmodern dimension of postsecularity is closely connected to genealogical studies about the modern construction of the religion-secular binary, which shows how both modern religion and modern secularity as two incompatible dimensions are not some eternal entities, but artificial constructs resulting from theoretical and political efforts dating back at least to the fifteenth century (Despland and Vallee 1992;Asad 1993Asad , 2003Molnar 2002;Dubuisson 2003;Masuzawa 2005;Fitzgerald 2007;Hurd 2008;Cavanaugh 2009;Nongbri 2013;Sullivan et al 2015).…”

Churches as firms: An exploration of regulatory similarities

“…The dominance that economists and their general abstractions of human behaviour have attained in the organisation of social life does not refer merely to the geographical spread and application of new political economy models. It also involves the reframing of 'the social sphere as a form of economic field', whereby the market is transformed from being embedded in to actually embed political and other aspects of social life (Gauthier et al, 2013, p. 13;Sullivan et al, 2015). Granted the modern tendency to evaluate social events from an economic perspective the influence of 'profit-and-loss' calculations is anticipated even in non-commercial domains, which are not integrated formally into the market economy (Jessop, 2001, pp.…”

On the Coptic question

“…Religious Difference in a Secular Age complicates the story, common in the West, that the worldwide struggle is between enlightened secularists and religious fundamentalists (see also Hurd, 2015;Sullivan et al, 2015). Regrettably, Mahmood's book avoids identifying who has actually burned Coptic churches or beaten Coptic demonstrators.…”