Secularisation and the Securitisation of the Sacred a Response to Lewin’s Framing of the Gearon–Jackson Debate

Abstract

In this article, I make a response to Lewin's insightful and judicious contribution to the Gearon-Jackson debate. I address the central and important arguments made by Lewin in relation to three aspects of my theoretical orientations on religion in education: (I) what Lewin rightly identifies as my 'propositional' interpretation of religion; (2) the politicisation of religion as secularisation; and (3) the securitisation of religion in education as a 'securitisation of the sacred'. I argue some theoretical framing for this is necessary and that an engagement with the (propositional) realities more helpful than their denial, and that precisely because religion is propositional it can be so used or directed to political and security purposes. In sum, to ensure there is no sense of equivocation in my response I greatly welcome Levin's intervention, but defend my propositional interpretation of religion and defend too my conceptualisation of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education. Prompted by Jackson's critique and Lewin's subsequent intervention, this response is offered then as a bridge to facilitate further theorisation of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education as an aspect of secularisation. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I should like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain and the Society for Educational Studies for respective funding of research grants which have over the past several years enabled and facilitated in often difficult to anticipate ways the interdisciplinary impacts of my work across the boundaries of religion, politics and education, and of late security and intelligence studies.

The Educational Sociology and Political Theology of Disenchantment: From the Secularization to the Securitization of the Sacred

“…Framing secularization as a shift of religious power to political authority (Chaves 1994;cf. Casanova 2009), I therefore re-state my position that for religion in education has achieved new pedagogical purposes as part of, as an adjunct of political and security discourse (Gearon 2013(Gearon , 2017a.…”

“…In European settings the Council of Europe benchmarks political principle through pedagogic practice in numerous ways (CoE 2008). Of late, as I have long noted, such political purposes served through pedagogical practices have developed a very specific and self-defined security function, and of paramount importance here is the otherwise perplexing engaging of a Cold War security agency in the teaching of religion in public schools-no lesser a body that is than the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in the Europe and its widely influential Toledo Guiding Principles on Teaching about Religions and Beliefs in Public Schools (OSCE 2007;Gearon 2017aGearon , 2017b. The facts of powerful international political agencies responding to crises of global security through education-itself entirely understandable-is perhaps nowhere better illustrated, nor anywhere more directly, than in the UN's direct organizational response to a book and an academic thesis: here Huntington (2002) Clash of Civilizations prompted a post-Madrid bombing response with the creation of a very high level political initiative with global reach and education to the fore, namely the formation of counter-thesis to Huntington in the form of the Alliance of Civilizations (UNAoC 2018).…”

“…Rousseau 1968;Bellah 1967). Where I have shown this politicization of religion in education becoming more integrated with security agendas I conceptualize this as the 'securitization of religion in education' (Gearon 2013(Gearon , 2017a(Gearon , 2017b. This has brought support as well as strong opposition (Jackson 2015;Newell 2015).…”

What is the point of religious education?

“…3 For fuller reviews and discussions of the various practices within the EU with regard to the teaching of religion, see, for instance: Jackson and O'Grady 2007;Council of Europe 2014;Jackson 2004;Hull 2005, andGearon 2013. For recent contributions to the lively, if not always illuminating, debate in this field, see Gearon 2017;Jackson 2015Jackson , 2017and Lewin 2017. curriculum should be used to foster an understanding of religious viewpoints are present. 4 In what follows we examine what we take to be the strongest reasons given in defence of this view, which we call the priority of religion model.…”

Religion, Education, Security

“…The European Agenda on Security (EAS 2015) has here increasingly drawn universities into the fray, while in the UK specifically, the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 has given public bodies, including educational institutions, legislative responsibilities for maintaining and enhancing security and preventing terrorism, and the ideologies which allow terrorism to flourish. The editor's conceptualisations of the 'counter-terrorist classroom' (Gearon 2013) and the 'counter-terrorist campus' (Gearon 2017a(Gearon , 2017b(Gearon , 2017cGearon and Prud'homme 2018) have sparked at times vituperative debate (Jackson 2015;Lewin 2017).…”