2008-09 AM Postsecular Britain? Religion, Secularity, and Cultural Agency

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Course Description

In answer to political and social paradigm shifts in the course of the last twenty years and especially in the new millennium, as well as the challenges faced by a multicultural, pluralistic society, our condition has often been described as postsecular. Meanwhile, the theory of postsecularism strives to position itself as a continuing revolution of the complementary theoretical angles of postmodernism and postcolonialism. This course offers an introduction into the debate and its possibilities for cultural and literary studies, while accompanying students' impressions of the 2008 conference in British Studies, "Postsecular Britain? Religion, Secularity, and Cultural Agency" (November 20-22). Students are encouraged to gain insight into current research by reading key texts and becoming experts on chosen fields within the debate, and a glimpse of academic life by attending speeches, taking notes, participating in discussions and forming their own ideas.

Requirements

  • Please note: This is a workshop - you may gain 3 KPs only. To be combined with other courses under AM 2b, AM 10 and AM 11.

Reader

Links and Quotes

  • "Rather than ushering in a new secular age, an age free from the influence of religion, spirituality and contemplation, the evidence seems to indicate that we are actually entering a Post Secular Age: an age wherein religion will necessarily fill up the vacuum created by the ruinous failure of 20th century secular materialism." Dr. Frank Morales, Ph.D. "The Post Secular Age", 2007
  • "'I think 9/11 has changed the nature of the debate tremendously,' he said. 'A decade ago people wouldn't say "I'm a Christian" at a dinner party. You would no more speak about your religious belief than you would your sex life. But after 9/11 we no longer think people should be treated differently or given exemption from certain laws because they believe something. Secularists are now saying, "OK, believe in what you like, believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden if you want to, but don't force your beliefs on us or our children, and don't expect preferential treatment." To allow religious organisations more privileges and influence than a political party or trade union, for example, is to distort public debate. People are waking up to the fact it is anomalous.'" Observer, "Believe it or not: the sceptics beat God in bestseller battle", by David Smith on August 12, 2007
  • "In January 2004, the Catholic Academy of Bavaria invited Habermas and Cardinal Ratzinger to air their ideas about the moral foundations of society in a public forum. There, Habermas used the term 'post-secular' to describe what modern society ought to be. Secularization, he and others have argued, was first the process, begun in the 17th and 18th centuries, of prying the fingers of the church from government and economy — all the aspects of life in which it had gained control. The idea emerged of the state as a neutral foundation for its citizens and their varied beliefs. But in Europe, secularism then came to mean antireligion. Historically, this antipathy was directed at Catholicism as well as at Protestant churches; Muslim immigration has teased it back to the surface and given it a new target." The New York Time, "Keeping the Faith", By RUSSELL SHORTO, April 8, 2007
  • "The idea that secularization is the irreversible wave of the future is still the conventional wisdom in intellectual circles here. They would be bemused, to say the least, at a Dutch relapse into religiosity. But as the authors of a recently published study called De Toekomst van God (The Future of God) point out, organized prayer in the workplace is just one among several pieces of evidence suggesting that Holland is on the threshold of a new era--one we might call the age of 'post-secularization.' In their book, Adjiedj Bakas, a professional trend-watcher, and Minne Buwalda, a journalist, argue that Holland is experiencing a fundamental shift in religious orientation: 'Throughout Western Europe, and also in Holland, liberal Protestantism is in its death throes. It will be replaced by a new orthodoxy.'" The Weekly Standard, "Holland's Post-Secular Future: Christianity is dead. Long live Christianity!", by Joshua Livestro, Volume 012, Issue 16, 01/01/2007
  • "To guarantee equal access to the European public sphere and undistorted communication, the European Union would need to become not only post-Christian but also post-secular. [Footnote 13] Even in his new post-secular openness to the religious 'other' and in his call for the secular side to remain 'sensitive to the force of articulation inherent in religious languages', Jürgen Habermas still implies that religious believers must naturally continue to suffer disabilities in the secular public sphere. 'To date, only citizens committed to religious beliefs are required to split up their identities, as it were, into their public and private elements. They are the ones who have to translate their religious beliefs into a secular language before their arguments have any chance of gaining majority support.' Jürgen Habermas, 'Faith and Knowlwdge', in The Future of Human Nature, Cambridge 2003, 109. Only by holding to a teleological philosophy of history can Habermas insist that 'postsecular society continues the work, for religion itself, that religion did for myth' and that this work of 'translation', or rational linguistification of the sacred, is the equivalent of 'non-destructive secularization' and enlightenment." José Casanova, "Religion, European secular identities, and European integration", Eurozine, 2004−07−29, First published in Transit 27 (2004) in German
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