Religious Speech in the Public Square

Abstract

I examine the reasons often given for restricting religious language to the private domain. Despite acknowledging their force, I argue that suppressing religious speech in public conversations is inherently dangerous, suggesting that such a policy undermines mutual trust and confidence, is corrosive of individual integrity and that such marginalization of religious language deprives social discussions of vital resources. Finally I propose a set of qualities and virtues that should underpin the way that religious languages and perspectives are deployed in public so that fears about this can be overcome in service of a more harmonious and enriched level of exchange in the public sphere.     

Bearing True Witness

Abstract

This research article analyzes the aspirations and likely outcomes of the Christian right in terms of educational policy in America. The main source of data for this analysis draws from 13 source-protected interviews with directors of state-level Christian right organizations. A semi-structured, elite interviewing approach was utilized. The qualitative data demonstrates that the American Christian right is divided, organizationally, between those who identify with Republican party politics versus those who approach the political process more independently. The author shows that for the Christian right, education is a peripheral issue rather than a central one. Consequently, the Christian right will likely be unable to turn its political objectives into actual policy gains in terms of public education.     

Loyalty and Liturgy: Union Occupation and Religious Liberty in Wilmington,North Carolina, 1865

Examining the controversy surrounding the Union army's 1865 seizure of St James Episcopal Church in Wilmington, North Carolina, this article explores the role of churches as symbols of loyalty during the final days of the American Civil War. The Wilmington episode shows that Union commanders who targeted southern churches exposed themselves to complaints of violating shared principles of church–state separation. Commanders saw expressions of loyalty from the pulpit as essential to establishing Union authority, but the southern clergy vehemently opposed interference in church affairs. Perceiving an opportunity to reaffirm their claims to moral leadership, southern religious leaders tacitly defended the honor of the southern cause by associating it with the cause of religious liberty. In so doing, they laid the experiential and rhetorical groundwork for the discourse of southern “redemption” that played such an important role in the defeat of Reconstruction.     

State restrictions on the Ahmadiyya sect in Indonesia and Pakistan: Islam or political survival?

Indonesia and Pakistan have both adopted state policy that restricts the religious freedom of a minority heterodox sect, the Ahmadiyya, which is viewed by mainstream Muslims as a non-Muslim minority. This outcome is somewhat puzzling as there is a great discrepancy between the institutionalisation and formal privileging of the dominant religion – Islam – in the two Muslim majority states. I find that the similar outcome is attributable not to the institutionalisation of Islam in the state, but rather to the political survival needs of the regime, motivating it to adopt the policy demands of Islamist actors to repress the Ahmadiyya sect.

印度尼西亚和巴基斯坦都施行了限制少数异端艾哈马蒂亚教派宗教自由的国家政策。艾哈马蒂亚被主流穆斯林视为非穆斯林少数派。这个结果有些令人费解,因为在两个穆斯林占多数的国家,在主导性宗教即伊斯兰教的体制化与特权化之间存在差异。笔者发现,类似的的结果根源不在伊斯兰的体制化,倒是在于政权的政治生存需要,即响应伊斯兰主义主体压制艾哈马蒂亚教派的政策需要。     

Keeping the Spiritual Home Fires Burning: Religious Belonging in Britain during the First World War

The religious impact of the First World War on the home front in Britain is assessed in terms of churchgoing and church membership and affiliation. Church attendance rose briefly at the start of the war but fell away thereafter in the Protestant tradition, accelerating a pre-existing trend, which was not reversed after 1918. The disruption caused by the war to the everyday life of organized religion probably accounts for the decrease, rather more than loss of faith. Church membership also declined during the war in the Anglican and mainstream Free Churches, albeit not for other denominations and faiths, but it temporarily revived after the war. This was not the case for non-member adherents and Sunday scholars whose reduction was more continuous.     

Israel's intellectuals and political independence

Over the past two decades, a new phenomenon has emerged in secular kibbutzim, in which some members have adopted a religious way of life. Some of these “newly religious” (hozrim bi-tshuvah) choose to leave the kibbutz, but others, who are the subject of this article, decide to remain in the kibbutz, which continues to serve as the framework of their life. Based on observation and in-depth interviews with newly religious members of secular kibbutzim, this article discusses the array of dilemmas created by the transformation of their identity and the response to it on the part of kibbutz society. One of the dilemmas concerns the question whether their choice reflects a break with the kibbutz way of life or rather a link and continuity with this ideal. The article contributes to understanding both the changes in modern-day kibbutz society and the identity issues related to these changes.     

Found in Translation: Habermas and Anthropotechnics

Abstract

In his recent work on postsecular societies Jürgen Habermas has stressed the need for a dialogue between religious and nonreligious citizens aimed at strengthening social integration and rejuvenating the moral bases of modern political and juridical institutions. This dialogue should focus on the translation of religious traditions into rational, secular forms. In his more recent work on the social function of rituals, however, he rejected the Durkheimian view of public secular rituals as mechanisms for fostering social integration. In this article I discuss Habermas’s early reflections on postsecularism and assess his interpretation of public religious rituals as sources of social integration. I then propose an alternative to his translation proviso whereby religious symbolic content would be translated into behavior-regulating technologies aimed at developing the dispositional resources needed for a continuous postsecular dialogue between religious and nonreligious citizens.     

Narratives of de-secularization in international relations

ABSTRACT

This article explores how a particular narrative of de-secularisation, the ‘restorative narrative,’ is shaping US foreign religious policy and practice. It develops two arguments about efforts to stabilize religion as an object of governance and restore it to international politics and public life. First, this narrative re-instantiates and energizes particular secular-religious and religious-religious divides in ways that echo the narratives of secularisation that it claims to challenge and transcend. Second, it contributes to the emergence of new forms of both politics and religion that are not only subservient to the interests of those in power but marginalize a range of dissenting and nonconforming ways of life. This has far-ranging implications for the politics of social difference and efforts to realize deep and multidimensional forms of democratization and pluralization. The argument is illustrated through discussions of recent developments at the US State Department, the evolving practices of US military chaplains, and the politics of foreign religious engagement in the context of the rise of Turkish Islamist conscientious objectors.     

New Responsibilities of Faith-Related Agencies

Nonprofit agencies with a religious base may be strongly affected by recent public policy changes; they tend to deliver services in areas where federal resources are further declining and are eligible for the special government purchase of service contracts that now may be provided to religious entities. Religious agencies also are now widely expected to deliver uniquely beneficial services and to mobilize social capital to compensate for increasing restrictions of some governmental programs. The current article reports on a qualitative, longitudinal, interview-based investigation of program changes and their relation to policy changes in a two-city sample of what are called "faith-related" agencies. In so doing, it investigates the implications of relying on religious agencies for service delivery. Making use of an extensive framework concerning how agencies are organized, the work finds that faith-related agencies mildly contribute to increased variety of service delivery styles in the examined cities, but that they rarely expand services significantly to meet increased need or otherwise provide dramatically unique service content in response to recent public policy changes. The patterns in part reflect trade-offs between fully emphasizing the unique aspects of religion and entering the public arena, and they thus question the likely role of religion in reforming social service systems.