Reading secularism through a theological lens

Linell E. Cady

pp. 247-264

in: Linell E. Cady, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (eds), Comparative secularisms in a global age, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

How might we view secularism differently if we read it through the eyes of its religious "other?" This chapter is a venture in answering this question. Although secularism is more aptly viewed as secularisms, distinctive formations that refract the history and politics of particular places, this collection tracks similar patterns across the country cases that reflect the global diffusion of the religion/secular classification and similar challenges stemming from its oppositional construction. As there is no single religious lens, of course, no reading can stand in for them all, though any one might generate insights that travel. In this chapter I read secularism through the lens of the Western theological tradition, with attention to its embodiment within the American context.