{"id":1163,"date":"2013-10-09T22:26:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-09T22:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/10\/critical-politics.html"},"modified":"2013-10-09T22:26:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-09T22:26:00","slug":"critical-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/10\/critical-politics.html","title":{"rendered":"Critical Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Our blog \u2018critical religion\u2019 receives contributions from many people, and they usually have the terms \u2018critical\u2019 and \u2018religion\u2019 in them somewhere. Some are much more clearly theorised than that. My own understanding of \u2018critical religion\u2019 is specific. For me, \u2018critical religion\u2019 is always about \u2018religion and related categories\u2019, because I argue that religion is not a stand-alone category, but is one of a configuration of categories. On its own, \u2018religion\u2019 has no object; it only seems to do so. Religion is a category that is deployed for purposes of classification, but it does not stand in a one-to-one relationship with any observable thing in the world. In modern discourse, \u2018religion\u2019 works as half a binary, as in \u2018religion and secular\u2019 or \u2018religion and [secular] politics\u2019. When we talk about religion today, there is always a tacit\u00a0exclusion<\/i>\u00a0of whatever is considered to be non-religious. If, for example, we talk about religion and politics, we have already assumed they refer to different things, and to mutually incompatible ones at that. Politics is secular, which means non-religious. Religion is separate from politics. If the two get mixed up and confused, then there is a problem.<\/span><\/div>\n
One thing to notice here is that there has been a massive historical slippage from \u2018ought\u2019 to \u2018is\u2019. What started in the 17th century as an \u2018ought\u2019 \u2013 viz. there\u00a0ought to be<\/i>\u00a0a distinction between \u2018religion\u2019 and \u2018political society\u2019 \u2013 has long become an assumption about the way the world actually\u00a0is<\/i>. In public discourse we have become used to talking as if \u2018religion\u2019 and \u2018politics\u2019 refer to two essentially different aspects of the real world, that we intuitively know what a religion is and what politics is, and we imagine that if we wanted to take the trouble we could define their essential differences. And yet of course the rhetorical construct of \u2018ought\u2019 keeps appearing, as for example when we insist that a nation that does not have a constitutional separation of religion and politics is undeveloped or backward; or when Anglican Bishops make moral pronouncements that seem uncomfortably \u2018political\u2019.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our blog \u2018critical religion\u2019 receives contributions from many people, and they usually have the terms \u2018critical\u2019 and \u2018religion\u2019 in them somewhere. Some are much more clearly theorised than that. My own understanding of \u2018critical religion\u2019 is specific. For me, \u2018critical religion\u2019 is always about \u2018religion and related categories\u2019, because I argue that religion is not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nCritical Politics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Our blog \u2018critical religion\u2019 receives contributions from many people, and they usually have the terms \u2018critical\u2019 and \u2018religion\u2019 in them somewhere. 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