{"id":1634,"date":"2013-01-09T08:24:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T08:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/can-political-theology-save-secularism.html"},"modified":"2013-01-09T08:24:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T08:24:00","slug":"can-political-theology-save-secularism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/can-political-theology-save-secularism.html","title":{"rendered":"Can Political Theology Save Secularism?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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If the violence of September 11, 2001, accomplished one thing, it was to force the United States, and by proxy the other Western powers who joined its military adventure in the Middle East, to drop the pretense of being secular nations. When one saw some of the most prominent atheists in American discourse\u00a0calling for crusades<\/a>\u00a0against Muslim invaders, the supposed progressivism of our intellectuals\u2014which still regularly and loudly\u00a0proclaims its superiority<\/a>\u00a0to the passions of religion\u2014looked a bit less convincing. Osama bin Laden had forced us to admit that, while the U.S. may legally separate church and state, it cannot do so intellectually. Beneath even the most ostensibly faithless of our institutions and our polemicists lie crouching religious lions, ready to devour the infidels who set themselves in opposition to the theology of the free market and the messianic march of democracy. Our god may not have a name, but we kill for him just the same.<\/div>\n
With theologically energized political movements raising a din among both citizens and enemies of the state, the liberal paradigm\u2014which depends on legal secularism, representative politics, and market economics to suppress deeper social conflicts\u2014seemed more and more besieged. Though it still has its champions, the secularism that triumphed in the nineteenth century has been ill-prepared to handle the voracious economies it unleashed, and the religious currents it struggles to contain. (The riots that began across the Middle East last week are yet another illustration of how explosive the reaction can be.) But now, scattered across philosophy, religion, and literature departments, a movement of critics is working to meet the challenge of this post-secular age. As our political system depends on a shaky separation between religion and politics that has become increasingly unstable, scholars are sensing the deep disillusionment afoot and trying to chart a way out.<\/div>\n
Even outside the academy, the ongoing crisis of secularism is a high-profile event. The most recent sideshow was the rise of reactionary literary atheism, which gallivanted into the breach with a commitment to polemicizing against religion and, ironically,\u00a0baptizing Western military aggression<\/a>\u00a0in a series of what have been religious wars in everything but name. Increasingly, though, the horizon in popular literature is toward a middle ground. James Wood, the literary critic for\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>, called in a\u00a02009 essay<\/a>\u00a0for \u201ca theologically engaged atheism that resembles disappointed belief.\u201d The call seems to have been answered: a litany of titles, including Greg Epstein\u2019s\u00a0Good Without God<\/em>\u00a0and Karen Armstrong\u2019s\u00a0Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life<\/em>, have tried to soften the edges of atheism by making popular cases for non-religious ethics. The Swiss writer Alain de Botton has taken it a step further, arguing that secular liberals should not just respect religion, but should actively emulate it.<\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If the violence of September 11, 2001, accomplished one thing, it was to force the United States, and by proxy the other Western powers who joined its military adventure in the Middle East, to drop the pretense of being secular nations. When one saw some of the most prominent atheists in American discourse\u00a0calling for crusades\u00a0against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nCan Political Theology Save Secularism?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If the violence of September 11, 2001, accomplished one thing, it was to force the United States, and by proxy the other Western powers who joined its\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/can-political-theology-save-secularism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Can Political Theology Save Secularism?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If the violence of September 11, 2001, accomplished one thing, it was to force the United States, and by proxy the other Western powers who joined its\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/can-political-theology-save-secularism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-01-09T08:24:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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