The Impossibility of Liberal Secularism: Religious (In)tolerance, Spirituality, and Not-Religion
This article re-thinks the problem of religious (in)tolerance by analyzing the 2015 deportation of three “Hindu priests” from a Caribbean nation for the practice of obeah. Defined popularly as “witchcraft” or “African tradition,” obeah was first criminalized as the alleged inspiration for the larges...
| Published in: | Method & theory in the study of religion |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2018
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| In: |
Method & theory in the study of religion
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Secularism
/ Liberalism
/ Religious freedom
/ Intolerance
/ Obeah
/ Criminalization
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| RelBib Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AG Religious life; material religion AZ New religious movements KBR Latin America KBS Australia; Oceania |
| Further subjects: | B
Liberalism
obeah
anthropology of secularism
religious (in)tolerance
Caribbean and Latin America
u.s. Islam
freedom of religion
colonialism
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | This article re-thinks the problem of religious (in)tolerance by analyzing the 2015 deportation of three “Hindu priests” from a Caribbean nation for the practice of obeah. Defined popularly as “witchcraft” or “African tradition,” obeah was first criminalized as the alleged inspiration for the largest slave uprising of the eighteenth century British Caribbean. I argue that the recent deportations in a nation that constitutionally enshrines freedom of conscience foregrounds some of the foundational limits of liberal secularism. I trace a genealogy of liberalism to critique the secular ideal of the “freedom from difference.” I suggest that attempts to invoke “spirituality” as a more inclusive idiom for denigrated forms of “not-religion” such as obeah extend rather than eliminate these limits of liberal secularism. I close by drawing some parallels with anti-Muslim nationalism in the u.s. and suggest some ways of thinking about a trinary formation of religion, not-religion, and secular power in modern nation-states. |
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| ISSN: | 1570-0682 |
| Contains: | In: Method & theory in the study of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341411 |