RELIGION AFTER THE STATE: SECULAR SOTERIOLOGIES AT THE BIRTH OF SOUTH SUDAN
This article examines South Sudan's experiment in creating a secular state out of the ashes of the professedly Islamic republic from which it seceded in 2011. South Sudanese political actors presented secularism as a means of redeeming the nation from decades of religious excess in which the go...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
2014
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In: |
Journal of law and religion
Year: 2014, Volume: 29, Issue: 3, Pages: 447-469 |
Further subjects: | B
Islam
B South Sudan B Politics B Muslim Minorities B Secularism |
Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Summary: | This article examines South Sudan's experiment in creating a secular state out of the ashes of the professedly Islamic republic from which it seceded in 2011. South Sudanese political actors presented secularism as a means of redeeming the nation from decades of religious excess in which the government conflated political imperative with theological ambition, claiming to save the nation from its woes through the unifying force of Islam. However, secularism as an alternative soteriology—one that contended that it is only through political nonalignment in regards to religion that the public could be saved from the problems that plagued its predecessor—quickly became an object of contention itself, read by many South Sudanese to be anything but neutral. This article interrogates the secular promise of mediating religious diversity through exploring the tensions that have arisen in its fulfillment at the birth of the world's newest republic. |
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ISSN: | 2163-3088 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of law and religion
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/jlr.2014.22 |