This paper explores the distinction between secularism as ideology and secularism as statecraft principle. By secularism as statecraft principle, I understand simply some principle of separation between religious and political authority, either for the sake of the neutrality of the state vis-à-vis each and all religions, or for the sake of protecting the freedom of conscience of each individual, or for the sake of facilitating the equal access of all citizens, religious as well as nonreligious, to democratic participation. Such a (...) statecraft doctrine neither presupposes nor needs to entail any substantive "theory," positive or negative, of "religion." Indeed, the moment the state holds a particular view of "religion" one enters the realm of ideology. Secularism becomes an ideology the moment it entails a theory of what "religion" is or does. It is this assumption that "religion," in the abstract, is a thing that has an essence or that produces certain particular and predictable effects that is the defining characteristic of modern secularism. (shrink)

_Global Religious and Secular Dynamics_ integrates European theories of modern secularization and theories of global religious revival as interrelated dynamics. Casanova contrasts the internal European road of secularization with the external colonial road of global interreligious encounters and the globalization of the secular immanent frame with the expansion of global religious denominationalism.

Marxian class theory has been unable to account for the most significant historical developments of the 20th century. The rise of fascism not only belied the hopes put in the revolutionary proletariat, it also brought into the center of the political stage those social strata which the class theory had relegated to, at best, secondary supporting roles. The triumph of the Bolshevik, revolution and the institutionalization and expansion of Soviet socialism has not only failed to issue into the anticipated free, (...) classless society, but has led to the creation of a new system of stratification and domination which is simply unthinkable within the classical Marxian framework. Late or advanced capitalism continues advancing in spite of all its crises and contradictions. (shrink)

CASANOVA: In the “Foreword” to your book Religion and Social Conflicts, Luis Ogade begins with a series of texts from the Latin American Anticommunist Federation, the Rockefeller Report, the Rand Study for the State Department and the like denouncing the Church as “subversive” and “revolutionary. “Hepoints out that the Right has begun to appreciate the revolutionary and subversive potential of religion, while the Left seems to continue the old stereotypes, such as religion being “the opium of the people,” or a (...) traditional residuum likely to disappear with the advance of science and modernity. Why do you think the Left has not been able to appreciate the alleged subversive and revolutionary potential of religion? (shrink)

The politics of nativism directed at Catholic immigrants in 19th-century America offer a fruitful comparative perspective through which to analyze the discourse and the politics of Islam in contemporary Europe. Anti-Catholic nativism constituted a peculiar North American version of the larger and more generalized phenomenon of anti-immigrant populist xenophobic politics which one finds in many countries and in different historical contexts. What is usually designated as Islamo-phobia in contemporary Europe, however, manifests striking resemblances with the original phenomenon of American nativism (...) that emerged in the middle of the 19th century in the United States. In both cases one finds the fusion of anti-immigrant xenophobic attitudes, perennial inter-religious prejudices, and an ideological construct setting a particular religious-civilizational complex in essential opposition to Western modernity. Although an anti-Muslim discourse emerged also in the United States after 11 September, it had primarily a geo-political dimension connected with the ‘war on terror’ and with American global imperial policies. But it lacked the domestic anti-immigrant populist as well as the modern secularist anti-Muslim dimensions. This explains why xenophobic anti-Muslim nativism has been much weaker in the United States than in Europe. (shrink)

If Zarathustra were to descend once again from the mountain, what would he make of the recent religious revival? Would he admit that he had been wrong, that “Deus absconditus” has now reappeared? Does this revival mean that the Enlightenment theory of religion was wrong? In view of the significance of religion, it is necessary to reassess that Enlightenment theory of religion and to inquire into the possible role jf religion in a reconstructed project of modernity. Yet, to overestimate the (...) importance of religion in the modern world can result in two extreme and equally unsatisfactory consequences. An unreconstructed secularism, assuming that the criticism of religion is not yet complete, would postulate again the criticism of religion as the premise and the primary task of critique. (shrink)