Exploring how religious and secular forces interact in the modern world.
A decolonial approach to the Qur’an also means de-Christianizing how we understand it as a text and its relationship to Muslims.
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What recognitions and forms of mutuality are necessary for common life amid plurality?
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How do religious and secular traditions approach and contest bioethical questions of human dignity and integrity? How can communities coexist peacefully in the wake of unprecedented migrations or in the ashes of intercommunal violence? We weave together the major themes of the CM Rome 2015 plenary conference in a synthetic account that brings to bear relevant scholarship and looks both back at CM’s research trajectory, as well as forward to the future research and outreach agenda of the CM initiative.
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Due to his sole preoccupation with a secularized Christian and Western story of human-humanism-humanitarianism, Asad’s genealogy misses ongoing, creative, and complex contemporary engagements with the ethics and practices, promises and ambivalences of all humanistic projects—engagements that can and do inform the ways in which humanitarianism is being envisioned, enacted, and critiqued.
Read More →CECELIA LYNCH
In addition to admiration, Jakelic’s talk prompted two other reactions. First, I differ with her on the role of “power” — in particular, her desire to move “beyond the discourse of power,” and I question whether her activists move beyond it, too. Second, I would ask her to address in more detail the problems and possibilities of fluid boundaries between religious and secular categories and identities. Read the full article »
Read More →Just as the identification ‘religious’ says only little in itself, there’s no such thing as the secular person. The Asadians are correct that these words come to life – have salience – in mutual tension. Like other identity categories, ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ are defined through historical use. The fact that someone is religious may seem unimportant to that person. Perhaps what matters in time x, place y is membership in St. Hedwig’s Polish Catholic Parish versus St. Casimir’s, a church equally Polish and Catholic. Read the full article »
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Can secular and religious actors engage each other beyond the discourse of power? Prof. Slavica Jakelić argued that they can. In a recent lecture, Jakelić recast the religious-secular binary as one of “enriching and chastening” exchange. Read the full article »
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