Articles

This contribution deals with the question of whether “Buddhism” was reified as an object of knowledge only as a result of it being studied by Western scholars, or whether it was already perceived as a collective entity by the social agents of the tradition before colonial encounter and independently of external observation. Premodern sources from China and Japan strongly indicate that the unity of the tradition founded by the Buddha was beyond question. Buddhists had a pronounced awareness that they belonged to a transregional community. Founded in India, the Buddhist monastic order spread in an unbroken succession of ordained practitioners. Authorised by genealogical succession, the order attended to the memory of the founder, and the preservation, transmission, and interpretation of his teachings. There were a number of emic concepts of representation and self-description. No Western scholarship was needed to construe “Buddhism” as an object.

Kleine, Christoph. “Who Invented Buddhism? Or: What Was Buddhism Before It Was Called Buddhism?” In Conceptualizing Islam: Current Approaches, edited by Frank Peter, Paula Schrode and Ricarda Stegmann, 44–58. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2025.

This paper takes a longue-durée perspective to show the different ways in which the Japanese have, in the course of history, identified a social sub-area that can be retrospectively (perhaps anachronistically) regarded as “religion.” In doing so, it makes a strong case that the classification of socially organized human activities serves specific purposes, and therefore varies greatly depending on the discursive context in which it occurs. In Japan, we find a variety of modes of distinction and classification that (from a modern perspective) distinguish “religion” from other integral activity bundles. Traditions that we consider to be religions, or that have evolved into religions in global modernity, have been defined as systems of cognitive and normative orientation, as nomospheres, as socio-cultural formations, as fields of knowledge, and as objects of law. With Japan’s entry into global modernity, we find, for the first time, a systematic juxtaposition of religion, on the one hand, with the state, science, or philosophy, on the other. An outstanding example of Japanese intellectuals’ appropriation of a globalized modern knowledge regime, with its division of social subsystems, is provided by the author Suzuki Daisetsu Teitarō, in his early work “New Theory of Religion,” from 1896. This text will be analysed in more detail, in an exploration of the historical continuities and discontinuities in the interpretation of social differentiation in Japan.

Kleine, Christoph. “Demarcating Religion: On the Varying Ways of Conceptualizing Social Differentiation in Japanese History.” In Historicizing Secular-Religious Demarcations: Interdisciplinary Contributions to Differentiation Theory. Special Issue of Zeitschrift Für Soziologie, edited by Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, Daniel Witte and Christoph Kleine, 301–27. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024.

Beyond the once dominant secularization thesis that anticipated the decline of religion in the modern era, the academic study of religion has in recent decades revisited secular as one of the factors that shape religion and religions in the globalized world. Against this theoretical backdrop, in this article, I use the case of South Korea to explore how secular and religion interact in contemporary global society. It focuses on describing the postcolonial reformulation of secularity and the corresponding transformation of religious diversity in Cold War South Korea. The Japanese colonial secularism rigidly banning the public and political engagement of religion was replaced by the flexible secular-religious divide after liberation of 1945. The porous mode of secularity extensively admitted religious entities to affect processes of postcolonial nation-building. Religious values, interests, and resources have been applied in motivating, pushing, and justifying South Koreans to devote themselves to developing the national community as a whole. Such a form of secularity became a critical condition that caused South Korea’s religious landscape to be reorganized in a vertical and unequal way. On the one hand, Buddhist and Christian populations grew remarkably in the liberated field of religion, while freedom of religion was recognized as a key ideological principle of the anticommunist country. On the other hand, folk beliefs and minority religious groups were often considered “superstitions”, “pseudo religions”, “heretics”, or even “evil religions”. With the pliable secularity at work, religious diversity was reconfigured hierarchically in the postcolonial society.

Kyuhoon Cho. "Porous Secularity: Religious Modernity and the Vertical Religious Diversity in Cold War South Korea." Religions 15, no. 8:893 (2024).

In order to trace pathways of secularisation and secularity in Africa this paper highlights a particular movement that carried great ideological weight at the time of most countries’ independence in the 1950s and 60s, namely African socialism. The development toward state secularism was structurally very similar throughout the continent independently of whether political leaders opted for the ‘West’ or the ‘East’ in the cold war. However, in opposition to Soviet ideology, African Socialism was famously antiatheist. With the wish to fend off Marxist atheism as a supposedly necessary aspect of socialism, ideologues in African socialism were among the few politicians in Africa even to address the place of religion in a secular state at all. The roots of African socialism can be traced to US-American Pan-Africanism as well as the interconnected colonial opposition movement grounded in Marxist anti-imperialism. Another argument focusses on the education of some prominent state leaders, such as Nyerere, Nkrumah, Touré and Senghor, to explain the importance of Christian mission schools and Islamic madrasahs as points of access to social, intellectual, and institutional participation in global anti-colonial movements. In the framework of one-party politics, state leaders called on (Pan-)African traditions, but ‘de-mystified’ them (Touré) in order to enhance African Socialism ‘as belief’ (Nyerere). In conclusion it is argued that state secularism in Africa at the time of independence, as demonstrated most visibly in African Socialism, is more about suppressing and/or balancing the traditional powers of religious leaders than about a fundamental critique of a religious way of life. In turn, the implicit association of socialism and Marxism with atheism needs further scrutiny in a global perspective.

Wilkens, Katharina. "African Socialism and Secular State Formation." Journal of Religion in Africa 54, 3 (2024): 326–56.

Raising timely and urgent questions about the forms, scope and boundaries of religious authority and practice, this article offers novel ways for the study of secularities and secularisms in contemporary African societies. In recent scholarly debates on secularity, Africa has been marginal. Part of the reason, it was suggested was that African ways of being in, and knowing, the world lay outside the religious-secular divide. We contest such positions. Secularism was clearly part of modernists colonial ideologies that called for the eradication of African beliefs described as backward and irrational. We find that the colonial encounter had a powerful historical impact, essentializing and othering African societies as marked by holistic indigenous cultures rather than differentiated religions. We suggest that the complex interplay of different African and European cultures has simultaneously shaped the social construction and historical development of multiple secularities. We propose that the concept of multiple secularities provides creative avenues to rethink religion, political authority and belonging. We consider secularities as contested arrangements of religious and other spheres whose dynamics include processes of de-differentiation and de-secularization.

Burchardt, Marian, Magnus Echtler and Katharina Wilkens. "Multiple Secularities in Africa – An Introduction." Journal of Religion in Africa 54, no. 3 (2024): 249–64.

In this chapter, we explore the ways in which religious communities, along with non-religious ones, produce particular emotional regimes through which they shape their members’ affective lives, produce knowledge on how to live with, endure and regulate certain emotions (e.g. pain and desire), and on how to make certain emotions as well as physical and mental state sufferable, as Geertz (1969) famously suggested. We pay particular attention to how religion and emotion have been theorized within the French and German sociological traditions, while also scrutinizing the contemporary assessments of these classical approaches. After this historical account and their relevance for secularization theory, we turn to recent studies that interpret religion and the secular within the framework of the affective turn that prioritizes embodiment, movement, practices, and spaces over individual feelings and beliefs in order to theorize the relationships between religion, emotion and institutions in relational and material ways.

Ural, Nur Yasemin, and Marian Burchardt. "What Emotions Teach Us About Religion: Sociological Approaches and the 'Affective Turn.'" In Research Handbook on the Sociology of Emotion, edited by Helena Flam, 329–55. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2024. 

This article explores the politics of cultural heritage in societies experiencing secularization and religious diversification by examining recent efforts made by Cordoba's Cathedral Chapter to emphasize the Christian origins and identity of the iconic Mosque-Cathedral. We argue that the Cathedral Chapter’s approach to managing and narrating the building over the past two decades responds largely to tensions stemming from the divergence between the primacy of its Islamic or multi-religious identity characteristic of popular representations of the building, both within Spain and beyond, on the one hand, and the primacy of the building’s Christian identity as manifested in the institutional arrangements concerning its ownership, management, and use, on the other. While this divergence has been a source of periodic tensions since the 1970s, such tensions have been amplified by recent symbolic acts and popular movements contesting the Church’s dominion over the Mosque-Cathedral, as well as by broader societal changes that have diminished the Church’s power and influence and heightened its sense of vulnerability. We identify and analyse four main strategies employed by the Catholic Church to (re)narrate the meaning of the building and assert its Christian roots and identity: (1) archaeological projects attempting to demonstrate its Christian foundations; (2) liturgical practices presenting it as a church to establish its Christian identity; (3) discursive practices framing Catholic traditions and rituals as ‘intangible heritage’ crucial to the building's successful preservation; and (4) the unconditional prohibition of Muslims from performing Islamic prayers. In our research, we have focused on the utilization of museological methods and the interweaving of diverse repertoires (scientific, artistic, religious), by Catholic actors, aimed authenticating and validating novel interpretations about the origin and Christian character of the building.

Griera, Mar, Avi Astor, and Marian Burchardt. “Performing Heritage at Cordoba’s Mosque-Cathedral.” Cultural Studies 38, no. 5 (2024): 815–38.

Analyzing the battle over Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple’s enormous treasure, the paper documents the litigious journey of the concept of sacred possession and heritage. It shows how the evolving and complex logic of secular governance in India provides the legal categories that animate this contestation over the deity’s wealth. While the enormous treasure trove housed in the six chambers of the temple’s basement ‘belongs’ to the idol (murthi) Lord Sree Padmanabhaswamy, the royal family of Travancore has held the right for over the last two hundred and seventy years to control the wealth as the Lord’s servants (dasa). Though the dispute over what is arguably the world’s largest temple gold and valuables collection began in 2007, it gained widespread media attention in 2009 when a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed. Since then, the royal family, temple management, and other stakeholders have been embroiled in the struggle for possession and control of the temple’s wealth. The paper explores how legal frames of Anglo-Hindu law in their postcolonial avatars, material patrimony (gold and land), and notions of immaterial heritage (shebaitship) animated and framed this contestation. To this end, the paper maps the legal trajectory of the dispute and the public debates over the ownership and control of the astounding wealth of Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple. Further, it decodes the legal reasoning behind the courts’ arguments and delves into ontological questions surrounding religious freedom and secularity. The discussion illustrates how notions of immaterial heritage anchored in ideas of kingship as well as kinship emerged as clinching evidence in the management and access to this sacred wealth. Finally, the analyses offer insights into the governance of sacred materiality through religio-legal categories in a postcolonial nation-state.

Chakrabarti, Anindita, Ayushi Dube and Shriram Venkatraman. "God’s Wealth, Legal Frames, and the Question of Material and Immaterial Heritage: The Case of Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Kerala, India." Cultural Studies 38 no. 5, (2024): 794–814.

In this paper I focus on designations of ‘our culture and heritage' that defend practices and symbols of religious majorities. I consider the entanglement of nationalist narratives, secularity and the ‘us' in the claims of social actors and public discussions about culture and heritage. What is understood as being religious and what is culture/heritage is dependent on the social actors involved, their position in society and the interpretive frameworks available to them. I consider the following questions: How are culture and heritage used in legal and public discourse to justify the continued presence of such symbols and practices in Christian majority countries in the West? What are the religious histories implicated in this process? Who is imagined to be included when crosses and prayers are staked out as ‘our culture and heritage’? What is the relationship between culture and heritage and national imaginaries? Ultimately, as religious majorities see their numbers dwindle and power relations shift, the attempt to imbricate religious practices and beliefs in public spaces and rituals is quite possibly a translation of the religious to the secular.

Beaman, Lori G. “Religion to Culture: Who Is the ‘Us’?” Cultural Studies 38, no. 5 (2024): 750–71.

The culturalization of religion has received considerable scholarly attention in recent years as a compelling restatement of religion in the secular public sphere. Existing research has focused primarily on Western contexts where Christianity, as the dominant religion, is relabelled as culture in order to sanction its continued presence in the secular and multi-religious public sphere. Building on the treatment of non-majority religions in postcolonial contexts, particularly in contemporary Ghana, the article proposes a second model of culturalization in which non-dominant religions undergo culturalization as a sign of marginalisation, restriction, and exclusion. The model of culturalization adopted, the article argues, is determined by the presumed compatibility of the given religious tradition with a specific understanding of ‘modernity’. Looking at culturalization as a form of marginality adds much-needed regional and thematic breadth to the ongoing discussion, as it allows for moving beyond the mostly Western Christian framework to include post-colonial and post-imperial contexts.

Goshadze, Mariam. “A New Model of Distilling Religion: Culturalization as Marginality.” Cultural Studies 38, no. 5 (2024): 733–49.

The question of how to symbolize collective identities in an age marked by both nationalist fervor and diversity politics has dominated public debates and highlighted the political role of religion. But what happens to religious objects, sites, and practices when they are framed as cultural heritage? What are the forces behind the ways in which religion is drawn into the dynamics around cultural heritage and heritage-making in secular societies? And why and how do some religious places become iconic sites of cultural heritage, arousing both national sentiments and global concerns? In this article, we explore the complex politics around religion and cultural heritage and scrutinize how they intersect with processes of secularization, and regimes of diversity and secularism. We argue that there is a growing tendency in contemporary societies to culturalize religion, suggesting that the framing of collective heritage is closely linked to what counts as religion and as culture in everyday life and in official discourse. We theorize this dynamic through the concept of ‘heritage religion’ and contend that it offers a distinctive material perspective on the culturalisation of religion. Drawing on Durkheim, we point out how processes of religious heritage-making produce new forms of sacredness.

Burchardt, Marian, and Nur Yasemin Ural. “The Future of Religious Pasts: Religion and Cultural Heritage-Making in a Secular Age – Introduction.” Cultural Studies 38, no. 5 (2024): 717–32.

Wir befassen uns in diesem Artikel mit zwei Typen neuerer religionsbezogener Analysen, die beide ihren Zugang den Debatten um die Moderne entlehnen: mit den am Begriff der Postmoderne orientierten Analysen des Postsäkularen einerseits und mit dem an den »Multiple Modernities« orientierten Ansatz der »Multiple Secularities« andererseits. Während in der ersten Gruppe von Arbeiten die Begriffe (und zugrundeliegenden Phänomene) des Säkularen, des Säkularismus oder der Säkularisierung in verschiedener Hinsicht problematisiert werden, operiert die zweite Gruppe mit einer Vervielfältigung des Phänomens der Säkularität. Es werden verschiedene Bezugsprobleme und darauf bezogene Antworten herausgearbeitet, gleichzeitig wird aber an einem Zentralbegriff festgehalten. Der erste Ansatz ist, wie wir im Folgenden zeigen wollen, in seiner Problematisierung des Säkularen und seiner Begrifflichkeit deutlich zeitdiagnostisch ausgerichtet, während der zweite Ansatz versucht, das zugrundeliegende Phänomen in seiner gegenwärtigen Vielfalt und historischen Genese zu erfassen, darüber aber gleichzeitig eine generalisierbare Perspektive auf Säkularität zu bewahren. Die Reflexion dieser sozial- und geisteswissenschaftlichen Debatten erscheint uns auch in einem theologischen Kontext nicht zuletzt deshalb von Relevanz, weil insbesondere die Deutung des »Postsäkularen« dort eine gewisse Popularität erlangt hat. Scheint doch die Terminologie des Postsäkularen dem Gegenstand theologischen Nachdenkens neue Legitimität zuzumessen, während sie die Inadäquatheit und Illegitimität von Diagnosen des »Säkularen« und der »Säkularisierung« suggeriert.

Wohlrab-Sahr, Monika, and Marian Burchardt. "Postsäkularität oder multiple Säkularitäten? Was steckt hinter den neuen Deutungen der religiösen Lage?" Theologische Literaturzeitung 149, no. 3 (2024): 128-139.

This article examines the relationship between two contemporary perspectives on conceptualizing a global history of religion. The first is anchored in an entangled conceptual history, reconstructing the genealogy of “religion” back to the colonial nineteenth century. The second favours a multicentred perspective in studying knowledge systems and general concepts independent of the West and predating global modernity. By analysing Japanese religious history, the article illustrates both the potential for and the necessity of integrating these two approaches.

Kleine, Christoph."From the History of Religions in Asia to a Global History of Religion." In Towards a Global History of Religion: Reflections on Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz's 'Lamas and Shamans', edited by Anja Kirsch and Andrea Rota, 56-63. Fribourg: AЯGOS, 2024.

This Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe was prompted by the convergence of two recent developments. In the realm of scholarship, heritage has now advanced to become a core concept in the study of religion. At the same time, national and international cultural agencies increasingly take into account the religious dimensions of heritage. By illuminating the space of convergence that lies between scholarship and practice, this handbook makes its specific contribution. Our starting point for this volume is the interaction we see taking place between university scholars and those in museums, government agencies, and church and heritage foundations who actively contribute to the making of heritage. Scholars and heritage professionals are not working in separate worlds but have jointly developed ethical and normative concerns and share many of the same intellectual curiosities.

The handbook is organized around three central areas of inquiry. The first is Heritage and Diversity and investigates how scholars and professionals are responding to the diversity of religion and culture in European societies. The second part examines Heritage between Religion and the Secular and asks how developments in religious heritage relate to the declining participation in traditional religions in many parts of Europe, but also to new secular-religious configurations. The third part investigates Heritage and Creativity and enquires how artistic means and curatorial practices are contributing to a new understanding of heritage as meaning making.

Weir Todd H., and Lieke Wijnia. “Religious Heritage between Scholarship and Practice” In The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe, edited by Todd H. Weir, and Lieke Wijinia, 3-14. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.