Articles

This is a book of comparative history. Its chapters approach a variety of apologetics across the ‘short 20th century’ through case studies taken from different world areas, under different conditions, and giving expression to various forms of pressure and tension. It captures religious– secular contestations involving different religious denominations and their internal divisions, often differing in their stance towards politics and the changing role of religion in society.

The book is not only relevant for historians, but also speaks to a sociology of religion that is interested in social conflicts and social change. It is especially appealing to sociologists of religion, like myself, who focus on the relations between the religious and the secular, including the boundary demarcations between the two. Over the past several years, I have co-led a research group at the University of Leipzig that deals with these issues under the heading ‘Multiple Secularities: Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities’. While discussing some systematic perspectives of the present volume, I will relate the findings on apologetics to some of the basic assumptions of the Multiple Secularities approach and explore the common ground between the two.

Wohlrab-Sahr, Monika. “Afterword: Apologetics as a Seismograph of Social Change and an Arena of Secular-Religious Conflicts.” In Defending the Faith: Global Histories of Apologetics and Politics in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Hugh McLeod and Todd Weir, 292–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

The article discusses the connection between theory formation and historical research in the study of religion. It presupposes that the study of religion is conceived of as an empirical discipline. The empirical basis of theories is provided primarily by historical research, including research in the very recent past, that is, the present time. Research in the history of religions, therefore, is an indispensable part of the study of religion. However, in recent discussions on the methods, aims, and theoretical presuppositions of the discipline, research in the history of religions largely is ignored. To shed some light on this blind spot, the article builds on the philosophy of science of Critical Realism. While the first part deals with the role of historical research in theoretical discourses of the discipline, the second part explains fundamental ontological and epistemological positions of Critical Realism and their implications for empirical research. On this basis, some methodological problems of theory formation in the study of religion are discussed in the third part. In particular, it is argued that it is impossible to validate empirically theories of religion that aim to explain what religion is. The concluding part sketches ways of theory formation in the study of religion that does not take religion as the explanandum but as the theoretical perspective that guides research.

Seiwert, Hubert. “Theory of Religion and Historical Research. A Critical Realist Perspective on the Study of Religion as an Empirical Discipline.” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 28, no. 2 (2020): 207–36.

Certain rights in Indonesia are non-derogable and are protected by the constitution. An example is the right to religious freedom with its scope included in the international forum. Meanwhile, externum forum is the right to practice religion or belief, and this is limited by law. The scope and restrictions of human rights in Indonesia are not all in accordance with the provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which have been ratified by Indonesia. This is a normative and qualitative research with data collected through the conceptual and legal approach. The results showed that the constitution and laws in Indonesia use the religious rights phrase which does not include protection against atheism and people that do not adhere to any religion or belief. The scope of the internum forum is limited with an expansion of human rights restriction by adding religious values and security. It does not include general welfare as contained in the International Human Rights Instrument.

Ratnaningsih, Erna, Sudarsono, Muchamad A. Safa’at, and Moh. Fadli. “The Scope and Restriction of the Religion Freedom as Part of Non-Derogable Rights Under Indonesian Legal System.” Journal of Critical Reviews 7 (2020): 2990–97.

Two major transformations in the constitutional history of the Islamic Middle East are examined with reference to Iran. Two snapshots sketch the consequences of the reception, respectively, of the Turko-Mongolian since the first half of the fifteenth century, marked the reconciliation of Turko-Mongolian and Islamic law, and of the legal framework of the international system of modern nation-states in the nineteenth century. The turning point from the Turko-Mongolian to the modern legal transplantation is the collapse of the last Turko-Mongolian empire in world history – that of Nāder Shah (1736-1747). It was followed by half a century of internecine tribal warfare from which Iran emerged as a state forced to adopt Western law in the century-long course of its defensive modernization against imperialist pressure that resulted in the inception of legal modernization.

Arjomand, Saïd. “Macrohistory of the Legal Transformations in Iran from the Reception of Turk-Mongolian Law to the Inception of Legal Modernization.” Oñati Socio-Legal Series 10, no. 5 (2020): 1001–15.

The understanding of law in the Middle East requires not simply different disciplinary perspectives but bringing disciplines into dialogue with each other. It also requires analysis that crosses historical periods in order to understand legal systems as ones that develop over time based on longstanding traditions and earlier transformations, not simply European intrusion. We present a series of analyses by scholar who, while anchored in their own discipline, historical focus, and geographical specialization consciously work to address a broad social scientific audience.

Brown, Nathan J., and Saïd A. Arjomand. “Introduction: Historical and Comparative Macrosociology of Middle Eastern Legal Systems.” Oñati Socio-Legal Series 10, no. 5 (2020): 955–59.

“To me, this is not religion. It is more like a juridical system”. Heidi Mayorga Escalante took me aside and lowered her voice. Heidi is the Bribri lawyer and activist who in January 2018 guided our group of researchers at the National Museum of Costa Rica. We had just entered a room where ‘INDIGENOUS RELIGION’ was written with bold and large letters on one wall, and ‘THE CATHOLIC CHURCH’ with equally bold and large letters on the opposite wall. Glass boxes with select objects, accompanied by snippets of text, representing indigenous religion and Catholicism respectively, stood on each side of the room, creating a neat symmetry, gesturing a comparison. Heidi was referring to the assemblage of objects and texts that articulated, exhibited, and explained an indigenous religion.

“TRANSLATING INDIGENEITIES: Educative Encounters in Talamanca, Tromsø, and Elsewhere.” In Indigenous Religion(s): Local Grounds, Global Networks. Edited by Siv-Ellen Kraft, Bjørn Ola Tafjord, Arkotong Longkumer, Gregory D. Alles and Greg Johnson, 21–58. Abingdon, Oxon, New York, NY: Routledge, 2020.

Latin American sociology of religion is a relatively young discipline, although institutionally speaking, it has not lagged as far behind European sociology as we usually think. There is, in fact, an early link between Continental Europe and Latin America in the development of institutions dedicated to the study of religions. They have witnessed an incredible expansion, particularly over the past three decades. The author offers a general panorama of the trajectory of the subdiscipline and the development of a robust academic field. The reasons for this intellectual explosion go from the development of a scientific institutional framework for social sciences in emerging economies to the changing structure of religions and the social awareness of a historical plurality of beliefs in Latin America. 

At the end of the twentieth century, structural and constitutional reforms took place in Mexico and involved a change in the public regulation of the religious. Note the legal recognition of churches and religious groups, as "religious associations", in the context of increasing plurality. These changes favored a political alternation and a more diversified role for the Churches. The rise of populism has also had an impact on Mexican secularism.

Blancarte, Roberto. “La Sécularité Mexicaine Entre Le Retour De La Religion Dans L'espace Public Et La Consolidation D'une République Laïque.” In La Sécularisation En Question - Religions Et Laïcités Au Prisme Des Sciences Sociales. Edited by Philippe Portier and Jean-Paul Willaime, 161–75. Paris: Classiques Garnier Numérique, 2019.

A praise poem of Isaiah Shembe, who founded the Nazareth Baptist Church (NBC) in 1910, calls him the “[b]reaker-away” who “broke away with the Gospel [. . .] because he thirsted for the happiness of the nation.” This nation (isizwe, pl. izizwe), the people Shembe gathered in his church, cut across African izizwe, the precolonial socio-political aggregates of descent groups, clans, or chiefdoms. Shembe built his church as a spiritual rival to the Zulu kingdom, whose “royal line of Senzangakhona” he pestered like a “[f]ly which pesters a sore”. The happiness of the new nation depended on the break with mission Christianity, whose representatives “denied that we had just preached the gospel”. Taking the view of the church members or Nazarites, the praise poemimplored Isaiah Shembe to “let us leave and let us head to our own Zululand” with the gospel, “which we saw approaching with our own royal leaders adorned with the plumage of the red-winged lourie.”

Echtler, Magnus. “Redeeming Zululand: Placing Cultural Resonances in the Nazareth Baptist Church, South Africa.” In Transnational Religious Spaces. Religious Organizations and Interactions in Africa, East Asia, and Beyond. Edited by Philip Clart and Adam Jones, 84–106. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co, 2020.

Though long neglected in sociological accounts of globalization, Protestant missions in Africa are one of the best examples of successful transregional institutional transfer in the history of globalization. In this chapter I argue that the success of Protestant missions in Africa depended both on the deployment of historically dominant spatial configurations and on the creativity of missionaries – both Africans and Europeans – in the development of new spatial arrangements. More specifically, Protestant missionary practices developed alongside the spatial boundaries and political nodes of European imperialism but also transcended these, creating missionary spaces that eventually thwarted imperial political projects. Developing this argument, I draw on the notion of “spatial formats”, which refers to spatial orientations that are relatively stable, have high social relevance, and are to various degrees institutionalized.

Burchardt, Marian. “From Mission Station to Tent Revival: Material Forms and Spatial Formats in Africa’s Missionary Encounter.” In Transnational Religious Spaces. Religious Organizations and Interactions in Africa, East Asia, and Beyond. Edited by Philip Clart and Adam Jones, 35–50. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co, 2020.

This article explores the complex role of political ideologies in everyday politics and for urban middle-class Bangladeshis’ evaluation of political parties. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research and, more specifically, conversations and contentions around the removal of ‘Lady Justice’ from the front of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh in 2017, I show that although the Awami League continues to be considered a ‘secular party’, many people do not believe that the Awami League is implementing secular policy and criticise it for what they perceive as ‘hypocrisy’. I argue that this seemingly paradoxical situation can be explained by a political structure that is marked by high factionalism and party competition. Data from research among politicians and the left-leaning, so-called ‘culturally-minded’ milieu in Sylhet, shows that certain segments of the educated middle class acknowledge the pragmatic realities of politics and do not expect the Awami League to act ‘progressively’. Nonetheless, they continue to position the party’s ‘progressive’ and ‘secular’ ideological basis as a primary reason for supporting the party. The article thus contributes to a deeper understanding of contemporary popular and elite practices and perceptions of party politics, democracy, and what might be labelled the ‘party-state effect’.

Schulz, Mascha. “‘That Was a Good Move’—Some Remarks on the (Ir)Relevance of ‘Narratives of Secularism’ in Everyday Politics in Bangladesh.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 54, no. 2 (June 2020): 236–58.

A lot of discussion about the place of religion in the public-political sphere has been generated by Jürgen Habermas’s introduction of the term “postsecular.” But, according to Charles Taylor, even the new openness to religion suggested by a postsecular perspective may not provide enough resources for enabling an appropriate understanding of secularism that is free from what he calls a fi xation with religion. For Taylor, it is a mistake to view secularism as a doctrine in which the state is pitted against religion. In place of the mistaken view, Taylor recommends interpreting secularity as something that requires the state to be neutral among all beliefs and not just religion-related ones. He says, “We think that secularism (or laicite) has to do with the relation of the state and religion; whereas in fact it has to do with the (correct) response of the democratic state to diversity”. While elaborating the problems with understandings of secularism that fi xate on religion, Taylor notes how the special concern with religion as the main problem relates back to Western history. For example, in France “the notion stuck that laïcité was all about controlling and managing religion”.

Lamba, Rinku. “Religion and the Postsecular: Reflection on the Indian Experience.” In Religion in the Era of Postsecularism. Edited by Uchenna Okeja, 123–47. London: Routledge, 2020.

This special section of Asian Medicine brings together three scholars of the history of healing practices and medicine in premodern Asian societies to explore whether and how emic boundaries between religion and medicine were drawn in different historical contexts. In this introduction, we use the example of ancient Japan in an attempt to show how first steps towards a separation of religion and medicine can be identified, even when they have not yet been clearly differentiated institutionally or distinguished conceptually as distinct fields of action. By doing so, we operationalize the macro-sociological question central to the ‘multiple secularities’ approach, namely how ‘secular’ fields of action—here, curing disease—emancipate themselves from ‘religion’ in premodern ‘non-Western’ societies. We propose to look for differences in the framing and interpretation of healing activities, for the ascription of either (professional) competence or (religious) charisma to the healers, to ask whether the activities are to be interpreted as a social function or service, and to identify the sources of authority and legitimacy. This is followed by a brief summary and discussion of the contributions by Selby, Czaja, and Triplett.

Kleine, Christoph, Katrin Killinger, and Katja Triplett. “Distinctions and Differentiations between Medicine and Religion.” Asian Medicine 14, no. 2 (2019): 233–62.

The contributions assembled in this special issue of JRJ are the outcome of the workshop “Secularities in Japan,” held at Leipzig University from 18 to 20 July 2018 within the framework of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences “Multiple Secularities—Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities." 


Dessì, Ugo, and Christoph Kleine. “Introduction: Secularities in Japan.” Journal of Religion in Japan 8, no. 1-3 (2019): 1–8.