Secularization, Desecularization, and Toleration: Cross-Disciplinary Challenges to a Modern Myth

by Vyacheslav Karpov (Editor), Manfred Svensson (Editor)

This book challenges the modern myth that tolerance grows as societies become less religious. The myth inseparably links the progress of toleration to the secularization of modern society. This volume scrutinizes this grand narrative theoretically and empirically, and proposes alternative accounts of the varied relationships between diverse interpretations of religion and secularity and multiple secularizations, desecularizations, and forms of toleration. The authors show how both secular and religious orthodoxies inform toleration and persecution, and how secularizations and desecularizations engender repressive or pluralistic regimes. Ultimately, the book offers an agency-focused perspective which links the variation in toleration and persecution to the actors of secularization and desecularization and their cultural programs.

348 pages, Hardcover

Published October 23, 2020

Reviews

[David Hartmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book several years ago and noticed that there were no reviews. Since I very much enjoyed the book, I wanted to offer one here. Karpov and Svensson’s edited volume contains 15 chapters and there is not a weak one among them. It is a multidisciplinary collection and I suspect that the reader’s training or even better, the reader’s interests, will favor some over others. First, a word not of caution but of expectation. The themes of secularization, desecularization and tolerance are obviously important but just as obviously nuanced and complicated and therefore difficult to capture and advance. Such advances must be provisional and theoretically grounded as well as informed by the breadth of cultural and temporal variety that these authors represent. I do not think this is the right forum for an extended critical discussion of each essay nor am I qualified to do such a review so I will limit myself here to what might be called reactions.
As a sociologist who is not a specialist in the sociology of religion, I was particularly drawn to the opening and closing chapters (1 and 15) which are marked by Karpov’s broad sociological training but also informed by both a philosophical and practical political sensibility that dramatically enriches each essay. They draw on other work I’ve seen and admired from Karpov in particular but extend it powerfully in honest appreciation for what the examples and perspectives of the other contributors to this volume offer. And needless to say, the appeal of this collection is indeed its pluralism, its variations on a very important theme.
If I was most comfortable with the sociology, I probably learned even more from the other essays whose authors drew on disciplines and styles with which I was less familiar. Svensson’s essay and Fuentes’ in particular came from different angles than I was used to and perhaps because of that took me farther into new ways of appreciating these issues. Philpott’s piece was both comfortable – he writes and argues like a social scientist – and forceful. For me, Smith took some getting used to – again, I suspect a disciplinary difference in style, but provided a coherent and useful take on the importance of “immanent” religion that I have often thought about. The Troens’ piece gave a packed and vital refresher course on the thorny histories of justifications and actions in that perhaps most famously contested arena of the interplay of secularization, religions and tolerance. Meyer’s piece, not surprisingly, was personal yet sweeping at the same time and incredibly moving at both levels.
I could go on and at this point I might as well – the American case law chapter (McGraw and Richardson) provided an important and efficient review and gave me the sense that I’d stumbled upon an important way of thinking that had too long been parallel to rather than intertwined with my usual habits. I am an urban sociologist and it was, not coincidently, the same sensation I had when I took a law school class in segregation and desegregation law while in graduate school. Fokas’ piece was superficially similar but perhaps more ambitious and more problematic (largely related to methods in my view) because of the recent time period, the vast scope of jurisdiction and a still shifting sense of appropriate framing tools. Yang’s chapter on China taught me an incredible amount in a very efficient way and I particularly like that he did not focus exclusively on the PRC. Murphy on Penn did a beautiful job of explaining the nuanced and evolving nature of the ideas of religious freedom and tolerance during that crucial period. That chapter fit particularly well with Harnick’s exposition on Kuyper which was among my favorites in the whole collection. Indeed, I am not sure why I liked Harnick’s chapter so much but it brought several things – history of ideas, pragmatic and political dimensions, institutional focus, … - together for me.
All in all, a great volume both to pick up evidence and argument on some really important topics.