Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Negotiating Religious Voices in Public Spaces

Abstract

Western society is entering an unprecedented political and cultural era in which many of the assumptions of classic sociological theory and of main¬¬stream public theology are being overturned. Whilst many of the features of the trajectory of religious decline, typical of Western modernity, are still apparent, there are compelling and vibrant signs of religious revival, not least in public life and politics - local, national and global. A number of scholars have adopted the terminology of the ‘post-secular’ to denote this supposedly problematic co-existence of re¬vitalized religious activism as a decisive force in public life, both globally and locally, along¬side the continuing trajectory of organisational rel¬igi¬ous decline, accompanied by robust de¬fence of secularism in Western societies. This new dispensation of ‘post-secularity’ presents novel challenges for the way in which religious voices are mediated into public spaces. They must learn to negotiate a path between the ‘rock’ of religious revival and the ‘hard place’ of secularism.

Western society is entering an unprecedented political and cultural era in which many of the assumptions of classic sociological theory and of main¬¬stream public theology are being overturned. Whilst many of the features of the trajectory of religious decline, typical of Western modernity, are still apparent, there are compelling and vibrant signs of religious revival, not least in public life and politics - local, national and global. A number of scholars have adopted the terminology of the ‘post-secular’ to denote this supposedly problematic co-existence of re¬vitalized religious activism as a decisive force in public life, both globally and locally, along¬side the continuing trajectory of organisational rel¬igi¬ous decline, accompanied by robust de¬fence of secularism in Western societies. This new dispensation of ‘post-secularity’ presents novel challenges for the way in which religious voices are mediated into public spaces. They must learn to negotiate a path between the ‘rock’ of religious revival and the ‘hard place’ of secularism.