The Return of Religion Or the End of Religion?
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Arts & Humanities ︱ Jayne Svenungsson The ‘Pegida movement’, populist Christian demonstrations against Muslim immigration, Germany. The return of religion or the end of religion? Jayne Svenungsson, Professor he research of Jayne Svenungsson, cultures that like to think of themselves as at the Centre for Theology Professor of Systematic Theology secular all the while still being orientated and Religious Studies, Lund T (including Philosophy of Religion) to Christian or even Protestant norms. University examines the at Lund University is concerned with relationship between religion religion and what the category of religion NOT ALL RELIGIONS ARE RELIGIONS and secularism and the has come to mean in 21st Century An array of prominent scholars in recent Buurserstraat38/Depositphotos ideological underpinnings European societies. She is not talking years have shown that religion is a of the European concept of about all the countless phenomena misguiding category when applied to as secular. The new visibility of religion religion. She demonstrates that that the word ‘religion’ is commonly historical cultures as well as to non- …. ‘religion’ is a misguiding category could also be linked with the rise of the term religion is a historical taken to refer to, such as prayers, rituals, Western cultures. In Western thinking, religious ‘extremism’, which became product of a secular but mainly sacred places, pilgrimages, sacrifices, ‘religious’ has often been defined as when applied to historical cultures as well more pronounced in the media with the Christian Europe, and that it and all the other defining aspects of that which is diametrically-opposed as to non-Western cultures. Salman Rushdie Satanic Verses affair in is now more meaningful as an a particular faith. Prof Svenungsson is to ‘secular’. In Europe, philosophers 1989 in which some Muslims were shown agent of disunity, and often used examining religion as a category for developed a conception of ‘religion’, evolved, in the grip of superstitions, and to a Catholic monastery before signing to be opposed, sometimes violently, to to separate and marginalise structuring social, political and historical beginning during the anti-clerical the new disciplines in contrast studied the Paris agreement in 1951. However, secular values. minorities. life, such as when we map certain people, 18th Century Enlightenment, and ‘other’ traditions and cultures in terms of in Europe there were few cultural customs and behaviours as ‘religious’ later elaborated by 19th Century their religious beliefs and practices. indicators that indicated religiosity in the The second is what is called the ‘post- and others as ‘secular’. Although, she anthropologists, that was presented as public sphere. political condition’ in which there is a says, these are not entirely misleading or in opposition to secular ‘rationality’ and However, just as the division of the world sense in which the grand political visons inadequate ways of organising our social ‘progress’. Since the dominant religion into a religious and a secular sphere did From the 1970s onwards there has of 20th Century Europe have come to worlds, they are insufficient and come of the time in the West was Christianity, not make sense to non-Western cultures been a renewed interest in religion, an end, and some left-wing thinkers look along with an array of other distinctions religion was moulded by this and the until those cultures encountered modern especially within the fields of philosophy “to religion as an in valuable resource and associations that lead us to draw traditions of Christendom. Europeans, it did not make sense to and sociology, often termed ‘the turn for democratic discourses about the conclusions that have both political and Europeans either before modernity. To to religion’. Svenungsson posits three common good”. ethical consequences. This was especially important during the illustrate the historical contingency of the reasons why this may have come about. 19th Century when academia changed concept of religion, Prof Svenungsson A third reason may be linked to Svenungsson’s interest lies in critically from being a Christian institution into a exemplifies with Judaism; “It was only Firstly, increased migration during the theoretical and methodological interrogating the way the category secular one, in which the supernatural in the late Middle Ages, when both latter part of the century brought other developments within the discipline of operates in contemporary Western power of God was replaced by the Christianity and Islam had emerged, that faiths to Europe, and religious practices philosophy itself, which seems to have societies. More precisely, she is interested rational principles that would form Jewish theologians were confronted with and attributes other than the culturally turned against the dogmatic atheist in exploring the limitations of the concept the rule of law. The emerging secular the concept and prompted to consider inherited began to appear in societies criticisms of religion promoted by authors of religion as it is deployed especially in disciplines of sociology, economics, and their own tradition as a religion”. that had long conceived of themselves such as Richard Dawkins. political science presented Europe as the as “a harbinger of universal history” while WHAT HAPPENED IN European societies increasingly severed THE 20TH CENTURY? ties with religious authority. By the early 20th Century, from the Western philosophical view, religion As American scholar Tomoko Masuzawa was increasingly seen as something that has argued, at the same time, the was in the process of withering away European powers were also at the height as civilization moved on. Religion and of their imperial dominion, and secular secularism existed side-by-side, but in the studiof22byricardorocha/Depositphotos academia was complicit in its justification. public sphere, religiousness (i.e. being While sociology, economics, and political Christian) was generally muted, despite, science studied Western traditions and for example, Christian social principles European philosophers developed a conception of ‘religion’ that was presented as in opposition practices, anthropology and oriental being fundamental to post-war German to secular ‘rationality’ and ‘progress’. American scholar T. Masuzawa argues that at this time studies were created in order to study Christian Democrat governments as European powers were at the height of their imperial dominion; secular academia was complicit During the Salman Rushdie Satanic Verses affair in 1989, some Muslims were shown to be in its justification. ‘other’ cultures’. These other cultures were well as to the European Union, whose opposed, sometimes violently, to secular values. presented as being inferior, less societally three major founders went on retreat www.researchoutreach.org www.researchoutreach.org IS RELIGION A LEGITIMATE CONCEPT? Given the above, Svenungsson asks: “In Behind the Research light of the growing critique against the very category of religion, one may fairly ask whether the concept today does 3DStockPhoto/Shutterstock.com Dr Jayne Svenungsson more harm than good. Should we, then, simply stop using the term ‘religion’?” E: [email protected] W: https://www.ctr.lu.se/en/person/JayneSvenungsson/ She believes not, arguing that it’s a word deeply embedded within language, and trying to replace it with another Research Objectives References word would be just as problematic as any new word would be “as historically Jayne Svenungsson’s research explores religion and Svenungsson, J. (2020) The Return of Religion or the End of and culturally biased as the term it is secularism, and ideological underpinnings of the Religion? On the Need to Rethink Religion as a Category of supposed to replace”. concept of religion. Social and Political Life. Philosophy and Social Criticism. 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453719896384 Another solution would be to use THE EXAMPLE OF SCANDINAVIA religion is increasingly functioning as an Detail the word but with an awareness of its Professor Svenungsson points out othering or even stigmatising category, Svenungsson, J. Idealism Turned against Itself: From Hegel “somewhat checkered past” and that that her own context, which is the notably within populist strands of the Jayne Svenungsson to Rosenzweig, in Marius Timmann Mjaaland (ed.), The its use with a “critical awareness of Scandinavian countries, is a case in political debate. Centre for Theology and Reformation of Philosophy: The Philosophical Legacy of the the Christian (or even Protestant) bias point. Sweden, Denmark and Norway Religious Studies Reformation Reconsidered (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), of the category” would obviate its have all been characterised historically Svenungsson uses a couple of examples Lund University 97–108. doi:10.1628/978-3-16-159218-8 weaknesses. Scholars must be aware by clear religious majority cultures of how this has shown itself within public Box 192 of the fact its meaning is no longer which have subsequently been debates about religion. In Sweden, 221 00 Lund Svenungsson, J. Divining History: Prophetism, Messianism inherently clear. For example, ancestor secularised. While most Scandinavians “modern Swedish Protestantism and Sweden and the Development of the Spirit, trans. Stephen Donovan, worship might not be a religion, per are reluctant to conceive of themselves secular humanism share the same basic New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016. doi:10.2307/j. se, but