Eggert, Marion, and Lucian Hölscher (eds.). 2013, Religion and Secularity: Transformations and Transfers of Religious Discourses in Europe and Asia. Boston: Brill, 286pp., ISBN 978-90-04-25132-8, €111,00/$141.00 (hb)
In the beginning of the 90’s Talal Asad, in his influential ‘Genealogies of religion’ has shown how the interconnection of liberal politics, a modern world view and changes in ideas about religion have contributed to a specific understanding of secularization. With religion, secularity and their relationship as its focus, this book follows in Asad’s steps and further investigates how ideas about the secular and the religious have developed in Germany, France, Israel, Turkey, Iran, Sri Lanka, Japan, China and Korea, convincingly refuting euro-centric theories.
Politics contributes to the formation of secularity as Lapidot-Firilla shows: not the rejection of religion brought about secularity in Turkey, but secularity was needed to ensure Turkey’s position in Europe. Similarly, Kramer explains how defining Shinto as religious or a-religious served the purpose of claiming Japanese modernity. Isomae, also discussing Japan, shows how the term religion was initially being related to public morality. As public morality became linked to the public realm, religion became public: the emperor as a ‘living kami’ was the pinnacle of the state. Likewise, Le Grand explains how in France not laïcité but the passion surrounding the debate is unique: she distinguishes at least three ‘schools’ of laïcité, each trying to define and appropriate the term for itself. Similarly, His-Yuan looks at Confucianism as linked with the fallen empire, showing how a declining intellectual elite mobilized a valuable symbolic asset transforming religion into national religion and then into non-religion, to suit the political changes history brought about. However, when politics are involved specific balances of power can also be expected. Bretfeld, talking about Sri Lanka, shows how the secularization of Buddhism has resulted in its hegemony and especially state protected position. All these examples point out that causes and influences are nuanced and but often also double sided.
Most contributions engage with and confirm Asad’s theories: the secular’s change over time has an impact on religion as Sukman shows with a vivid portrait of interdependence in modern Korea. Similarly, Hölscher, examining transformations of the religious field in Germany, points out that the religious-secular dichotomy as understood today is a fairly recent phenomenon, a product of its age. Along the same lines, Roetz, in a critique of Taylor’s “A secular age”, shows that European Enlightenment is not exclusively the product of European history, but rather an intercultural phenomenon. He highlights the influence of Confucian ideas such as natural power, rationality and critique and individual autonomy that came to Europe through Jesuit missions.
Two contributions are mainly linguistic. Fischer investigates the Hebrew terms for secularist/secular and explains how the view of each aspect of life as having a religious meaning shapes both state institutions and their political status quo. Mozaffari, talking about Iran, shows how until the first decade of the 21st century with no consensus existed for a Persian word for secular/secularity. Finally, in an interesting theoretical contribution, Krech presents possible indicators for measuring secularization.
The book presents a wide range of empirical studies, with geographical and historical variability, aiming successfully at clarifying concepts and their fluctuating meanings. They add flesh to Asad’s theories, in a perspective that is both broad geographically and rich historically, highlighting the wide diversity of approaches towards secularity. The foremost evidence for what secularity implies, the authors concur, is to come from the social, political and cultural reality indicated by the terminology used by each linguistic community. Thus, using a socio-historical and semantic approach, the contributions tackle conceptual matrixes, observing variations and particularities. For the theoretically minded religious studies scholar, this book might be a less challenging read, however, an appreciating audience will be found in area and globalization studies, linguists and anthropology.
Carolina Ivanescu 