Is the Secular Tradition All Bad? A Critical Reflection on the State of the Critical Subfield

This paper argues that scholars of religion should treat the secular tradition and its cognate concepts, like secularism and secularity, like we treat other “religious” traditions, i.e., as a mix of good and bad and a source of both help and harm. This paper pushes back against the current trend of treating “secularism” as a catch-all name for the harms of liberalism, colonialism, technocracy, and even Christianity (such as when scholars elide the differences between Protestant and secular ways of life). Hopefully by treating the secular as an internally diverse tradition we can help resolve some glaring tensions among scholars of religion, who are wary of Christian nationalism, worried about the use and abuse of religious discourse, defensive of religious ways of life, dissatisfied with liberalism, and anxious about the erosion of the separation of church and state. Hopefully we can also have a more productive conversation about out differences.