A Religious Canon for Europe?: Policy, Education, and the Postsecular Challenge

Abstract

This essay discusses the "need to know" in public policy now that it has been confronted with the resurgence of so-called global religion. More specifically, it details recent controversies concerning "the religious fact" in education in the secular state and analyzes the conceptual difficulties in differentiation between "cult" and "culture." The essay concludes with some very tentative observations concerning the desirability of a religious "canon"—to begin within and for "Europe"—suggesting that, if we adopt or, rather, stipulate a plausible definition of that historical and somewhat technical term (i.e., "canon") and, indeed, apply it wisely, then nothing less—and nothing more—may be needed to avoid the old and new cultural "clashes" that so many have feared are invited by the so-called "post-secular challenge." To do so requires revisiting and reconsidering the cultural idioms and cultic practices for which this term—"canon"—once stood, not least since many of its original assumptions seem no longer valid or useful, if ever they were.