Abstract
Religion can be good and bad. For too long, the field of religion and peace has repeated this argument, cogently articulated by R. Scott Appleby in his field shaping The Ambivalence of the Sacred. It is time to examine whether there are other arguments to be made. The field of religion and peace is multifaceted and has grown exponentially in recent decades, primarily by enhancing various sites of policy making to mobilize “good” religion more effectively for its utility while devising more complex mechanisms to contain “bad” religion. This is not a bad development in and of itself and many actors populating the religion and peace spaces of practice do a lot of good in the world. However, without also subjecting the field to critique of its basic operative categories of analysis, the field in its various nodes will remain just that: practice, without reflection to recall Paolo Freire’s critical pedagogical approach to transforming the world.
Highlights
Religion Matters, TooReligion can be good and bad
Recent decades saw the emergence of a new global North discourse of “religious literacy,” which complemented an extensive subfield of religion and public life (e.g., Dinham and Francis 2015)
It was pertinent that oppressed people gain a critical analysis of the oppressive forces structuring their condition of oppression and subjugation
Summary
If the “bad” religion genre sought to understand and operationalize this understanding in order to devise containment policies and programs of securitization of Islam and Muslims globally under the auspices of the “war on terror,” the “good” religion genre sought to unlock constructive and helpful heretofore-unappreciated actors within realist political thinking Grappling with this orientalist genesis clarifies a layered continuity of the contemporary securitizing discourse, and the constructive “global engagement with religion” turn. The intersection of neoliberalizing and securitizing religion as explicit policies and programming denotes a transition from a secularist myopia where religion did not seem to be relevant to realist concerns to a “postsecular” phase that identified religion’s utility both for containing “bad” religion and for mobilizing “good” and helpful religion.7 This postsecular moment denotes a neoliberal synergy between peace and development practices (e.g., Appleby 2015). I highlight what an archaeological approach does and how it troubles the field’s basic categories, opening up the field to asking new questions beyond “how can religion be more effectively contained and better mobilized?”
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