Secularism on the Edge: Rethinking Church-State Relations in the United States, France, and Israel. Edited by Jacques Berlinerblau, Sarah Fainberg, and Aurora Nou

Abstract

This is an edited volume of papers and interviews drawn mostly from an academic conference of the same name at Georgetown University’s Program for Jewish Civilization in February 2013. Volumes of this kind feature certain well-known limitations: rather than elaborating a scholarly approach at length or investigating a case in-depth, they often gather a series of reflections that may or may not hang together coherently. What such volumes can do well, however, is bring together scholars who are not normally in dialogue and help give readers a sense of the scholarly “lay of the land” on a new, complicated, or contentious topic. This collection does indeed do this well. In recent years, “secularism” and its various cognates (including those with the ubiquitous academic “post-” prefix) have become important keywords in the various disciplines that study religion in public life. Religious studies, theology, political science, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, literary studies, and law have all seen a proliferation of secularisms as objects of critique, defense, description, and analysis. In the humanities and social sciences, this phenomenon rivals “neoliberalism” in its contemporary ubiquity.