Secularisation, Sovereignty and Sacralisation: The Ambivalence of the Secular and the Roots of Violence

Abstract

According to the Westphalian legacy secular sovereignty pacified religious strife and created the secular system of international relations of sovereign states. Religion is thus mainly seen as a source of quarrel, or the sacred is conceptualized as ambivalent, and has to be tested as to when it is peaceful or war-prone. The panel challenges this Westphalian narrative and turns the research agenda upside down. So instead of problematizing religion, secular shortcomings are being scrutinized and religiously informed options of world order are examined. Was the world a more secure place when religion was banned from politics and the Leviathan of the Bible was turned into the mortal God of Hobbes’ sovereign state? Is the linkage between the sovereignty of the people and the sovereignty of God only one of secularization, or are there other options to bring theocracy and democracy together? How can religiously informed approaches explain violence? What can transnational actors from religious traditions contribute to broaden our understanding of political order beyond the secular nation state? Can politics be purely pragmatic or does secularization only shift the object of sacralization from one sphere to another, to the nation or human rights for instance? What happens on the global public sphere when secular gods of free speech clash with resistance to blasphemy, or when accusations of blasphemy are used to suppress religious communities? The panel is open for approaches that are debating the religious roots of sovereignty, analyzing the secular roots of violence or focusing on transnational religious actors and their potential to create world order. Political theory papers can be brought together with empirical studies on religious movements and their conceptual thinking.

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