Liberal-Democratic Separation and Religious Literacy: A Secularism Studies Critique

Within the past two decades, the concept of religious literacy has gained currency in both scholarly and popular discourse. A trans-Atlantic, Anglophone conversation has emerged as U.S. and U.K. academics and policy-makers have called for increased public understanding of, and engagement with, religion through educational initiatives. Implicitly, and, in many instances, explicitly, proponents of religious literacy engage with theories of secularism by raising questions about the constructed category of religion. Despite the impact of the secularisation paradigm within religion and politics research, there is a dearth of scholarly analysis connecting theories of secularism to current religious literacy policy proposals. Against this backdrop, my paper asks to what extent the concept of religious literacy— which is proliferating within public policy circles—serves to reproduce, or alternatively, to challenge the liberal-democratic separation principle as well as the normative assumption that churches and state should constitute separate spheres. Religious literacy, this paper will argue, brings into focus some of the approaches and assumptions about religion and public policy. To reflect on the possible manifestation of Western/Eurocentric agendas within contemporary policy proposals, my paper uses theories secularism that challenge the liberal conception of self-sovereignty to examine religious literacy case studies. In so doing, this paper analyses the ways in which the separation principle undergirding Western liberal thinking informs and impacts the representation of religion within religious literacy policy proposals. The following question becomes critical to an analysis of the nexus between scholarship and public policy: is religious literacy an antidote to perceived religious decline in the global West or a symptom of it? In other words, does seeming decline necessitate an increased understanding of religions, or, conversely, does religion’s robustness warrant greater understanding in the service of promoting informed civic participation and democratic debate? By examining the particular context of these proposals, this paper analyses the ways in which the developing discourse around religious literacy might problematise the category of religion at play in debates around contemporary religious literacy. This paper advances the case that a critical secularism studies approach exposes some of the hidden liberal-democratic epistemological assumptions underlying the current religious literacy debate.