Rethinking Secularism/Eds. Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, Jonathan VanAntwerpen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. - 311 p.

The Post-Secular in Question: Religion in Contemporary Society/Eds. Philip S. Gorski, David Kyuman Kim, John Torpey, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen. New York & London: New York University Press, 2012. - 375 p.

A look at the history of the term "post-secular" reveals an interesting, if not intriguing, dynamic. This word has been rapidly spreading around the world in recent years, and today it is mainly a networked "world": so, in 2004, Google

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gave several thousand links to Post-Secular; in 2012-almost 7<e million. The question arises: what is it - "just fashion" or evidence of what this term means, captures some important turn that is taking place today, both in reality itself and in its description and understanding?

Of course, we must distinguish between public discourse (including that which sounds in the so-called media space) and scientific discourse, but it would also be wrong not to correlate them. Because there is also an academic fashion, and in recent years, many conferences, studies, publications, that is, various scientific and scientific phenomena in different parts of the world, including Russia, have been labeled with this neologism. Again, it is interesting that only a few people reject it or question it, while the majority seem to accept and use the term without any hesitation, as a matter of course.

In other words, the term "post-secular" (and its derivatives) is both (already) banal and (still)commonplace today. intriguing. It is all the more important to find out what is happening with this term in the global academic space.

The short answer is that this term and the realities that are visible behind it are being used. This is evidenced by a number of recent scientific events and collective publications. At the same time, however, one should be aware that in the world of science, tens of millions of Internet links to Post-Secular correspond to the close attention to the problem of only a dozen and a half leading specialists-sociologists, philosophers, anthropologists, and even a couple of dozen scientists specializing in various fields of socio-humanitarian knowledge who "noticed" the specifics of the post-secular issue 4.

This is a normal situation. New research approaches are always reserved for a few, usually just a few. Any " science-

4. In addition to peer-reviewed collections, we would like to point out other recent ones: Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age / Michael Warner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, Craig Calhoun (eds.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010; Discoursing the Post-Secular. Essays on the Habermasian Post-Secular Turn/Peter Losonczi, Aakash Singh (eds.). Munster: LIT-Verlag, 2010; Exploring the Postsecular: The Religious, the Political and the Urban/Arie L. Molendijk, Justin Beaumont, Christoph Jedan (eds.). Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2010 (see review in this issue); The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere/Eduardo Mendieta, Jonathan VanAntwerpen (eds.). New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.

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The New revolution" reveals the unwillingness of the academic majority to change - after all, a revolution is a paradigm shift that threatens all established positions and identities. And, in order to avoid misunderstandings, which are so rich in our Russian social sciences of the post-Soviet period, it should be emphasized that the thematization of the post-secular in Western science is a recent phenomenon. When thinking through the possible meanings of the term "post-secular", we, now in Russia, do not so much study old and foreign lessons as participate in an actual discussion, the purpose of which is to comprehend the religious and social processes that are currently taking place and have not yet been completed.

The titles of the two books that are the subject of this review indicate a double configuration of the discussion that began in Western science a decade or more ago, and has recently only gained momentum: "Rethinking secularism" - "Discussing the post-secular". The subtitle of the second book sets the general framework: "Religion in modern society" (modern in this case is not "modern", but the current one, of which we are contemporaries).

Speaking of a double configuration, I mean that the problem of the post-secular is considered from two different angles: not only through the analysis of the term "post-secular" itself and the identification of the corresponding socio-cultural realities, but also through attempts to re-interpret the secular and secularism. The second perspective is certainly a consequence of the "post-secular turn" - for why would it be necessary to rethink the established ideas? This is exactly the task set by the editors and authors of the first collection - "Rethinking Secularism". The articles included in it are revised reports from two conferences: one was held in 2007 as part of the activities of the American Social Science Research Council (SSRQ), the other was held a year later at Yale University (p. 16).

In the introductory chapter, the editors recount in detail the entire "history" associated with the term "secular", with the relationship between secularism and secularization, with the separation of religion from politics. The main question is: how to distinguish between religious and secular? General answer: "In general, it remains unclear to what extent we can distinguish religion from culture, ethnicity, or national identity."

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identity or other concepts constructed in secular terms" (p. 18). Accordingly, "the question of how 'secular' the public sphere can and should be remains controversial " (p. 19).

The reason for these difficulties is that the modern concepts of "religious" and "secular" are not just correlative, but also mutually defining (p. 21). The very category of "religion "was created - both in" European " and colonial contexts, and presumably similar phenomena were summed up under it (p. 19). Therefore, a critical analysis of secular / secularism is intended to reveal behind these concepts not only a value sphere, but also a project - along with religious projects of world exploration (p. 21).

The book opens with the article "Western Secularism" by Charles Taylor, a well - known master in this field-the philosopher and political theorist. In general, the author of the monumental " Secular Age "5 - with his concepts of" immanent frame "(immanent frame)," buffered self "(buffered self)," exclusive humanism", as well as criticism of subtraction story (secular as a" subtraction " of religion) - is constantly quoted and discussed on the pages of both peer-reviewed collections. And this is very significant, because, again, the debate about the post-secular is also a debate about the secular, which Taylor is scrupulously analyzing. In particular, in this article, he expresses the opinion that Western secularism should be understood as a consequence of a fundamental change in "sensitivity", denoted by the term "disenchantment", but also of a parallel historical movement, the purpose of which was to link a personal religious position with the "true" religion.

Another authority cited by many authors is Jose Casanova. He was one of the pioneers of rethinking the role of religion in modern society6 and in his article "Secular, secularization, secularisms" reproduces an important analytical distinction between three elements of the" standard " theory of secularization: the decline of religious faith, the separation of religious and non-religious spheres, and the privatization of religiosity. From his point of view, the first and third theses should now simply be rejected, while the second one retains its significance.-

5. Taylor Ch. A Secular Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007.

6. Casanova J. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

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chenie. Again, we are talking about the fact that the boundaries between religious and secular, although necessarily postulated, are still subject to redefinition, especially if we take into account the global context in which we meet with different secularisms, that is, not only with its Western version.

In this sense, India is a typical (but also quite special) example. Rajiv Bhargava [7], drawing on the Indian experience, insists in his article on the need for a contextual understanding of secularism, based on the idea of "principled distance". The same idea is developed by Alfred Stepan in the article "Multiple secularisms in modern democratic and non-democratic regimes". He identifies four secularist models: "separation", "established religion"," positive accommodation", "respect for all, positive cooperation, principled distance" - and on the example of India, Senegal and Indonesia shows how the fourth group is formed and works. a model indicating new patterns of relations between the state, society, and religion.

Peter Katzenstein also writes about the need to see different secularisms - in parallel with "multiple moderns" - and approaches the problem from the point of view of the theory of international relations. Criticizing both liberal and realistic approaches, he suggests a civilizational approach (while introducing the rather unfortunate terms "civilizational state" and "civilizational polity"), From his point of view, "civilization is a world that is equally far from Hobbesian anarchy, Habermasian public sphere, empire, and so on." from cosmopolis. Instead, we should talk about a weakly institutionalized social order, which is formed by various processes" (p. 151). Such "civilizational states" with varying degrees of state consolidation are, from the author's point of view, the USA, Europe, China, Japan and Islam. The forces of globalization, on the one hand, and various religious-based cultural programs entering the world stage, on the other, generate both homogenization and differentiation, which creates space

7. See the collective study edited by Bhargava: Secularism and Its Critics/Bhargava R. (ed.). Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

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a kind of" polymorphic globalism " in which various secularisms and religions are intertwined, which are in the process of cooperation and adaptation, coordination and conflict. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, another author of the collection, also speaks about the need for new approaches in understanding international relations.8 From her point of view, "the study of the secular and religious in world politics requires suspension of (disbelief), a rethinking of established political, philosophical and religious beliefs that support the rigid secular/religious opposition that underlies the current social science" (p. 181), because such an opposition is a serious problem. a construct based on certain assumptions. The author illustrates the new approach using the example of relations between the United States and Iran, as well as internal political processes in Turkey.

Mark Jurgensmeyer, turning to the topic of violence, concludes that the current religious violence is a response to secular nationalism. Following Tocqueville, Ninian Smart, and others, he draws attention to the fact that secular nationalism is a kind of "religion" that presupposes "faith." "Both inventions of modernity - secular nationalism and religion-perform an ethical function and serve as a framework for the moral order... As a result, the modern idea of religion turns out to be a potentially revolutionary construct" (p. 198). In other words, religious aggression is a reaction to what is perceived as aggressive secularism.

Cecilia Lynch describes the reverse processes in her article "Religious Humanitarian Organizations and the global politics of secularism", showing, based on interviews with NGO employees in Central and East Africa, the Middle East, Geneva and New York, how the global discourses of the "war on terror" and the liberal market economy intersect with local religious discourses and practices, exerting a strong influence on them, but at the same time discovering that the boundary between the secular and the religious remains vague and very mobile.

The presence of R. Scott Appleby's article in the collection under consideration is highly indicative. It was he who was the head, vme-

8. See her book: Hurd E. S. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.

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The project, which lasted from 1988 to 1995 and produced a series of collective monographs, totaling more than 3,700 book pages, was launched in collaboration with Martin Marty.9 And it is with the mention of this project that Peter Berger begins his famous introductory article to another collective monograph called "Desecularization of the world" - a completely incomparable volume, but now much more famous 10.

In his article, Appleby dwells in detail on the Fundamentalism Project itself, its ideological attitudes, methodology, and different approaches among different participants, but in a new, current, historical, and intellectual situation (starting, in particular, from the concept of Ch. Taylor), comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to critically evaluate the work done earlier by more than 120 specialists ("Rethinking Fundamentalism in the secular age" - this is the title of his text). From his current point of view, in the context of the latest global processes, "fundamentalism" should be understood rather as a "strong religion" that goes out into the public sphere and in its own way takes into account the general "immanent framework" (recall: this expression of Ch. Taylor), rather than as a completely anti-secular religious phenomenon. According to Appleby, "'fundamentalism,' whatever you want to call it, refers to a late-modern mode of religiosity - a kind of religious public presence-whose internal logic, though not specific political, social, or cultural expressions, is shared by individuals, movements, groups, and political parties that proclaim adherence to a particular religious tradition and they protect this tradition from marginalization, erosion, privatization, and decline - that is, from the sharp edge of secularism in its most anti-religious forms. In this sense, "fundamentalism" should be understood as a type and example of the more general category of "public religion" " (p. 236-237).

9. See: Eds. Martin E. Marty and R.Scott Appleby: Fundamentalisms Observed (1991), Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Politics, Economies and Militance (1993), Fundamentalisms and Society: Remaking the Family, the Sciences and the Media (1993), Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements (1994), Fundamentalisms Comprehended (1995).

10. The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics/Berger PL. (ed.). Grand Rapids: Michigan: WilliamB. Eerdmans Publishing, 1999.

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An article by anthropologist Peter van der Veer (Utrecht), who specializes in the study of China and India, shows that it is important to take into account specific, local contexts in the current rethinking of secularism. In the case of these two countries and cultures, secularism is not so much an ideology as a project that combines both colonial "imperial" influence and earlier local anti-clerical traditions. However, in both of these cases, which were largely different, secularism was not just anti-religious, but, on the contrary, as a project and as a state policy, it was aimed at "transforming religions into moral sources of citizenship and national identity" (p. 280). The collection concludes with an article by Talal Asad, Professor Emeritus at New York University, another master of what can be called "secular research" (in a broad sense) .11 In this text, as in many others, he analyzes an actual and, one might say, hot problem: The article is entitled "Freedom of expression and religious restrictions" (this is blasphemy from the point of view of Islam, but partly also Christianity). His intention is best expressed by the question he asks at the end of his argument: "Why does aggression in the name of God shock secular liberal sensibilities, while the art of killing in the name of a secular nation, in the name of democracy, does not?" (p. 295). In essence, T. Asad tries to correlate secular and religious discourses (in this case, conflicting ones), revealing their internal logic and revealing fundamental contradictions (primarily in liberal discourse). "Theology speaks of dependence on a transcendent force, and secularism denies such a force, asserting the independence of man. But this freedom from the transcendent is the ideological attitude of secularism." 284). Accordingly, the secular understanding of freedom, the free individual, and freedom of expression is valid only as long as those who do not share this fundamental secular attitude do not come on the public stage, which creates a conflict that cannot be resolved in the space defined, in Taylor's words, by the "immanent framework". This reveals the logically necessary contradiction of secularism

11. Key book by T. Asad on the topic under consideration: Asad T. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press, 2003.

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(the last expression is not the author's, but ours. - A. K.).

In this brief review of the first peer - reviewed collection, Rethinking Secularism, I deliberately omitted some authors because they combine the first book with the second, Discussing the Post-Secular. This indicates not only the unity of the research field, but also that, as mentioned above, a relatively small group of scientists still works in this field. Thus, the co-editor of both collections (as well as the other two collective publications mentioned in the first footnote) is Jonathan Vanantverpen.12 Another co - editor of the first of the books under review is Craig Calhoun, whose articles appear in both publications under review13.

The fact that each subsequent collection of articles on the subject under consideration is in some sense a continuation of the previous one is also indicated by this fact (which, however, can be considered strange): in Calhoun's concluding article "Discussing the post-secular", we find not only meaningful, but also literal textual coincidences with the introductory article in the book "Rethinking Secularism", written by editors (one of whom is K. Calhoun).

In his texts in both collections - "Secularism, Citizenship and the public sphere" and "Time, World and Secularism", respectively - Calhoun addresses a wide range of issues that arise in the process of identifying the" essence " of Western secularism and rethinking its relationship to religion (focusing on the position of Jurgen Habermas) and reveals the difficulties associated with attempts to redefine the place of religion in theorizing about ethical citizenship, political discourse, and the public sphere. In his view, secularism is not neutral, and "in any case, it is not just Different in relation to religion "(The Post-Secular in Question, p. 361). He suggests that we think about the ultimate foundations of the secular attitude, about its own "transcendent", which, although it is not otherworldly, but this-worldly, at the same time generates a corresponding ponya-

12. He is the Program Director of the aforementioned Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and Editor-in-Chief of the Council-supported Internet blog "The Immanent Frame", which focuses on secularism, religion and the public sphere (http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/).

13. He is President of the SSRC and co-editor of the aforementioned monograph Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age (2010).

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It requires a lot of experience and commitment on the part of a "secular person".

Turning to the second peer-reviewed collection as a whole, we can say this: two books - two approaches. If the intention of the editors and authors of the former can be described as "the need to rethink secularism", then the intention of the latter is to approach the same problem cautiously in the perspective of analyzing the opportunities, but also the dangers that the "fashionable" term "post-secular" reveals. And this approach seems quite reasonable from a strictly academic point of view.

However, both approaches - through the analysis of secularism and through the thematization of the post-secular-constantly force us to turn to religion and the religious, revealing those dimensions that are just missed if we look through the secularist lens (especially since the latter is implicitly connected with a specific religion-Christianity, and as a "Western" religious phenomenon).

And here it is useful to turn to other contexts, as does the American sociologist Richard Madsen, whose articles are found in both collections ("Secularism, religious change and social conflict in Asia" and " What is Religion? Categorical configurations in the global horizon"). Using the examples of China, Indonesia, and Taiwan, he shows how different relations between the state and religions developed there, as well as how various forms and manifestations of religiosity are hidden behind the facade of formally secular political institutions. And in this case, we are talking about exactly such a religiosity, which cannot be identified and described in terms of the Western understanding of"religion".

The collection "Discussing the Postsecular" is made up of rather diverse texts.

Here we find the article "Rediscovered goods: Durkheim's Sociology as the ethics of virtue", the author of which, Philip Gorsky, laments that the "secular revolution" broke the link between sociology and the traditions of moral and political philosophy, condemning today's sociologists to the "moral naivete of radical individualism", so that today Durkheim's definition of sociology as "a secular revolution" is "a secular revolution".moral science " just hurts the ear (p. 100, 77). Ant de Vries in the article ""Simple Ideas, Small Miracles": The Obama Phenomenon "attempts to describe what he calls the" theology "(or" political theology " - p. 116) of the current US president, pointing out the very heterogeneous nature of the issue.-

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some of its sources, but especially focusing on Reinhold Niebuhr's "Christian realism" 14.

Courtney Bender, in her article "Things in their Intertwining", refers to the phenomenon of "spirituality", which often escapes the sociological view, to the history of the concept of" religious experience "in theology, psychology and sociology, as well as to the" mystical"experience of America ("America as mysticism" - p.66). The author believes that "raising the question of how and where religion is present-conceptually, practically and institutionally-opens up new directions for sociological questioning about religion, corresponding to the current, broader post-secular turn" (p. 67).

Quite provocative for the" traditionalist "understanding of religion (both from the modern scientific and secular point of view and from the religious point of view itself) is the proposal of James K. A. Smith, put forward in his article "Secular Liturgies and Prospects of the" post-secular"sociology of Religion". He opposes the" intellectualist "perception/understanding of religion, emphasizing its" embodied, material, liturgical " dimension, which "shapes our desire and imagination before assimilating doctrines and beliefs" (p. 161). Based on this attitude, the author, at the second step, expresses the conviction that it is necessary to change the theoretical optics in such a way that "secular religion" is also seen, that is, to identify "some "secular" practices as religious... For exclusive humanism remains religious, since it has its own liturgies [rituals and practices]" (p. 162). He takes Taylor, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Bourdieu as his allies.

The position that reflects the proper sociological (Western) approach to religion is presented in the book by the British sociologist of religion Brian Turner 15.

This second collection (dedicated to the post-secular) was not without the "classical" question generated by the standard theory of secularization: USA and Europe - who is the exception to the rule? John Torpey addresses this issue-

14. Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971). the greatest American Protestant theologian of the 20th century; his most famous work is "The Moral Man and the Immoral Society" (1932).

15. The reader has the opportunity to get acquainted with his view on the problems discussed by referring to the article published in this issue of our magazine.

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in the article "Religion and secularization in the United States and Western Europe", but, in accordance with the new approach stated in the title of the book, first of all, it asks difficult questions about what religion is and what secularization is, while referring to the texts of other authors of the collection. Thus, the old sociological problem is subjected to a new problematization - in the post-secular perspective.

It remains for us to touch on two topics that are reflected in the book "Discussing the Post-secular". One of them is a particular but very interesting question about how the secular and then post-secular "twists "(in the last century) manifested themselves in the university and academic space. This question is answered by Tomoko Masuzawa ("Secular by default? Religion and the University before the Post-secular Era"), and co-authors John Schmalzbauer and Kathleen Mahoney ("Religion and Knowledge in a Post-Secular Academy"). Without delving into this special problem of the secularist evolution of attitudes to the study of religion and its presence at the university (and now-counter-evolution), which would require a separate article, we will only note the fact that in this case-so far-we are talking only about American universities, that is, also about a " special case"this is a very interesting general topic.

Finally, the editors and authors of the second collection under review did not ignore one of the" fathers " of post-secular discourse, namely Jurgen Habermas. The Russian reader has the opportunity to get acquainted with his position on the issue under discussion thanks to already available translations. 16 However, numerous controversial and polemical texts that reflect the reaction to Habermas ' theoretical strategy are still outside the Russian-language literature.17
Two articles are devoted to Habermas in the peer-reviewed collection: "Jurgen Habermas and postse-

16. See translations of key texts by Yu. Habermas on the issue under consideration: "Faith and knowledge "(Habermas Yu. The future of human nature, Moscow: Vse mir, 2002); "Religion and publicity" (Habermas Yu. Between Naturalism and Religion, Moscow: Vse Mir, 2011, pp. 109-141); "Postsecular Society - what is It?" (Rossiyskaya Filosofskaya Gazeta, No. 4 (18) April-5 (19) May 2008), as well as the book Habermas Y., Ratzinger Y. Dialectic of secularization. On Reason and Religion, Moscow: BBI, 2006.

17.At the same time, an example of such a discussion and at the same time polemic - from a religious, Christian, point of view - is the article published in this issue of our magazine by Brian Trainor.

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Cultural Appropriation of Religion: A Sociological Critique "by Michel Dillon and" Spiritual Politics and Post-Secular Authenticity: Foucault and Habermas on Post-Metaphysical Religion" by Edouard Mendieta. For lack of space, as well as due to the complexity of the issue, we will not go into the content of the discussion itself here: the postsecondary project and / or Habermas ' discourse, without a doubt, requires a separate serious conversation. But it is important to highlight the fact that this discourse occupies an essential place in the current discussion of the "post-secular".

In this regard, we can briefly say about Habermas: by introducing the term "postsecular" and being in his own scientific and intellectual topos, he "made a mess" that began to boil, swell and "get out" in a variety of intellectual and disciplinary spaces. That is, he has already "done his job", having discovered - on the slope of life and professional activity - such sensitivity to the latest socio-cultural processes, which any professional can envy. Everything else - analyzing the term, clarifying the problem, asking questions and possible answers, polemics, new turns of the topic-remains different. Including us.

In general, the richness of perspectives, thoughts, creative intuitions, and just specific research material contained in the two collective monographs under consideration, which deal with secularism, religion, and the post-secular view of them, cannot be adequately reflected in this brief review. In this case, we are dealing with a complex, interdisciplinary topic that is just coming to the forefront of scientific research, both theoretical and empirical. At the same time, the very "matter" of the subject matter, whether it is "secularism", "religion" or some "post-secular" phenomena or symptoms, so to speak, is presented to all of us, who are in different cultural and geographical contexts and academic situations. And it is only to be regretted that the active scientific forces involved in post-secular research are mainly based "overseas" and, in part, in the Old World. At the same time, Russian science should also be involved in this work, especially since it has its own specific domestic, wide and very interesting field for its own, home - made case studies.

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