Reading Secularism: Formative Texts in the Study of Secularism and Secualrization

The modern world is a secularized world. The presence and  providence of the deity are no longer automatically assumed, and faith or a religious way of life are no longer the only options. Nevertheless, the modern world is also very religious. Powerful institutions preserve the might of religions, and almost everywhere there are individuals and communities for whom religion is an inseparable part of their lives. How can this contradiction be explained? Reading Secularism: Formative Texts in the Study of Secularism and Secularization addresses this question and many others.

This anthology—the first collection of its kind of essays and articles nearly all of which are appearing for the first time in Hebrew translation—opens for the reader a gate to the fascinating, broad, and complex field of the study of secularization and secularism. The first section contains fundamental theoretical and conceptual articles that are milestones in the philosophy and study of secularization. The articles address the meaning and development of the concepts of secularization and secularism, the creation of the secularized subject, and a critique of secularization, raising questions regarding all universalist and emancipatory pretensions of many of its mouthpieces in the west and elsewhere. The articles in this section have introductions by Israeli scholars written specially for this anthology. The second section presents studies on specific historical, political, and cultural contexts and the multitude of forms that secularization has taken in various times and places. Inter alia, it discusses the complex relations between religion, secularism, and state in India; the relation between secularization and approaches to gender equality in Egypt and in France; how European secularization transformed Judaism into a religion; the manner in which Communist revolutions in the Soviet Union and in China sought to create a secular-atheist subject; and the formation of the New Age in the west as a kind of secular religion.

In Israel, a country in which the relations between religion and secularism are usually discussed from a local and quite narrow angle, it is especially important to open up and broaden the field of discussion of these topics. The questions, uncertainties, and critiques presented in the book may enrich the local discussion and make it less polarized, deeper, and, primarily, more aware of the many and surprising ways in which secularization and secularism are present in our lives.