Some of the presenters at the Religious History Association conference: Diane Hall, Pamela Welch, Howard Le Couteur, Susan Mary Withycombe (chairperson of a session) , Hilary Carey and Noel Derbyshire.

“Religious historians have an important role to play in resisting grand narratives of secularism and modernisations”, stated Professor Hilary Carey at the commencement of the Religious History Association Conference last week.  “Instead of a single path to modernity there are many”, she argued while encouraging historians of religion to engage with this insight of post-modernism.  “What interests the postmodern scholar is not the discovery of points of truth…  but rather the relationships between propositions and how they are structured and given legitimacy”.

As I discussed in my first post about the Religious History Association conference, the secularisation thesis argues that religion will die out with advancing modernisation but this foundational theory of many academic disciplines is now being heavily scrutinised.  As can be seen in Carey’s discussion, many are starting to see this theory as too simplified and failing to fit the historical evidence of the last two hundred years.  Historians need to revisit the history of secularism and religion in order to provide the evidence which will develop a better, more sophisticated theory, or maybe debunk it altogether.  Thus the theme of the conference, Secularism and History, has an urgency and relevance that is evident in the life of Australia today.  Carey referred to the recent High Court decision about chaplaincy in schools.  This was an issue because religious belief is still an active agent in our society today – something that the secularisation thesis would suggest should have almost disappeared by now.

The papers that I heard presented at the recent Religious History Association conference in Adelaide reflected the spirit of Carey’s comments well.  They discussed religion in society and the intersection between religion and secularism.  In my first post about this conference I discussed the papers that engaged with the philosophical issues currently being raised in relation to the secularisation thesis.  In this post I will share with you the presentations that focussed on religion and secularism in its historical context. Continue reading →

Confucianism: religion or a philosophy? Statue of Confucius in the grounds of the University of Adelaide

All week I am attending the Australian Historical Association Conference in Adelaide.  As I mentioned in yesterday’s post this conference is really four conferences in one.  I have been mostly attending the Religious History Association conference which concluded today.  This post gives a brief introduction to some profound philosophical debates about religion and secularism and how these debates were addressed in the papers presented at this conference.

The secularisation thesis has underpinned the work of much of the humanities and social sciences since the nineteenth century. This theory proposes that religion will die out with the increasing modernisation of society (for further explanation see the introduction to Sacred and Secular by Inglehart and Norris).  This theory is under intense scrutiny because it would be reasonable to expect that if the secularisation thesis holds then in many western societies religion would have virtually disappeared by now.  As religion is still a force in the west the question is whether the theory is incorrect or whether it needs to be reframed in a more nuanced manner.

To discuss the secularisation thesis we need to be able to understand the nature of both secularisation and it’s binary opposite, religion.  I have touched on the meaning of secular in an earlier post, but what is religion?  This has proven to be very difficult, and I would argue, virtually impossible to define.

While these debates are relevant and discussed by other disciplines, the historical record is crucial to understanding what is occurring.  The theme of this week’s Religious History Association conference is very topical. Continue reading →