Christoph Kleine and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr

Preliminary Findings and Outlookof the CASHSS “Multiple Secularities –Beyond the West, B​ eyond Modernities”

Working Paper #22

Working Paper Series of the Centre for Advanced Studies
in the Humanities and Social Sciences (CASHSS)“Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”
ISSN 2700-5518#22: Christoph Kleine and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr. “Preliminary Findings and Outlookof the CASHSS ‘Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities’.”Leipzig University, 2020.
© Christoph Kleine and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr
This Working Paper has been published online and can be downloaded fromwww.multiple-secularities.de/publications/working-papers or ordered in print via email
to multiple-secularities@uni-leipzig.de
The CASHSS’s Working Paper Series serves to disseminate the results of work inprogress prior to publication to encourage the exchange of ideas and academic
debate. Inclusion of a paper in the Working Paper Series should not limit
publication in any other venue. Copyright remains with the authors.
Please cite as:
Kleine, Christoph, and Wohlrab-Sahr, Monika. “Preliminary Findings and Outlookof the CASHSS ‘Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities’.”Working Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond
Modernities” 22. Leipzig University, 2020.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36730/2020.1.msbwbm.22

Leipzig University
CASHSS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities“
Nikolaistraße 8–10
04109 Leipzig
Germany

The CASHSS is part of Leipzig University and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Contents

1 Introduction and Background ................................................................................. 3
1.1 History of the Research Project.......................................................................... 3
1.2 The Academic Debate.......................................................................................... 5
1.3 Current State of Research in Selected Research Areas.................................. 10
2

Research Findings from the First Funding Period (2016-2020)........................ 13
2.1 Further Developing and Refining the Concept.............................................. 13
2.2 Assumptions and Hypotheses.......................................................................... 15
2.2.1 Internal Social Differentiation − Social Structures..................................... 15
2.2.2 Taxonomies, Classifications, Knowledge Systems: Epistemic Structures.. 18
2.2.3 Differentiation of Spheres of Activity.........................................................24
2.2.4 Reference Problems and Guiding Ideas....................................................... 26
2.2.5 Cultural Interaction and Acquisition, Transfer, and Integration
Processes...........................................................................................................29

3

The Centre for Advanced Studies’ Aims in the Second Funding Period(2020−2024)..............................................................................................................30
3.1 Regional Expansion and Intercultural Encounter.........................................30
3.2 Systematic Perspectives.....................................................................................37
3.2.1 Critical Junctures and Path Probabilities.....................................................37
3.2.2 Culturalisation of Religion, Materiality of the Secular...............................38
3.2.3 Art, Culture, and Architecture as Spheres of Activity................................424

Bibliography..............................................................................................................45

1Preliminary Findings and Outlook of the CASHSS“Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond
Modernities”
1 Introduction and Background
1.1 History of the Research Project

In its initial research project description, the Centre for Advanced Studies
in Humanities and Social Sciences (CASHSS) took a position on thelongstanding academic and public debates on secularism, secularisation,and secularity. In doing so, it referred to the concept of Multiple
Secularities, which had been developed in a previous research project,1 andwhich Kleine had applied to pre-modern Japan.2 Against this backdrop,
an idea arose for a multidisciplinary project combining sociology, historyof religion and study of religions.
‘Secularity’ is an analytical concept, which seeks to avoid the ideologicalconnotations of the term secularism. The term, which is conceived as
an ideal-type, describes how conceptual distinctions and institutional
differentiations are made between religious and non-religious spheres andpractices. In this context, ‘differentiation’ is not a complete separation,but entails some form of relation between two conceptually distinguishedspheres. The previous research project had taken an exploratory approach,comparing different countries, and had developed a typology of forms ofsecularity, which focused on reference problems, associated guiding ideas
and resulting cultures of secularity. While non-Western forms of secularity
were considered3 − albeit not systematically – research on pre-modern
forms remained an unfulfilled ambition.
The CASHSS took up the concept of Multiple Secularities and developed
it further. Based on the hypothesis that distinguishing and differentiating
practices are not an exclusive sign of Western modernity, we decided tosystematically explore regions beyond the ‘Western world’, and in doing so
1
2
3

Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Marian Burchardt, “Multiple Secularities: Toward a Cultural
Sociology of Secular Modernities,” Comparative Sociology 11, no. 6 (2012).
Christoph Kleine, “Religion and the Secular in Premodern Japan from the Viewpoint of
Systems Theory,” Journal of Religion in Japan 2, no. 1 (2013).
Marian Burchardt, Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, and Matthias Middell, eds., Multiple
Secularities Beyond the West: Religion and Modernity in the Global Age (Boston, MA: De
Gruyter, 2015).
3

expand our research remit beyond that on which Taylor had focused.4 We
focused on regions that have been culturally shaped by Islam (the MENA
region, Indonesia, India), as well as on Asia, which necessarily involved
some overlap. These regional contexts differed historically and still do sotoday in terms of their propensity for conflict over boundary demarcationand the way in which relationships are established between the religious
and the non-religious. What they have in common is that the applicationof the term ‘religion’ to the respective socio-cultural traditions is highly
controversial. Exploring these regions brought different religious traditions
as well as experiences of the confrontation with the Western world into
focus, suggesting the prospect of instructive comparisons.
In addition, we planned to systematically investigate pre-modern
configurations and to critically analyse current religious distinctions anddifferentiations specifically with regard to their historical preconditions andpossible antecedents, as well as various forms of historical entanglements.
This went hand in hand with the question of whether, in addition to thehistorical disruption that generally resulted from confrontation with the‘modern West’, there were also continuities that influenced how Westernconcepts and institutions were engaged with. Furthermore, entanglements
between and within the investigated regions were to be analysed. Our interestin comparing context-specific variants of secularity was thus coupledwith an interest in being able to better understand and explain modern
developments and conflicts against the backdrop of historical structuresand processes, and to identify possible development trajectories or pathprobabilities5. Although Eisenstadt’s6 concept of ‘multiple modernities’
did inform our approach, we did not adopt his strong foundation in thetheory of civilisation. Using secularity as a heuristic term when exploring
pre-modern configurations does not mean equating these with modern
configurations; nor does it mean neglecting the processes of comparison,

4
5

6Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2007).
As the term ‘path dependence’ is susceptible to deterministic misinterpretation, we
decided to replace it with the expression ‘path probability’. This broadly corresponds,
however, with the understanding of path dependence in Giovanni Capoccia and
R. Daniel Kelemen, “The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory, Narrative, andCounterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism,” World Politics 59, no. 3 (2007).
Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, “Multiple Modernities,” Daedalus 129, no. 1 (2000).
4differentiation and purification7 that commenced in modernity with what
Dreßler8 terms “religionisation”.
The open format of the CASHSS is ideal for our research, which isnecessarily reliant on expertise in and from different non-Western regions.
Our research aims to initiate an international exchange with the objectiveof examining conceptual distinctions and institutional differentiations(secularities) in both modern and pre-modern configurations, andexploring the associated processes, dynamics, and development trajectories.
1.2 The Academic Debate

The research project’s conceptual, historical and empirical approach wasa response to the diverging camps into which research on religions had
fallen. Roughly speaking, one side consisted of proponents of secularisation
theory within the social sciences who, while acknowledging cultural
divergences to a certain degree,9 regarded modernisation emanating fromthe ‘West’ and secularisation as being inextricably linked. One strand of
this research assumes a convergence of global developments, while anotheremphasises the specific nature of Western developments.10 The other sideof the debate comprised a heterogeneous group of fierce critics.
US sociologists, in particular, criticised European secularisation theories
that assumed the demise of religiosity in the context of modernisation.
The dimension of functional and institutional differentiation, particularly
between religion and political power,11 was initially spared criticism.12
Critics later questioned the assumption of self-perpetuating differentiation
7

Adrian Hermann, “Distinctions of Religion: The Search for Equivalents of ‘Religion’ andthe Challenge of Theorizing a ‘Global Discourse of Religion’,” in Making Religion: Theory
and Practice in the Discursive Study of Religion, ed. Frans Wijsen and Kocku von Stuckrad(Leiden: Brill, 2016), 111.
8 Markus Dreßler, “Modes of Religionization: A Constructivist Approach to Secularity,”
Working Paper Series of the CASHSS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond
Modernities” 7, Leipzig University, 2019.
9 Ronald Inglehart and Wayne E. Baker, “Modernization, Cultural Change, and thePersistence of Traditional Values,” American Sociological Review 65, no. 1 (2000).
10 Steve Bruce, “Modernisation, Religious Diversity and Rational Choice in Eastern Europe,”
Religion, State & Society 27, no. 3–4 (1999); Detlef Pollack, Religion und gesellschaftliche
Differenzierung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016).
11 José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1994).
12 Rodney Stark, “Secularization, R.I.P.,” Sociology of Religion 60, no. 3 (1999): 252.
5

processes, with reference made to the forceful role played by secular elites.13
Pursuing this line, Joas ultimately warned against the use of “dangerous
nouns of process”.14
There was also criticism from within the field of the academic study ofreligions,15 which questioned whether the term ‘religion’ could be applied
to non-Western societies (especially pre-modern ones) as ‘religion’ is anemic term of European provenance and a modern Western concept, andthus unsuited to the analysis of non-Western societies. The link between
academic categorisation and colonial classification practices was also
raised as an issue − criticism which inevitably extended to the conceptof secularity.16 Post-colonial approaches, particularly those influenced by
Asad, subjected the religious-secular binary to fundamental epistemic
critique.17 These academics argued that the religious-secular binary wasbound to European history and coupled to the rise of the nation state.
They contended that perspectives on Islam, for instance, were distorted
by a secular(ist) bias originating from the universalisation of the religious13 Christian Smith, “Introduction: Rethinking the secularization of American public life,”
in The Secular Revolution: Power, interests, and conflict in the secularization of American
public life, ed. Christian Smith (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003).
14 Hans Joas, “Gefährliche Prozessbegriffe: Eine Warnung vor der Rede von Differenzierung,
Rationalisierung und Modernisierung,” in Umstrittene Säkularisierung: Soziologische
und historische Analysen zur Differenzierung von Religion und Politik, ed. Karl Gabriel,
Christel Gärtner, and Detlef Pollack (Berlin: Berlin University Press, 2012); see Monika
Wohlrab-Sahr, “Die Macht der Unterscheidung: Gibt es nicht-westliche Grundlagen
der Säkularität?,” in Religion, Zum Teufel!, ed. Armin Nassehi and Peter Felixberger(Hamburg: Kursbuch Kulturstiftung, 2018).
15 See, among others, William E. Arnal and Russell T. McCutcheon, The Sacred Is the
Profane: The Political Nature of ‘Religion’ (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013);
Russell T. McCutcheon, “‘They Licked the Platter Clean’: On the Co-Dependency of
the Religious and The Secular,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 19, no. 3–4(2007); Tomoko Masuzawa, “The Production of ‘Religion’ and the Task of the Scholar:
Russell McCutcheon among the Smiths,” Culture and Religion 1, no. 1 (2000); Timothy
Fitzgerald, “A Critique of ‘Religion’ as a Cross-Cultural Category,” Method and Theory in
the Study of Religion 9, no. 2 (1997).
16 Mitsutoshi Horii, “Critical Reflections on the Religious-Secular Dichotomy in Japan,” in
Making Religion: Theory and Practice in the Discursive Study of Religion, ed. Frans Wijsen
and Kocku von Stuckrad (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 2 and many others.
17 Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, ed. Mieke Bal andHent d. Vries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); Elizabeth S. Hurd, The
Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2008); Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference in the Secular Age: A Minority Report(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); Charles Hirschkind, “Is There a
Secular Body?,” Cultural Anthropology 26, no. 4 (2011) and many others.
6secular distinction shaped by Christianity. Similar arguments have been
made for India and Japan.18
As the conceptual distinction and related research seemed inextricably
linked to modernity as a political project, there was a determined shift
towards a conceptual and discourse history perspective, where thediscursive power of secularism and the genealogy of secular-religious
distinctions were the focus.19 As a result, no space was left for investigating‘indigenous’ distinctions and differentiations in the non-Western worldthat corresponded to the ‘Western’ distinction between the religious andthe secular and which may have influenced the adoption of (or resistanceto) such a distinction.
By critically intervening in these debates, we sought to re-open the way
for a comparative study of religion and the secular. The aim was to makeconstructive use of the critics’ key concerns, in particular, their demands forthe historicisation and contextualisation of theories, analytical categories
and comparative concepts used,20 their sensitivity to power and violence,and their criticism of assumptions of automatic societal developments.
In doing this, we were able to link to differentiation-theoretical
approaches applied in sociological research on secularisation. Chaves,for example, identifies secularisation as the declining influence of religious
authority over other social spheres.21 Consequently, struggles for power,social movements and struggles against religious dominance become
18 For India see for example Ashis Nandy, “An Anti-Secularist Manifesto,” India International
Centre Quarterly 22, no. 1 (1995); for Japan: Horii, “Critical Reflections.” Many of thesestudies, particularly in the Islamic world, tie in with criticism of political regimes, which
are sometimes relatively sweepingly described as ‘secularistic’ and judged to be incapableof dealing with religious diversity (e.g. Mahmood, Religious Difference in the Secular Age,and others. For a critical perspective, see: Andrew F. March, “Speaking about Muhammad,
Speaking for Muslims,” Critical Inquiry 37, no. 4 (2011)). The same reservation also
applies to studies regarding Muslims in Europe and North America, such as in the debate
surrounding blasphemy, see Talal Asad, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood, Is Critique
Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech (Berkeley, CA: Townsend Center, 2009).
19 Asad, Formations of the Secular; Kocku von Stuckrad, “Discursive Study of Religion:
Approaches, Definitions, Implications,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 25,
no. 1 (2013): 18.
20 See Michael Bergunder, “Comparison in the Maelstrom of Historicity: A Postcolonial
Perspective on Comparative Religion,” in Interreligious Comparisons in Religious Studies
and Theology: Comparison Revisited, ed. Perry Schmidt-Leukel and Andreas Nehring(London: Bloomsbury, 2016).
21 Mark Chaves, “Secularization as Declining Religious Authority,” Social Forces 72, no. 3(1994).
7

analytically relevant both at the institutional and the individual level.
Another important resource was Gorski’s critique of both sociologicalesearch on secularisation and the religious economies model,22 which is
widespread in the US, and which, Gorski argues, ignores extensive epochs
and variations of religious development. We were also able to link to thecritical debate surrounding sociological differentiation theory and efforts− mainly by considering actors and networks − to enhance the explanatory
power of differentiation-theoretical approaches.23 We considered theobjection that had been raised to understanding differentiation as thedivision of labour, as well as the associated call for a conflict theory in linewith Weber. Such a theory holds that conflict primarily arises between areas
which have a “comprehensive capacity to create order”.24 We also founddifferentiation theory-oriented approaches, partly based on Luhmann, tobe instructive.25
Since the CASHSS was established, the normativity of the debate has
not changed substantially, and our work has involved efforts to deal withthis normativity. Our plea for a differentiation-theoretical perspective has
made us part of this debate.26 What’s more, given the identitarian currents
22 Philip S. Gorski, “Historicizing the Secularization Debate: Church, State, and Society in
Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ca. 1300 to 1700,” American Sociological Review
65, no. 1 (2000).
23 Thomas Schwinn, Clemens Kroneberg, and Jens Greve, eds., Soziale Differenzierung:
Handlungstheoretische Zugänge in der Diskussion (Wiesbaden: Verlag für
Sozialwissenschaften, 2011); Thomas Kern, “Modernisierung und Demokratisierung:
Das Erklärungspotenzial neuerer differenzierungstheoretischer Ansätze,” Kölner
Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 59, no. 4 (2007).
24 Thomas Schwinn, “Zur Neubestimmung des Verhältnisses von Religion und Moderne:
Säkularisierung, Differenzierung und multiple Modernitäten,” in “Religion undGesellschaft,” ed. Christof Wolf and Matthias König, special issue 53, Kölner Zeitschrift
für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 65 (2013): 78–79.
25 Volkhard Krech, Wo bleibt die Religion? Zur Ambivalenz des Religiösen in der modernen
Gesellschaft (Bielefeld: transcript, 2011); Volkhard Krech, “Theory and Empiricism of
Religious Evolution (THERE): Foundation of a Research Program. Part 1,” Zeitschrift
für Religionswissenschaft 26, no. 1 (2018); Volkhard Krech, “Theory and Empiricism of
Religious Evolution (THERE): Foundation of a Research Program. Part 2,” Zeitschrift
für Religionswissenschaft 26, no. 2 (2018); Michael Stausberg, ed., Religionswissenschaft:
Ein Studienbuch (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012); David Martin, “What I Really Said about
Secularisation,” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 46, no. 2 (2007): 141–42; Hartmann Tyrell,
Soziale und gesellschaftliche Differenzierung: Aufsätze zur soziologischen Theorie, ed. Bettina
Heintz, André Kieserling, Stefan Nacke, and René Unkelbach (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für
Sozialwissenschaften, 2008); Pollack, Religion und gesellschaftliche Differenzierung.
26 For example Kleine, “Religion and the Secular in Premodern Japan;” Satoko Fujiwara,“Introduction: Secularity and Post-Secularity in Japan: Japanese Scholars’ Responses,”8

in politics and academia, the focus on differentiation itself has become apolitical issue. However, contributions can now be found that critically
discuss the narrowing of the post-colonial critique of secularism. The
studies by Enayat and Rots/Teeuwen, which both refer to the conceptof Multiple Secularities,27 are good examples: While it is not possible torecapitulate this discussion in detail here,28 this does show that our work
has raised highly relevant questions both for academia and for politics.
It was also necessary for us to consider a recent reformulationof an old argument that, while aligned with differentiation theory,
posits an exceptional position for the West in the process of functional
differentiation. Pollack, for example, underlines the specificity of Westerndevelopment against the background of the historical conflict between
the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope in the Investiture Controversy.29
According to Pollack, the Catholic Church’s claim to leadership(unintentionally) expedited the genesis of the modern Western world.
Nowhere else had a religious institution asserted claims to truth andloyalty to this extent, which is why processes of functional differentiation
developed so extensively in the Latin Church. Steckel has countered thisby pointing to recurring dynamics of ‘re-differentiation’ in the course of
the Middle Ages.30 She argues that Pollack’s theory is too bound to the

27
28

29

30

Journal of Religion in Japan 5, no. 2–3 (2016); Hadi Enayat, Islam and Secularism in PostColonial Thought: A Cartography of Asadian Genealogies (Cham: Springer International
Publishing, 2017), 11; Horii, “Critical Reflections,” 40; Wohlrab-Sahr, “Die Macht derUnterscheidung;” Rebekka Habermas, ed., Negotiating the Secular and the Religious in theGerman Empire: Transnational Approaches (New York, NY: Berghahn, 2019).
Enayat, Islam and Secularism in Post-Colonial Thought, 11; Aike P. Rots and Mark
Teeuwen, “Introduction: Formations of the Secular in Japan,” Japan Review 30 (2017): 11.
See among others Aamir R. Mufti, “The Aura of Authenticity,” Social Text 18, no. 3 (2000);
Sindre Bangstad, “Contesting Secularism/s: Secularism and Islam in the Work of Talal Asad,”
Anthropological Theory 9, no. 2 (2009); Aaron W. Hughes, Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary
Deconstruction and Reconstruction (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012); Jonas Jakobsen,“Secularism, Liberal Democracy and Islam in Europe: A Habermasian Critique of Talal
Asad,” Revista Internacional de Filosofía 20, no. 3 (2015); Jean Cohen, “On the Genealogy andLegitimacy of the Politically Liberal Secular Polity: Bockenforde and the Asadians,” 2016.
Pollack, Religion und gesellschaftliche Differenzierung. See also Hartmann Tyrell,“Investiturstreit und gesellschaftliche Differenzierung: Überlegungen aus soziologischer
Sicht,” in Umstrittene Säkularisierung: Soziologische und historische Analysen zur
Differenzierung von Religion und Politik, ed. Karl Gabriel, Christel Gärtner, and Detlef
Pollack (Berlin: Berlin University Press, 2012).
Sita Steckel. “Differenzierung jenseits der Moderne: Eine Debatte zu mittelalterlicher
Religion und moderner Differenzierungstheorie,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 47, no. 1(2014).
9image of a ‘rise of the West’. Again, we cannot discuss this in detail here
(to do so would involve making a comparison on a global scale). In any
case, the debate suggests a research programme that corresponds exactlywith our agenda, namely, instigating a global analytical comparison of thehistorical conditions and processes through which different configurationsof conceptual distinctions and institutional differentiation evolved.
1.3 Current State of Research in Selected Research Areas

Given the CASHSS’ comparative empirical approach, it was relevant toalso look at the current state of research in selected research areas. This
helped us to differentiate the Multiple Secularities approach and ensure
we were covering sufficient material. We have briefly outlined the current
state of research in a few research areas below.
In the debate regarding the relationship between secularity and Islam,which is dominated by theories on their incompatibility,31 Jackson recently
coined the term “the Islamic secular”.32 He assumes a differentiation
between shari’a and that which is outside shari’a’s jurisdictional limits
and describes a differentiation between the religious and the secular
for the Islamic tradition, which, as it were, is reintegrated under theumbrella of Islam. Recently, both Yavari and Leder have detailed how
the differentiation of the sultanate and the caliphate was discursively
legitimised within political theories developed during the period when
the power of the Abbasid Caliphate was declining.33 Yavari even points
to an “incipient secularism” in the mirrors for princes literature.34 She
also shows that an implicit religious-secular distinction was made in
the context of Sufism in early modern Iran – irrespective of notions ofa secular society: “It recognises a political realm that must be tamed byreligion, and an ideational sphere of religion which must be tempered tomake good government possible.”35 The authors listed above all question
31 See, for example, John L. Esposito and Azzam Tamimi, eds., Islam and Secularism in the
Middle East (London: Hurst, 2000).
32 Sherman A. Jackson, “The Islamic Secular,” American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences
34, no. 2 (2017).
33 Neguin Yavari, Advice for the Sultan: Prophetic Voices and Secular Politics in Medieval Islam(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014); Stefan Leder, “Sultanic Rule in the Mirrorof Medieval Political Literature,” in Global Medieval: Mirrors for princes reconsidered, ed.
Neguin Yavari and Regula Forster (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
34 Yavari, Advice for the Sultan, 83.
35 Neguin Yavari, “The Political Regard in Medieval Islamic Thought,” in “Islamicate
10the uniqueness of European problems and concepts and encourage
analysis of indigenous concepts of secularity and their precursors incultures influenced by Islam.36
For Japan, in addition to Kleine,37 more recently Teeuwen,38 Paramore,39
and Reader,40 among others, have pointed to pre-modern practices of
distinction that are to some extent analogous to Western forms of secularity.
Influenced by Buddhism, strong conceptual distinctions and institutional
differentiations between ‘mundane’ and ‘religious’ powers or nomospheres
can be found above all in the Japanese concept of the interdependence ofthe ruler’s nomosphere and the Buddha’s nomosphere (ōbō buppō sō’i).41
Something similar can be found in pre-modern Tibet (e.g. chos srid gnyisor chos srid zung ’brel),42 in Mongolia43 and in Bhutan,44 although thecorresponding institutional arrangements were completely different.
In his response to Taylor, Bhargava writes of an “Ancient Indian SecularAge“,45 thereby pointing to continuities between pre-modernity and

36
37

38
39
40
41
42

43
44
45

Secularities in Past and Present,” ed. Markus Dressler, Armando Salvatore, and Monika
Wohlrab-Sahr, special issue, Historical Social Research 44, no. 3 (2019).
See the special issue Dressler, Salvatore, and Wohlrab-Sahr, eds., “Islamicate Secularities.”
Christoph Kleine, “Religion als begriffliches Konzept und soziales System imvormodernen Japan: Polythetische Klassen, semantische und funktionale Äquivalente
und strukturelle Analogien,” in Religion in Asien? Studien zur Anwendbarkeit desReligionsbegriffs, ed. Peter Schalk et al. (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2013); Kleine,“Religion and the Secular in Premodern Japan;” Christoph Kleine, “The Secular GroundBass of Pre-Modern Japan Reconsidered: Reflections Upon the Buddhist Trajectories
Towards Secularity,” Working Paper Series of the CASHSS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond
the West, Beyond Modernities” 5, Leipzig University, 2018.
Mark Teeuwen, “Early Modern Secularism? Views on Religion in Seji kenbunroku(1816),” Japan Review 25 (2013); Rots and Teeuwen, “Introduction.”
Kiri Paramore, “Premodern Secularism,” Japan Review 30 (2017).
Ian Reader, “Secularisation R.I.P.? Nonsense! The ‘Rush Hour Away from the Gods’ and the
Decline of Religion in Contemporary Japan,” The Journal of Religion in Japan 1, no. 1 (2012).
Toshio Kuroda, “The Imperial Law and the Buddhist Law,” Japanese Journal of Religious
Studies 23, no. 3–4 (1996).
David Seyfort Ruegg, Ordre spirituel et ordre temporel dans la pensée bouddhiquede l’Inde et du Tibet (Paris: Collège de France; Diffusion De Boccard, 1995); Ulrike
Roesler, “Die Lehre, der Weg und die namenlose Religion: Mögliche Äquivalente eines
Religionsbegriffs in der tibetischen Kultur,” in Religion in Asien?, ed. Schalk et al.
Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz, “Lamas und Schamanen – Mongolische Wissensordnungenvon frühen 17. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur Debatte um außereuropäische
Religionsbegriffe,” in Religion in Asien?, ed. Schalk et al.
Dagmar Schwerk, “Drawing Lines in a Mandala: A Sketch of Boundaries Between
Religion and Politics in Bhutan,” Working Paper Series of the CASHSS “Multiple
Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” 12, Leipzig University, 2019.
Rajeev Bhargava, “An Ancient Indian Secular Age?,” in Beyond the Secular West, ed. Akeel
11modernity in India. For imperial China, Roetz has shown that “elements ofa secular civilization were a reality in China long before latter-day Western
philosophers strove for it”.46 Indeed, particularly during the Enlightenment,
China was regarded by some Europeans as an exemplary case of a secularstate and enlightened monarchy, and thus also inspired ‘Western’ concepts ofa secular state. For Japan, too, “elements of secularization avant la lettre” havebeen diagnosed,47 with the characterisation of corresponding configurationsas (proto-)forms of secularity provoking fierce criticism.48 The critics
argued that pre-modern non-European cultures must not be compared withmodern Western cultures using European concepts. This argument in turnwas criticised by others as lending support to Japanese conservatives andthose who promote theories about the unique nature of the Japanese people(nihonjinron), and claim that Western distinctions between the religious
and the non-religious are not transferable to Japan.49 The religious characterof Shintō has been disputed on the basis of such cultural particularism, withefforts made to change Japan’s secular constitution in order to enable state
support for and participation in Shintō festivals. Investigation into historicalantecedents, conceptual resources or cultural imprints in societies ‘beyond
the secular West’ has now started to bear fruit,50 and has also included
responses to Taylor.51 As Sheehan has emphasised, more in-depth research
into the “resources of the nonreligious”, including responses to Taylor, would
also seem useful for European history.52
When it comes to the antecedent historical conditions for forms of
Bilgrami (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2016).
46 Heiner Roetz, “The Influence of Foreign Knowledge on Eighteenth Century European
Secularism,” in Religion and Secularity: Transformations and Transfers of Religious Discourses
in Europe and Asia, ed. Marion Eggert and Lucian Hölscher (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 29.
47 Jan Swyngedouw, “Reflections on the Secularization Thesis in the Sociology of Religion
in Japan,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 6, no. 1–2 (1979): 82.
48 Horii, “Critical Reflections.”
49 Fujiwara, “Introduction,” 101.
50 Akeel Bilgrami, “Gandhis’ Radicalism: An Interpretation,” in Beyond the Secular West, ed.
Akeel Bilgrami (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
51 Mirjam Künkler, John Madeley, and Shylashri Shankar, eds., A Secular Age beyond theWest: Religion, Law and the State in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2018); Florian Zemmin, Colin Jager, and Guido
Vanheeswijck, eds., Working with a Secular Age: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Charles
Taylor’s Master Narrative (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016).
52 Jonathan Sheehan, “When was Disenchantment? History and the Secular Age,” in
Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, ed. Michael Warner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen,
and Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 242.
12

secularity, we do not claim mere continuity or even cultural inevitability.
We will continue to consider the matter of path probabilities for certain
forms of social differentiation and conceptual distinctions, particularly withregard to the possibility of alternative, unrealised paths. If distinctions were
institutionalised in early Islamic tradition, for instance, and then merged
again under Islam, this does not mean that sharper distinctions would not
be possible in the Islamic world. However, it would be particularly difficult
to prove the existence of these conceptual distinctions, even though a‘cultivated’ tradition of differentiation between the ‘religious’ and the‘secular’ was indeed established.

2

Research Findings from the First Funding Period (2016–2020)

In the first four years, our work was determined by the following leading
questions:
1. Which forms of defining and structuring the relationship between thereligious and the non-religious can be identified and described in theselected regions?
2. How can differences with regard to the form of secularity be understoodand explained in relation to historical, socio-economic, political andcultural conditions?
In the course of our work, it became clear that our aim could not be toconclusively answer these questions. Instead, we worked to establish a field of
research, and provide the necessary conceptual basis and empirical evidence forthat research. Consequently, our work involved refining and operationalisingterms in response to numerous empirical and historical studies.
2.1 Further Developing and Refining the Concept

Maintaining the formal definition of ‘secularity’ as institutionally as well as
symbolically embedded forms and arrangements for distinguishing between
religion and other societal areas,53 and initiating an international discussion
53 Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt, “Multiple Secularities.” The term ‘secularity’ is also central to
Taylor’s work but employed very differently. See Taylor, A Secular Age. Equally, Bochinger
sometimes defines ‘secularity’ as the opposite of ‘religiosity’ and sometimes as the oppositeof ‘religion’. See Christoph Bochinger, “Das Verhältnis zwischen Religion und Säkularität
als Gegenstand religionswissenschaftlicher Forschung,” in Säkularität in religionswissenschaftlicher Perspektive, ed. Peter Antes and Steffen Führding (Göttingen: V&R, 2013).
13

on this definition has proven to be effective. Unlike the prevalent focus on‘secularism’ with its strongly normative implications, the analytical conceptof ‘secularity’ has opened up a new research perspective and stimulated arevision of historical and empirical data.
It was both difficult and time-consuming to refine concepts and determine
theoretical approaches and perspectives, tasks which were necessary in orderto establish a new transdisciplinary field of research. It was important inthis endeavour to find a balance between more descriptive empirical or
historical approaches on the one hand and more theory-based systematic
approaches on the other. It was also necessary to repeatedly reflect on thetranscultural use of comparative concepts such as ‘secularity’ and ‘religion’,to consistently historicise debatable concepts, and to emphasise theircultural dependence on context and historical contingency, as well as theentanglement of their genesis with political power.
In the course of numerous discussions, it became clear that we needed toanalytically separate conceptual distinctions and social differentiations. It also
became clear that there was a risk of restricting the term ‘secularity’ to connote
impermeable separation. We therefore refined our working definition.
Conceiving ‘secularities’ as an ideal type,54 we now understand ‘secularities’ asinterrelated epistemic and social structures, in which the religious and the nonreligious are socially differentiated (institutionally, legally, organisationally,
spatially, habitually, lifeworldly, etc.) and are conceptually distinguished(taxonomically, semantically, discursively, symbolically, etc.) by relevant actors
in a binary schema, whereby the corresponding demarcations can be variable,
negotiable, controversial, and blurred. We are therefore combining a formal
analytical concept with an interest in structures of conceptual distinction andsocial differentiation that can be identified empirically. Our empirical andhistorical research involves identifying such distinctions and differentiations
and establishing the substantive content of the distinct areas.
When analytically separating epistemic and social structures, as wellas conceptual distinctions and institutional differentiations, one must
remember that, in the social reality, both are entangled. ‘Secularity’ is not
an object language term but a comparative concept, which is supposed to
54 Here we are essentially referring to Weber’s notion of the ‘ideal-type’. See Max Weber,“‘Objektivität’ sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis,” in Gesammelte
Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tübingen: Mohr, 1968
[1904]), 191.
14

capture a certain modality of making distinctions and a corresponding
state of differentiation. As a modality, the special feature of secularity is
its binary construction. As an actual state, this binary construction does
not exist. Only when social differentiation is interpreted – by actors and in
discourse – through the lens of a distinction between the religious and thenon-religious, and this distinction becomes structurally relevant, can thesocial differentiation be characterised as secularity. In other words, only
when the social differentiation of ‘religion’ as a sphere of action (i.e. as asocial structure) produces a binary schema in people’s perception (i.e. as
an epistemic structure), does a form of secularity emerge from an initiallydiffuse and diverse social differentiation. An important focus of the second
funding period will therefore have to be to identify the markers55 thatindicate social differentiations.
2.2 Assumptions and Hypotheses
2.2.1 Internal Social Differentiation − Social Structures

One of our main initial hypotheses was that boundary demarcation
between the religious and the non-religious was not an exclusive sign of‘modernity’ or ‘the Western world’. We assume that every society has forms
of internal differentiation, although it must remain open for now whether
these can be adequately described with the term ‘secularity’.
In the globalised modern era, the use of the attribute ‘religious’ (orcorresponding semantic equivalents), and likewise the attribute ‘secular’ fornon-religious matters, is well established. Globally, secularity is generally
accepted as a politically, legally and thus socio-structurally relevant
modality of making distinctions - but not as a term to designate thismodality. It is evident that what Stausberg calls attributive differentiation,56
that is, the differentiation of certain facts and circumstances as religious,
falls within the area of conceptual distinctions or epistemic structures in ourconceptual framework. However, this process of attribution is structurally
relevant and dependent on social structures even in its genesis. Usually, we
find that objects, actions, roles, discourses, concepts, symbols, architecture,etc. are marked as religious because they are located in certain institutional
55 Eva Bonn, Christian Knöppler, and Miguel Souza, eds., Was machen Marker? Logik,
Materialität und Politik von Differenzierungsprozessen (Bielefeld: transcript, 2013).
56 Michael Stausberg, “Distinctions, Differentiations, Ontology, and Non-humans in
Theories of Religion,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 22, no. 4 (2010).
15

contexts. In short, whether something can be given the attribute ‘religious’is both structure-dependent and structure-forming.
As a consequence of the ‘religionisation’ of complex socio-culturalformations that occurred in large parts of the world in the wake ofmodernisation, certain organisations (religious groups, shūkyō dantai,
zongjiao tuanti, agama, ṭāʾifah, jamāʿah dīniyyah, sampradaya,
mazhab…) have become the sole legitimate guardians of the religious.
Legal recognition of certain organisations as religions, which frequently
occurred as part of legal codification in modern nation states (e.g.
recognition as a ‘religious corporation’, shūkyō hōjin or similar), whichgave them a legal status, generally went hand in hand with interdependent
processes of ‘comparison’ with other religions, ‘differentiation’ from othersocietal spheres, and ‘purification’ from ‘superstition’, myths, cosmology,
etc.57 ‘Religion’ has thus become both a legal category and a comparative
concept,58 with the boundaries between the religious and the seculardrawn more sharply than before, at both the actor and the observer
level. “Cultures of ambiguity”59 are being eliminated, which does not
end contentious debates over boundary demarcation, but often provokes
or inflames them in the first place.60 These social structures, defined by
Stausberg as “structural differentiation”,61 occur at the meso-level. The
majority of investigations into boundary demarcation conflicts between
the religious and the non-religious take place at the meso-level, and often
relate to religious and state organisations. As one might expect, whenidentifying social structures in pre-modern societies, it is the macrolevel of functional differentiation − often prioritised in differentiation
theory − which causes the biggest problems. For this reason, it proved
useful to start by focusing on differentiations at the organisational level.
To avoid anachronisms when it comes to the retrospective labelling oforganisations as ‘religious’, we propose using current classifications,
57 Hermann, “Distinctions of Religion.”
58 Ruth Streicher and Adrian Hermann, “‘Religion’ in Thailand in the 19th Century,” inCompanion to the Study of Secularity, ed. CASHSS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond theWest, Beyond Modernities” (Leipzig University, 2019).
59 Thomas Bauer, Die Kultur der Ambiguität: Eine andere Geschichte des Islams (Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen, 2011).
60 Dreßler describes this dynamic as “religio-secularization”. See Markus Dreßler, Writing
Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
61 Stausberg, “Distinctions, Differentiations, Ontology, and Non-humans.”
16

that is, organisations that are legally and/or conventionally classified as‘religious’ today.
In the pre-modern era in particular (though not only then), ‘religious’organisations participated in societal activities that we would not necessarily
classify as ‘religious’ today. Despite this, we think it is possible to identify
certain core activities (e.g. communication with transcendent powers)
and communicative codes (e.g. the distinction between transcendence
and immanence), and to distinguish these from peripheral activities(e.g. agriculture, healing the sick, etc.). Situations of cultural encounter
provide a good opportunity to understand the formation of an organised
nexus of societal activities in terms of a historical macro-sociologicaldifferentiation.62 For example, where two organisations of different origins,which would both be considered ‘religious’ today, perceived each other ascompetitors, when conversions took place between them, and equivalentterminologies were agreed or established in the process of culturaltranslation (as was the case with the Jesuits and Buddhist orders in Japan),there are good reasons to consider these organisations as representative ofa shared sphere of activity. For the operationalisation of our differentiation
theory suppositions, we therefore also propose the historical analysis
of mutual cultural comparisons including organisations that are related
genealogically to today’s religious organisations.63
Particular attention should be paid to configurations in which two
institutions appear as competing or complementary powers and form abinary power structure. Weber wrote of the “struggle between the military
and temple nobility, between the royal and the priestly following” being
fundamental to the development of states and societies.64 Pollack, inturn, recently highlighted how competition between the Pope and the
62 Cf. Tenbruck who argues that cultural comparison is initiated during inter-cultural
encounters, i.e. much earlier than formal academic cultural comparison would
have you believe. Friedrich H. Tenbruck, “Was war der Kulturvergleich, ehe es den
Kulturvergleich gab?,” in Soziale Welt: Zwischen den Kulturen?, ed. Joachim Matthes(Göttingen: Schwartz, 1992).
63 For one such attempt, see Christoph Kleine, “Premodern Intercultural andInterreligious Dialogues and the Formation of Comparative Concepts: How
Encounters Between European Missionaries and Japanese in the 16th and 17th centurieschanged the conceptual world.” NotaBene, no. 44 (2019). (Part I) (Part II)
64 Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1985 [1921/22]), 690. English: Max Weber, Guenther Roth, and Claus
Wittich, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 1160.
17

Holy Roman Emperor significantly shaped the specific characteristics ofEuropean secularisation.65 Similar power configurations also existed inmediaeval Japan. We suspect that it was these particular institutional andpolitical configurations that promoted the development of binary schemas
in both Europe and Japan, and in Europe ultimately formed the basis forsecularity being established as a central organisational principle of themodern state. The fact that this did not happen in the same way in Japan isprobably due in part to the fact that epistemes taken on from China, whichprescribe the absolute sovereignty of the ruler over all other institutions
and regulatory powers, continued to have a subliminal effect. Moreover, incomparison to the Roman Catholic Church, the Buddhist orders were highly
fragmented, with individual monasteries often in fierce competition witheach other,66 and there was no central authority that could have confronted
the ruler. In Europe, the dominant position and institutional autonomyof the Catholic Church provided an impetus that initiated processes ofdifferentiation in the field of politics in response.67 In contrast, while theimpulse for differentiation in Japan also came from religious institutions,these institutions sought to secure their own autonomy from the state.
This provides an initial response to the question of the role played byinstitutional actors in differentiation processes: It is religious organisations,in this case Buddhist monasteries, that pursue organisational interests andunderpin them with corresponding legitimising theories in the first place.
2.2.2 Taxonomies, Classifications, Knowledge Systems: Epistemic
Structures

In our initial project description, we assumed that all societies developed
taxonomies to organise a hyper-complex world by classifying natural andcultural facts in an abstract manner, and to provide orientation within
this world. In the course of our work, we increasingly conceptualised
cognitive-, normative-, and also aesthetic- and affection-oriented68
65 Pollack, Religion und gesellschaftliche Differenzierung.
66 Masayuki Taira, “Kuroda Toshio and the Kenmitsu Taisei Theory,” Japanese Journal of
Religious Studies 23, no. 3/4 (1996).
67 Pollack, Religion und gesellschaftliche Differenzierung.
68 Thomas Schwinn, “Wertsphären, Lebensordnungen und Lebensführungen,” inVerantwortliches Handeln in gesellschaftlichen Ordnungen: Beiträge zu Wolfgang
Schluchters Religion und Lebensführung, ed. Agathe Bienfait and Gerhard Wagner(Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1998), 294.
18

taxonomies and classifications that are consolidated in specific knowledge
systems, as epistemic structures. As such an epistemic structure, secularity
would be a specific binary modality for perceiving and interpreting thesocial environment, in which social facts and circumstances are eitherclassified as religious or secular.
Given the dominance of discursive sources, relevant conceptual
distinctions or epistemic structures are much easier to identify than social
structures, particularly when it comes to historical analysis. This has
resulted in many sub-projects and publications to date taking semantic
approaches.69 Diachronic examinations of relevant dictionaries andencyclopaedias can be a useful starting point in the search for taxonomies,classifications and knowledge systems.70 However, pre-modern sources
primarily have taxonomies that are used for specific purposes in specificsituations. They rarely have universally valid classification systems andclear taxonomies. Classification systems, which may be considered as
precursors to or early or special forms of secularity owing to their binary
structure and the ways in which they are semantically similar to modern
distinctions between the religious and the secular, are almost exclusively
to be found in discourse contexts in which two institutions formulate
extensive normative claims of validity.71 It would appear that a dualityof such nomospheres can develop particularly strongly where there is awell-organised and, above all, monastic priesthood, as in Christianity andBuddhism. As heterotopias,72 monasteries often represent nomospheres in
69 The issue of emic taxonomies and indigenous knowledge systems in pre-modern
Asia was the subject of the workshop ‘Formations of Secularity in pre-modern Asiansocieties’, which the CASHSS ran in collaboration with the Arbeitskreis “Asiatische
Religionsgeschichte” (Working Group on History of Religions in Asia, AKAR) within theGerman Association for the Study of Religions (DVRW). The findings of this workshop
will soon be published in Critical Studies in Religion/Religionswissenschaft, a publicationof V&R. The subject was discussed in more depth at our conference “Secularities Patterns of Distinction, Paths of Differentiation” in October 2018.
70 Markus Dreßler (Ottoman and Turkish dictionaries), Hubert Seiwert (encyclopaedias
and dictionaries in pre-modern China) and Christoph Kleine (encyclopaedias anddictionaries in pre-modern Japan) have notably taken this approach.
71 See Goldenberg, who conceptualises religions as “vestigial states” − that is, as the “cultural
remnants of former sovereignties that persist within current states” (40). She assumes
that “religious and secular law“ are to be understood as both “types of regulation”
and “products of similar social motives and processes” (52). Naomi R. Goldenberg,“Theorizing Religions as Vestigial States in Relation to Gender and Law: Three Cases,”
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 29, no. 1 (2013).
72 Michel Foucault, “Andere Räume,” in Aisthesis: Wahrnehmung heute oder Perspektiven einer
19which a fully rationalised, salvation-oriented way of life is fostered, whichholds a mirror up, as it were, to the incomplete (secular) way of life outside
the monastery.
It is only in modern states with a separation of powers that the field of
law becomes independent and develops its own relationship to religion,
partly independent of politics. In reality, boundary demarcation debates
between the religious and the secular in modern societies often occur in theform of legal disputes.73 In pre-modern societies, by contrast, negotiations
about boundaries, areas of jurisdiction and responsibilities of religious
versus non-religious powers generally occurred between ‘the throne andthe altar’. Whether in contrasting normative guidelines for kings (Arthaśāstra) and Brahmins (Dharma-śāstra) in ancient India,74 in the paradigmof the “interdependence of the ruler’s law and the Buddha’s law” in premodern Japan,75 and analogous distinctions in Tibet,76 Mongolia,77
Bhutan (chos-srid-gnyis)78 and Sri Lanka,79 be it in the Islamised preIslamic notion of state and religion as twins (dīn va daulat) in Iran80
anderen Ästhetik. Essais, ed. Karlheinz Barck and Peter Gente (Leipzig: Reclam, 1991).
73 Many of our fellows’ projects explore questions pertaining to the legal form of therelationship between the religious and the secular. Sociologist Anindita Chakrabarti is
examining the complex relationship between Islamic and civil courts in Uttar Pradesh,
India; jurist Muchamad Ali Safa’at is investigating the relationship between secular andIslamic law in Indonesia; Muktiono is researching blasphemy legislation in Indonesia;
Arabist Hans-Georg Ebert is researching religious legal systems with a focus on land
law in countries in the MENA region; study of religions scholar and Japanologist MarkR. Mullins is investigating constitutional law issues linked to boundary demarcation
between the religious and the secular in post-war Japan. Tibetologist Dagmar Schwerk(Bhutan) and sociologist Nader Sohrabi (Iran) are also researching constitutional issues.
Hubert Seiwert has published a theoretical interpretation of legal debates surrounding
boundary demarcation. See Hubert Seiwert, “Religiöser Nonkonformismus in säkularen
Gesellschaften,” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 23, no. 1 (2015).
74 Louis Dumont, Religion, Politics and History in India: Collected papers in Indian Sociology(La Hague: Mouton De Gruyter, 1970).
75 For example Kleine, “Religion and the Secular in Premodern Japan.”
76 Seyfort Ruegg, Ordre spirituel et ordre temporel; Roesler, “Die Lehre, der Weg und die
namenlose Religion.”
77 Among others, our fellows Matthew King and Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz are working
on this.
78 As Dagmar Schwerk shows, the principle of the dual sovereignty of ‘religion’ (moreprecisely Skt. dharma as in Buddhism or Tib. chos) and ‘politics’ (srid) even found its way
into Bhutan’s modern constitution. See Schwerk, “Drawing Lines in a Mandala.”
79 Our fellow Sven Bretfeld is researching similar concepts of mutual dependence between king and sāsana (that is, Buddhism).
80 Neguin Yavari is working on distinctions between religion and politics in pre-modern Iran.
20

or the “soft distinction” between adab and shari’a in the pre-colonial
Islamicate world81 − we are always dealing with a competition, codified
ideologically as complementarity,82 between two nomospheres, for each ofwhich an institution or a group of actors claims exclusive responsibility.
Comparisons with Gelasius’ two-swords theory or Luther’s two-kingdoms
theory suggest themselves. And if one follows Pollack’s argument that
Christian efforts to distinguish areas of responsibility significantly
influenced the European process of secularisation,83 it seems expedientto start with such binary figures of distinction in order to identify sociostructurally founded epistemic structures which have helped to shape thedebate on modern Western normative forms of secularism (in the senseof secularity as a prerequisite for state legitimacy). This comparison of
the differentiation and interrelation of areas of responsibility as a basic
pattern of institutional differentiation will be extended and deepened in
the second funding phase with a focus on different cultural contexts.
Our work has shown that not all forms of semantic distinction
or social differentiation between spheres of activity, organisations orinteractions can be meaningfully described as ‘secularity’, even if one of
the entities being distinguished is marked as religious from an emic oretic perspective. Secularity is rather to be understood as a special formof conceptual distinction and social differentiation whose constitutive
structural element and distinguishing feature is the binary nature of the
distinction between the religious and the non-religious.
But even though diverse phenomena do not appear to have a clear
affiliation with either of the two sides (e.g. superstition, spirituality, theoccult, spiritism, magic),84 this does not change the efficacy of the binary
structure itself, which is, however, only the expression of a certain view
81 Armando Salvatore, “The Islamicate Adab Tradition vs. the Islamic Shari‘a, from PreColonial to Colonial,” Working Paper Series of the CASHSS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond
the West, Beyond Modernities” 3 (Leipzig University, 2018).
82 In religions with a strong concept of transcendence, the distinction between ‘the religious’and ‘the political’ is generally interpreted as only being temporarily valid. This distinction
will be overcome at a higher level or at a later time, or both the religious and the politicalare deemed to have the same source. The concept of absolute transcendence necessarily
excludes true dualism.
83 Pollack, Religion und gesellschaftliche Differenzierung.
84 Our fellows Martin Ramstedt and Edith Franke have, among other things, investigatedthe distinction between ‘belief ’ (kepercayaan) and ‘religion’ (agama) in Indonesia.
21

of the world. Indeed, the emergence of a “hidden ‘third’”85 that eludes
classification as either religious or secular, is itself the consequence of theprocess of ‘religionisation’ mentioned above. While in the late 19th and early
20th centuries, it was primarily the categorisation of heterodox worldviews(‘superstitions’), ethnic religious customs (‘folk religions’) and academicallymarginalised claims to knowledge (‘parascience’) that was controversial;
today, it appears to be first and foremost the question of allocating certain
societal actions and institutions either to religion or to culture86 and custom
that is politically controversial. We use the working term ‘culturalisation’ torefer to the reinterpretation of matters that have generally been classified
as ‘religious’. Examples such as the dispute surrounding the categorisationof societal activities, institutions and rituals in modern Japan87 and China,
as well as discussions about the religious or merely cultural symbolic valueof crucifixes in Bavaria, Poland or Quebec, or of yoga in India, highlightthe genuine ambiguity of diverse cultural elements on the one hand. On
the other, they also draw attention to the politically motivated tendency
to intentionally play on this ambiguity in line with an observable global
shift towards emphasising national characteristics and cultural or ethnic
identities. Meyer and de Witte88 detail a special case of culturalisation, thenaming of religious sites and practices as UNESCO World Heritage, which
they refer to as ‘heritagisation’. Once classified as heritage, the sites and
85 Peter van der Veer, The modern spirit of Asia: The spiritual and the secular in China andIndia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 115.
86 On the ambiguity and fuzziness of the concept of ‘culture’, particularly when related toreligion, see Krech, Wo bleibt die Religion?, 151–63.
87 This is evident in debates on constitutional amendments in Japan (see Colin P. A.
Jones, “The LDP constitution, article by article: a preview of things to come?,” The
Japan Times, July 02, 2013.); Jiyūminshutō Kenpō Kaisei Suijin Honbu 自由民主党 憲
法改正推進本部自由民主党 憲法改正推進本部 [Liberal Democratic Constitutional
Reform Promotion Headquarters] (2013)). Among others, our fellow Mark R. Mullins
has been working on this: Mark R. Mullins, “Secularization, Deprivatization, and theReappearance of ‘Public Religion’ in Japanese Society,” Journal of Religion in Japan
1, no. 1 (2012); Mark R. Mullins, “The Neo-Nationalist Response to the Aum Crisis:
A Return of Civil Religion and Coercion in the Public Sphere?,” Japanese Journal of
Religious Studies 39, no. 1 (2012); Mark R. Mullins, “Japanese Responses to Imperialist
Secularization: The Postwar Movement to Restore Shintom in the Public Sphere,” inMultiple Secularities Beyond the West: Religion and Modernity in the Global Age, ed.
Marian Burchardt, Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, and Matthias Middell (Boston, MA: De
Gruyter, 2015).
88 Birgit Meyer and Marleen de Witte, “Heritage and the sacred: Introduction,” Material
Religion 9, no. 3 (2013).
22

practices are deprivatised and secularised, but also sacralised as the “publicsacred”.89 Culturalisation is not limited to state identity politics that privileges
cultural majorities (e.g. Hindu nationalism, and Buddhist nationalism in Sri
Lanka and Myanmar90), it is also a means by which ethnic minorities canassert themselves.91 As the reinterpretation associated with ‘heritagisation’often has legal and institutional consequences, the interrelatedness ofclassifications and social structures is particularly evident here.
In any event, secularity is particularly significant as a contextindependent distinguishing practice and specific ordering principle,
because it primarily regulates the relationship between two institutionalised
powers – the state and religions – that both claim general normative and(to a lesser extent) cognitive validity. States claim to regulate societal affairs
through binding laws and regulations but also to establish certain types of
behaviour and conduct via education, and to expand epistemic structures
through academia. Religions, on the other hand, seek to provide coherent
systems of cognitive and normative orientation. Empirical studies to datehave found that secularity as a specific modality of distinction primarily
comes into effect when there are conflicts over whether the state or religions
are responsible for regulating and interpreting human actions. It would also
appear that the binary nature of secularity has specifically religious roots,
stemming from a religious logic where everything that is not included
within the religious is marked as ‘secular’ and thus singularised, an approachfirst adapted by states in (initially Western) modernity. Religious claims
to autonomy are being superseded or replaced by efforts to emancipate
non-religious areas of society from religious intervention. As modern
states claim validity as the highest authority on cognitive and normative
89 Cf. Aike P. Rots, “World Heritage, Secularisation, and the New ‘Public Sacred’,” in“Secularities in Japan,” ed. Ugo Dessì and Christoph Kleine, special issue, Journal of
Religion in Japan 8, no. 1−3 (2019). For some time, the issue of the legal classification ofsites and practices of ‘folk religion’ as cultural heritage or religion has also been virulent in
the China. See also Hubert Seiwert, “The Dynamics of Religions and Cultural Evolution:
Worshipping Fuxi in Contemporary China,” in Dynamics of Religion, ed. Christoph
Bochinger and Jörg Rüpke (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016).
90 Our fellows Sven Bretfeld and Madlen Krüger are working on these areas.
91 See the studies on the Bribris in Costa Rica, which our fellow Bjørn Ola Tafjord outlined
in a guest lecture. See also Bjørn Ola Tafjord, “Scales, Translations, and Siding Effects:
Uses of indígena and religión in Talamanca and Beyond,” in Religious Categories andthe Construction of the Indigenous, ed. Christopher Hartney and Daniel Tower (Leiden:
Brill, 2017). Our fellow Edith Franke is researching the categorisation of the belief andpractices of ethnic minorities in Indonesia.
23orientation, as well as responsibility for the law, science, education, healing
and societal affairs, etc., secularity is increasingly becoming a limiting
practice, which while often granting religion a special legal status, restricts
it in areas that have traditionally fallen within its competence.
In the course of the project, we have repeatedly returned to the questionof whether the adjective ‘secular’, as a property that is negatively correlated
to ‘religion’, ought not to be positively determinable,92 particularly where
we identify precursors to secularity without there being an associatedterminology.93 When formulating competing claims to validity, theadjective ‘secular’ is regularly associated in different discourse contexts
with connotations such as ‘rational’, ‘taking human beings as a model’,‘knowledge-based’, and ‘empirically grounded’, and is thus normatively
loaded. The discussion regarding whether it is useful or even necessary
for the application of the formal term ‘secularity’ that ‘the secular’ be
determinable as a distinctive form of the non-religious, is yet to beresolved.94 This has also raised the question as to which markers95 are used
to establish a distinction from the religious in different lifeworld contexts.
2.2.3 Differentiation of Spheres of Activity

In the research project description for the first funding period, we also
determined that we would examine the differentiation of religion and thedependent formation of secularity from a macro-sociological perspective:
investigating the differentiation of functional sub-systems or spheres ofactivity.
As a test case for processes of boundary demarcation between societal
spheres of activity, we looked at healing, as the complex relationshipbetween religion and healing forces us to ask very precise questions inorder to disentangle the web of meanings, competences, roles, means and
92 See also Bochinger, “Das Verhältnis zwischen Religion und Säkularität.”
93 These include forms of relativising or distancing oneself from religious claims to validity,
without explicitly taking a secular perspective.
94 Participating in the sixth Semana Internacional de la Cultura Laica (International Weekof Lay/Secular Culture) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in April 2019
was informative on this subject, focused as it was on the principle of self-determination.
For ancient China, Hubert Seiwert has proposed, for example, looking for purely innerworldly interpretations of ritual actions as an indicator of secular perspectives, such as
Confucius’ warning that one should sacrifice to ancestors and spirits “as if they were
present” (祭如在) (Lúnyǔ III.12).
95 Bonn, Knöppler, and Souza, eds., Was machen Marker.
24purposes connected to healing as a “subset of human social ontology”.96 As
an “integral activity bundle”,97 healing also fulfils a clear function, which isof the utmost relevance both subjectively for individuals and objectively forsocieties. In contrast, the institutional positioning of actors who provide
healing services, is diverse or unclear, particularly (though not exclusively)in pre-modern societies. Graduates of state academies, monks, nuns, andindividual healers of the most diverse hues compete against each other tooffer their healing services.98
A working group looked intensively at activities at the interface of thatwhich is categorised as ‘religion’ and ‘medicine’ in modern taxonomies,
taking the examples of pre-modern India, China and Japan. For the purposesof operationalisation, the working group initially isolated factors that could
indicate approaches to differentiation between the spheres of ‘religion’ and‘medicine’. These were distinctions related to (1) purposes (e.g. salvation
vs. healing), (2) means (e.g. material vs. spiritual), (3) interpretations (e.g.
transcendent vs. immanent origins of the disease and/or its treatment), (4)competences (e.g. formal training vs. personal charisma), and (5) sources ofauthority (e.g. reason and observation vs. revelation and canonicity). The
last two factors in particular indicate both epistemic and social structures.99
In the second funding period, we want to consider boundary
demarcations between ‘religion’ and ‘art’ (including music, theatre,architecture, etc.) in a similar vein, without assuming spheres of activity
that are self-evident today to have been differentiated as functional systems
in all historical contexts, or assuming they have abstract functions such as
those laid out in Luhmann’s systems theory. We will first consider how thetasks and purposes of certain organised networks of societal activities aredefined in concrete discourses. That is, which reference problems they are
responding to and which associated guiding ideas are formulated.

96 Stanley Stowers, “The Ontology of Religion,” in Introducing Religion: Essays in Honor ofJonathan Z. Smith, ed. Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (London: Equinox, 2008), 434.
97 Theodore R. Schatzki, The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution ofSocial Life and Change (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002),
70–72.
98 See also Bernadett Bigalke, “Religion and Medicine in Mazdaznan: Distinction Without
Differentiation,” in Companion to the Study of Secularity, ed. CASHSS “Multiple
Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” (Leipzig University, 2019).
99 Cf. Christoph Kleine, Katrin Killinger, and Katja Triplett. “Distinctions and Differentiations
Between Medicine and Religion.” Asian Medicine 14, no. 2 (2019): 233–62.
25

2.2.4 Reference Problems and Guiding Ideas

The previous research project conceptualised four reference problems in
response to which forms of differentiation between the religious and thenon-religious take shape: (1) individual freedom, (2) balancing religious
diversity, (3) societal development and national integration, and (4) the
independent development of institutional domains.100 For various reasons,these are not readily transferable to pre-modern societies. The underlying
empirical reference to national societies is not necessarily appropriate topre-modern contexts. Equally, identifying reference problems has provento be difficult when it comes to method. While guiding ideas can be clearly
identified in discourse, whole societal reference problems can at best bereconstructed indirectly from discourse. It therefore seems to make sense
to no longer assume reference problems, and interpret guiding ideas as thesecondary reaction to these, but rather to start with the guiding ideas andconsider these (taking into consideration the respective organisational andinteractional contexts, as well as the particular institutional interests) as
indicators for possible reference problems, and to successively expand andadjust the spectrum of reference problems for pre-modern societies.
Guiding ideas, which justify the institutional differentiation of two
nomospheres by pointing to the autonomy of the religious as a prerequisite
for its efficiency as a civilising power for stabilising societal order, seem toaddress, for example, the reference problem of securing dominance. The
guiding idea of the independent development of the religious sphere asa condition for social order and stable rule seems to be central, at least in
pre-modern societies, and it is evident that securing social order and stable
rule was actually perceived as a reference problem. For example, in earlymodern Islam, approaches to distinguishing between religious and civil
spheres were combined with ideas of civilising and “good rule”.101
In contrast, for ancient India, Bhargava has associated the reference
to Emperor Aśoka’s (r. ca. 268–232) ‘secular’ reign with the practice oftolerating competing ascetic communities and their teaching systems(dhamma) as can be interpreted from the famous rock and pillar edicts.
This appears to be a rare piece of pre-modern evidence in which the valuesof religious diversity, mutual tolerance and the development of individual
100 Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt, “Multiple Secularities.”
101 Yavari, “The Political Regard in Medieval Islamic Thought,” 57–62.
26

religiosity are propagated as intrinsic values102 − even though it seems
clear that these values were ultimately supposed to prevent conflicts andthus secure dominance in the first place. Guiding ideas for differentiating
between religious and non-religious areas can thus also be analysed in premodern societies and conclusions can be drawn about the perception ofsocietal problems. We argue that these guiding ideas serve as conceptual
resources for culture-specific forms of secularity under the conditions ofglobal modernity.
A specific situation in relation to the formulation of guiding ideas ofsecularity can be seen in societies with experiences of colonisation (suchas India and Indonesia), societies faced with the threat of colonisation(such as Japan and Siam), and those that experienced authoritarian ruleby Western-oriented governments (such as Iran and Turkey). Theseexperiences of external rule shaped their dealings with secularity − thus
confirming the stance of post-colonial critique. The rejection of Westernmodernity for different reasons, as it culminated in Iran, for example, inthe term ‘Westoxification’ (gharbzadegi), creates a particular reference
problem in the countries in question, which can be described as preserving
cultural identity in the context of participation in global modernity.
This should be considered in the interpretation as there is substantial
resistance to that which is treated as ‘secularism’, particularly in the Islamic
world.103 In response to this reference problem, religion is often presented
as an ‘authentic’ source of identity − a position which has, in turn, been
criticised as an auratisation of the pre-colonial past within post-colonial
discourse.104 This configuration points to the fact that different responses
can be found to societal reference problems: ‘Secularism’ and ‘religionism’
are conceivable and exist as responses to the same problem.105
102 Kristin Scheible, “Toward a Buddhist Policy of Tolerance: The Case of King Ashoka,”
in Religious Tolerance in World Religions, ed. Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner (WestConshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2008).
103 See Daniel Kinitz, Die andere Seite des Islam: Säkularismus-Diskurs und muslimischeIntellektuelle im modernen Ägypten (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). This was discussed in theconference ‘The Critique of Modernity’, which took Mirsepassi’s book about the Iranian‘oral philosopher’ Ahmad Fardid as its starting point. Ali Mirsepassi, Transnationalism in
Iranian Political Thought: The Life and Times of Ahmad Fardid (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2017).
104 Mufti, “The Aura of Authenticity.”
105 Wohlrab-Sahr and Burchardt, “Multiple Secularities,” 889; Uri Ram, “Why Secularism
Fails? Secular Nationalism and Religious Revivalism in Israel,” International Journal of
Politics, Culture, and Society 21, no. 1 (2008).
27

The formulation of guiding ideas marks the transition from more
implicit or de facto106 forms of distinction to explicit forms, such as thoseformulated in ideological terms when secularising the law, or within
political secularism. This transition is tied to groups of supporters orindividuals such as intellectuals propagating such ideas publicly (andthrough the media). We learnt a lot from studying the print press in the
Arabic-speaking world from the mid-19th century.107 The press was thecentral arena for negotiating the modern socio-political order − including
issues of secularism and secularity. Initially, these debates were particularly
fostered by Syrian Lebanese intellectuals with Christian backgrounds who
were the first and the most explicit in taking on European ideas and political
positions. The civilisational progress perceived in the avoidance of sectarian
violence was one of the guiding ideas that was promoted in this context.
In contrast, Islamic media almost entirely rejected secularism as a foreign,exclusively European Christian doctrine, and Islamic intellectuals, fortheir part, who also acted within the modern context of structural seculardifferentiation, developed the conceptual distinction of secularity within
an Islamic framework, creatively combining contemporary European ideas
with traditional Islamic Arabic concepts.
At the same time, a somewhat different configuration was to be foundin the Ottoman Empire where the call for political reform was primarily
made by the Young Ottomans. One of their guiding ideas was the unity
and renewal of the state in light of the increasing threat from nationalistmotivated separatism. The path they proposed was not secularist, however.
Instead, they regarded a political return to using shari’a as the basis of an
Ottoman constitution as the only opportunity to secure the well-being of
all religious groups in the empire. Explicit formulations of secularity only
gained significance in the late Ottoman-Turkish period.
106 Saïd Amir Arjomand, “Secularisation Through Legal Modernisation in the MENARegion,” in Companion to the Study of Secularity, ed. CASHSS “Multiple Secularities –Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” (Leipzig University, 2019).
107 Florian Zemmin, Daniel Kinitz and Mohammad Magout have been working on debatesin the Arabic press. Florian Zemmin, “Secularism, Secularity and Islamic Reformism,”in Companion to the Study of Secularity, ed. CASHSS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond
the West, Beyond Modernities” (Leipzig University, 2019) and Mohammad Magout,“Secularity and the Syro-Lebanese Press in the 19th Century,” in Companion to the Study ofSecularity, ed. CASHSS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”(Leipzig University, 2019).
28

2.2.5 Cultural Interaction and Acquisition, Transfer, and Integration
Processes

From the outset, the Centre for Advanced Studies has tried to strengthen
entangled history perspectives, and in so doing, to overcome both a cultureessentialist reification of cultural spaces, which mostly considers such spaces
in isolation (and mostly according to current regimes of territorialisation),and theoretical positions, which presuppose a unidirectional diffusion ofWestern concepts into the rest of the world.
The example of the cultural encounter between the Europeans andJapanese − particularly between Christians and Buddhists − in the 16th
and 17th centuries demonstrated that the intercultural comparison andtranslation process instigated by these encounters both on the European andon the Japanese side resulted in the development of a system of categories
relevant to secularity.108 In addition, the idea of a global system of religion
and the associated possibility of secularity as a universal classification
system was strengthened on all sides through cultural encounters, andparticularly through the Jesuit mission.
While cultural encounters and entanglements beyond missionary
or colonial contact demand more research, inner-Asian entanglement
history, in which above all the spread of Buddhism and Confucianism
played a decisive role, has already been the subject of extensive research.
In areas influenced by Buddhism, particularly East and Central Asia,
strong similarities can be shown when it comes to the binary division
into complementary nomospheres (rāja-dharma/buddha-dharma; ōbō/buppō; chos/srid) or into an “ordre spirituel” and an “ordre temporel”.109 This
paradigm, probably propagated by Buddhist thinkers for the purposes of
institutional self-assertion, was constantly in tension with Confucian ideasof absolute rule by the monarch, to whom all areas of society and normative
systems are subordinate. However, the matter of inner-Asian (and the same
applies to the MENA region) entanglements and encounters, and theirinfluence on the development of epistemic and social structures relevant
to secularity, still needs more attention.
Based on Tenbruck’s hypothesis that “cultural encounter was the real
field and driving force not just of history, but also of societal development
108 Kleine, “The Secular Ground Bass of Pre-Modern Japan Reconsidered;” Kleine,“Premodern Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogues.”
109 Seyfort Ruegg, Ordre spirituel et ordre temporel.
29and social differentiation”,110 our historical focus has been on phases ofintensified cultural contact. In such phases, cultures are forced to makecomparisons and reflect on them, which can provoke cultural crises but
also provoke social dynamics.111 It will be instructive to examine moreclosely how epistemic and social structures becoming uncertain and thestruggle over boundary demarcations between the religious and the nonreligious are tied together in phases of cultural contact.

3 The Centre for Advanced Studies’ Aims in the Second Funding
Period (2020−2024)
Some of the research questions, topics and empirical research that will be
the focus of our future work follow on directly from our work in the first.
We also plan to develop new systematic questions and shift the regional
focus of our work. In the first project phase, we significantly improved theoperationalisation of the concept of Multiple Secularities and developed new
hypotheses about certain contexts, mechanisms and typical configurations.
As a result, we can now seek relevant fellows’ research projects in a moretargeted fashion and determine the theoretical and empirical gaps in the
research more precisely.
3.1 Regional Expansion and Intercultural Encounter

One evident change will result from the shift in our regional focus. In
the first project phase, our research intentionally focused on regions andreligious traditions that differed greatly (both historically and presently)
from ‘the West’.112 In the second, we intend to consider the West itself in its
diversity, investigating internal contrasts, but also mutual entanglements.
This does not mean that Europe, particularly the Europe shaped by Latin
Christendom, will be the primary focus, prioritised as the starting point for
secularity as a binary logic for making distinctions. Instead, Europe will
be regarded as part of a complex history of encounters and entanglements
110 Tenbruck, “Was war der Kulturvergleich,” 25.
111 Björn Bentlage et al., eds., Religious Dynamics Under the Impact of Imperialism andColonialism: A Sourcebook (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
112 As with the term ‘Asia’, we use ‘the West’ as a purely pragmatic placeholder. In the verybroadest sense, we are referring to regions shaped by Latin Christendom whose elites do
not regard Latin Christendom as an exogenous tradition.
30

(and thereby be ‘provincialised’113), the result of which was secularity as anordering principle. We will look, for example, at how intercultural encounter
affected the development of European secularities in the course of the almost
800-year era of Al-Andalus and the Reconquista. Our research will not only
consider how the European expansion and the Christian mission affected
the epistemic and social structures of societies outside Europe. It will also
consider the changes that intercultural encounters – which saw a significant
acceleration from the 15th century – provoked within Europe itself.114
This shift in perspective is not supposed to deny the formative impact
of western European, and later North American, ideas and institutions on
the social and epistemic structures in other regions. Rather, we want tounderstand the global dynamics that resulted in there being an apparently
greater need to establish universal concepts for cultural comparison (e.g.
‘religion’) in Europe than in other regions of the world, and that have put
Europe in a hegemonic position since the 18th century – a consequence,
among other things, of the economic and military power it attained throughexploiting colonies. As post-colonial authors have shown,115 Europe as apolitical, economic, military, ideological and academic hegemonic power
is itself the product of intercultural encounters. These encounters will be
brought into focus in the second funding period.
In addition to western Europe, we will look at the Americas, sub-SaharanAfrica, Israel, and areas of eastern Europe and Russia shaped by the Eastern
Orthodox Church. However, our primary aim is not to establish a global
map of secularities. Instead, we want to investigate differences in the various
intercultural encounter situations, and the heterogeneity of the various
epistemic and social structures in the cultures involved. Our comparative
113 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical
Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
114 Peter van der Veer, Imperial encounters: Religion and modernity in India and Britain(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Roetz, “The Influence of Foreign
Knowledge”; José Casanova, “Jesuits, Connectivity, and the Uneven Development of
Global Consciousness Since the Sixteenth Century,” in Global Culture: Consciousness
and Connectivity, ed. Roland Robertson and Didem Buhari-Gulmez (Farnham: Ashgate,2016); Kleine, “Premodern Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogues.” Travel andmission reports will be important sources here, as will the descriptions of the world
based on these reports, which were particularly popular from the 17th century. In thesedescriptions, ‘religion’ is used systematically as a comparative concept for global culturalcomparison for the first time. See Guy G. Stroumsa, A New Science: The Discovery of
Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
115 van der Veer, Imperial Encounters; Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe.
31research will thus also look at societal projects for which secularism or,conversely, the role of religion116 play a central role and which have resulted in
major conflicts over the relationship between the religious and the secular,some of which have extended beyond the demise of the societal project inquestion. Such projects include the major secularist socialist projects that
culminated in the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union, as wellas, in an entirely different way, the Zionist project of establishing a Jewish
state of Israel in Palestine.117 Equally, revolutionary or nationalist projects
in Mexico, France and Turkey, which flew the flag of secularism (andsometimes “assertive secularism”118), would also be relevant.
So far, our research has focused on societies in East, Central, Southand Southeast Asia, and the MENA region. The majority of these societies
formed relatively strong ‘state’ and ‘religious’ institutions, were shapedby transcendence-oriented voluntarist religions with universal claims tovalidity, had written traditions that had been cultivated over extended
periods, and secured influence over a relatively large geographical area.
By contrast, broad parts of Sub-Saharan Africa in pre-colonial times
comprised predominantly decentralised structures, and local and oral
traditions. The dual power configuration that we previously identified
as a significant factor in the emergence of secularity is not as common.
Our research may therefore investigate how the relative incompatibility ofindigenous epistemic and social structures with those that were enforced
violently by the colonial powers influenced the appropriation of Westernconcepts such as secularism. Here, West African arrangements of state
secularity, e.g. in Nigeria, which officially regards itself as a secular state,and Senegal, which took on and adjusted the French principle of laïcité,
are of particular interest. Our research will consider how these states treat
indigenous religious traditions and forms of ethnic identity politics. We will
also explore how forms of laïcité are accommodated alongside indigenous
traditions and reworked in relation to these traditions, as well as whichtypes of resistance these forms of laïcité encounter.
116 Ram, “Why Secularism Fails?”; Markus Dreßler, “Beyond Religio-Secularism: Towarda Political Critique”, The Immanent Frame, 25 February 2014.
117 Dan Diner, Israel in Palästina: Über Tausch und Gewalt im Vorderen Orient(Königstein: Athenäum, 1980).
118 Ahmet T. Kuru, “Assertive and Passive Secularism,” in The Future of Religious Freedom:
Global Challenges, ed. Allen D. Hertzke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
32

Our initial observations suggest that debates over boundary
demarcation and the assignment of social activities or cultural elements
to either ‘religion’ or ‘the secular’ (or however such a category is termed)
in parts of Africa and the Americas develop their own dynamic as aconsequence of complex identity politics. Ethnic identities overlap in partwith religious identities, and the question of whether certain practices
and affiliations are to be defined according to the religious/secular dual
or using ethnic categories, is apparently answered strategically dependingon the given situation.119 In the second funding period, we want to analysesuch dynamics and the resultant configurations, such that we can add to
our theoretical understanding.
Boundary demarcations between the religious and the secular inminority policy is the subject of public and, particularly, legal disputes inNorth America too. An example there is the dispute over the religious natureof ritual drug use (e.g. the use of peyote) in the Native American Church.120
However, the specific colonial and independence history of the British
Americas is not only of particular interest when considering whether thepractices of indigenous ethnic groups fall under custom or religion. Anothertopic that deserves closer analysis is the ambivalent (and global) influenceof ‘passive secularism’121 (which tolerates public religions), which has its
roots in colonial history. Since the 1970s, this form of secularism seems tohave partly turned into a form of religionism as a consequence of the riseof politicised evangelicalism.122 For example, Protestantism in the southernstates of the US in particular developed a specific perspective on secularity
in that it wanted to blur or even shift the boundaries between the state andreligion in favour of the latter.123 Knöbl has emphasised the importance ofconsidering the different colonial histories of different regions, and the
119 Tafjord, “Scales, Translations, and Siding Effects.”
120 Cynthia S. Mazur, “Marijuana as a Holy Sacrament: Is the use of Peyote ConstitutionallyDistinguishable from that of Marijuana in Bona Fide Religious Ceremonies,” Notre Dame
Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy 5, no. 3 (1991).
121 Kuru, “Assertive and Passive Secularism.”
122 Martin Riesebrodt, “Was ist ‘religiöser Fundamentalismus’?,” in Religiöser
Fundamentalismus: vom Kolonialismus zur Globalisierung, ed. Clemens Six, Martin
Riesebrodt, and Siegfried Haas (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2005), 16.
123 Wolfgang Knöbl, Die Kontingenz der Moderne: Wege in Europa, Asien Und Amerika(Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 2007), 247; David Goldfield, Southern Histories: Public,
Personal, and Sacred (Athen, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003), 49.
33

significance of the American Civil War, when researching this subject.124 At
the same time, and potentially motivated by the same developments, there
has been a significant increase in non-affiliation125 (with a clear boundary
drawn between non-affiliation and atheism126) − a phenomenon thatdeserves regionally differentiated in-depth historical analysis.
In addition to analysing the extent of power asymmetries and thestructural starting conditions for the appropriation of Western norms by
the colonised, we will also analyse the different ideological guidelines and(religio-)political interests that determined the process of colonisation on
the part of the colonists. Among other things, we might consider whether
the power of the Catholic Church and its proximity to the state may havetriggered particularly strong defensive reflexes during revolutionary
movements, and provoked more radical forms of laicidad, i.e. in Mexico,
which aim for a strict limitation of religious influence on non-religious
areas of society.127 We will also look at non-Western forms of colonialism(e.g. the colonisation of Korea and Taiwan by Japan), particularly incomparison to regions that we examined during the first funding period.
An interesting case for comparison is Israel, where the Zionist projectof an ethnic religious state was realised against the backdrop of historicalantisemitism and the Holocaust. This coincided with the conspicuouslycolonial treatment of the local Arab population. The Zionist characterof the state, which ties citizenship at least in principle to being Jewish(although whether this is a religious identity is contentious), has major
consequences for the shaping of secularity. The specific interrelation of
the religious, ethnic, national and secular, and the resulting tensions,especially in an Arab environment, are interesting to examine, particularly
in comparison with countries such as pre-war Japan (Shintō as a ‘nonreligious state religion’) or present-day India (Hindutva). Starting points
for areas to study include the contradictions between religion-based
personal laws and demands for secular citizens’ rights (e.g. secular
124 Knöbl, Die Kontingenz der Moderne.
125 Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer, “Explaining Why More Americans Have No
Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987–2012,”
Sociological Science 1 (2014).
126 Penny Edgell, Joseph Gerteis, and Douglas Hartmann, “Atheists As ‘Other’: Moral
Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society,” American Sociological
Review 71, no. 2 (2006).
127 Roberto Blancarte, La república laica en México (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 2019).
34

marriage and divorce),128 as well as everyday confrontations between
lifestyles that are increasingly visibly marked as secular or religious.
This focus on different colonisation projects and situations inevitably
brings us back to the starting conditions in Europe. While there is often
a tendency to speak of ‘Western secularism’ or ‘the Western concept’of secularity, in Europe too we observe multiple secularities that havedeveloped over time. Even in the course of European integration, there
has so far been no indication of a convergence of religious regulation129 –national path dependencies are evidently quite strong. We want to analysethese path dependencies more closely in the second funding period so we
can sharpen our theoretical understanding. One area we will look at is
how the principle of subsidiarity in states such as Germany has resulted
in apparently paradoxical developments such as the loss of significanceof Christianity as a religion coinciding with a gain in the importance ofchurches as organisations running schools, kindergartens, etc. This will becompared with the situation in more centralist states such as France. We
will also explore national differences in terms of tensions − increasingly
exacerbated by populist actors − that result from the increase in nonreligious parts of the population coinciding with a stronger public presenceof minority religiosities.
Orthodox eastern Europe also serves as a ‘laboratory’ for studying
divergent developments of secularity. Whether the current adjustmentof the relationship between religion and secularity in (Orthodox) eastern
European states reflects a reification of theoretical principles of religious
dogmas such as the ‘symphonia’130 or whether it is more the result of
128 A number of our fellows have investigated the influence of Islamic law on state personallaw: A. Safa’at (Muchamad Ali Safa’at, “Indonesian Secularities: On the Influence of
the State-Islam Relationship on Legal and Political Developments,” Working Paper
Series of the CASHSS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” 13(Leipzig University, 2019)) and Anna Mrozek (for Indonesia), Anindita Chakrabarti and
Suchandra Gosh (for India) and Saïd A. Arjomand (for Tunisia).
129 Richard Traunmüller, “Nationale Pfadabhängigkeit oder internationale Konvergenz?
Eine quantitativ-vergleichende Analyse religionspolitischer Entwicklungen in 31
europäischen Demokratien 1990–2011,” in Religionspolitik und Politik der Religionen in
Deutschland, ed. Antonius Liedhegener and Gert Pickel (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2014).
130 Jelena W. Beljakowa, “Der Begriff ‘symphonia’ in der russischen Geschichte,” OST-WEST
Europäische Perspektiven 11, no. 1 (2010); Kristen Ghodsee, “Symphonic Secularism:
Eastern Orthodoxy, Ethnic Identity and Religious Freedoms in Contemporary Bulgaria,”
Anthropology of East Europe Review 27, no. 2 (2009); Zoe Knox, “The Symphonic Ideal:
The Moscow Patriarchate’s Post-Soviet Leadership,” Europe-Asia Studies 55, no. 4 (2003).
35

concrete and highly conflictual negotiation processes (the outcome ofwhich is entirely open), needs further clarification. There is evidence tosuggest that numerous entirely contingent factors generated their own
secularisation paths within Orthodox Europe as well. We should investigate
whether the social consequences of transformation and the inefficiencyof secular state institutions in the course of post-socialist change resulted
in religious authorities and norms gaining validity at the same time associety individualised and globalised. Apparently fragile nation-building
processes also seem to strengthen religious self-assertion and contributeto an increasing culturalisation of the religious131 where abstaining
from ritual and de facto distance from faith is combined with a general
acknowledgement of religion as part of one’s identity.
We have observed comparable culturalisation processes, which makeallocating certain actions, places and symbols to the categories ‘religious’or ‘secular’ (that is, as part of culture or tradition) difficult and legallycontroversial in China, Japan and Indonesia. In the second project phase,an additional systematic focus will be the analysis of culturalisation
processes that run counter to the model of a binary distinction between thereligious and the secular that is typical for modernity, because they raisequestions about some kind of ‘post-secularity’ and the critique of Westernmodernity as a whole.
In the second project phase, we will also make a systematic comparisonof the critical juncture of colonialism and imperialism, and the socalled Sattelzeit (‘threshold period’), taking into consideration different
regional experiences. Our aim will be to identify factors that make certain
configurations of secularity more likely than others. We will particularly
consider intercultural encounters as a catalyst for the reconfiguration of
epistemic and social structures on both sides.
At the theoretical level, we will continue to address questions thathave yet to be conclusively answered regarding the relationship between
epistemic and social structures, contingency and path probability,
structural restriction and individual agency when it comes to the form of
For a critical perspective, see Cyril Hovorun, “Is the Byzantine ‘Symphony’ Possible
in Our Days?,” Journal of Church and State 55, no. 2 (2016); Daniele Kalkandjieva, “АComparative Analysis on Church-State Relations in Eastern Orthodoxy: Concepts,
Models and Principles,” Journal of Church and State 53, no. 4 (2011).
131 Christoph Dahm, “Editorial,” OST-WEST Europäische Perspektiven 11, no. 1 (2010).
36

the relationship between religious and secular areas of society in global
modernity. We will also continue to investigate the relationship between
different levels of differentiation. To address the differentiation between
the secular and the religious at the level of interaction, we intend to expand
our thematic focus in addition to our regional focus.
Some projects focused on the MENA region and Asia will continue
with the findings from empirical and historical research to date serving
as a point of comparison for other regions. By expanding our regional
focus, we will predominantly look at different starting conditions andconsequently investigate different configurations and mechanisms. Thisshould ensure that we attain a higher level of theoretical saturation.
3.2 Systematic Perspectives
3.2.1 Critical Junctures and Path Probabilities

Our observations suggest that at historical turning points whereendogenous and/or exogenous factors make a reconfiguration ofsocial and epistemic structures inevitable, the very same structures
are explicitly reflected upon and become the subject of controversial
negotiation processes, and thus visible. To identify situations wherereconfigurations of epistemic and social structures appear inevitable,
understand their dynamics and, not least, to delimit the time frame
for historical analyses for practical reasons, we want to make use of thetheoretical framework of ‘critical junctures’ and ‘path dependencies’ insecularity research. The Sattelzeit, the beginning of the global condition
and the age of colonialism132 and imperialism naturally play an importantbut not an exclusive role here. In future, we want to focus even more on
critical junctures. It is assumed that reference problems (the problems
to which concepts of secularity refer) become more clearly visible, andcorresponding guiding ideas are formulated more explicitly at these
historical crossroads where, for a certain amount of time, significantly
132 It should be kept in mind that there was no single ‘colonialism’ but a multitude of different
colonial projects and very different colonial situations and experiences. For an attempt toidentify epistemic and social structures of an extreme longue durée which conditioned
the path dependencies that shape the specific form of secularity in modernity, see
Christoph Kleine, “Formations of Secularity in Ancient Japan? On Cultural Encounters,
Critical Junctures, and Path-Dependent Processes,” in “Secularities in Japan,” ed. Ugo
Dessí and Christoph Kleine, in “Secularities in Japan,” special issue, Journal of Religion in
Japan 8, no. 1−3 (2019).
37

more courses of action are available than before or after, and actors areforced to make decisions.
A fundamental hypothesis for us is that the way epistemic and social
structures are reconfigured is subject to certain path probabilities.
That is to say that existing epistemic and social structures create
crucial cultural pre-conditions for the acquisition of Western ordering
principles, knowledge systems and institutions that can explain, at leastin part, differences in the concrete configuration of ‘secularities’. In linewith this theory, social and epistemic structures can be seen as factors
which, within a complex ensemble of contingent influences, make radical
changes or upheavals less likely or help determine the path of change.
These structures are path probabilities in a non-deterministic sense andare sensitive to contingent factors.133
In the course of numerous discussions, questions have formed
regarding the use of the concepts of critical junctures, path dependencies,
and path probabilities. The following questions will be exploredfurther during the second project phase in related sub-projects: (1)How can path probabilities be identified, and how can we avoid
retrospective deterministic interpretations based on knowledge of theresult of a historical process? (2) In comparison, how can contingent
factors be isolated and how can we determine their significance forpath probabilities? (3) What is the relationship that the agency of
relevant actors has with existing structures and contingent events?
(4) How can developments be identified that have not prevailed
historically but serve as reference points for current developments?
3.2.2 Culturalisation of Religion, Materiality of the Secular
In our work so far, we have encountered forms of culturalisation of thereligious in a number of different contexts with very different implications.
133 Knöbl, Die Kontingenz der Moderne, 252. An example: where clear distinctions between
worldly and other-worldly responsibilities, material and spiritual responsibilities, andresponsibilities dealing with immanence and those dealing with transcendence are
institutionalised, it is probable that secularity will be chosen as a binary modality formaking distinctions and given legal validity. However, corresponding emic practices of
distinction and differentiation are not a determining prerequisite for secularity. Secularity
can also occur simply as a result of (voluntary or forced) adaptation, e.g. in the context
of the introduction of modern constitutions, which almost always refers back to Westernexamples.
38

We have encountered this phenomenon in the identity politics of politicalelites acting in collaboration with ethnic/cultural majorities (e.g. inWestern Europe, Eastern Europe, Quebec, India and Japan), as well as
in identity politics employed as a strategic means for minorities to assert
themselves (e.g. in Latin America, North America, and Australia). When
culturalisation as a majority project is implemented ‘from above’ to countercultural diversity and migrant religiosity, this can be combined with a shift
toward a public religion. By contrast, the Chinese government defining‘popular religion’ (minjian xinyang) as ‘non-material cultural heritage’(feiwuzhi wenhua yichan) is more indicative of a form of ‘secularisationfrom above’ which makes the cultivation of local customs possible without
softening highly restrictive policy on religion. We want to explore such
dynamics from a comparative perspective.
On a theoretical and conceptual level, we should consider whether weare dealing with a creeping revision of the modern process of religionisation
and whether the binary schema of secularity is losing plausibility andeffectiveness in the post-modern era. We might also want to consider
whether corresponding trends are to be interpreted as indicators of
religions increasingly being perceived again as complex, multifunctionalsociocultural formations, which provide affectual and aesthetic as well as
cognitive and normative modalities of orientation;134 and as such, religions
act as creators of collective identities, resulting in a series of societally andpolitically relevant conflicts over boundary demarcation and allocation,some of which are fought at the legal level. These conflicts appear to beintensified by the existence of religious minorities. Forms of interculturalcontact and comparison play a decisive role here, too.
In the second funding period, we want to explore this lifeworld
dimension of secularity, which has increasingly become the target of thelaw,135 public opinion, and discourses on identity, much more closely.
In addition to conceptual distinctions, markers of both religion andsecularity play an important role here. These concern different formsof symbolisation, such as symbolically loaded dress codes and bodily
practices, but also conflicts over food rules, the symbolic significanceof space and time, lifestyles, etc. By broadening our perspective to
134 Schwinn, “Wertsphären, Lebensordnungen und Lebensführungen,” 295.
135 Matthias Koenig, “Religion und Recht,” in Handbuch Religionssoziologie, ed. Detlef
Pollack et al. (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2018).
39

lifeworld and, above all, material aspects, we want to make effective useof theoretical approaches such as that of “material religion”136 in ourinvestigation of secularity. Nowadays, it is indeed the case that conflicts
over the boundaries of the religious are becoming inflamed; and theseconflicts primarily relate to the material (and embodied). Think, forexample, of conflicts surrounding the construction of mosques, the useof prayer rooms in public buildings, circumcision of boys, or wearing
headscarves. This suggests that material things should not only be seenas ‘symbols’ or conveyors of meaning that can ‘be read’.137 Instead, one
ought to consider that they are closely tied to the socio-cultural identity ofhuman beings, and socio-cultural relationships are constituted throughmaterial culture.138 Material forms such as headscarves or crucifixes not
only create identity, they also ‘do’ something to people, as they trigger or
influence social action and determine how situations are interpreted.139
Approaches concerning the aesthetics140 and aisthetics141 of religion also
deserve closer attention in this regard.
This raises the question as to whether there is a genuine materiality ofthe secular and, potentially, associated sensational forms,142 or whether thematerialisation of the secular is a secondary phenomenon, i.e. the result ofdrawing a boundary with religious materiality. This ties in with classicalsociological theory such as Durkheim’s work on totemism.143 Our interest
136 Birgit Meyer et al., “The Origin and Mission of Material Religion,” Religion 40, no. 3 (2010).
137 Dick Houtman and Birgit Meyer, “Introduction,” in Things: Religion and the Question ofMateriality, ed. Dick Houtman and Birgit Meyer (New York, NY: Fordham University
Press, 2012), 5.
138 Peter J. Bräunlein, “Material Turn,” in Dinge des Wissens: Die Sammlungen, Museen undGärten der Universität Göttingen, ed. Georg August Universität Göttingen (Göttingen:
Wallstein, 2012).
139 Bruno Latour, “On actor-network theory: A few clarifications plus more than a few
complications, ”Soziale Welt 47, no. 4 (1996); Bruno Latour, Reassembling the social: An
introduction to actor-network-theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 54–55.
140 Susanne Lanwerd, Religionsästhetik: Studien zum Verhältnis von Symbol und Sinnlichkeit(Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2002).
141 Jürgen Mohn, “Religionsaisthetik: Religion(en) als Wahrnehmungsräume,” in
Religionswissenschaft: Ein Studienbuch, ed. Michael Stausberg (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012).
142 Birgit Meyer, “Mediation and immediacy: sensational forms, semiotic ideologies and thequestion of the medium,” Social Anthropology 19, no. 1 (2011).
143 Emile Durkheim, Die elementaren Formen des religiösen Lebens (Frankfurt: Verlag der
Weltreligionen, 2007 [1912]); following this, Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, “Das Kopftuch als
negatives Totem,” in Intervalle: Lebensaspekte der Moderne. Wissenschaftlich-literarisches
Hörbuch, ed. Cultiv e.V. (Leipzig: Voland & Quist, 2005).
40

is in forms of everyday life and habitus (e.g. clothing and food as a means ofdistinction) and the drawing of material and symbolic boundaries with ‘thereligious’ or ‘the secular’. There appear to be revealing conflict negotiation
processes surrounding defining public space, such as those pertaining to
the matter of adequate swimwear (‘burkinis’), which is then contrasted
in populist commentary with something that is invoked as secular (e.g.
bikinis). At the same time, everyday negotiation is much more nuanced
than populist responses would have us believe.144
Such negotiations are also connected to forms of demarcation of public
spaces, and the ways in which public spaces are accorded symbolism.
These processes simultaneously define in practical terms what the public
space is and how it relates to and is distinguished from/by ‘the religious’
within it. Such definition processes can currently be observed in Russia in
relation to the public presence of Orthodoxy, with numerous new church
buildings, the restitution of church property and changes in the rights ofuse of formerly secularised spaces.145 Further examples are disputes about
religious exhibits in museums and questions of the appropriate handlingof sacred artefacts in secular spaces, which also question the character ofthe museum as a secular space. Examples of such boundary demarcation
conflicts can be found in a number of countries and are suitable subjects
for comparative research. 146
When examining disputes regarding the structure of the public space,
one must also consider emotions and bodily experiences (e.g. collective or
individual agitation over acts of ‘blasphemy’, which, according to Mahmood,is perceived by the Muslim minority as “moral injury” and supposedly
collides with a “secular rationality”147), understandings of space and time(e.g. boundary demarcation conflicts as a result of religious activities inpublic spaces or the interpretation and form of religious holidays).

144 Ines Michalowski and Max Behrendt, “Organisationaler Wandel für muslimische
Badegäste in deutschen Schwimmbädern: Schnelle Anpassungen und Konflikte,”
Discussion Paper SP VI 2019-101 (Berlin: WZB Berlin Social Science Center, 2019).
145 Tobias Köllner, “On the Restitution of Property and the Making of ‘Authentic’ Landscapesin Contemporary Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies 70, no. 7 (2018).
146 Our fellow Philip Clart is researching the museumisation of religious objects in secular
museums and religious museums, particularly in Taiwan.
147 Saba Mahmood, “Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?,”Critical Inquiry 35, no. 4 (2009): 836, 842.
41

3.2.3 Art, Culture, and Architecture as Spheres of Activity

In addition to the spheres of activity that we have already explored (namely
politics, law and medicine), we plan to conduct transregional comparativeand historical research on art (including architecture, music and theatre)
in relation to the differentiation of the secular and the religious.148
Aesthetic material objects and artefacts are important for religious
rituals and practices in (almost) all religious communities. In Christianity,a charged attitude regarding the appropriate handling of such objects canbe seen early on in disputes over objects from antiquity. The recent view,primarily voiced in the field of sociology of materiality, that these objects
are not only an expression or representation of the social − and thus alsoof the religious − but also function as its medium and thus contribute toits creation,149 seems to have always been acknowledged by contemporaries,
especially those engaged in religion. This particularly applies to sacredarchitecture and raises the question of whether there is a corresponding
materiality of the secular and of secularity and how this might be identified.
The field of architecture lends itself particularly well to such aninvestigation. The Paulinum at Leipzig University is an instructive example.
The building functions as both an assembly hall and a university church
but separates the religious and the secular with a moveable plexiglass
wall.150 This raises questions about the existence of comparable forms of‘constructed’ distinction in other contexts and their discursive framing. The
architectural design (and identification) of the secular could be exploredthrough the great building projects of the 20th century, which were decidedly
committed to secular ideas. Comparative cultural studies on India, Brazil,
Russia and Turkey are examples.151 But we would also benefit from looking
at European architectural history, including the debates at the beginningof the 20th century about whether and how modern church architecture
should distinguish itself from increasingly dominant secular constructions
148 Krech, “Theory and Empiricism of Religious Evolution (THERE),” Parts 1 and 2.
149 Heike Delitz, Architektursoziologie (Bielefeld: transcript, 2010); Sonia Hazard, “TheMaterial Turn in the Study of Religion,” Religion and Society: Advances in Research 4 (2013).
150 See Thomas Schmidt-Lux, “Kirche und Aula zugleich? Eine Gebäudeinterpretation desLeipziger Paulinums,” in Architekturen und Artefakte: Zur Materialität des Religiösen, ed.
Uta Karstein and Thomas Schmidt-Lux (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2017).
151 Sibel Bozdoǧan, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the
Early Republic (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2001); Alev Cinar, Srirupa
Roy, and Maha Yahya, Visualizing Secularism and Religion: Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, India(Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2012).
42

(cinemas, train stations, department stores, villas etc.)152 Here the connection
between discourses, actors and material forms of expression becomes visible
and raises the question as to how distinctions manifest in the various
settings. In any event, it seems that it is not only “the symbolic character ofreligious buildings and objects” that provokes conflicts, but also “concrete
questions about the material implementation and form of religious practice,
as well as the implied demarcation from the secular environment.”153 Even
early Christianity addressed the question of whether pictures, statues, places
and buildings etc. have a religious quality themselves, or whether they ‘only’
function as symbols of that which is ‘actually’ religious. Belting’s distinction
between “cult images” and “images used for didactic purposes” is instructive
here.154
In European modernity, artists increasingly insisted on keeping art freeof religious references and claims, and on emphasising its intrinsic logic.155
This was the case for visual art, music and literature. We will investigate
whether and how justifications drawing on secularity are identifiable inthese debates on autonomy, and to which reference problems the guiding
idea of autonomy refers. The autonomy of art has since been demanded asvehemently as it has been contradicted − both by religion and theology,
and by art and artists themselves. The fact that this permanent boundary
work can also be found, in a similar vein, in the performing arts of western
European and North American Muslim migrants,156 and is explosively
present in literature and visual arts in Egypt157 and India, advocatescomparative research focused primarily on contemporary debates andconflicts.
152 Michaela Marek et al., “Von der Künstlerschöpfung zum multiauktorialen Werk:
Großstädtischer Kirchenbau und der Wandel des Architekturbegriffs in der Ära derModernisierung,” Denkströme 9 (2012).
153 Uta Karstein and Thomas Schmidt-Lux, “Die materiale Seite des Religiösen: Soziologische
Perspektiven und Ausblicke,” in Architekturen und Artefakte, ed. Karstein and Schmidt-Lux.
154 Hans Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst(München: Beck, 2004), 9, 25.
155 Michael Müller et al., Autonomie der Kunst: Zur Genese und Kritik einer bürgerlichen
Kategorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974).
156 Yolanda van Tilbourgh, “Islam, culture and authoritative voices in the UK and the US:
Patterns of orientation and autonomy among Muslims in art,” Zeitschrift für Religion,
Gesellschaft und Politik 2, no. 1 (2018).
157 Samuli Schielke, “Is Prose Poetry a Conspiracy Against the Noble Qur’an? Poetics,
Humans, and God on Contemporary Egypt,” in “Islamicate Secularities,” eds. Dressler,
Salvatore, and Wohlrab-Sahr.
43

44

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