Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Public Theology in a Post-Secular Age

Elaine Graham

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780334045984
• eBook ISBN: 9780334049920
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Public theology is an increasingly important area of theological discourse with strong global networks of institutions and academics involved in it. Elaine Graham is one of the UK's leading theologians and an established SCM author. In this book, Elaine Graham argues that Western society is entering an unprecedented political and cultural era, in which many of the assumptions of classic sociological theory and of mainstream public theology are being overturned. Whilst many of the features of the trajectory of religious decline, typical of Western modernity, are still apparent, there are compelling and vibrant signs of religious revival, not least in public life and politics - local, national and global. This requires a revision of the classic secularization thesis, as well as much Western liberal political theory, which set out separate or at least demarcated terms of engagement between religion and the public domain. Elaine Graham examines claims that Western societies are moving from 'secular' to 'post-secular' conditions and traces the contours of the 'post-secular': the revival of faith-based engagement in public sphere alongside the continuing – perhaps intensifying – questioning of the legi¬timacy of religion in public life. She argues that public theology must rethink its theological and strategic priorities in order to be convincing in this new 'post-secular' world and makes the case for the renewed prospects for public theology as a form of Christian apologetics, drawing from Biblical, classical and contemporary sources.

part 1

Post-Secular Society

1

The Turning of the Tide

How Religion ‘Went Public’

Religion in the 1980s ‘went public’, in a dual sense. It entered the ‘public sphere’ and gained, thereby, ‘publicity.’ Various ‘publics’ – the mass media, social scientists, professional politicians, and the ‘public at large’ – suddenly began to pay attention to religion. The unexpected public interest derived from the fact that religion, leaving its assigned place in the private sphere, had thrust itself into the public arena of moral and political contestation. (Casanova 1994, p. 3)

Introduction

We are undoubtedly witnessing fluid and shifting boundaries between categories of belief and non-belief, and corresponding revisions in taken-for-granted understandings of the relationship between ‘politics’ and ‘religion’. In this chapter, I will examine some of the key pressure points and begin to identify what is at stake. It seems that the current situation, particularly in the West, is one of simultaneous religious decline, mutation and resurgence. There are plenty of signs of what Jose Casanova (1994) terms the ‘deprivatization’ of religion and its renewed public significance, although this is further complicated by continuing de-institutionalization of religious and spiritual belief.

Mathew Guest has summarized the cultural condition of religion in the UK as follows:

a more uncertain, fragmented culture, in which Christianity appears as a minority pursuit, no longer at the heart of civic unity, instead a media curiosity, inspiring fierce defence among some, open mockery among others. This framework suggests neither inexorable decline on the one hand, nor naïve optimism about Christian vitality and influence on the other. (Guest, Olson and Wolffe 2012, p. 60)

If this diagnosis is accurate, then it has particular implications when we focus on the public – and therefore institutionalized, organizational – dimensions of religious belief and practice. The mutation of traditional religious activity and belief into alternative, more privatized, expressions is further evidence that this cannot be conceived of as any kind of reversal of religious decline, but rather its re-orientation, albeit within newly modest and straitened circumstances. But the unprecedented co-existence of multiple forms of belief and non-belief (and all points in between) may require a re-orientation of the conventions by which Western democracies have demarcated religion and politics, as well as many of the legislative conventions governing the mediation of religion into the public square. Part of the contemporary condition appears to be an impending collision between the ‘immovable object’ of religious activism and the ‘irresistible force’ of secularism.

New Visibility

Is it possible to measure the fortunes of religious faith in the world? In reviewing a range of statistical data, I should remark that I am looking for trends and patterns of growth or decline, rather than static snapshots; and that while a global picture is valuable, regional and cultural variations matter also. While many surveys on religion record patterns of affiliation and institutional strength as well as individual belief, my main focus is on religion as a cultural and political force, and how personal faith is mediated into the public domain. This is because any analysis of the role of public theology needs to take into account both formal, institutional interventions (official statements, policies and provision) and individual conviction (as expressed in voting habits, patterns of volunteering, moral attitudes, and so on).

Research from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life (conducted in 2010) offers a comprehensive overview of global religious observance, drawn from over 2,500 censuses and surveys worldwide. Globally speaking, over eight out of ten people identify with a religious group, with religious affiliation distributed as follows:

Christian		32 per cent
Muslim		23 per cent
No affiliation		16 per cent
Hindu		15 per cent
Buddhist		7 per cent
‘Folk Religion’		6 per cent
Jewish		0.2 per cent
(Source: Pew Forum 2012, p. 9)

Summary by Region, 2010
Region		Population (millions)		Per cent of Population
				Christian		Muslim		Unaff		Hindu		Budd		Folk		Other		Jewish
Asia-Pacific		4,054.99		7.1		24.3		21.2		25.3		11.9		9.0		1.3		<0.1
Europe		742.55		75.2		5.9		18.2		0.2		0.2		0.1		0.1		0.2
Latin America/Caribbean		590.08		90.0		0.1		7.7		0.1		<0.1		1.7		0.2		<0.1
Middle East/ North Africa		341.02		3.7		93.0		0.6		0.5		0.1		0.3		<0.1		1.6
N. America		344.53		77.4		1.0		17.1		0.7		1.1		0.3		0.6		1.8
Sub-Saharan/ Africa		822.72		62.9		30.2		3.2		0.2		<0.1		3.3		0.2		<0.1
World		6,895.89		31.5		23.2		16.3		15.0		7.1		5.9		0.8		0.2
(Source: Pew Forum 2012, p. 50)

Regional variations are significant, however. While there are signs of religious growth in China, for example, it remains the world’s largest centre of religiously unaffiliated people (700 million, or 52.2 per cent of the population and 62 per cent of all religiously unaffiliated people in the world).Those who identify as religiously unaffiliated are significant, since one of my concerns is to consider how relationships between those of faith and none are worked out across different dimensions of public life. This group is not, of course, homogenous: it includes atheists, agnostics and people who simply do not choose to identify with any organized creed or institutional faith. This is not to say, however, that many of them would not hold religious or spiritual beliefs, or participate in forms of religious ritual. Pew records that:

. . . belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7% of unaffiliated Chinese adults, 30% of unaffiliated French adults and 68% of unaffiliated U.S. adults [and that] 7% of unaffiliated adults in France and 27% of those in the United States say they attend religious services at least once a year. And in China, 44% of unaffiliated adults say they have worshiped at a graveside or tomb in the past year. (Pew Forum 2012, p. 24)

Trends in some countries, especially in Western Europe, however, suggest both increasing religious diversity coupled with a growing divide between those who identify with a religious faith and those who do not. The results of the 2011 census in the United Kingdom indicate a continuing drift away from Christianity and an increase in religious disaffiliation. For the second time, the census asked people to choose a religious identity, although the question1 was voluntary. Results showed that while Christianity was still the largest religion, with 33.2 million people, or 59.3 per cent of the population, this had fallen from 71.7 per cent in 2001. The second largest religious group was Muslims, whose numbers grew from 1.5 million to 2.7 million people (3.0 per cent to 4.8 per cent). Significantly, there was a marked increase in those reporting no religion (from 14.8 per cent to 25.1 per cent). The census question gives us no insight into religious attitudes or into opinions about the public role of religion, but other polls do offer further information in this respect. A poll conducted by YouGov in 2011 recorded that 40 per cent of adults interviewed professed no religion, 55 per cent were Christian and 5 per cent of other faiths. Age made a major difference, with only 38 per cent of the 18–34s being Christian and 53 per cent having no religion; whereas for the over-55s the figures were 70 per cent (Christian) and 26 per cent (no religion) respectively. 11 per cent of respondents claimed to attend a religious service once a month or more, 27 per cent less often, and 59 per cent never. Non-attendance was higher among the young (62 per cent for the 18–34s) than the old (54 per cent for the over-55s); higher among manual workers (62 per cent) than non-manuals (56 per cent) (YouGov 2011).

In November 2012, ComRes, on behalf of ITV News, conducted an online survey of 2,055 Britons aged 18 and over. 79 per cent agreed with the statement that religion is a cause of much misery and conflict in the world today; 11 per cent disagreed. 35 per cent agreed that religion is a force for good in the world, but 45 per cent disagreed, dissentients being more numerous among men (50 per cent) than women (41 per cent).

All in all, these data point to a society in which religion is increasingly in retreat and nominal. With the principal exception of the older age groups, many of those w...

Table of contents

• Between a Rock and a Hard Place
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: A Rock and a Hard Place
• Part 1 Post-Secular Society
• 1 The Turning of the Tide
• 2 The Unquiet Frontier
• Part 2 Post-Secular Public Theology
• 3 Lost in Translation?
• 4 Public Speaking
• 5 Crusades and Culture Wars
• Part 3 Public Theology as Christian Apologetics
• 6 Jews, Pagans, Sceptics and Emperors
• 7 The Apologetics of Presence
• Bibliography
• Index
• Index of Authors