From Nietzsche to the present, the Western philosophical tradition has been dominated by a secular thinking that has dismissed discussion of God as largely irrelevant. In recent years however, the issue of theology has returned to spark some of the most controversial debates within contemporary philosophy. Discussions of theology by key contemporary philosophers such as Derrida and Levinas have placed religion at centre stage. Post-Secular Philosophy is one of the first volumes to consider how God has been approached by modern philosophers and consider the links between theology and postmodern thought. Fifteen accessible essays present a clear and compelling picture of how key thinkers including Descartes, Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Derrida have made God a central part of their thinking. Each philosopher and how they have approached and criticised theology is placed in a clear historical context. Placing the collection in context with Phillip Blond's outstanding introduction, Post-Secular Philosophy presents a fascinating discussion of the alternatives to the relativism and nihilism that dominate Western thinking.

Chapter of interest: Chapter 2, "How the Secular World Became Postsecular"
John D. Caputo explores the very roots of religious thinking in this thought-provoking book. Compelling questions come up along the way: 'What do I love when I love my God?' and 'What can Star Wars tell us about the contemporary use of religion?' (are we always trying to find a way of saying 'God be with you'?) Why is religion for many a source of moral guidance in a postmodern, nihilistic age? Is it possible to have 'religion without religion'? Drawing on contemporary images of religion, such as Robert Duvall's film The Apostle, Caputo also provides some fascinating and imaginative insights into religious fundamentalism.

Journal Information: Religion & literature, 2009, Vol.41 (3), p.68-73
In this forum scholars from literary studies and religious studies engage in a dialogue about postsecular theory and its implications for the study of literature. Collectively the essays argue that postsecular theory challenges narratives of secularization and the return of religion, and complicates binary oppositions between religion and secularity. Through readings of texts by Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith, Octavia Butler, and John Milton, the essays explore different implications and manifestations of these shared starting points. Does postsecular theory identify a particular trend in contemporary literature or does it delineate a repertoire of critical orientations that could apply to all periods of literary history? How does postsecularism seek to reengage the sacred while at the same time remain skeptical of fundamentalisms of any kind—sacred, secular, scientific? Through discussions of topics such as fundamentalism and Judaism, commentaries from scholars from religious studies further complicate the categories of the religious and the secular, and also examine some of the operating assumptions that inform postsecular literary criticism.

Contents: Introduction: Postsecular projects -- Ontological pluralism and preterite spiritualities : Thomas Pynchon -- Worldly vocations : Don Delillo -- Enclosures, enchantments, and the art of discernment : Toni Morrison -- Narratives of turning in Native American fiction : N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Louise Erdrich -- Neomonastic paths and the limits of postsecularism : Michael Ondaatje -- Epilogue: The dream of open dwelling.

How can intense religious beliefs coexist with pluralism in America today? Examining the role of the religious imagination in contemporary religious practice and in some of the best-known works of American literature from the past fifty years, Postmodern Belief shows how belief for its own sake--a belief absent of doctrine--has become an answer to pluralism in a secular age. Amy Hungerford reveals how imaginative literature and religious practices together allow novelists, poets, and critics to express the formal elements of language in transcendent terms, conferring upon words a religious value independent of meaning. Hungerford explores the work of major American writers, including Allen Ginsberg, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, and Marilynne Robinson, and links their unique visions to the religious worlds they touch. She illustrates how Ginsberg's chant-infused 1960s poetry echoes the tongue-speaking of Charismatic Christians, how DeLillo reimagines the novel and the Latin Mass, why McCarthy's prose imitates the Bible, and why Morrison's fiction needs the supernatural. Uncovering how literature and religion conceive of a world where religious belief can escape confrontations with other worldviews, Hungerford corrects recent efforts to discard the importance of belief in understanding religious life, and argues that belief in belief itself can transform secular reading and writing into a religious act. Honoring the ways in which people talk about and practice religion, Postmodern Belief highlights the claims of the religious imagination in twentieth-century American culture.

This is the Introduction to the 2014 Special Edition of American Literature Titled "After the Postsecular."
Journal Information: American literature, 2014, Vol.86 (4), p.645-654
"The secularization thesis is dead. There is no doubt whatever about that. Over years that have begun to stretch into decades, through the work of a diverse array of scholars—from Talal Asad, José Casanova, Saba Mahmood, and Charles Taylor, down to Americanists like Tracy Fessenden, Toni Wall Jaudon, Kathryn Lofton, John Modern, and Michael Warner—the notion that something called “secularization” provides an adequate conceptual framework for the post-Enlightenment movement of bodies and belief, of thought and authority, has come under sustained and multidimensional assault."

"The essays collected in this special issue certainly show themselves to be in such a vanguard—asking what, if anything, the secular might mean in the context of US literary history. We have arranged them chronologically to facilitate readers’ spinning of their own nonsecularization stories."

How secularism has been used to justify the subordination of women Joan Wallach Scott's acclaimed and controversial writings have been foundational for the field of gender history. With Sex and Secularism, Scott challenges one of the central claims of the "clash of civilizations" polemic--the false notion that secularism is a guarantee of gender equality. Drawing on a wealth of scholarship by second-wave feminists and historians of religion, race, and colonialism, Scott shows that the gender equality invoked today as a fundamental and enduring principle was not originally associated with the term "secularism" when it first entered the lexicon in the nineteenth century. In fact, the inequality of the sexes was fundamental to the articulation of the separation of church and state that inaugurated Western modernity. Scott points out that Western nation-states imposed a new order of women's subordination, assigning them to a feminized familial sphere meant to complement the rational masculine realms of politics and economics. It was not until the question of Islam arose in the late twentieth century that gender equality became a primary feature of the discourse of secularism. Challenging the assertion that secularism has always been synonymous with equality between the sexes, Sex and Secularism reveals how this idea has been used to justify claims of white, Western, and Christian racial and religious superiority and has served to distract our attention from a persistent set of difficulties related to gender difference--ones shared by Western and non-Western cultures alike.