Public Religions Revisited

2008

Professor Casanova reexamines the arguments he put forth in Public Religion in the Modern World (1994), engaging in a constructive re-evaluation of the claims made in the earlier work. Casanova points out that Public Religions suffered from three general limitations: Western-centrism, the restriction of modern public religions to the sphere of civil society, and a state-centered framework for analysis. He addresses each of these in turn. First, Casanova moves towards a global comparative perspective on religion and secularism by emphasizing the existence of multiple modernities, both within the West and in other cultural contexts. Second, to move beyond an exclusive focus on civil society, Casanova draws on the work of Alfred Stepan to argue for a framework in which religious authorities tolerate the autonomy of governments and demand no vetoes or prerogatives, while democratic institutions tolerate the ability of religions to advance their claims in civil and political society, as long as they doe not violate the democratic norms or the rule of law. Finally, in discussing the transnational dimensions of modern religion, Casanova highlights the importance of new, global imagined communities, ranging from the Hindu Diaspora to Pentecostalism to the Baha’i, noting that these pose challenges to both the system of nation-states and to liberal cosmopolitanism.

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