Seriously, What Does “Taking Religion Seriously” Mean?

摘要

In this essay, I argue that recent calls to take religion seriously are lessnabout taking religion seriously and more about avoiding conflict. Thusnrather than being an antidote to secular liberalism, such calls are,ninstead, an insidious reinscription of a secular liberal assumption, i.e.,nthat a nonconflictual, liminal space free of power can be created.nI examine this reinscription in two areas of scholarship on religion:nfirst, works which address the political and civic challenges ofnAmerican pluralism; second, works which address the difficulties ofnproducing scholarship about persons in different historical periods andncultural contexts. Whereas in the first case, the risks of taking religionnseriously are managed by a more sophisticated deployment of secularnliberalism, in the second case, they are managed by the exceptionalnscholar who is capable of radically opening himself or herself up to thenother and resisting closure and its attendant conflict.