| abstract |
The organization of academic disciplinary structures around a religion/secular binary is arguably the prime regulative logic within higher education in the United States today, and throughout the West. Religion scholar Boaz Huss has called such a binary the "fundamental discursive category of modernity," affecting our entire social and political milieus. This organizational structure emerges from a long and complex history with Christendom in the West. Yet, given that we live today amidst cultures of vast diversity—with perhaps the greatest racial, ethnic, and religious diversity the world has ever seen, including growing religio-spiritual experimentation—this dissertation asks what is meant when terms such as 'religion' or 'the secular' are utilized. Analyzing how various uses of these terms are embedded in contemporary academic disciplinary structures, this dissertation imagines how disciplinary structures might be reconceived in the light of decolonial concerns, as well as current scholarship that questions the meaning of terms such as 'religion' and 'the secular.'
Beginning with democratic political theory and a consideration of the role of academia as a locus of professional thinking and education in society, academia is seen to hold at least some responsibility for inculcating democratic and decolonial praxis. What does this mean in terms of current disciplinary delineations? In particular, I analyze delineations between philosophy, theology, religious studies, cultural-critical theory, and sociology. These delineations within the humanities are places where a religion/secular binary has significant sway, and this dissertation argues that current disciplinary formations have racial and colonial consequences. Following upon this analysis, an exploration of democratic and decolonial praxis commences, mainly thru voices from marginalized communities, leading into the constructive work of envisioning new discourses and disciplinary formations in academia—ones that might better serve our democracy today.
A liminality of democracy materializes in the course of these explorations, recognizing religio-spiritual becomings as vital aspects of a religiously pluralistic democracy. In bringing clarity to the ways in which a religion/secular binary functions in the organization of society, politics, and knowledge production today, this dissertation simultaneously opens up liminal, interstitial spaces in which one might reassess the disciplinary structures of academia. Given colonial and racial consequences discovered along the way, this dissertation argues extensively that our democracy is better served by a thorough reassessment of the anachronistic, often fetishized, institutional structures we have inherited. In their stead, it argues positively for the relevance of an interreligious/interspiritual contemplative discourse within academia, as well as a movement towards a beloved community of religious diversity—as a cultural, political, and even scholarly formation.
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