Academia's Unexpected Religious Turn

“It was inevitable,” writes William Johnsen in the inaugural issue of English Language Notes (Spring 2006), “that the shame associated with admitting religious belief in the secular world of the human sciences in midcentury would prepare the ground for the great succès de scandale of religious (re)turn at the end of the century.” In other words, some of us may need to click refresh on our stereotype of academia. I’ve written about this phenomenon here before, and about the graying of critical theory at my home address. One consequence of the shift is that new phenomena are now subject to the scrutiny to which religion has long been exposed. You could call it the anthropology of secularism, which is being exemplified by Catholics (Charles Taylor), Muslims (Talal Asad), Evangelicals (Hunter Baker), and—perhaps most interestingly—people of no faith commitment at all (Fenella Cannell).