The Sacred is the Profane collects nine essays written over several
years by William Arnal and Russell McCutcheon, specialists in two
very different areas of the field (one, a scholar of Christian
origins and the other working on the history of the modern study of
religion). They share a convergent perspective: not simply that
both the category and concept "religion" is a construct, something
that we cannot assume to be "natural" or universal, but also that
the ability to think and act "religiously" is, quite specifically,
a modern, political category in its origins and effects, the mere
by-product of modern secularism. These collected essays,
substantially rewritten for this volume, advance current scholarly
debates on secularism-debates which, the authors argue,
insufficiently theorize the sacred/secular, church/state, and
private/public binaries by presupposing religion (often under the
guise of such terms as "religiosity," "faith," or "spirituality")
to historically precede the nation-state. The essays return, again
and again, to the question of what "religion"-word and
concept-accomplishes, now, for those who employ it, whether at the
popular, political, or scholarly level. The focus here for two
writers from seemingly different fields is on the efficacy, costs,
and the tactical work carried out by dividing the world between
religious and political, church and state, sacred and profane. As
the essays make clear, this is no simple matter. Part of the reason
for the incoherence and at the same time the stubborn persistence
of both the word and idea of "religion" is precisely its
multi-faceted nature, its plurality, its amenability to multiple
and often self-contradictory uses. Offering an argument that builds
as they are read, these papers explore these uses, including the
work done by positing a human orientation to "religion," the
political investment in both the idea of religion and the academic
study of religion, and the ways in which the field of religious
studies works to shape, and stumbles against, its animating
conception.
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