From a South African Passion Play to Turkish Sufi tourism, from contemporary street preaching in America to public Hindu rites in India, from cloistered prayer in 17th century France to the queer politics of 'the closet' today, Performing Religion in Public brings together an international array of voices that grapple with the important role of religious performance in our secular public lives. Because traditional notions of the public sphere have emphasized rational discourse in a secular setting, religion has often been excluded. But religious life is not impersonal argument; rather, it is passionately performed, crossing boundaries between public and private, the personal and the political, and claiming a significant role in modern democracies, from everyday cultural interactions to political advocacy. By focusing on the performative nature of both religion and publics, this timely volume offers a fresh and fruitful re-conception of the relationship between religion and the public sphere.

Religious life and public life are both passionately performed, but often understood to exclude one another. This book's array of voices investigates the publics hailed by religious performances and the challenges they offer to theories of the democratic public sphere.