Conference on the Religious-Secular Divide

In 1988, Arien Mack of New School University, founded the Social Research Conference Series (SRCS) to increase public understanding of critical and contested issues by exploring their social and historical contexts. Since its inauguration, eighteen conferences have presented the research of scholars working in diverse disciplines. As the nineteenth event in the SRCS, Mack, along with Georgetown University sociologist José Casanova, will host the conference “The Religious-Secular Divide” on March 5-6, 2009. The conference agenda will focus on American debates and scholarship, specifically, and will open with a session on “The Origins of the Secular,” where participants will consider the theoretical foundations of the current religious-secular divide. Following this session, “Religious Selves; Secular Selves,” will explore the notions of the self as defined by religion, spirituality, psychology, and secularism. Subsequent sessions include “Religion, Politics, and the Democratic State,” examining historical and contemporary legal and constitutional debates, and “Moral Crusades: Religious and Secular,” which will look at how religion has been implicated in reform movements throughout U.S. history. The conference will conclude with “Contemporary Debates: The Future of Religion, the Future of Secularism.” Conference papers will be edited and published in the journal Social Research.