Postsecularism

An exploration of how spiritual and secular thought collide and combine in today’s world, charting a new way forward that combines the best of both worldviews. Spirituality in the post-9/11 world is a complex topic. The détente between secular culture and religious faith that characterised the 20th century, the ‘mutual ignorance pact’, has been shattered. From the rise of Islamic extremism to the American Christian Right to the fiercely anti-religious writings of staunch atheists such as Richard Dawkins, the controversy over what role the spiritual can or should play in our lives, public and private, has never been more widely discussed or hotly contended. In Postsecularism, Mike King posits that out of this conflict between socially dominant secular thinkers and the ‘new defenders of faith’ is arising a distinct way of thinking that is neither a return to pre-Enlightenment beliefs nor a continued hegemony of the secular – the postsecular. At once a retention of secular critical