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The force behind postsecularism comes largely from the media. Universities don't seem eager to fight the idea that news is a shortcut to wisdom. The word “wisdom” is seldom used around universities. Universities look forward to completing the sciences and turning as much of their curriculum as possible into science. It is hoped that universities will make religion a more serious and intelligent area of academic life.

This essay applies François Laruelle’s thinking of nonphilosophy to theology, to imagine what a nontheology would look like in contemporary terms of political theology and political ecology. Nontheology does not think to God, but posits God as the Real or what Laruelle calls a “vision-in-One,” and thinks from it. Political theology can be characterized by postsecularism. The return of religion in thought, politics, and culture deconstructs any simple opposition between religion and the secular. This return is also tied to the breakdown of modern liberalism and the crisis of global capitalism in terms of ecology, economics, and energy because of the demands for perpetual growth conflicting with the increasing scarcity of natural resources. I introduce some reflections for political ecology based on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, concerning repetition, intensity, entropy, and thermodynamics. Repetition is the creation of entropy, but entropy is not heat death and irreversible loss of order but rather the reduction of gradient differentials. What Deleuze calls repetition can be related to what Laruelle calls unilateral duality. Finally, I offer a reading of Lacan’s Seminar XVIII in which Lacan discusses the objet petit a in connection with entropy. Just as Laruelle attempts to think about religion and Christianity in terms of gnosis, heresy, and insurrection, here I deploy nontheology in insurrectionist terms, an insurrection with and against theology, to think about what happens when God dies in symbolic terms as Other and becomes manifest along the lines of an objet petit a.

This essay examines the biopolitical forces of corporations under late global capitalism, particularly how corporations come to serve as a ground for subjectivity after the death of God. By drawing on Philip Goodchild’s argument that it is capital itself that has murdered God, I then argue that corporations now fill the role formerly occupied by God and the state. To make this argument, I turn to Hegel’s insightful theorization of the corporation. For Hegel, corporations were the second dialectical universal that opened human subjectivity to a fuller realization of the common good. The legal notion that corporations are persons, coupled with the way they produce values through various biopolitical means, is corporation’s own consummation as the universal. After the death of God and the rise of what Hardt and Negri call “Empire,” the corporation has replaced both God and the state as the primary source of subjective grounding and ethical meaning as people deal with the resentment experienced after the loss of the big Other (the death of God). I conclude by attempting to “mistrust” or rethink the death of God with Deleuze, who always asserted that the fallout of Hegelian dialectics was resentment.

The introduction surveys this book’s stakes in debates within queer theory, critical race studies, early modern studies, and postsecular studies. Discussing the affordances of taking seriously the religious metaphors that continue to shape discourses of secular love, it outlines the ways in which Renaissance love lyrics provide a valuable archive to modern queer challenges to norms of monogamous coupledom and sovereign subjectivity. It proposes that rather than assume the coherence of faith, this poetry explores an ethics of promiscuity in which awareness of shared vulnerability entails a more challenging acceptance of shared propensity to change, ambivalence, and self-deceit. It further traces the history of the concept of secularity from its Protestant roots and, joining a number of postsecular theorists, argues that attending to the persistence of religious thought in modern culture can compel a confrontation with the racial dimensions of queer views of the autonomy of desire. Moreover, in suggesting that we may never have been secular, the introduction shows how attentiveness to Christian theology’s queer assumptions can help to contest normative associations of Christianity with unique innocence and morality, and a progressive periodization that sets modernity off from its others.

This essay explores the work of San Francisco-based artist Paul Madonna, his unique use of the tropes of imagetext and its implications concerning authority, readership and meaning in a post-modern, post-secular world. In reading through the absences in Madonna’s work – the absence of people in the landscape, the absence of an observing entity, the absence of a clear symbol and reference, this essay argues for a philosophical approach that underlies this work, one that can be dubbed “Durkheimian Existentialism.” In analyzing the ‘space’ Madonna creates in his work between an empty city landscape and human communication through the French thinker, Émile Durkheim, this essay argues for meaning behind the visual absence of people in Madonna’s comics: a celebration of people’s centrality and importance in a reality with no external meaning, to the extent that they themselves can become a revelation.

Chapter Two provides an introduction to the key terms, concepts and debates useful in describing political and ethical FBO activities. The chapter examines these activities and their relation to secularism, welfare and citizenship. It is divided into two sections. The first section explores historical and conceptual frameworks for thinking about FBO activity in Europe and the second looks at the neoliberal ideologies and the political promise of FBOs.

The concept of the postsecular is addressed, referring to emergent spaces where faith-based and secular interests collaborate. The chapter sets out the argument that FBOs are not tools of neoliberalism, supported by case material including empirical examples of London citizens (UK) and CARF (The Netherlands). The cases are connected with the political and ethical promise of FBOs in urban spaces.

This chapter explains the book’s central arguments, provides background, and theorizes its approach to literature. It shows how Old Testament wisdom philosophy informs Melville’s response to the manifold crises of modernity, specifically the loss of religious certainty and biblical authority. It explicates the book’s argument that Melville’s response can help us understand the dynamics at play in this crisis by providing historical and contextual background: first, it inscribes Melville into a transnational theological conversation about biblical interpretation that lasts from the early eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century; second, it outlines the American reception of new analytical methods such as higher criticism, surveys America’s intellectual infrastructure, and discusses how romantic literature fills the interpretive lacuna left by theological scholarship. Finally, it defines “wisdom” and “religious skepticism” and explains its approach to literary criticism as informed by a hermeneutic theory of contemplation (theology) and by postsecular as well as postcritical approaches (literary studies).

Since the end of the Cold War religion has increasingly become an organized subject and object of American foreign policy. This has been notable with the emergence of four religious foreign policy regimes—International Religious Freedom, Faith-Based Foreign Aid, Muslim and Islamic Interventions, and Religious Engagement—which together constitute an American foreign policy regime complex on religion. The introduction poses the book’s three guiding questions. First, why and how did these different, yet closely related, religious foreign policy regimes emerge? Second, have the boundaries between religion and state been redefined by these regimes, and if so, how? Third, what are the global effects of the growing entanglement between faith and American foreign policy? The chapter introduces the concepts and arguments that are central to answering these questions. It also highlights the contributions made to the existing literature, discusses some definitional and methodological issues, and presents the plan of the book.

The chapter presents the book’s theoretical framework, which is grounded in a sociological approach to international relations (IR) theory. It suggests that to explain the causes and shape of the operationalization of religion in US foreign policy attention needs to be paid to the combined effects of macro-level forces represented by the emergence of a postsecular world society, and the mobilization at the micro-level of a diverse range of desecularizing actors who seek to contest the secularity of American foreign policy through the deployment of multiple desecularizing discourses. The chapter then conceptualizes four different processes of foreign policy desecularization—institutional, epistemic, ideological, and state-normative—which take place as religion increasingly becomes an organized subject and object of US foreign policy. Finally, it advances three hypotheses about the global effects of America’s religious foreign policies: they shape religious landscapes around the world in ways that reflect American values and interests; they contribute to religionizing world politics; and they promote similar policies internationally.

The chapter identifies the constellation of desecularizing actors embedded in postsecular processes responsible for the institutionalization and evolution of the International Religious Freedom regime since the late 1990s. It then investigates the main institutions and practices of the regime and their evolution over time. The chapter suggests that processes of desecularization that underpin this regime are opening up greater spaces for the organized and sustained inclusion, reification, positive essentialization, and normative accommodation of religion in US foreign policy. In terms of global effects, the IRF regime advances a radically pluralist cum Protestant particularist understanding of what constitutes religion and religious freedom; contributes to the religionization of world politics through mechanisms of elevation and categorization; and promotes the adoption of similar policies around the world. The conclusion summarizes the main findings and reflects on developments taking place under President Trump.

The chapter identifies the constellation of desecularizing actors embedded in postsecular processes responsible for the emergence of the Faith-Based Foreign Aid regime under President Bush in the early 2000s. It examines the continuation and evolution of the regime over time and shows how this has depended on the type of desecularizing actors that have had access to the Bush and Obama administrations. It argues that the regime generates considerable forms of institutional desecularization, sustained by parallel processes of ideological and state-normative desecularization. In terms of global effects, the regime is potentially shaping global religious landscapes primarily by supporting Christian organizations and communities, and contributing to processes of religionization especially through mechanisms of elevation. The conclusion summarizes the chapter’s findings, compares the regime to the International Religious Freedom regime, and considers developments occurring under President Trump.

The chapter identifies the constellation of desecularizing actors embedded in postsecular modes of thinking responsible for the emergence and evolution of the Muslim and Islamic Interventions regime in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11). It highlights the multiple desecularizing processes taking place in American foreign policy as this has sought to increasingly target, pacify, and reform Muslim politics and Islamic traditions in the context of the war on terror. In terms of global effects, the chapter argues that the regime is potentially shaping the lives and religiosity of Muslims around the world along American interests and values; that it is contributing to religionizing world politics through processes of categorization and elevation; and that it is central to wider global policy networks seeking to promote moderate Muslims and Islam. The conclusion compares the Muslim and Islamic Interventions regime with the regimes examined in previous chapters, and considers developments taking place under President Trump.

The chapter shows how two epistemic communities embedded in postsecular modes of thinking provided the intellectual impetus since the 1990s that led to the creation of the Religious Engagement regime in 2013. It identifies how both epistemic communities shaped the regime during the Obama presidency. The chapter then assesses the multiple processes of foreign policy desecularization that the regime is both a product of and contributes to. In terms of global effects, it argues that the regime has potentially shaped religious landscapes internationally by empowering what it views as “good” religion; that it has tended to religionize world politics through mechanisms of elevation; and that it has contributed to the diffusion and consolidation of similar policies across Western governments and international institutions. The conclusion summarizes the chapter’s findings and compares the Religious Engagement regime to the previous three regimes. It then considers developments taking place under the Trump administration.

The conclusion has two main objectives. The first is to show how the International Religious Freedom, Faith-Based Foreign Aid, Muslim and Islamic Interventions, and Religious Engagement regimes form a broader American foreign policy regime complex on religion. The second objective is to reflect on the book’s wider implications for the study of religion in international relations and highlight areas for further research. This includes assessing the strength of the book’s theoretical framework in light of ongoing developments under the Trump administration; understanding better the changes occurring to the religious traditions and actors that America draws from and intervenes in around the world; investigating further how the American experience with the operationalization of religion in foreign policy relates and compares to similar policy changes taking place elsewhere; and reflecting more broadly on the implications for international order of the growing systematic attempt by the United States to manage and mobilize religion in twenty-first-century world politics.