Neoliberalism, postsecularism, and the end of religion

Abstract

This article examines the situation of religion in the context of contemporary neoliberalism. I argue that neoliberalism is a symptom of a fatal crisis in modern liberalism, which is brought about by geophysical planetary limits to growth. The concept of religion is a modern one that emerges from a secularized Christianity, and as liberalism declines, religion as a category is also declining. This phenomenon can be analyzed in terms of what I call postsecularism. Postsecularism indicates the breakdown of the modern divide within liberalism that assigns religion to a private sphere of belief that is separate from political-civil reason. Postsecularism attends to the ways that what we call religion exceed their modern frames and become deprivatized and politicized. In this process, spiritual-political forces are liberated from the modern framework of religion. Recent movements called New Materialism and New Animism can be seen as attempts to conceptualize this development. Finally, as an example, I turn to a recent book by Elizabeth Povinelli called Geontopower to show how religion fails to capture a profound entanglement of spiritual and political phenomena in neoliberalism, or what she calls late liberalism.