Civil War Secularity Talk

Abstract

Despite important advances in the study of war and religion, the role of the secular remains under-analyzed. This article develops a theory of secularity talk in civil wars, examining two instances where actors have made religion and sect salient. In comparing patterns of secularity talk among non-elites found in oral history sources from the Syrian civil war and the Northern Irish Troubles, this article contributes to the recent peace turn in the religion-and-conflict literature. Greater attention to religion’s borderlands, to how actors distinguish religion from other arenas of human life can tell us more about what happens to the secular when people are under extreme pressure, including during war. This approach also sheds light on non-elite ambivalence towards elite mobilization of religion to fuel conflict, a common but as-yet under-theorized phenomenon.