The Educational Sociology and Political Theology of Disenchantment: From the Secularization to the Securitization of the Sacred

Abstract

This article provides an outline theoretical synthesis of educational sociological and political theology, through the concept of ‘disenchantment’ to afford insights on critical current debates around secularization and securitization. Drawing together two originating frameworks—Max Weber’s (1918) sociological theorization of religious authority’s intellectual demise as disenchantment of the modern world and Carl Schmitt’s (1922) contemporaneous framing of a political theology—this article argues that a bringing together of these apparently disparate perspectives facilitates an understanding of securitization as a staging post in the history of the secularization of religion in education. Here an educational sociology and political theology of disenchantment thereby provides embryonic evidence of the securitization of the sacred as a staging post in the history of secularization. It is argued, in conclusion, that all these framings are a matter of decision-making in the exercise of ideological, political and theological power in and through education. Such decision-making in educational policy presents new sociological and political-theological territory for empirical and theoretical analysis of the shifting sources of authority amongst what C. Wright Mills called the “power elite”.

Religious education and the pandemic: postcolonial perspectives

“…In Religious Authority and the Arts: Conversations in Political Theology, published in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, I outlined some of the sensitivities around religious rather racial offence (though the two are often conjoined), charting the different responses of religious leaders and authority figures in England to contemporary issues of freedom of expression. This contextualisation of the social and political-theological shows here the importance of the arts and humanities for religious education, and provides a necessary counter to the increasing dominance of social scientific methods and approaches in the subject (Gearon, 2018a(Gearon, , 2018b.…”

Der Religionsunterricht angesichts der öffentlichen Debatte um gesellschaftliche Säkularisierung und Re-Sakralisierung

“…Gleichzeitig steigt durch die verschiedenen Migrationswellen die Anzahl muslimischer und christ lich-orthodoxer Menschen, für die Religion selbstverständlich zum Leben gehört und die ihre Religiosität auch im Alltag zeigen (Stonawski, Skirbekk, Kaufmann & Goujon, 2015). Ferner greift die populäre Kultur wieder verstärkt auf religiöse Erzählungen, Symbole und Figuren zurück (Partridge, 2005), während die Politik vor allem den Islam als Risiko für die innere und äußere Sicherheit moderner Staaten verhandelt (Gearon, 2019). Religion bleibt somit auch in modernen Gesellschaften sozial präsent, wird mit hin sogar wieder bedeutsamer für die öffentliche Diskussion.…”