The Problem of the Postsecular

Fessenden, Tracy

doi:10.1093/alh/ajt066

Cited by 33 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Among postsecular critics, Taylor is often criticized as being too invested in a secularization narrative that has led to what he calls our secular age. 2 But there is another way to read Taylor's work that 1 Unlike Horton's more narrow use of postsecularism, I am not referring to a particular recontextualization of religious faith such as McClure's (2007) partial faith or Hungerford's (2010) postmodern belief, which Fessenden (2014) has persuasively critiqued as still being beholden to the secularization thesis. See also Pecora (2011), who makes a similar argument about Habermas.…”

Section: The Gift As Moral Sourcementioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Taylor 2007, p. 25). This certainly is an important aspect of Taylor's work, but it also misleads readers from seeing the more complex moves he makes to show, like Fessenden (2014), how entrenched and entwined our religious and secular sources emphasizes a historical narrative of secularity less than the hermeneutic conditions of belief. Focusing on the latter-on the conditions of belief-makes it possible to see him engaged in a postsecularism that goes beyond a project of recovering religion or translating it into other categories.…”

Section: The Gift As Moral Sourcementioning

confidence: 99%

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“In the Way of the Gift”: The Postsecular Conditions of Grace in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead

Sung¹

2020

Humanities

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In Robinson’s Gilead, one of Ames’ greatest hopes is for his son to place himself “in the way of the gift.” What is this gift, and what does it mean to place oneself in its way? The gift, I will argue, is what Charles Taylor has described as a moral source that is mediated by interpretive frameworks, and empowers us toward ideals otherwise difficult or impossible to sustain. Gilead enacts the necessary condition of having narratives of the gift, of having been in its way, in order to mediate its reception again. But if restoration is the great potential of the gift’s reception for Ames, it also points to the condition of impossibility for Jack, who is never given such a gift, despite having always been in its way. Although there is no guarantee the gift will be given, what Gilead explores are the postsecular conditions necessary for the gift to be received.

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Section: The Gift As Moral Sourcementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Gift As Moral Sourcementioning

confidence: 99%

“In the Way of the Gift”: The Postsecular Conditions of Grace in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead

Sung¹

2020

Humanities

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“…On the secularization thesis and the post secular moment, see Coviello and Hickman; Fessenden; Kaufmann; Taylor.…”

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confidence: 99%

A New “Mormon Moment”? The Book of Mormon in Literary Studies

Scales

2016

Literature Compass

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Despite deep popular interest in Mormon culture, scholars have not given significant attention to the religion's central scripture. The Book of Mormon is relevant to literary studies at a moment when the turn to religion and debates over the secularization thesis have captured scholarly attention. Until recently, scholarship on The Book of Mormon was largely polemical and divided between apologists and skeptics. The rise of the new Mormon history beginning in the 1960s helped bring studies of Mormonism tentatively into the mainstream academy. Historians and scholars of religious studies have examined the reception of The Book of Mormon, the rise of the religion in early American culture, and the story of its founder, Joseph Smith. By studying the long‐neglected internal workings of the text, literary critics have the opportunity to bring new scholarly techniques to bear on this highly influential American scripture.

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“…This is a question that lurks in the margins of Tracy Fessenden's recent critique of studies of the post‐secular under the auspices of Literature and Religion. In her article for the special issue of American Literary History addressing these developments, Fessenden warns scholars against the easy emancipation narratives and implicit sorting of “good” and “bad” religion, which often emerges – even unintentionally – in disciplinary accounts of religion and the secular. This is reflected in the way that scholars both select and narrativize their objects of study, charting “a path away from a doctrinal definition and toward an expansive, indeterminate space of spiritual power and option” (160).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Christian Science and American Literary History

Squires

2016

Literature Compass

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The religious turn in American literary studies has produced new interest in religious movements from the turn of the 20th century, and due to the opening of archives, Christian Science is one possible direction that research in this area might turn. Yet until very recently, literary scholarship related to Christian Science has been extremely f lawed, due mostly to over-reliance on a few problematic sources. This article offers an overview of the issues that have impacted that research while suggesting that promising work is beginning to emerge.In 1899, a Christian Science healer named Josephine Woodbury sparked a nation-wide scandal by suing her former teacher, Mary Baker Eddy, for libel. 1 Eddy founded Christian Science in 1866, claiming to have healed herself from a fatal injury by reading her Bible and meditating on her conviction that sickness, sin, and suffering were illusions. In the decades that followed, she spread her doctrine and her healing methods -which involved helping the patient realize that God created them to be perfect and therefore that they could not be really sick -beyond New England and across the continent. By the end of the century, Christian Science was one of the fastest growing and most controversial religious groups in the United States with a growing transatlantic presence. A variety of people, including European aristocrats, women of modest means looking to make a living, and neurasthenic novelists like Frances Hodgson Burnett and Theodore Dreiser visited Christian Science healers and studied the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, despite (perhaps even because of ) the fact that the movement was denounced by religious and medical authorities alike.Josephine Woodbury was one of many fascinating women to have risen up through the ranks of Christian Science. She traveled throughout the United States and, through the power of her magnetic personality, built a following of her own, a community of Christian Scientists who sometimes practiced asceticism and celibacy (at Woodbury's behest) and had mystic experiences. Due to her unsanctioned cult of personality and outlandish behavior -which included instructing her students to venerate her son as the second coming of Christ -Woodbury was

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The Problem of the Postsecular

Cited by 33 publications

References 9 publications

“In the Way of the Gift”: The Postsecular Conditions of Grace in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead

“In the Way of the Gift”: The Postsecular Conditions of Grace in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead

A New “Mormon Moment”? The Book of Mormon in Literary Studies

Christian Science and American Literary History

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