‘Scripture and Secularism: Biblical Influences in and on Modern Publics’ is a five-year multidisciplinary research project based at Lund University. The assumption that the Bible is increasingly irrelevant in the modern world is pervasive, particularly in the modern West, where the West is taken as the norm and as normative. Taking constructions of secularism, stories of secularization, and the porosity of secular contexts as our starting point, we examine the purported biblical origins of the secular; we analyse how the Bible is negotiated in different modern publics; and we scrutinize how parts of the Bible are remembered and repeated while others are forgotten.
The project team approaches the relationship between the “biblical” and the “secular” from multiple angles, from the Bible in Scandinavian academy and media during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, to influential European post-war thinkers and debates for contemporary secularities, as well as critiques of the biblical-secular as a specifically Western ideal. Ultimately, the project seeks to uncover the ways in which the continued role of the Bible in the modern world is important for understanding constructions of the West as normative for distinctions between religion and politics.
Aims
- examine the purported biblical origins of the secular
- analyse how the Bible is negotiated in, and is formative for, different modern publics
- scrutinize how parts of the Bible are remembered and repeated while others are forgotten
- uncover the ways in which the continued role of the Bible in the modern world is important for understanding constructions of the West as normative for distinctions between religion and politics
fUNDING
The Scripture and Secularism project is funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
members
Click here to know more about the researchers involved in the project.