By now, it is nearly a commonplace observation to note that secularism – until quite recently simply assumed to be the basis of modern nation states and the public sphere – is a contested and even “beleaguered” cultural, social, and political formation. Once regarded as the sine qua non of public democratic life and the requisite integument of international relations, the secular was taken to be unmarked ideologically, as the mere absence or negation of obsolescing “religion.” Linked to this regard for secularism as an unmarked, neutral category was the standard secularization thesis, according to which modernity itself was characterized by, if not understood as predicated upon, the progressive decline of religion – its relegation to the private sphere, its diminishing hold on individual belief, and its loss of authority in separate and increasingly differentiated spheres of discourse and activity. Published in Michael Rectenwald, Rochelle Almeida and George Levine, eds. Global Secularisms in a Post-Secular Age. Boston and Berlin: De Gruyter (2015): 1-24. Click here or on title.