Orthodox churches and politics in Southeastern Europe: nationalism, conservativism, and intolerance

Abstract

another, and thus in turn produce and reproduce the particular ways religious diversity circulates in public discourse? The text contends with a number of ‘linguistic dilemmas’ – successfully on some points, less so on others, and on yet others one might say ‘the jury is still out’. The perennial problem of consistency and accuracy in the uses of ‘ity’, ‘ism’, and ‘isation’, which dogs the field of sociology of religion generally, is one point of vulnerability in this text. One example is in the use of the term ‘religious diversity’, endowed by Burchardt with a normativity because of the ways it ‘is turning into an increasingly prominent tool in order to render populations legible for governmental and administrative purposes’ (3); it may or may not be overly pedantic to suggest that good old-fashioned ‘pluralism’ and ‘anti-pluralism’ could serve the purpose equally well without contributing to the prevalent conceptual confusion between diversity and pluralism. Another example may be found in the uses of ‘secular’, ‘secularism’, ‘secularity’, and ‘secularisation’. Perhaps more substantially though, one might question the overall limitation of the book’s focus, as indicated in its subtitle, on the ‘secular West’. Besides not offering a definition of the ‘secular West’, Burchardt also does not entirely do justice to his previous work on ‘multiple secularities’ in thus limiting the scope to the ‘secular West’: many contestations of religion akin to those he describes in his second chapter, and to those he elaborates further through examples of urban administration and debates around head and face coverings (chapters 3 and 4), as well as iterations of heritage religion (chapter 5) may be found in not-so-post-secular contexts, across the globe. The extent to which migration-driven diversity is a necessary catalyst for all the above may also be questioned in a globalised world in which societies may be torn by passionate debates over issues not (yet, or possibly ever) directly relevant to them, in an empirical sense at least. Burchardt’s Regulating Difference is an excellent resource for students and scholars of religious diversity, of the relationship between religion and national identity, and of secularism and secularity. It is path-breaking, insightful, and a delight to read, and the field of religious diversity studies will be enriched if many do indeed read it.