The Immanent Frame is a digital forum that publishes interdisciplinary perspectives on secularism, religion, and the public sphere. It was formed in conjunction with projects on religion and the public sphere at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Initially conceived as an experimental blog that invited multiple contributions from a number of leading scholars in the humanities and social sciences, The Immanent Frame was established in October 2007 by an SSRC team led by program director Jonathan VanAntwerpen, who served for several years as editor-in-chief. [1]
Among other topics, The Immanent Frame launched with an extensive discussion of Charles Taylor's A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2007). Sociologist Robert Bellah called A Secular Age "one of the most important books to be written in my lifetime." [2] The Immanent Frame's discussion of Taylor's book included original contributions by Robert Bellah, Wendy Brown, Charles Taylor, and several others. The name of the digital forum itself alludes to a central concept in Taylor's book.
In 2008, The Immanent Frame was named an official honoree of the 12th annual Webby Awards and a "favorite new religion site, egghead division" by The Revealer. [3] [4] In September 2011, The Immanent Frame partnered with Killing the Buddha to launch Frequencies, which was later named an official honoree of the 16th annual Webby Awards. [5]
Recent forums at The Immanent Frame include "Nature and normativity: New inquiries into the natural world," [6] "Modernity's resonances: New inquiries into the secular," [7] and "Antiblackness as religion: Black living, Black dying, and Covid-19." [8] In November 2019, Mona Oraby, The Immanent Frame's current editor, worked with Daniel Vaca and others to launch another special project, entitled The Universe of Terms, which asked how scholars might "advance the academic study and public understanding of religion and secularism in a way that meets college students' demand for visual imagery, pithy prose, and compelling narratives." [9]
Contributors to The Immanent Frame have included: Arjun Appadurai, Talal Asad, Rajeev Bhargava, Akeel Bilgrami, José Casanova, Craig Calhoun, Dipesh Chakrabarty, William E. Connolly, Veena Das, Hent de Vries, Wendy Doniger, Simon During, John Esposito, Nilüfer Göle, David Hollinger, Mark Juergensmeyer, Mark Lilla, Kathryn Lofton, Tanya Luhrmann, Saba Mahmood, Martin E. Marty, Tomoko Masuzawa, Russell T. McCutcheon, Birgit Meyer, John Milbank, John Lardas Modern, Tariq Modood, Jean-Claude Monod, Ebrahim Moosa, Samuel Moyn, Robert Orsi, Ann Pellegrini, Elizabeth Povinelli, Vijay Prashad, Robert D. Putnam, Olivier Roy, Joan Wallach Scott, Jonathan Z. Smith, Judith Stacey, Alfred Stepan, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Mark C. Taylor, Peter van der Veer, Michael Warner, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Molly Worthen, and many others.
In 2016, The Immanent Frame established its first editorial board. [10] Board members included sociologists Courtney Bender and Ruth Braunstein, political scientist Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, anthropologists Saba Mahmood and Mayanthi Fernando, historian Daniel Vaca, among others. Recent additions to The Immanent Frame's editorial board include Vaughn Booker, Todne Thomas, and Nathan Schneider. [11]
Secularism is the principle of seeking to conduct human affairs based on naturalistic considerations, uninvolved with religion.
Sociology of religion is the study of the beliefs, practices and organizational forms of religion using the tools and methods of the discipline of sociology. This objective investigation may include the use both of quantitative methods and of qualitative approaches.
Charles Margrave Taylor is a Canadian philosopher from Montreal, Quebec, and professor emeritus at McGill University best known for his contributions to political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, the history of philosophy, and intellectual history. His work has earned him the Kyoto Prize, the Templeton Prize, the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy, and the John W. Kluge Prize.
Irreligion is the absence or rejection of religious beliefs or practices. It encompasses a wide range of viewpoints drawn from various philosophical and intellectual perspectives, including atheism, agnosticism, skepticism, rationalism, and secularism. These perspectives can vary, with individuals who identify as irreligious holding a diverse array of specific beliefs about religion or its role in their lives.
In sociology, secularization is a multilayered concept that generally denotes "a transition from a religious to a more worldly level." There are many types of secularization and most do not lead to atheism, irreligion, nor are they automatically anti-thetical to religion. Secularization has different connotations such as implying differentiation of secular from religious domains, the marginalization of religion in those domains, or it may also entail the transformation of religion as a result of its recharacterization.
Secularity, also the secular or secularness, is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Origins of secularity can be traced to the Bible itself and fleshed out through Christian history into the modern era. In the medieval period there were even secular clergy. Furthermore, secular and religious entities were not separated in the medieval period, but coexisted and interacted naturally. The word "secular" has a meaning very similar to profane as used in a religious context.
Robert Neelly Bellah was an American sociologist and the Elliott Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was internationally known for his work related to the sociology of religion.
American civil religion is a sociological theory that a nonsectarian religious faith exists within the United States with sacred symbols drawn from national history. Scholars have portrayed it as a common set of values that foster social and cultural integration. The ritualistic elements of ceremonial deism found in American ceremonies and presidential invocations of God can be seen as expressions of the American civil religion.
Craig Jackson Calhoun is an American sociologist who currently serves as the University Professor of Social Sciences at Arizona State University. He is a strong advocate for applying social science to address issues of public concerns. Calhoun served as the Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) from September 2012 until September 2016 and continues to hold the title of Centennial Professor of Sociology at LSE.
Talal Asad is a Saudi-born cultural anthropologist who is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His prolific body of work mainly focuses on religiosity, Middle Eastern studies, postcolonialism, and notions of power, law and discipline. He is also known for his writing calling for an anthropology of secularism. His work has had a significant influence beyond his home discipline of anthropology. As Donovan Schaefer writes:
The gravitational field of Asad’s influence has emanated far from his home discipline and reshaped the landscape of other humanistic disciplines around him.
Saba Mahmood (1961–2018) was professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, she was also affiliated with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Institute for South Asia Studies, and the Program in Critical Theory. Her scholarly work straddled debates in anthropology and political theory, with a focus on Muslim majority societies of the Middle East and South Asia. Mahmood made major theoretical contributions to rethinking the relationship between ethics and politics, religion and secularism, freedom and submission, and reason and embodiment. Influenced by the work of Talal Asad, she wrote on issues of gender, religious politics, secularism, and Muslim and non-Muslim relations in the Middle East.
Religious intellectualism in Iran reached its apogee during the Persian Constitutional Revolution (1906–11). The process involved philosophers, sociologists, political scientists and cultural theorists.
Susan Jacoby is an American author. Her 2008 book about American anti-intellectualism, The Age of American Unreason, was a New York Times best seller. She is an atheist and a secularist. Jacoby graduated from Michigan State University in 1965. She lives in New York City.
A Secular Age is a book written by the philosopher Charles Taylor which was published in 2007 by Harvard University Press on the basis of Taylor's earlier Gifford Lectures. The noted sociologist Robert Bellah has referred to A Secular Age as "one of the most important books to be written in my lifetime."
Philip Stephen Gorski is an American sociologist, interested in both the sociology of religion and historical sociology.
The sociology of Jewry involves the application of sociological theory and method to the study of the Jewish people and the Jewish religion. Sociologists are concerned with the social patterns within Jewish groups and communities; American Jewry, Israeli Jews and Jewish life in the diaspora. Sociological studies of the Jewish religion include religious membership, ritual and denominational patterns. Notable journals include Jewish Social Studies, The Jewish Journal of Sociology and Contemporary Jewry.
Philip Joseph Zuckerman is a sociologist and professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He specializes in the sociology of substantial secularity and is the author of eight books, including Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society (2023) What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life (2019).
Michael D. Rectenwald is an American author and former professor. He has written about 19th-century British secularism and is a critic of the contemporary social justice movement. As of 2024, he is a member of the Mises Caucus of the US Libertarian Party.
Whites, Jews, and Us: Toward a Politics of Revolutionary Love is a 2016 book by the French-Algerian political activist Houria Bouteldja, first published in English in 2017.
Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm is an American academic, philosopher, social scientist, and author. He is currently Professor in the Department of Religion and chair in Science and Technology Studies at Williams College. He also holds affiliated positions in Asian studies and Comparative Literature at Williams College. Storm's research focuses on Japanese religions, European intellectual history from 1600 to the present, and theory in religious studies. His more recent work has discussed disenchantment and philosophy of social science.
