Re-Imagining Religion Along Postsecular Lines in Sub-Saharan Africa

Religion continues to exert a far-reaching influence on politics in sub-Saharan Africa. This influence is ambivalent, in that it carries significant promise while simultaneously posing serious contemporary challenges. Although there is nothing essentially problematic about religion—which indeed shapes social morality and nurtures solidarity—certain abuses grounded in faith traditions nonetheless have deleterious political and economic ramifications. The unwholesome aspects of religion are unsustainable and call for a re-thinking of the place of religion in sub-Saharan Africa today. The objective of this article is to propose postsecularity as a viable conceptual framework for re-imagining religion in sub-Saharan Africa. This postsecular framework acknowledges the socio-political value of religion, while delineating normative guardrails for a responsible practice of religion. Drawing on theorizations of the postsecular in the works of Habermas and other relevant thinkers, the article contends that the postsecular framework holds out a promise of political and economic stability for the sub-continent, ceteris paribus.