Questioning the secular/religious divide in a post-Westphalian world

Current debates in sociology are questioning not only the secularization thesis, that religion is inevitably declining under conditions of modernity, but also the notion of the secular and its relation to religion. Beginning with a brief look at six representative scholars who have been prominent in this debate, this interpretative essay seeks to contribute to it on the basis of a distinction between a ‘Westphalian’ and a ‘post-Westphalian’ way of understanding and structuring religion and the secular, above all in the form of the state. The argument is illustrated with three examples, India, Turkey and Canada.