Episode 106: You may be done with religion, but religion isn’t done with you
Transcript for Episode 106:
PDF transcript & digital transcript!
Shownotes for Episode 106:
In this episode, we talk about how if you’re saying, “Ugh, seriously, who cares, I’m not religious,” or “I hate religion!” then you are missing the boat. Because even if you think you’re done with religion, it isn’t done with you. We talk about who gets to choose to be religious and who doesn’t, how “being spiritual but not religious” is a new set of choices only available to some, and how religion lurks around every corner, like in hospitals!
We had a number of keywords this time! Find them in our glossary. They were:
religious, spiritual, voluntary/voluntarism, secularism, perennialism
The 101:
This episode had the academic—and comedic!—rule of three front and center: Megan talked us through three primary ways we can tell that even if you don’t care about religion, religion still shows up in your life. They were:
1) voluntary religions,
2) “spiritual but not religious,”
3) and religion lurking in the floorboards, even for those of us that are avowedly not religious or not members of a particular religion.
First, Megan talked about voluntarism—who gets to choose to be religious and who is just assumed to be religious—by citing Winnie Sullivan’s Impossibility of Religious Freedom. She talked about who chooses to identify as not religious (often white folk) and who chooses to identify as religious (often, though of course not always/only, she said: “People of color. Women. Poor folks.”).
Here, Ilyse riffed on actor and comedian Ahmed Ahmed’s bit about never being allowed to fly by talking about whether a TSA agent—or white, secular societies writ large—would accept a name sharing his name’s claims to atheism. She suggested that his assumed Muslimness disallowed either the real or hypothetical Ahmed Ahmed to choose his religious belonging or practice freely. Ilyse claimed, then, that for some, religion is not voluntary at all—and not really about religion, but about assumed identities (a process we talked about as part of the racialization of Muslims).
Second, Megan talked us through being spiritual but not religious (and only sort of came for your yoga class, nerds). Key to this bit of the pod were how secularization works and how Orientalism is a thing that allows some religious practices to be specific and others to be universal—and how yoga, in particular, was made secular in order to make it universal.
We also gave a shout to how Orientalism, spiritual but not religious, and secularization work around Islamic mystic Rumi. Daniel José Camacho wrote a piece on Rumi, politics, secularism, the US, and Iran, with copious quotes from friend of the pod (and E107 guest star!) Omid Safi.
But, really, what we did was cite Ali A. Olomi’s sick burn of a tweet:
Third, Megan scared the crap out of Ilyse by talking about how hospitals don’t have to name themselves as religious, but then can—using US law—impose their religious beliefs on patients who may not have even chosen to be a patient at that hospital. Catholic hospitals in the US are allowed to deny reproductive healthcare based upon their—not their patients’—sincerely held beliefs. Even if you’re brought there unconscious. Even if you would never choose that hospital yourself.
Story Time:
In this episode’s story time, Megan cites Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini’s Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance (2003), which looks at how judges have decided supreme court cases about sexuality based on their personal interpretations of sexual morality (which are pretty Christian, even if the judges themselves don’t acknowledge a Christian bias).
Here’s the quote:
“With this recasting of specific religious laws as generically moral ones, the Court dispenses religion in the place of justice -- and this despite the Court’s responsibility to uphold the principle of Church-state separation. This is not a matter of hypocrisy or duplicity. Even as it appeals to religious doctrine, the Court can truly believe that it is acting in a secular manner...even at its moment of institution the secular is not necessarily ‘free’ from the religious.” (32-33)
If this book isn’t accessible to you, here are some pieces that might be!
Jakobsen and Pellegrini also edited a great book about secularism: Secularisms (2008).
Jakobsen and Pellegrini wrote a few pieces for The Immanent Frame:
Primary Sources:
In this week’s Primary Sources, Megan talked about getting legal-married in North Carolina, where she was told to “swear on the Bible, or on the desk.” Because, sure: IKEA particle board is the equivalent of not-the-Bible.
Ilyse talked about Sigmund Freud and his Christmas tree—which is to say, the famous theorist and psychologist of religion’s attempt to “be secular,” and how it haunts her that he died in London, as a refugee from the Nazis, because religion isn’t voluntary. No amount of Christmas trees made Freud not Jewish enough to ensure his life in the face of the Holocaust.
This is not right. (But it does add a little levity, no?)
Your homework for Episode 106:
Homework during the COVID-19 Pandemic is hard, at best, and realistically impossible. But, we planned all this in the Beforetime, so we’ll share it now!
Ilyse suggested a few things about Orientalism, racing religion, and more:
Andrea Jain’s Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture (2014) is a great overview of yoga, from its historical roots to its contemporary forms.
If that book isn’t accessible to you, Jain has quite a number of public-facing pieces that are worth your time at her website.
Ilyse specifically recommends:
On race and religion, Ilyse cannot recommend the Islamophobia is Racism Syllabus highly enough, put together by an allstar list of academics of Islam, race, and religion: Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, Arshad Ali, Evelyn Alsultany, Sohail Daulatzai, Lara Deeb, Carol Fadda, Zareena Grewal, Juliane Hammer, Nadine Naber, and Junaid Rana. We can’t make you read all of it, but we can strongly suggest it. Some highlights:
It has a whole sections on surveillance: where one’s racialized religious identity is assumed and static/enforced.
Ilyse is especially partial to the impartial list of sources on Islam, race, and empire—all of which get at the idea that religion isn’t done with us.
The See Something, Say Something Podcast with Ahmed Ali Akbar is rad and frequently gets at some of what we talked about in this episode. We subscribe! The episode “Terrorist #1 in a Chuck Norris Movie” is specifically on point for our thesis.
Megan also has homework assignments, nerds!
Winifred Sullivan’s Impossibility of Religious Freedom (mentioned above) is always important for law, US, religion, secularism.
Journalist Patricia Miller’s Good Catholics: the Battle over Abortion in the Catholic Church (2014) gets at a lot of the activism and action around law, religion, Catholicism, and the US.
See Miller’s pieces here and here and a whole collection here for more on Catholics, healthcare, and access.
Nyasha Junior’s work complicates the notion of voluntarism, especially around issues of race. Her piece “Black Church Taught Me How to Be Black” is a good entry-point.
Mary McClintock Fulkerson’s Changing the Subject: Women's Discourses and Feminist Theology (2000), on Christian women of appalachia, also complicates the notion of voluntarism, with attention to class.
Journalist Kaya Oakes’ The Nones Are Alright (2015) gets at some of the spiritual but not religious language and identification.
Megan herself has published thoughts about all this! Check out her piece, “Costs of Corporate Conscience: How Women, Queers, and People of Color Are Paying for Hobby Lobby’s Sincerely Held Beliefs,” in the Religion in the Age of Obama volume edited by Anthony Pinn and Juan Floyd-Thomas.