TY - JOUR AU - Fitzgerald, Timothy PY - 2007/09/01 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Theology, Religious Studies and the Secular Academy: Rhetoric and the Control of Meanings JF - Temenos - Nordic Journal for the Study of Religion JA - Temenos VL - 43 IS - 2 SE - Articles DO - 10.33356/temenos.7910 UR - https://journal.fi/temenos/article/view/7910 SP - AB - <div class="column"><p><span>The debates among academics over whether Religious Studies belongs within Faculties of Theology, the Social Sciences or The Humanities is a distraction from a more fundamental issue, which is the pervasive and largely unquestioned assumption that religious experiences, practices and institutions are universally distinct in kind and essentially separate from non-religious ones. Theologians and non-theologians alike have contributed to constructing a modern discourse on ‘religion’ and ‘religions’ that tacitly embeds its distinction from ‘non-religious’ or ‘secular’ practices. What is assumed as a commonplace is best understood as a rhetorical construction, which historically has had the ideological function of subverting a much older understanding of ‘religion’ that inhibited class mobility and the growth of capital- ist institutions. The most notable feature of the study of ‘religions’ lies in the tacitly distinct and embedded ‘secular’ or non-religious ground from which the study is assumed to be conducted. It was this wider rhetoric that made possible a basic part of the warp and woof of modern consciousness, the non-religious state and the ubiquitous </span>arena of ‘secular politics’.</p><p><span> Keywords: </span><span>theology, religion, politics, secular, economics, state, sacred </span>and profane</p></div> ER -