Neocharismatic Christianity and Secularism

Dear Colleagues,

Recently, there has been an increasing interest by scholars of religion in articulating the ‘secular body’. The impetus was to identify the particulars of secularism and secularity not on the ideological or even sociological level, but instead as sensibilities that operate at sensory, or even haptic, levels of embodied resolution. These well-ordered secular bodies stand in marked contrast to other non-secular bodies. A notable contrast can be made with the seemingly undisciplined (neo)charismatic body to buttress this view.

Unlike the bounded bodies of secularism, this other (neo)charismatic body can a ‘porous’ form of incorporation. In contrast to the secular body, the (neo)charismatic body is cut through by a plurality of visible and invisible forces, prone to contagious affective swells and ebbings. These formal contrasts between the secular and (neo)charismatic body become important as these forms of embodiment inevitably double back to the social. In other words, just as the embodied character of the secular and (neo)charismatic have become sites of meaningful contestation in these movements, what constitutes the ‘social body’ has become a similarly critical question. This doubling back to the social occurs in two different ways. Through the tracing of (neo)charismatic and secular networks, a sociological doubling back becomes evident in a statistical or molar manner. A more semiotic doubling back also occurs at a metaphoric level, where the ‘body’ has become a template for modeling the networks mentioned above, such as a church ‘body’, the broader ‘body’ of Christ, or even in the secular ‘body politic’.

This Special Issue presents the tensions and resonances between these two bodies, with ‘bodies’ thought of in the broadest possible literal and metaphorical terms. Revisiting this comparison provides an opportunity to interrogate the boundaries of secularism and secularity against the seemingly ‘porous’ constitution of the (neo)charismatic bodies. This comparison also provides an opportunity to understand better how the embodied person and metaphorical experience of social life play constitutive roles in these two global–historical movements. This collection will draw on scholars from numerous disciplines while bringing together contemporary theory and observation. In doing so, it maps the nature, history, health, and possibly entangled futures of secularism/secularity and (neo)charismaticism.

Dr. Jon Bialecki
Mr. Jordan Haug
Guest Editors

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