NEWS RELEASE

The New School’s Social Research Journal Announces Conference Investigating the Changing Role of Separation of Church and State in U.S.

“The Religious-Secular Divide, The U.S. Case,” March 5 – 6

New York, February 2, 2009— The New School for Social Research and its flagship journal, Social Research: An International Quarterly of the Social Sciences, will host the conference “The Religious-Secular Divide: The U.S. Case” from March 5–6 at The New School. The conference will explore the historical tension between religion and secularity in the United States and investigate current trends, both public and personal, in the re-emergence of faith-based decision-making.

“This conference offers to bring transparency and open discussion to the ever-changing but ever-present conflict between religion and secularism in our country,” said Arien Mack, editor of Social Research and the Alfred and Monette Marrow Professor of Psychology at The New School for Social Research and co-director of the conference with José Casanova, professor of sociology and senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. “By proactively exploring the pressures challenging our Constitution’s reliance upon the separation of church and state as an organizing principle, we can ensure diverse individuals their rights to express their spirituality publicly and peacefully.”

The intensifying debate on the expression of personal religious beliefs in the public sphere is evident in contemporary social issues such as increasingly organized movements to include evolution and intelligent design in public education curriculums, the increased prominence of religious priorities in political decision-making, in governmental reliance on spiritual or faith-based philanthropy, and on the role of faith-based communities in lobbying for legislation and/or mobilizing voters to elect candidates. These larger social issues often serve as a proxy for personal debates emerging in the home, including the merits and quality of public versus parochial schools, the rights of personal domestic partners whose relationships are not sanctified by recognized organized religions, and health care alternatives in an age of increased medical technology.

Prominent scholars, experts and professionals with backgrounds ranging from religious studies, legal studies, political science, sociology, to philosophy will address these issues from their unique perspectives.

On Thursday, March 5, the conference will begin with an exploration of the origins of the secular with a look at the theoretical foundations of the current religious-secular divide from the perspectives of history, religion, politics, and philosophy. This panel will feature Noah Feldman, professor of Law at Harvard Law School, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is widely known for his work in Iraq as an advisor in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority and his book, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State. The day’s second session will explore notions of the self as defined by religion, spirituality psychology and secularism.

The conference’s keynote address, titled, “The Polysemy of the Secular,” will be presented by Templeton Award winner and distinguished political philosopher Charles Taylor, professor emeritus of Philosophy at McGill University. Known for his viewpoints on morality and modern Western identity of individuals and groups, he is the author of A Secular Age. Taylor will discuss the inevitability of confusion in analyzing “secular” through its many historical meanings.

Events for Friday, March 6 will begin with an exploration of the historical and contemporary legal and constitutional debates about the ‘wall of separation’ and the continuous entanglement of religion and politics in U.S. history. The panel will feature John T. Noonan, Jr., a Reagan appointee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. This discussion will be followed by a session on the ways in which religion has been implicated in reform movements throughout American history. The conference will conclude with a look at contemporary debates and the future of religion and secularism by a panel including Michael W. McConnell, a George W. Bush appointee to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and Mark Lilla, Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and author of The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. To view the conference agenda and speakers, visit http://www.socres.org/religiousseculardivide.

The conference is the 20th in a series organized by the New School for Social Research’s award-winning journal, Social Research. This conference is made possible with generous support from the Russell Sage Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, and Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts.

About Social Research, An International Quarterly of the Social Sciences – An award-winning journal, Social Research has been mapping the landscape of intellectual thought since 1934. Most issues are theme-driven, combining historical analysis, theoretical explanation, and reportage in rigorous and engaging discussion by some of the world’s leading scholars and thinkers. Articles cover various fields of the social sciences and the humanities and thus promote the interdisciplinary aims that have characterized The New School for Social Research since its inception. Recent issues have focused on such themes as "Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Denial,” “Collective Memory and Collective Identity,” and “Difficult Choices.” The Social Research conference series was launched in 1988. The conferences aim to enhance public understanding of critical and contested issues by exploring them in broad historical and cultural contexts. For more information, visit www.socres.org.

About The New School – Located in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village, The New School is a center of academic excellence where intellectual and artistic freedoms thrive. The 10,200 matriculated students and approximately 6,400 continuing education students come from around the world to participate in a wide range of undergraduate to doctoral programs in art and design, the social sciences, management and urban policy, the humanities and the performing arts. When The New School was founded in 1919, its mission was to create a place where global peace and justice were more than theoretical ideals. Today, The New School continues that mission, with programs that strive to foster engaged world citizenship. For more information, visit www.newschool.edu.

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