Thinking freely in religion in English-speaking countries
Penser librement en religion dans les pays anglophones
Published on Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Abstract
This conference will explore the different ways by which thinking freely in religion has been understood and practiced in English-speaking countries since the Middle Ages. The starting point is the peculiar way by which freethought has been historically associated with hostility to religion. What is, therefore, thinking freely in religion? The conference calls for papers about the free spaces created by religious traditions and institutions in the English-speaking world and about how these spaces relate to freethought and to any way of thinking freely that is hostile to religion. The conference aims for a long-term perspective on the interactions between freethought and thinking freely, and calls for papers on any historical period from the Middle Ages to the present.
Announcement
Argument
In his Discourse of free-thinking, occasion'd by the rise and growth of a sect call'd Free-Thinkers(1713), Anthony Collins vindicated the “right to think freely,”which, he argued, was the only way to discover truth. Collins went on to challenge the view that the prophecies provided compelling evidence that Christ was the Messiah. In response to such claims, the Anglican theologian Benjamin Ibbot took to the pulpit to launch a counterattack: “This is what there are great pretences to at present, under the Name of Free-Thinking; which, if taken in a right sense, has nothing in it but what is commendable, and tends to promote the Interest of true Religion; but in the sense wherein it seems of late to have been taken, … it is of a very pernicious Consequence, destructive not only of Reveal'd, but of all true Religion, and undermining the Foundations of all Certainty, and opening a door to Libertinismand Scepticism, Atheismand Infidelity” (The True Notion of the Exercise of Private Judgment, or Free-Thinking, 1713). Ibbot's strictures reveal the prevailing state of mind of his time. In early 18thcentury Britain, as “free thinking” was gaining ground, the attempt to think freely in religion was considered suspicious, possibly a devious strategy to smuggle in atheism (itself a form of intellectual libertinism), or even libertinism tout court, under the guise of a new form of intellectual freedom.
The correlation between freethought and sexuality can be found in most attacks on prominent “infidels.” Accusations of sexual impotence were levelled at Thomas Paine, the author of The Age of Reason, and Frances Wright, the Scottish feminist freethinker who became a United States citizen and co-edited The Free Enquirer with Robert Dale Owen, was called “the great red harlot” by her detractors.
It is of note that the term “freethought” should be seen as self-explanatory, referring to some form of thought about, against, outside of religion even without any explicit mention of religion. It is hardly less remarkable that the term should imply an absence or lack of freedom within religious institutions. Freedom of thought is not, however, necessarily exercised about or against religious dogmas and clerical institutions, nor does it always presuppose anticlericalism. With more or less liberalism, the religious institutions themselves create spaces of freedom for the expression of religious thought. That was the case of the Medieval Church, which actually did not generate submission to religious authorities only, as the black legend has it, but also produced the conditions for the rise of the individual and the subsequent emergence of new forms of spiritual experiences. Later, the Protestant Reformation introduced the concept of free enquiry. Thinking freely in religion includes thinking not only againstorwithout, but also withinreligion.
Religious traditions and their foundational texts provide believers with significant, though often unacknowledged, intellectual resources. They enable the faithful to introduce some creative spaces into religious structures and some fluidity into fixed religious categories. This leads to different ways of relating to religion and the divine, as well as addressing political and social issues which would otherwise remain untouched by the religious imagination. The process can be exemplified by the development of queer theology, whose presence can be felt in various degrees in the three monotheistic religions, or by Christian, Jewish and Muslim feminisms with their non-patriarchal approaches to the sacred texts and religious traditions.
Moving away from a narrow understanding of the “freedom to think” as the mere inverted mirror of religion, we welcome papers on the constructive contributions of free religious thought to religion per se, as well as papers which discuss the theological and ecclesiastical foundations of the notions of liberty and freedom. We encourage participants to distinguish between thinking freely in religion and religious freedom, on the one hand, and free religious thinking and freethought, on the other.
How does the “free” thinker think in religion? What does one claim or proclaim at various times and in various contexts when one professes the desire to think “freely” from within a religious tradition? How can one express and experience what is then being thought? Is not the freedom to think in religion—that very freedom that can lead to heresy, impiety, or blasphemy—the sine qua nonof the survival and expansion of a religious tradition? Is there a causal relationship between freedom of thought and secularization?
Semantic variations may also be explored. What isthe possible difference in meaning and scope between “free thought” (or “freethought”), “free enquiry”, heterodoxy, dissent, or even skepticism and doubt? How enlightening can linguistic specificities be in the matter? For example, the English word order does not allow the subtle distinction between “libre pensée” and “pensée libre” readily available to French speakers. Conversely, the lack of a neutral grammatical gender in French may preclude any attempt to theorize the deity and the divine in gender-neutral terms. Does it mean that one can think “more freely” in English (or in French) in religious matters? We will seek to establish and/or question the existence of one—or more—idiosyncratic English-speaking traditions of free thought.
Conference organised by:
- Culture et religion dans les pays anglophones and sponsored by CREA (Paris Nanterre)
- Histoire et Dynamiques des Espaces Anglophones (Sorbonne Université)
- PHARE (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
- TransCrit (Université Paris 8)
Keynote speakers
- Kirsten Fischer (University of Minnesota)
- Nicolas Slee (The Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham)
Submission Guidelines
Deadline for submissions (500 words and a CV):
September 30, 2018
Please send proposals to nathalie.caron [at] paris-sorbonne.fr& remy.bethmont [at] univ-paris8.fr
Scientific Committee
- Rémy Bethmont (Université Paris 8 / TransCrit)
- Nathalie Caron (Sorbonne Université / HDEA)
- Jacqueline Clais-Girard (Université d’Angers)
- Françoise Deconinck-Brossard (Université Paris Nanterre / CREA)
- Yannick Deschamps (Université Paris Est Créteil / IMAGER)
- Pierre Lurbe (Sorbonne Université / HDEA)
- Clotilde Prunier (Université Paris Nanterre / CREA)
- Cyril Selzner (Université Panthéon-Sorbonne / PHARE)
Subjects
- Religion (Main category)
- Mind and language > Thought > Philosophy
- Mind and language > Representation > Cultural history
- Mind and language > Religion > History of religions
- Mind and language > Thought > Intellectual history
- Mind and language > Language > Literature
- Mind and language > Religion > Sociology of religion
- Society > History
Places
- Maison des Sciences Économiques de l’Université Paris 1, 106 Bd de l’Hôpital, 75013 Paris
Paris, France (75013)
Date(s)
- Sunday, September 30, 2018
Keywords
- religion, monde anglophone, liberté, libre pensée
Contact(s)
- Rémy Bethmont
courriel : remy [dot] bethmont [at] univ-paris8 [dot] fr
Reference Urls
Information source
- Rémy Bethmont
courriel : remy [dot] bethmont [at] univ-paris8 [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Thinking freely in religion in English-speaking countries », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, July 11, 2018, https://doi.org/10.58079/10lz
