䡲䡲䡲

The Problem of Secularism and Religious Regulation

Anthropological Perspectives

Emerson Giumbelli

䡲 ABSTRACT: his article raises questions about the study of secularism, from an anthro-
pological perspective. It begins by discussing some general references in the literature
on secularism and its counterpart in Latin languages, “laicity”. It then discusses the
approach for deining secularism that privileges models and principles, and advocates
for an analysis of the devices that produce forms of regulating the religious. he study
of conigurations of secularism is the outcome of a consideration of all these elements
(models, principles, and devices), and has a strategic focus on ways of deining, delim-
iting, and managing the religious. hree cases are examined in order to illustrate this
approach: France, the United States, and Brazil.

䡲 KEYWORDS: church–state relations, modernity, public space, regulation of the religious,

religious symbols, secularism

he purpose of this article is to render problematic the study of secularism, especially from an
anthropological perspective.1* It seeks to strike a balance between a bibliographic review and
a program of questions. It shares recent scholarship’s move towards comparative eforts. But it
also shares a diiculty that lies in the very nature of the research topic, as well as in the various
ways of deining it. I therefore begin with broader references in the literature on secularism and
its corresponding term in Latin languages, “laicity”. Next, I propose a discussion of the approach
that privileges models and principles for deining secularism, in order to advocate for an analy-
sis of the devices that produce ways of regulating what is religious. he study of secularism’s
conigurations can thus be performed through the consideration of such elements—that is, the
models, principles and devices—together with a strategic focus on the ways of deining, delimi-
tating, and managing the religious. If secularism necessarily involves the assumption of the exis-
tence of religion, then I think that the understanding of the modes of regulation of the religious
can be an interesting method for the practice of an anthropology of modernity. hree cases are
brought in to illustrate this approach: France, the United States, and Brazil.

What Is It We Are Talking about?

Let us begin with Brown’s (2009) brief but insightful comments in her introduction to a book
focused on the idea of critique and on controversies involving the notion of blasphemy. he cat-

Religion and Society: Advances in Research 4 (2013): 93–108 © Berghahn Books

doi:10.3167/arrs.2013.040106
94 䡲 Emerson Giumbelli

egory of the “secular” is also at stake, since she reminds us that it “has come to stand in common-
sense fashion for post-Reformation practices and institutions in the West that formally separate
private religious belief (or non belief) from public life” (Brown 2009: 10). Ater mentioning the
widely known books by Asad (2003) and Taylor (2007) on the subject, she continues:

Consider, too, the train of associations with the secular that betray the commonsensical
meaning—“secular” can suggest a condition of being unreligious or antireligious, but also
religiously tolerant, humanist, Christian, modern, or simply Western. And any efort at set-
tling the term immediately meets its doom in the conlicts among these associations, con-
licts epitomized by the recent phenomenon of an American neoconservative political agenda
that simultaneously sought to legitimize Christian prayer in American public schools and to
make secularization a central tenet of the regime change project in the Middle East. Indeed,
today, the secular derives much of its meaning from an imagined opposite in Islam, and, as
such, veils the religious shape and content of Western public life and its imperial designs. Yet
something named “secular humanism” is also targeted by the right in domestic American
politics, held responsible by its decriers for destroying the fabrics of the family, the moral
individual, and patriotism. (Brown 2009: 10)

For those who are ofended by semantic dissonances, the intellectual symphony suggested by
Brown may sound maddening. I will return to the nuances that characterize the notion of “the
secular”. But for the moment let us try a diferent path following the clues suggested by Cannell
(2010), whose review article “he Anthropology of Secularism” is illed with pertinent points
and valuable references. But its introduction prompts us to relect on the very nature of the
theme being discussed. hus, she airms that “the meanings of ‘secular’ and ‘secularism’ are
constantly shiting in the literature, depending on whether a given author believes that they
are real” (ibid.: 86). Faithful to her statement, the author acknowledges from the start her own
skepticism: “I am not convinced that there is such a thing as an absolutely secular society nor
that there can be such a thing as a perfectly secular state of mind” (ibid.). At the same time, she
recognizes that secularism is an “idea” that, when politically institutionalized, produces impor-
tant concrete efects. hus, “its efects—like the efects of some religious facts—vary according
to how far people believe in it and in which ways” (ibid.).
he author is well intended when she proposes to bridge secularism and religion, therefore
refusing an ontological preeminence of the former over the latter. But the symmetry she pro-
duces between secularism and religion depends on a contradictory coniguration: it is about
“things”, the existence of which we should comprehend, and, at same time, it is about “ideas”
with which we can agree or not. Perhaps the problem is in the notion of belief itself, which the
author deploys both when speaking from a personal standpoint and when accounting for the
social existence of secularism and religion. he critiques of the notion of belief in the anthropol-
ogy of religion (Asad 1993; Favret-Saada 1980) or even more generally (Needham 1972; Pouil-
lon 1982; Latour 2011, 2009) should provide a warning against attempts at using it for the study
of secularism. Cannell herself does not however suggest a deinition for secularism. Her text
covers a series of topics and authors, including a critical discussion on the theory of seculariza-
tion with special attention to the works of Asad and Taylor, the same authors quoted by Brown.
One section of the article is dedicated to a debate on secularism in India; it concludes with brief
comments on ethnographic works on countries such as Turkey and China. She hopes that from
these we can “begin to develop a genuine comparative anthropology of secularisms based on
particular historical and local studies” (Cannell 2010: 86).
More recently, there has been a proliferation of comparative projects on secularism and laic-
ity, but few of them based on anthropological inspirations and interventions. Bhargava (1998);
 he Problem of Secularism and Religious Regulation 䡲 95

Da Costa (2006); Blancarte (2008); Levey and Modood (2008); Cady and Hurd (2010); Warner
et al. (2010); and Calhoun et al. (2011a) are edited volumes assembling dozens of authors; Kuru
(2009) and Baubérot and Milot (2011) are comparative monographs. here seems to be a cer-
tain publishing efervescence in the Anglophone world on the topic of secularism, driven by
research projects, events, blogs, and so forth. In this literature, the use of the plural—“laicities”,
“secularisms”—is quite common, and indicates a comparative disposition as well as a refusal
of privileged models. It is signiicant that the volume of commentaries on Taylor’s 2007 book,
A Secular Age, which had opted for the singular, deployed the plural in Varieties of Secularism
(Warner et al. 2010). Nonetheless, some research sites are more salient than others: France,
the United States, India, Turkey, and other countries with signiicant Muslim populations are
much discussed. Latin American countries, on the other hand, are virtually absent as a ield of
research, especially in the Anglophone literature.
he burgeoning literature on secularism does not translate into a shared understanding of
what it is. Bowen’s (2010) diagnosis and the clues he raises are useful in this respect. He notes:
“To begin with, there are a number of words to choose from: you can write about ‘secularism,’
‘the secular,’ ‘secularity,’ or ‘secularization,’ or about several at once. You can stick to a French
word or a Turkish one, refusing translation. … Years ater a considerable literature began to
accumulate on the topic, one has only to glance at a sample of recent books and articles to see
that their authors feel the need to begin by deining and distinguishing” (Bowen 2010: 680).
Bowen (ibid.: 680–681) suggests that we distinguish between two debates, both of them relect-
ing academic trends for dealing with the category of the “secular”: “on the one hand, a set of
historical processes that characterize the modern age (at least for some of the world) and, on
the other, a dilemma of governance that emerges at quite distinct times and places.” In the irst
case, there is the production of genealogies seeking to account for the conditions surrounding
religion in Western modernity. he second case is about political analysis, aimed at understand-
ing how states are organized in order to govern or contain religions.
he distinction put forth by Bowen seems useful for acknowledging not only the boldness
but also the limitations of Taylor’s (2007) book. he latter can be associated with the irst of the
currents noted here, which also includes authors like Dumont (1986) and Gauchet (1999). As
Mahmood (2010: 293) clariies in her commentary, “While Taylor’s book provides a culturalist
and phenomenological account of the subjectivity characteristic of modern liberal secularism, it
remains indiferent to questions of political secularism. By political secularism, following Asad,
I do not simply mean the principle of state neutrality toward religion but the sovereign preroga-
tive of the state to regulate religious life through a variety of disciplinary practices that are politi-
cal as well as ethical.” his, I believe, is a path towards a deinition that allows for circumscribing
in a more precise manner what we are talking about when we discuss and study secularism or
laicity. I will return to the diference between governance and regulation below, as well as to the
possible and necessary connections between secularism and modernity.
In my understanding, Bowen’s suggestion may be taken up as we crat a conceptual dis-
tinction between secularization and secularism. “Secularization” would indicate a debate on
the importance of religion for society, which implies a consideration of various dimensions
and variables: beliefs, practices, institutions, public spaces—each of which is subject to multiple
unfoldings. Herbert (2003), among others, has helped to shed light on the multiplicity of levels
and variables. In a diferent direction, Casanova (1994, 2011) has posed challenges that seek to
detach the concept from any teleology. Indeed, a limitation of this notion is its epistemologically
negative bias—that is, one speaks of religion from the perspective of its disappearance or with-
drawal. he idea of rendering plural the measurement variables and levels poses disconcert-
ing questions, as it complicates the assessment of the advancement, stabilization, or retreat of
96 䡲 Emerson Giumbelli

secularization. Be this as it may—and I do not intend to delve deeper into these questions—the
discussion that pivots around this concept is always about the importance of religion.
“Secularism”, on the other hand, is about “diferent normative-ideological state projects, as
well as diferent legal-constitutional frameworks of separation of state and religion and diferent
models of diferentiation of religion, ethics, morality, and law” (Casanova 2011: 66). In other
words, what is being debated is not the importance of religion but the ways in which the state
relates to “religion”, in the sense of establishing a place for it in society by taking into account
the role played by various social agents (including “religious” ones) in the processes of shaping
such relations. hese are therefore political arrangements, and the task ahead of us is to clarify
how to deine and approach them.
It should be clear that secularism/laicity does not designate sets of ideas or ideological views
only. Since the nineteenth century, ideas and views sustained by both notions—as well as others
in opposing camps—have been reformulated and promoted by diferent social agents, including
those involved in shaping nation-states. It is vital to take into account the social debates made
possible by these and other related notions (Kuru 2009). On the other hand, attention must be
paid to their connections with multiple and heteroclite political arrangements between state and
society in diferent historical periods. Finally, it should be remarked that any and all debate is
situated within a certain social coniguration that cannot be reduced to discourse.
Cady and Hurd’s (2010: 5–6) remarks are also pertinent in this respect: “We approach secular-
ism as a series of constantly evolving and contested processes of deining and remaking religion
in public space. … Rather than seeing secularization as resulting from a transfer of authority
away from religion, various modes of secularism provide diferent spaces for religion, with the
latter understood to be plural in form and always internally contested.” his is not about deny-
ing possible and even necessary relationships between secularism and secularization. hus, the
particularity of the claim that secularism is an aspect or level of secularization is that, if such
conceptual dissociation is granted, the relationship is entertained from distinct ields of ques-
tions that will generate equally distinct research programs. Perhaps it would be better to say
that, as a dimension of secularization, secularism is to be approached in terms of its efects,
including those that contradict expectations of withdrawing and privatization of religion.
Before carrying forward our search for an approach to the study of secularism, it is worth
resuming Bowen’s proposals as they appear in another piece of work. In the book he dedicates
to the French case, Bowen (2007) discusses the notion of “laicity” in order to deny its usefulness
as an analytical tool. Coming from what he calls an “anthropology of public reasoning”, Bowen
(ibid.: 3) prefers to consider laicity as a concept authorities use, along with others, to describe
“the proper relationships among religion, the state, and the individual.” Further on, he radical-
izes his stance: “there is no historical actor called ‘laicité’: only a series of debates, laws, and
multiple eforts to assert claims over public space” (ibid.: 33). While the irst formulation seems
to point to a central aspect of the approach to secularism, the second may be misplaced. If we
agree that secularism and laicity are political arrangements, there is no need to minimize their
reality. It is in this sense that we may positively evaluate the comparative drive traversing the
recent literature, which draws either on the notion of secularism (as does Bowen himself) or on
the notion of laicity (as is usually preferred by those writing in Latin languages). he question
becomes how best to approach these realities.

Models of Secularism and heir Limits

Bowen’s skepticism about the nature of laicity and Cannell’s preference for circumscribed stud-
ies raise the question of the status of models as a way of approaching secularism. In order to
 he Problem of Secularism and Religious Regulation 䡲 97

tackle it, let us take the study by Kuru (2009), a political scientist who proposed a typology
encompassing 197 cases, based on how the state deals with religion. he irst type is the theo-
cratic state, where religious authorities control legislative and judiciary processes. he second is
the nontheocratic state that designates an established or oicial religion. he third is the secular
state, which combines two conditions: judiciary and legislative processes are free from institu-
tional religious control, and there is a constitutional statement (or some equivalent) on religious
neutrality. he fourth is the antireligious state in regimes that adopted communist atheism. In
this discussion, I will leave aside Kuru’s historical appraisal of ideological struggles on secular-
ism in France, the United States, and Turkey. What I wish to highlight is his starting point,
which suggests the above-mentioned typology while considering the four types as a continuum
of regimes of relations between the state and religion. In doing so, this recent study ends up
reproducing an older procedure that deines the secular state in residual terms: where there is
neither prevalence of religion over politics, nor prevalence of politics over religion.
In the case of Kuru’s typology, the paradox is that this residual category of the secular state
contains 120 countries, the majority of his sample. his might indicate a shit in perspective, as
traditionally the secular state was considered an exception. he fact that it designates a majority
in a sample that encompasses the whole world is part of the drive towards broad-based compar-
ative eforts. By bringing together countries that igure as paradigms for state–religion relations
and a country located at the margins of the West, Kuru’s research design is itself revealing of new
research possibilities. On the other hand, there are indications that we have not overcome the
notion of privileged models. Let us take a passage from a piece by Casanova (2011: 71) already
mentioned here: “Indeed, between the two extremes of French laïcité and Nordic Lutheran
establishment, all across Europe is a whole range of very diverse patterns of church–state rela-
tions, in education, media, health and social services, and so on, which constitute very ‘unsecu-
lar’ entanglements, such as the consociational formula of pillarization in the Netherlands or the
corporatist oicial state recognition of the Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany.” At
least in this formulation, France appears as a country where there is (or there tends to be) no
imbrication between the state and religion, while other countries end up downgraded in their
aspirations to secularism.
In a book suggesting that laicity may be found in various contexts, Baubérot and Milot (2011)
contest the notion that France would be an exemplary model or an extraordinary case. I will
return to the French case, and I will begin by agreeing with them. However, their approach
falls short of encompassing what even they consider to be a very complex picture. Baubérot
and Milot deine laicity based on four principles: equality of religious convictions; freedom of
conscience; state neutrality; and separation between the state and religions. hey then propose
a typology of six models of laicity, based on a diferential emphasis on such principles. he
French coniguration, for instance, is understood from the perspective of the interpenetration
and combination of these models, or of the challenges that practical arrangements pose to them.
his way of understanding laicity in France—to produce periodizations contrasting a separatist
past committed to the promotion of a civic faith with a present more open to collaboration and
dialogue between the state and religions—has become common among French social scientists
(Willaime 2008; Portier 2009).
I side with Bader (2012) in his view on the use of models for constructing approaches to
secularism. Although he is engaged in a debate with other scholars, I see his critiques as also it
for Baubérot and Milot’s proposals. Rather than choosing between models, it is about privileg-
ing “disaggregated comparisons of speciic practices (over time, in diferent territorial units such
as countries).” Indeed, secularism involves conigurations that cannot be reduced to models and
principles. It matters if we are able to describe which devices and mechanisms have been histori-
cally constituted in order to deal with collectives, agents, and spaces understood as “religious”.
98 䡲 Emerson Giumbelli

his is not about adapting models to “practical conigurations”, or vice-versa, but about under-
standing the mechanisms that allow the operation of secularism. It involves for instance the pro-
cesses leading to the establishment of a juridical regime applicable to religious collectives (the
constitution of juridical personality and civil capacities) and its corresponding state apparatus,
including iscal issues and norms pertaining to sectors such as education, health, social assis-
tance, historical patrimony and cultural politics, party politics, and mass communications and
media. It also involves the ways in which religion becomes present in public spaces of various
kinds, thus providing situations that may be followed up by means of ethnographic observation.
In other words, secularism not only takes the form of state agents and norms. It also depends on
conigurations that are manifested as relations between social actors of various kinds, from the
broadest to the most ininitesimal level.
his does not mean that references to models and principles are not useful, but one must
be precise about the sense in which that is the case, for instance, as declarations assumed in
juridical orders and legal procedures in certain countries. From this perspective, “separation”,
“autonomy”, “neutrality”, and “freedom” work as clues for identifying conigurations of secu-
larism. hey may also provide indications as to how models and principles crated in Europe
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were gradually adopted in other countries from
then until today. In fact, otentimes deinitions that are meant to operate as models and prin-
ciples as if they were evaluation or measurement criteria refer to elaborations whose genealogy
can be ultimately traced back to modern European ideals. My proposal is to begin with this
identiication and then follow the clues of its dissemination. his approach poses anew the rela-
tionship between secularism and modernity without returning to the conceptual and analytical
ield of secularization. At the same time, it renders modernity itself problematic. In this respect,
there is a disagreement between my own understanding and Bowen’s (2010) suggestion, since to
accept the separation between analytical questions need not lead to a rejection of the relation-
ship between secularism and modernity.
One observation on this deinitional procedure is needed to prevent a misunderstanding. To
recognize that Western Europe, and the United States as an outgrowth of it, are a historical refer-
ence-point when considering models and principles does not mean that they are being ascribed
any epistemological privilege, nor that the historical experiences of other world regions do not
carry their own, multiple speciicities. he European reference is maintained for preserving the
possibility of ascertaining the presence of threads traversing very diverse conigurations of secu-
larism. What is gained is precisely the possibility of considering Europe and the United States as
cases in a broader comparative tableau. Europe and the United States are therefore included no
longer as conceptual paradigms, but as privileged cases in order to understand how secularism
efectively functions in the situations in which it was originally elaborated. Research on other
situations and other countries ofer the advantage of providing new points of view from which
to look at the secularist metropolises. It should be kept in mind, moreover, that the conigura-
tion of these metropolises has never been isolated from their peripheries, including at the very
moment when secularist principles and models were formulated (Van der Veer 2001; Velho
2007).

Regulating Religion
I will now put forward a proposal as part of the efort to characterize conigurations of secular-
ism beyond models and principles. he most obvious way to do this would be to propose a focus
on the secular, inasmuch as this notion is supposed to undergird that of secularism or is used to
 he Problem of Secularism and Religious Regulation 䡲 99

qualify oicial statements. A problem is that not many norms make use of this concept, so this
would reinstate a restriction on the situations to be investigated. he irst formulation is based
on the idea that secular and religious form a necessary dyad, so that to understand the forms
of existence of the religious in societies that have adopted modernity, or that participate in it
in various ways, would also imply following up the forms that produce the secular. Curiously
enough, at a moment when many are dedicated to understanding “varieties of secularism”, while
others regret that secularity has not been achieved yet, some prefer to talk about the “postsecu-
lar” (as in the title of one of Habermas’s latest books [2010]). his brings the unnecessary risk of
turning a discussion on secularism and laicity into an assessment of civilizational epochs.
In any case, there is a broader tendency in the literature towards rendering the secular prob-
lematic both as social principle and epistemic category. his involves a critique of views that
consider the secular as a sort of default condition of mankind, waiting to be depurated from the
religious. I agree with such a critique and its association with a critical understanding of moder-
nity. But it may lead to overrating the “secular” itself. While I agree that the secular—as secular-
ity and secularism—always involves, by deinition, the notion of religion (Calhoun et al. 2011b:
5), the reverse is not necessary. In other words, to deine something as “nonreligious” does not
mean that the notion of the “secular” is automatically supposed. “Nonreligious” may correspond
to the “political”, the “economic”, the “civil”, the “associative”, the “humanitarian”, the “cultural”,
or many other domains and categories. To me, it does not seem that we are able to understand
these various demarcations as coordinated ways of developing something conceptualized as
secular. Conversely, as revealed in the commentary by Brown (2009) included in the beginning
of this piece, the notion of the “secular” has acquired very diferent meanings and characters,
therefore rendering complex its opposition vis-à-vis the “religious.”
he work of Asad (1993, 2003) has inspired all of those who have accepted the call to divest
the secular from its claim to correspond to what is essentially human. What is necessary is to
follow up by examining how the secular has been historically constituted. At the same time, his
emphasis on the secular as a focus of disciplinary practices central to modernity grants them
a prominence that is questionable. I therefore agree with one of the critiques that Bangstad
(2009) has addressed to Asad, speciically with respect to the association between the secular
and the production of violence. Like Casanova (2011: 70), Asad reminds us that the most tragic
episodes of the twentieth century had nothing to do with religious fanaticism, but with mod-
ern secular ideologies. But in these cases, it does not seem appropriate to consider secularism
as the factor causing violence. Similarly, it is also possible to question the general validity of
the use made by Göle (2010) of the notion of the “secular”. She shows the important role this
notion plays in our understanding of conigurations of space, material culture, bodily habitus,
gender, and sexuality in Turkey and France. But would not this analytical use be made plausible
precisely because, in the Turkish and French societies, laiklik and laïcité are fundamental cat-
egories in their national imaginaries and daily practices? Could that same use be reproduced
where this is not the case?
I believe that a better alternative is to be found in the categories “religion”, “religious”, and
others derived from or associated with them. What I suggest is that we take the occurrences
and references to such categories as more appropriate clues for understanding conigurations
of secularism. First of all, references to, and occurrences of, religion and religious are more
frequent and broadly disseminated than the secular. his ensures that the full extension of the
research ield is more thoroughly encompassed. I also argue that this alternative preserves its
association with the project of rendering modernity problematic, which is much more evident
when one begins with the notion of the secular. Such a claim is supported by elaborations show-
ing that the category of “religion”, in the sense of a genre deined by multiple doctrines and
100 䡲 Emerson Giumbelli

practices, is shaped by historical processes and formulations that hark back to post-sixteenth-
century Europe (Asad 1993; Dubuisson 2003; Masuzawa 2005). he contemporary dissemina-
tion of this category is contemplated by what Beyer (2003) and Casanova (2011) have called,
respectively, a religion world system and a global discursive reality. herefore, the objectiication
of something called religion is itself an indicator of modernity, and allows for rendering prob-
lematic the operations that project this objectiication on the past.
I propose to conceptualize the ways in which modern states and societies deal with the “reli-
gious” as models of regulation. In other words, we can identify in the normative references
and occurrences of religion and the religious (and associated categories) various devices and
mechanisms that, when taken together, allow for a characterization of conigurations of secular-
ism. I should add however that the concept of regulation is not necessarily related to practices
or attitudes of domestication, control, or even governance of religion, as Bowen (2010) seems to
assume. his happens more oten than expected when one begins with some abstract deinition
of secularism. Bowen is therefore right in calling attention to the procedures by which states of
various kinds single out certain religious groups over others, many times engendering disputes
between their religious leaders. Sullivan (1994) has shown how US Supreme Court justices have
arrived at deinitions of what “religion” is that have consequences for the cases being appreciated
by them.
here are however situations where the regulation of the religious operates indirectly through
efects stemming from the normativization of other social spheres; where the religious lacks
explicit deinitions and direct interventions; or even where the reference to it is accompanied
by positive discriminations, which may be either generic or directed at certain confessions. he
association of the idea of regulation exclusively with religious minorities (Richardson 2004)
or with a particular period of the coniguration of secularism (Willaime 2011) should also be
avoided. he aim of the concept is to encompass the ensemble of mechanisms and devices that
touch several religious groups in their transformations within a secularist regime, in order to
address analytical levels not contemplated by models and principles—thus the latter’s inappro-
priateness as heuristic instruments. We should also avoid viewing regulation as a kind of anom-
aly. Since religion is directly linked to modernity, it should be recognized that its regulation is
part of the workings of the latter—without assuming the existence of an ideal or satisfactory
measure of regulation. It is therefore about looking at multiple regulatory forms without expect-
ing to ind a situation where it does not occur.

France, United States, Brazil, for Instance

his section will illustrate some of the elements of the perspective centered on the regulation
of the religious. I have chosen three countries, two for their paradigmatic place in the ield of
secularism or laicity: the United States and France. he other, Brazil, is the country where I live;
it has been included to suggest the possibility of horizontal comparison. In doing this, I am less
interested in explaining the situations found in each of these countries than in pinpointing ele-
ments, claims, and operations that, in diferent ways, link up with debates and conigurations
implying demarcations and articulations between religion and other social spheres, especially
those demarcating public spaces. Strictly speaking, this is not a comparison; that would have
demanded greater rigor when dealing with the situations under analysis. A comparison will
remain implied. On the other hand, I have been careful to select situations that involve both
speciic and general aspects of conigurations of secularism and regulation of the religious. he
reader will notice that all of them refer to “religious symbols in public spaces.” his is an issue
 he Problem of Secularism and Religious Regulation 䡲 101

well suited for focusing simultaneously on the speciic and the general. It also allows for a series
of methodological approximations, including those inspired by anthropological ethnography.
One of the main, if not the main, reasons for the recent international interest in France is the
so-called headscarf afair. his highly polemical issue has led to the enactment of legislation in
2004 banning the “wearing of ostensive religious signs” in public schools.2 A possible interpreta-
tion would look back at the separationist model, consecrated by a piece of legislation from 1905
known as the “separation law”—itself the outcome of a series of measures that brought an end to
the regime of “recognition” of four speciic religious groups during the hird Republic. hings
are however more complicated than that. his very separation law created a new juridical ig-
ure in French law known as association cultuelle (religious association). his was a particular
kind of association with operational rules more extensive than those regulating generic associa-
tions, including an interdiction to receive state funds. Although the religious collectives were
not forced to frame themselves according to it, it may be regarded as one of the ways the French
state found to attribute a delimited space for religion within society.
It is also interesting to note that this igure of the religious association has become one of
the avenues for establishing positive relations between the state and religions in France. he
fact that it demanded more rigorous operational rules, which were compensated for instance
by some iscal prerogatives, turned it into a valuable mechanism when the French state sought
to ight the so-called cults (sectes). Only when I was doing research on reactions to the sectes in
France was I able to make sense of a series of devices and processes for regulating the religious.
Reactions by some belonging to the groups considered cults pointed to several administrative
and juridical avenues by which a religious association could be recognized. What is more, it is
not possible to understand the state’s reactions outside of a circuit articulating civil initiatives
(anticult associations) and media approaches (which convert the category sectes into something
to which broadly shared negative connotations are attached). his is thus not just about the
state, then, but also about other social agents.
We can thus return to the headscarf afair with a more complex interpretation in mind. It is
possible to envisage in the motivations behind the 2004 law a vector of hostility to the religious
that seeks to conine it to the private sphere. French oicial statistics do not include questions on
religious ailiation, and the same hostility may be related to the lower public visibility enjoyed
by religions in general as compared for instance to Latin America. On the other hand, it is clear
that, although the 2004 law is formulated in generic terms, it afects Muslims more directly. he
growth and consolidation of Islam in the French metropolis brought to the surface the historical
accommodations between the state, society, and Christianity. his is made manifest for instance
in oicial holidays associated with Christian dates and in the generalized association between
cultural patrimony and Christianity. Finally, there is a third vector: the restriction of practices
linked to Islam coexists with a policy that has spanned several governments at least since the
1980s, and which may be referred to as “recognition”. Its most evident expression is the creation
of an Islamic organization to act as an interlocutor with the French state in issues such as religious
assistance in institutions of collective coninement. he inclusion of such an issue in the original
text of the 1905 law demonstrates that the vector of recognition is as old as that of privatization.
Finally, it must be remarked that privatization, as it appears within a coniguration of secu-
larism, is not detached from procedures for regulating the religious. As many have observed,
the use of the veil in an Islamic context may acquire various meanings; its consideration as
a “religious sign” is itself equivalent to an intervention in that play of meanings. hus we see
Asad’s (2006) suggestion that the French law implies a kind of secular theology, as it demands
that a state authority or a civil servant interpret in religious terms the use of a piece of garment.
A similar line of argument is followed by Mahmood (2010) when she, as it were, politicizes the
102 䡲 Emerson Giumbelli

secularity analyzed by Charles Taylor. If we consider the form of self that Taylor associates with
modernity and with the religiosity that it allows for, it is necessary, she argues, to ask: “What are
the mechanisms, institutions, and strategies of modern governance through which an authori-
tative deinition of secular religiosity is secured in modern liberal societies?” (Mahmood 2010:
294). herefore, to observe the wearing of the veil in a country like France allows for simulta-
neously rendering problematic various aspects that lead us from the present to the past, from
Islam to other religions, and from schools to other spaces where the religious is regulated—all
these make up a speciic coniguration of secularism.
he United States suggests a very diferent picture. In contrast with France, there is no legis-
lation speciic and precise enough instituting a separation between the state and religions. he
main references are the laconic text of the First Constitutional Amendment (which deines the
principles of nonestablishment and religious freedom) and its interpretations in the judiciary.
But this does not mean that there are no legislative references operating as regulatory land-
marks. According to Sullivan, there are around 14,000 occurrences of the categories “religion”
and “religious” in federal and state norms in the US (2007:11). he books by this researcher of
American law may serve as a guide for some of these occurrences. Paying the Words Extra (Sul-
livan 1994) is about how US Supreme Court justices deine religion in their pronouncements.
As she airms in another book, “When law claims authority over religion, even for the purpose
of ensuring its freedom, lines must be drawn” (Sullivan 2007: 148). his passage was taken from
he Impossibility of Religious Freedom, which discusses debates over the possibility of consider-
ing religious the sculptures and funerary ornamentations straying from the rules of a municipal
cemetery. Prison Religion (2009), in its turn, is about a lawsuit concerning a religious reeduca-
tion program in a state prison.
Sullivan’s relections are interesting as they take as reference-points precisely the two principles
consecrated by the First Amendment. To render them problematic shows how their efects may
end up going the opposite way than their formulations. About the nonestablishment principle,
Sullivan (2008) notes the proliferation, at the level of society, of religious programs and initia-
tives, as well as the ground gained at the level of the juridical debates by the notion that religion
should be treated as any other motivation. he outcome would be the impossibility of sustaining
a clear and strict separation between the state and religion. A similar argument is made by Martin
(2010) based on an analysis of defenses of secularism and their rhetorical efects: since the ways
power circulate are not acknowledged in these defenses, organizations linked to dominant reli-
gions may freely socialize citizens, shape interests, and create normalization regimes, thus pro-
ducing efects that nullify the “separation between church and state”. With respect to the principle
of religious freedom, Sullivan (2005) raises yet another paradox: the criteria used by magistrates
in their elaborations of legal deinitions of religion oten operate through exclusion. On the same
issue, but going in another direction, is Palmié’s (1996) analysis of the observation of a municipal
law for protecting animals. his piece of legislation was contested by practitioners of Santería,
and their victory did not mean simply a conirmation of religious freedom, but was an important
episode in the reconiguration of religious and ethnic power structures.
Although the question of “religious symbols” has already appeared with respect to funerary
architecture and even animal sacriice, it occupies center stage in the cases analyzed by Howe
(2008). hey deal with the opposition against monuments exposing Decalogues in public places
that has been going on since the 1980s and has sparked reactions advocating the maintenance
or establishment of these monuments. Howe dedicated special attention to a case during the
1990s involving a Decalogue located in the access path to the Texas capitol. hose who defended
the permanence of this representation of the biblical stone tablets explored the fact that it is
one among monuments of many kinds. his allowed for presenting them as an element of the
 he Problem of Secularism and Religious Regulation 䡲 103

American cultural patrimony as if the patio of sculptures were an outdoor museum. Another
argument was that the biblical monument was being celebrated as one voice amongst others in
a “market of ideas” of sorts, the existence of which should be preserved in the name of plural-
ism. In both cases, the defense of an item in the conservative agenda makes ample use of weap-
ons from their secularist opponents: culture, pluralism, freedom of speech, and so forth. hese
argumentative forms, which proved successful in this case, reairm perhaps the impossibility of
dis-establishment and religious freedom. But they also say something about the conigurations
of secularism and the regulation of the religious in the United States. Moreover, they add yet
another sense to the occurrences of the secular arrayed by Brown and included in the beginning
of this article.
Broadly speaking, Brazil has more commonalities with the United States than with France, as
it lacks a separation law like that of the latter.3 When the country adopted secular ideals along
with the Republic, a law conirmed by the 1891 Constitution airmed the principles of separa-
tion, religious freedom, and confessional equality. Other provisions echo the anticlerical strug-
gles of the French republic, but without the same outcomes. In Brazil, for instance, there is no
juridical igure corresponding to the associations cultuelles. he Civil Code that came into efect
in 2003 speciies “religious organizations” without attributing to them clear conditions. here
is a bill running in the National Congress that regulates the civil life of religious collectives. In
both cases, the code and the bill were initiatives by Evangelical leaders, a religious minority with
growing relevance during the past three decades. he bill was, in fact, a hasty reaction to a 2009
agreement between Brazil and the Catholic Church. he consequences of these changes are still
uncertain. But it is possible to ascertain that a sensitive issue has been precisely religious sym-
bols, included in the agreement and emphasized in the bill.
Perhaps the most imposing religious symbol ever erected in Republican Brazil was the Christ
the Redeemer statue. It was inaugurated in 1931 in Rio de Janeiro, which was then Brazil’s capi-
tal city. It may be understood as an icon of the project to make Catholicism representative and
driver of the nation. his latter project was never fully carried out, but Catholicism has persisted
as a strong social reference. he rise of the evangelicals is also marked by political dimensions
and symbolic expressions. I refer to the state recognition of religious dates, and more specii-
cally, to the construction of imposing temples and biblical monuments in public spaces. If the
massiveness of the temples speaks to the majesty of the Christ the Redeemer, the modesty of the
biblical monuments inds a counterpart in the cruciixes commonly found in state oices—for
instance, parliaments and courts. In the past few years, some have opposed the presence of
“religious symbols” in state facilities. his opposition usually comes from civil society and bran-
dishes the weapon of laicity, but it has also been embraced by state actors. his tendency has
engendered reactions mobilizing arguments for justifying the permanence of the cruciixes.
An analysis of these arguments indicates that some of them prefer to circumvent or attenu-
ate the religious dimension of these objects. As in the case discussed by Howe (2008: 447), this
does not preclude a defense of cruciixes based on a claim of Christian majority. But it usually
comes along with arguments that displace the reasoning towards notions such as “cultural tradi-
tion” and the moral action these objects may have on those who make or enforce the law. he
discourse is that the cruciixes are not religious in the strict sense proclaimed by their critics. It
is interesting to contrast this argument with the concern shown by Catholic authorities with the
use of the image of Christ the Redeemer. his concern is a reaction to appropriations and re-
signiications that add diverse meanings to the monument and its reproductions, for instance,
its use in advertising. Faced with what they consider as sacrilege, the Catholic authorities recall
precisely the religious meaning of the image in order to threaten their antagonists with terms
corresponding to what is written in the bill under consideration by the National Congress.
104 䡲 Emerson Giumbelli

Again, what I wish to highlight is less the particular outcome of these controversies than the fact
that they necessarily draw on principles linked to secularism. his point becomes evident both
when one seeks to circumvent the religious meaning of an object displayed in a state facility and
when the Catholic Church claims that same religious meaning for reconnecting a monument
with a particular sphere of reality.

Final Considerations
As in many other public debates, the question of religious symbols tends to be entangled with the
issue of church–state relations. he latter has at least two limitations: the separation is regarded
as a negation of diferent forms of relation; and it may be conirmed by a juridical analysis that
considers above all laws of irst magnitude (Robbins and Robertson 1987). he approach based
on the regulation of the religious aims to displace this perspective; it demands that the analysis
go beyond models and principles linked to secularism to include the devices and mechanisms
into which models and principles are translated, thus articulating state projects and ideological
struggles that involve various social agents. Laicity or secularism may be therefore studied as
an outcome of the interaction between these various elements. What is being focused on is no
longer the degree of autonomy acquired by the political vis-à-vis the religious (or vice versa),
but the actors, operations, and discourses that assign a locus to the religious in a given historical
and social coniguration. he elements that compose this picture may be accessed by means of
various strategies and research methods, including ethnography.
he valorization of an ethnographic perspective allows us to highlight the importance of
studying the trajectory of minority groups. Following them within historical and national con-
texts identiied with secularism brings up things that the analysis of legal norms would have
more diiculty doing. hink of what can be revealed about the mechanisms for deining and
regulating what is “religious” by the diiculties and demands of Jehovah’s Witnesses in France,
by groups that engage in the ritual use of peyote in the United States, and by Afro-Americans’
religions in Brazil. At another level, also open to historical and ethnographic approaches, analy-
ses of controversies and deinitions about “symbols” can be quite instructive. he same object,
event, or character can be regarded as “religious”, “cultural”, or “civic”. We have then to under-
stand the various viewpoints involved, the disputes between them, and the mechanisms that
recognize some of the alternatives as the most appropriate.
Indeed, the perspective of regulation raises new questions with respect to the issue of reli-
gious symbols. he images of Christ the Redeemer and Islamic veils may function as emblems of
objects’ two modes of being: one referring to monumentalization and the other to embodiment.
When taken this way, religious symbols may be brought into recent anthropological debates
on the agency of objects. Works such as those by Latour (2002), Mitchell (2005), and Taussig
(1999) become relevant here. hey invite a look at the chains of images in which these symbols
participate, putting in relationship multiple social agencies, spheres, and discourses. his would
include those that, in the name of secularism, try to discard or attack certain religious symbols,
in which case the analysis turns their iconoclasm into a fully positive act (Howe 2009). Another
possibility, exempliied by Göle (2002), entails rendering problematic the visibility of religious
symbols in controversies related to secularism, be it over European mosques or Brazilian cru-
ciixes. his means accepting that their meanings and potential for controversy are associated
with multiple forms of presence and display in various public spaces, multiple perspectives by
diferent historical agencies, and multiple forms of performance or appropriation in diferent
social environments and media apparatuses.
 he Problem of Secularism and Religious Regulation 䡲 105

Finally, I believe that the debate on laicity and secularism may be enriched by its ampliica-
tion in yet another sense. he inclusion of India, Turkey, and other countries with a signiicant
Muslim population along with the more classic cases of France and the United States points
in this direction. It would be interesting therefore to enlarge the number of cases, considering
countries from Latin America, where we ind cases ranging from a strong secularist trajectory
(Uruguay, Mexico) to a privileged status enjoyed by Catholicism (Argentina, Costa Rica). But the
prevailing trend, including among local intellectuals, is to consider secularism in Latin America
as being feebly rooted. his view is supported by approaches that privilege public opinion and
the perspective of social actors over devices and mechanisms for regulating the religious. On
the other hand, the historical experience of Latin American countries, whose participation in
modernity has been marked by a sort of permanent crisis (including the adhesion to secular-
ism), constitutes a potentially valuable counterpoint to other experiences. It is thus imperative
to consolidate the trend towards horizontality that is shaping up in the recent comparative pro-
grams on secularism and laicity. he brief analysis sketched here of the Brazilian case side-by-
side with France and the United States is aimed precisely towards this end.

䡲 EMERSON GIUMBELLI has a PhD in Social Anthropology (National Museum, Federal Univer-
sity of Rio de Janeiro) and is professor of Anthropology in Federal University of Rio Grande
do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil. His current research is about secularisms in Latin America. Rua
Fernando Gomes, 38 ap 12 Porto Alegre RS Brasil 90510-010. E-mail: emerson.giumbelli
@yahoo.com.br

䡲 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I must acknowledge the contribution of the members of Núcleo de Estudos da Religião, with
whom I work at UFRGS.

䡲 NOTES
1. An early version of this text was presented at the roundtable “Compared Laicities,” in the 16th Jour-
ney on Religious Alternatives in Latin America, Uruguay, 2011. Translation by Leticia Cesarino.
2. My account of the French case is based, besides the works quoted, on Bowen (2007), Scott (2007),
Auslander (2000), Atglas (2008), Jansen (2006), and Giumbelli (2002).
3. I synthesize here my own research and formulations, carried out in dialogue with other works on
Brazil (Giumbelli 2002, 2008a, 2008b, 2011, 2012). For an overview of the religious situation in Brazil,
see Birman and Leite (2002) and Oro and Mariano (2011).

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